NPCs

[aerelm]

NPCs will NOT be removed at all regardless how hard you cry for it. The only thing that'll be done to them is removing their CD's outside of guard systems and making them generally less annoying.

And you state that as a fact, how? It's usually good that when you're forumlancing and decide to bold and capitalize something and state it as a fact, you add a [url] tag to it as well, so you'd have an official statement to back your point up. If we want to play the game your way, I can just go ahead and say "4.86 will NEVER come out, cause the whole project is canceled." Go figure.

True, but I think that the NPC's are pretty important just cause of their feel. It makes the server... Less empty at times...

One thing people always forget in these threads. Some factions need NPC's to rep. No bribes for any military's.

And shooting hostile NPCs without taking missions won't effect your guard rep, so your point is..?

Personally i think NPC's should all be like Gallia,or guard NPC's. And i mean every where.

Why don't you just go play SP then instead? I'm pretty sure both you and the majority of this community would be happier if you actually do that.

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Now, I'm gonna say what I've said just too many times in similar threads:
My personal opinion about NPCs, is that they're unneeded, no matter how you try to justify it. If I come to play an online multiplayer game, means I want to interact with Players, not the same stupid bots I can find on SP. You say "oh NPCs give feeling to RP"? Then take this scenario: 3 players faction A run into a single player from faction B, one of the players from faction A is the leader of the faction, and he orders everyone to stand down, and sends in a single ship to duel the player from faction B. Now what we usually get is, 5 player ships sitting around the fight without interfering, while 12 NPCs keep chainfiring the faction B player, which just makes the ones sitting and watching look silly.
The only thing about random NPCs spawning is ability to do quick rep fixes, which can be easily solved with adding more depots for each faction. Other than that, I don't see how a bunch of bots that only know how to ram your larger ships around, and block the docking port of bases and gates add any "feeling" to the game. There are only 40 players on server? Then face it, you're not gonna get as much player interaction as when server is full, either don't log on and go play SP, or accept the fact that you might have to fly through empty systems for a couple of minutes. This is a multiplayer server, and the point is to fill it with players, not bots.
Lately, my main issue with NPCs have been the lag they cause. I don't have a perfect net, and I don't live right next to the server, so my average ping is something around 170ms and I usually get a slight lag or loss. Now, the only thing I need to completely ruin my fight and make it lag up so bad that it's simply unhittable, is the regular 9 - 12 NPC spawns that we've been seeing too much lately. From Class 2 daggers who can't even move my shield, and won't do any damage even when the shield is done, to Class 16 NPCs in different systems that even 3 of them is enough to kill you if you sit still for a second... All they do is to kick my ping from a steady 170/4/0/0 to a lagged up 250/40/20/15 when they spawn. And not to mention if I want to get ganked by NPCs, I'll go play SP, and if I log on a multiplayer server, it's to pvp with players, not NPCs.

All and all, I can't get the point behind having at least 12 NPCs around me most of the time, and I don't see how they might give any "feeling" to server, and that's why I've supported every single thread of this type so far.

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I would like to see some suggestions about how to implement tha changes proposed. Such that you could then possibly go and make the changes yourself if allowed to do so.
Time estimates included.

Simplest, but maybe not the best solution which would at least buy us time to consider an alternative to solve this problem? What we had before - Turning NPCs off when there are more than 160 players on server.

Back during the day, I only played when server load was higher so there were no NPCs around. Right now, I only play when server load is low, so having 12 NPCs around me doesn't lag me up -That- bad, cause if I have to deal with 12 NPCs all the time, I'd rather do it when server is less laggy.