Airdrops working correctly?

[deviousity]

Twice, once in the forest and once in the industrial area, an airdrop happened but I couldn't find the box ANYWHERE. Empty or not, whatever I don't care, but I can't find the box. I found a shootout between bandits and soldiers, joined the soldiers, and I was dashing around as quick as I could, looking all around... nothing. 5 minutes later I'm walking all around the area, looking in every corner, behind every piece of clutter... nothing.

I know the box isn't visible if you're not looking at it, your character's FOV pointed at it, nothing in the way, so I have been wandering around for 15 minutes just to see what the box looks like. I'm about to give up. NGL, kinda pissed.

Edit: To be clear, 100% of the airdrops I have gone for I have found nothing but violence and bodies.

[div1]

There should be a sky blue UN crate in about the center of the zone, but it could spawn inside the rubble on the map, check by going close around the scenery objects.
N.B. These are timed too, max resources available for the loot roll within 30 seconds after drop.
Timer stops the instant you open the crate the first time, so a quick open close when you reach it could mean the difference between good loot and just water, bread and some ammo.
They can be a hassle to find, especially if you choose the skill specialization that makes chests always visible, but that skill could be beneficial in other situations (you see when enemies drops, as they are effectively loot boxes too).

[deviousity]

Hmm.. It can spawn INSIDE clutter? like that field of shipping containers? There was a lake in the middle of the airdrop circle I saw in the forest... could it have dropped in the lake?

If airdrop chests are spawning inside clutter, I call that broken. Can I turn off airdrops? The fact that the box might be inaccessible is enough of a deterrent to prevent me running over there and risking my life fighting for it. If I'm going to ignore them I'd rather they didn't happen at all.

[div1]

So far on my 0.40 save, out of 8 airdrops I've tried 6 and 3 could be called to be partially inside clutter as you say, with 1 of those being completely inside one of those half buried shipping containers, but still reachable.
Depending on difficulty and your level, it could be viable loot there quite some time after the drop, because there's a wide range of loot in those crates.
It's possible that it dropped inside the lake, but that has to bee the worst luck I've heard of.
Check out the Wiki if you don't mind spoilers for what you can find there, but at whatever level you are I'm certain you will benefit from it.
You cannot disable it, but they are easy to ignore as there's no other notification except the Plane sound and the orange circle on the map.
Can you get some screenshots of the next drop?
Because the UN box an be surprisingly easy to miss.

[Duke Fleed]

I find that enemies spawn around the crate so if I find bandits and hunters having a shoot out clues me in that the crate is there

[deviousity]

I found the shootout but no sign of a crate. I cleared the whole map and only left because I was out of food and water. Still couldn't find it.

It was almost right in the middle of the industrial area, covering the maze of shipping containers neatly stacked two high. There is quite a lot of ground covered by these. If it dropped in there there's no way you'd ever find it. If that's a possibility it needs to be fixed.

What I meant to say is it's a huge ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ tease, knowing that there's good loot, but it probably landed somewhere unreachable. Mildly infuriating.

[BlueSpark]

Originally posted by div1:

Timer stops the instant you open the crate the first time, so a quick open close when you reach it could mean the difference between good loot and just water, bread and some ammo.

I've seen other people report that merely entering the airdrop zone stops any further loot in the chest from despawning.

I haven't gone for many airdrops over my time of playing this game, but a few times, I sprinted straight towards the zone, arrived, then took my time scouting and killing the remaining enemies, and finally opening the chest well over a minute after the airdrop happened – which was very generously filled with loot (I don't know what the max amount is, though).

Oh, and for what it's worth, I think there was only 1 time I couldn't find the crate even after searching for a while. The other times, it never overlapped with other objects in the game world for me. But that might be a symptom of update 0.40 spawning a lot more clutter on map generation (I haven't done any air drops since that patch).

[deviousity]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3119118002
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3119118362

[deviousity]

Win some loose some, I guess. Or lose some first then win some.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3119236229
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3119236791

[div1]

I chalk the missing airdrop crates up to still EA, undoubtedly irritating but hopefully fixable when they've added the features they're planning.

Originally posted by BlueSpark:

snip I've seen other people report that merely entering the airdrop zone stops any further loot in the chest from despawning.
snip

From my experience, that doesn't sound right to me, but YMMV and likewise for others.

Originally posted by deviousity:

Win some loose some, I guess. Or lose some first then win some.
snip

That's one of the fullest crates I've seen, but still not the most impressive in loot value.
I'm guessing you're around level 4 - 5 on the difficulty scaling?
That could explain the somewhat low value in the crate.
Did you do a quick open and close before clearing the enemies or opened only after clearing them?
That could be an another point in favor of BlueSpark's comment, that would be nice to know you didn't have to rush to the crate, I've gambled hard on reaching that crate asap.

