NPC Spawns breaks immersion of exploring

Veantur · Dec 20, 2014

Hi

i made a journey to outerspace. At the moment im in a System 350 ly from the nearest Human outpost away.
Exploring is cool but here are some bugs or features that are breaking the immersion of beeing in a huge Galaxie.
First of all i have met a lot of vipers and sidewinders in systems that these ships should not be able to reach. A Viper 300 Ly from the next Space Station battel equipt? This feels just strange.

But the biggest Gamebreaker are Planets with rings. Every Time im entering the Asteriods at a ringplanet i encounter NPCs, what the hell are they doing 350 ly from the next Space Station, and i meet them every time i enter the Asteriodring. This feels strange too, the System is empty but the Planetring is full of ships. Here are some Screenshots.

View attachment 5492

Im in HIP 93783 the next System with an Outpost is HIP 100967

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The System has a ringed Gas Giant

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I entered three time at different Locations the Asteriod Rings and every time had encounters

1. encounter
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2. encounter
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3. encouter
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I think that the NPC Spawn algorithm is broken atm.

patricio_z · Dec 20, 2014

Elite : Random

xDreadnoughtx · Dec 20, 2014

I agree. Seeing the very occasional NPC in a remote system is fine, but 300 out, and coming across NPCs in 2 out of 3 systems, nah.

It does tail of to nothing further out though.

Great being very occasionally interdicted though. Very tense when you have a couple of million exploration data to protect.

Really would like an audio prompt for a new contact!

Cmdr Moritz · Dec 20, 2014

Yea well.. It is not a cake, but a dough..

It deserves a ticket.

Frog · Dec 20, 2014

I think they are virtual ships that get created while the ever unfolding Universe unfolds.

For every Viper you see out there there is an Antiviper somewhere in the system, and once they meet again they annihilate each other.

Henri · Dec 20, 2014

i think the missing exploration mechanics break exploration, the non persistance of npc's breaks everything.
economy, trading, bounty hunting....

Lobstris · Dec 20, 2014

Henri said:
i think the missing exploration mechanics break exploration, the non persistance of npc's breaks everything.
economy, trading, bounty hunting....

Whilst I agree that NPCs shouldn't spawn out in the middle of nowhere, I don't think that there will ever be a game that has a galaxy-wide play area, and tracks *ALL* NPCs as persistent, that's just not feasible. Now it would be nice if select NPCs were persistent, so you could track them and whatnot, which was suggested in a DDA - but unfortunately doesn't appear implemented in any meaningful way.

Enride · Dec 20, 2014

I also find the NPCs random appearance to be somewhat annoying. Takes away alot of the feeling of being in a living persistent universe :/
Even in systems, i find them appearing/disappearing all to randomly.

And if you drop into a random spot of an asteroidfield, sure enough there are NPCs about. Im not saying it COULD happen, but it should be very very unlikely.
At least less then it is right now.

Lobstris · Dec 20, 2014

Enride said:
I also find the NPCs random appearance to be somewhat annoying. Takes away alot of the feeling of being in a living persistent universe :/
Even in systems, i find them appearing/disappearing all to randomly.

And if you drop into a random spot of an asteroidfield, sure enough there are NPCs about. Im not saying it COULD happen, but it should be very very unlikely.
At least less then it is right now.

I also find the NPC increase with time amusing, or annoying, depending on mood. I'm in a gas-giant ring at an extraction site in the middle of nowhere, all on my own, yet 30 mins later it's downtown in rush hour. [Was amused when an AI cobra demanded my cargo, just as an System Security Anaconda appeared - led to a spectacular, if brief, fight - Cobra's dumbfire missiles and pulse laser, against the Anaconda's Plasma Accelerator and turrets.

]

specialsymbol · Dec 20, 2014

Yes, please fix that.

CMDR i Tetsuo · Dec 20, 2014

totally agree, hopefully this is an area that will see some attention over time as it really undermines exploration

Frog · Dec 20, 2014

Lobstris said:
Whilst I agree that NPCs shouldn't spawn out in the middle of nowhere, I don't think that there will ever be a game that has a galaxy-wide play area, and tracks *ALL* NPCs as persistent, that's just not feasible. Now it would be nice if select NPCs were persistent, so you could track them and whatnot, which was suggested in a DDA - but unfortunately doesn't appear implemented in any meaningful way.

Well, first of all, the real play area is not the whole galaxy, but only the systems with stations in them. I don't know how many there are, but not more than a few thousand. It could be done with modern hardware. Even Frontier and First Encounters were far more advanced in that respect than what we have now.

NPCs don't even need to be persitent. It would be enough if traffic would be generated in a meaningful way dictated by the background simulation once a human player enters a system. Fill the trading lanes with ships that haul the wares the system sells and buys, add a few pirates according to the stability of that system and its kind of rulership, and a few bounty hunters and police ships hunting those pirates.

Nothing of that is impossible, nothing of that has not been done before. And you would have a game world that feels alive, and that the players could interact with in a lot of meaningful ways.

Lobstris · Dec 20, 2014

Frog said:
Well, first of all, the real play area is not the whole galaxy, but only the systems with stations in them. I don't know how many there are, but not more than a few thousand. It could be done with modern hardware. Even Frontier and First Encounters were far more advanced in that respect than what we have now.

NPCs don't even need to be persitent. It would be enough if traffic would be generated in a meaningful way dictated by the background simulation once a human player enters a system. Fill the trading lanes with ships that haul the wares the system sells and buys, add a few pirates according to the stability of that system and its kind of rulership, and a few bounty hunters and police ships hunting those pirates.

Nothing of that is impossible, nothing of that has not been done before. And you would have a game world that feels alive, and that the players could interact with in a lot of meaningful ways.

There are, I believe 150,000 systems with stations (or there abouts) - when you say it 'has been done before', by whom? (Not trying to start an argument, just curious as to your examples). The 'X' series of games have a deeper simulation aspect, but a far smaller play area, as far as I'm aware (own X2, X3 and X:Rebirth - but never really got into them).
.
I agree that the tie between the background simulation and what you see could be a lot richer and deeper (having multiple ships travelling together would be a nice bonus). Whether this is plausible with the AI being distributed between p2p clients is another issue.
.
I also agree that Frontier/FFE's ship persistence in the specific case of assassination missions and tracking via the hyperspace scanner was better than E: D's "randomly fly round USS" approach.