Disappearing NPC Ships

[Greasetrap42]

I have been doing lots of misc combat missions and haz rez lately. I notice that sometimes NPC ships that I am following but not currently engaged in blink out of existence. Both in supercruise and normal space. No wake left behind, and no debris. And I don't believe they went beyond my scanner range (usually there is the flickering radar signal on the edge of scanner perception).

I don't recal this in my Horizons days but maybe I just didn't notice. Anybody else notice this sometimes?

 

[Pville_Piper]

 

[Riverside]

Easy to test whether they just dropped off your scanner, turn around & go back to see if they are still there Many of my ships have A-rated long range scanners and I don't see the unresolved signals in those ships, after about 13km they just go out of range. I can still see the lasers of mining NPCs in a RES, or distant weapon fire or thruster trails (that might depend on graphics settings).

In general I don't think NPCs just despawn, they get blown up or jump out. If you follow their wake with a wake scanner they do 2-3 jumps then fly to some arbitrary destination, drop out & circle.

ETA just done a haz RES session (in Legacy) and the signals to go to unresolved briefly at the limit of my sensor range, and (something I forgot) some ships with a low heat signature can be unresolved or disappear from the scanner (it was an icy ring).