[Elegant Caveman]

Originally posted by div1:

Originally posted by BlueSpark:

snip I've seen other people report that merely entering the airdrop zone stops any further loot in the chest from despawning.
snip

From my experience, that doesn't sound right to me, but YMMV and likewise for others.

I seem to recall something about that in the wiki as well, but it could be my imagination. Doesn't say that now.

What I remember reading was that it stopped when you got close, but "close" is a vague and nebulous thing, so I do try to open it ASAP.

I haven't done a lot of air drops, so I can't really say either way with any confidence.

Just tried testing a bit with debug, but it seems that the Christmas event interferes, since it overwrites air drops, and it looks like they behave differently from regular air drops.

I did three tests:

1. First time, I spawned an air drop, left debug on, and went to it. It was about halfway across the map. When I opened it, it was completely full. Like, completely. I've never seen that before, and it took me about as much time to get to it as when I rush to a regular air drop as soon as it gets announced.
   
   Figured maybe leaving debug mode on might interfere, so...
   
   
2. Second time, I spawned an air drop, and turned debug mode off as soon as I had done so. I rushed to it, roughly halfway across the map like last time, but this time I didn't open it ASAP, instead just standing right next to the box for ~5 minutes. When I opened it, it was completely full again, like last time.
   
   
3. Third time, I spawned an air drop, and turned debug mode off as soon as I had done so. This one spawned right next to my location; I was just on the edge of the orange circle. I ran off in the opposite direction, found a building to hide in, and waited ~5 minutes. When I finally went to the air drop and opened it, there were a couple of items missing, but it was still more full than I've ever seen a regular air drop.

This seems to indicate that just getting "close enough", without opening it, is enough to stop the despawn timer. But, some huge caveats here:

These were very quick & dirty tests. I don't know if waiting inside a building on my third try changed anything.

I also didn't calculate the times I waited... I just walked away from my computer and did other stuff for "some minutes". The "5 minutes" thing is just a very rough approximation.

It's theoretically possible that my third test was just considerably longer than the second one, even though it felt relatively close.

Maybe the new Christmas event has it so that it takes quite a while longer before items start despawning, and if I'd waited just another 30 seconds, it would have been half empty? I don't know...

I don't know how linear the despawn time is. Does it normally start despawning as soon as the crate spawns? Is there a grace period? Is that grace period longer for the Christmas event? Is the despawn rate slower in general during the Christmas event?

[div1]

Originally posted by Elegant Caveman:

snip
I seem to recall something about that in the wiki as well, but it could be my imagination. Doesn't say that now.

What I remember reading was that it stopped when you got close, but "close" is a vague and nebulous thing, so I do try to open it ASAP.

Copied from the wiki:

"Quantity is depend on how much time you took to get to open the crate itself. If you come close under 30 seconds after spawn, the Air Drop is full."

Checked for the line saying what I remembered and looked for anything more I found this in another part of the wiki, copied here:

"Formula
Do not read if metagaming isn't your thing.
Until the player doesn't reach a certain range (short), every item repeat a 18% chance of not spawning for every 30 seconds elapsed since air drop spawn."

So the wiki says both it seems, so now I'm a little confused what to believe.

The formula part sounds like it's an accurate explanation for the game mechanics, so with good rolls you could have a lot left still after the "5 minutes" used in the test.

But that could be old information, I tried to check for last edits on the page and couldn't find it.

I'll continue to go for the chest asap as I have done so far, that seemed like the safest bet I feel.

Thanks for doing the test Elegant Caveman, I hope the debug tool didn't interfere with the timer functions, it shouldn't for performing debugging but that depends on the tool in question.

[Elegant Caveman]

Originally posted by div1:

Copied from the wiki:

"Quantity is depend on how much time you took to get to open the crate itself. If you come close under 30 seconds after spawn, the Air Drop is full."

Checked for the line saying what I remembered and looked for anything more I found this in another part of the wiki, copied here:

"Formula
Do not read if metagaming isn't your thing.
Until the player doesn't reach a certain range (short), every item repeat a 18% chance of not spawning for every 30 seconds elapsed since air drop spawn."

So the wiki says both it seems, so now I'm a little confused what to believe.

Oooh, yeah, that second part is what I remembered seeing. Missed it at the bottom when I looked again and just saw the first part.

The first part itself doesn't necessarily say that only opening it will stop things from despawning. Even if the second part is true, the first part could just be a poorly-/simply-worded explanation.

