Too much NPCs

[LuckyOne]

Frame challenge:

1. What about immersion is intrinsically valuable? Or reprhased, why is it so necessary for a game to engulf the player?

Well if your game is about a universe grounded in our dimension / world it better be immersive if you want people to actually be interested in it, and stick to it. It is exactly the immersive universe with consistent lore that attracts people to Freelancer to this day.

2. Immersion is not the same as realism. You can be immersed in (that is, wholly preoccupied and engaged with) a game without that game being realistic. People get immersed in Tetris. People could be immersed in Disco if a pirate cruiser wandered up to you and picked a fight in Manhattan orbit. The resulting fight would probably be very preoccupying and engaging. It just wouldn't be realistic.

I never did say immersion is the same as realism. Talking about realism in a universe as comically built as Freelancer's is a moot point.

But it is about suspension of disbelief. We do have a couple of reference points from the single player game of how the life of an unlawful should be in the Freelancer universe (hint: hard). Namely the mission where Juni and Trent flee Manhattan and the period of being chased / harassed by Bounty Hunters wherever you go that comes after.

3. Like @Archaetherial, you are simplifying my argument to make it easier to attack. I'm not talking about pirates and smugglers taking over the game and removing all threatening NPCs, but the fact that you think any adjustment to the balance of power in favor of unlawfuls at all is indicative of the exact cancerous mindset of "lawfuls should be easy to play and pirates should be hard to play" that has gotten us to where we are in the first place.

You are twisting my words now. Yes, I started my example with a pirate flying his cruiser into the center of a House but immediately followed it with an equal counter-point of Navy patrol venturing into lawless territory. The result should be the same: trespassers end up dead unless they significantly outnumber the NPCs.

If you had bothered to read my post to the end maybe you would have noticed I proposed some alternative solutions that could be looked into too...

Oh, and another point that might be looked into. If a NPC base is disabled, will the patrol NPCs continue to spawn on it?