Originally posted by div1:

The formula part sounds like it's an accurate explanation for the game mechanics, so with good rolls you could have a lot left still after the "5 minutes" used in the test.

But that could be old information, I tried to check for last edits on the page and couldn't find it.

But yeah, it could be old information.

Good rolls could account for "a lot left", but it's hard to account for a completely full screen, which I've never seen before. I can't help but feel that's part of the Christmas event, giving us more goodies than normal.

Originally posted by div1:

I'll continue to go for the chest asap as I have done so far, that seemed like the safest bet I feel.

Agreed.

Originally posted by div1:

Thanks for doing the test Elegant Caveman, I hope the debug tool didn't interfere with the timer functions, it shouldn't for performing debugging but that depends on the tool in question.

No problem, as I said, it was just a quick test.

I hope using debug didn't affect things as well, but who knows.

As I mentioned, I turned off debug as soon as I spawned the air drop in my last two tests, to limit potential interference from debug itself.

Can't be completely debug free, though, unless you want to spend a lot of time just randomly waiting for regular air drops.

I hoped debug could let you choose where to spawn the air drop (I tried using the command while on the map, hoping it would spawn at my mouse's location), but no luck.

So even using debug, it's a bit hard to do thorough testing. At a minimum for "proper" tests, a stopwatch should be used.

Even if there is an actual radius around the drop which stops the despawning if you get close enough, it would be hard to test that precisely.

For something like this, it would be nice to hear from the dev, or maybe if there's someone who can look at the code and understand enough of what's happening there.

[div1]

Adding spoilers here for Santa content.

After a single Santa event test, it's using something similar to the airdrop mechanics and gave me a full crate even after over 30 sec, that could be the intended system.

Perhaps that's connected to the regular airdrop system, but I had too few outings to get one (1 on each of 2 different maps and on the second the Santa was out of bounds on the Industrial area (center on the right for the top pier).

The event generation is as reliable as usual.

Originally posted by Elegant Caveman:

snip
Even if there is an actual radius around the drop which stops the despawning if you get close enough, it would be hard to test that precisely.

For something like this, it would be nice to hear from the dev, or maybe if there's someone who can look at the code and understand enough of what's happening there.

Some Dev feedback or anyone who could dive into the code would be helpful, but the mechanics could change too.

Or if the debug tool allowed us to change the despawn mechanics to function like a "worst case scenario" where it despawned only one item every 30 sec, then that line of questions would be easily tested.

[Elegant Caveman]

Originally posted by div1:

Adding spoilers here for Santa content.

After a single Santa event test, it's using something similar to the airdrop mechanics and gave me a full crate even after over 30 sec, that could be the intended system.

Perhaps that's connected to the regular airdrop system, but I had too few outings to get one (1 on each of 2 different maps and on the second the Santa was out of bounds on the Industrial area (center on the right for the top pier).

The event generation is as reliable as usual.

Oh, yeah, sorry if I didn't make that clear:

Spawning an air drop through debug gives you the Santa bag air drop, so it looks like the Christmas event has completely overwritten regular air drops.

All the tests I mentioned above were with a Santa gift/bag air drop "chest".

Originally posted by div1:

Some Dev feedback or anyone who could dive into the code would be helpful, but the mechanics could change too.

Or if the debug tool allowed us to change the despawn mechanics to function like a "worst case scenario" where it despawned only one item every 30 sec, then that line of questions would be easily tested.

Some more granularity for the debug tool could be useful, but it could also easily become overwhelming, so I won't hold my breath on us getting something like that.

Could be kind of cool to have a "simple debug" and "advanced debug", though.

"Simple" could be whatever we have now, and then for those that want it, a further toggle that unlocks more advanced options.

[div1]

Originally posted by Elegant Caveman:

Oh, yeah, sorry if I didn't make that clear:

Spawning an air drop through debug gives you the Santa bag air drop, so it looks like the Christmas event has completely overwritten regular air drops.

All the tests I mentioned above were with a Santa gift/bag air drop "chest".

Then the Santa version is more forgiving if it has a timer at all, we'll have to wait then for the end of the event to test our theories for the normal airdrops.

Originally posted by Elegant Caveman:

Some more granularity for the debug tool could be useful, but it could also easily become overwhelming, so I won't hold my breath on us getting something like that.

Could be kind of cool to have a "simple debug" and "advanced debug", though.

"Simple" could be whatever we have now, and then for those that want it, a further toggle that unlocks more advanced options.

That would be nice, but this depends on the level of access that the Devs would like us users to have, like giving out Dev tools access that at least one game has added to their beta branch, but those could be a watered down version.