Spawn Blocks

[Player One]

So how do you guys like these new spawn blocks that spawn the NPCs now?

Well, personaly i got to say that i was a bit disappointed about their implementation. I like the intention of making POIs more difficult and place more enemys around, but not in that way.

First disadvantage is that they only spawn enemys when the player is very close to them, making it impossible to kill npcs with an SV from far away - or allows on the other hand to destroy the pads from a distance without them spawning any nps at the whole poi.

Second is that it does not seem to be satisfying having to shoot at all the pads, instead of dealing with smarter enemys (what i was hoping for). most pads spawned 3 soldiers in the same spot, standing inside eachother, what seems to be buged right now..

But i want to talk about the whole idea of spawnerblocks at all. I dont think its the way i like enemys to be restocked. Instead i do like the troop transports and would suggest to let them replace troop contingents after a certain time and if the base core is still intact. It would feel much more reasonable to face new enemys outside of the bases once you took a long time to clean it inside and if you leave without destroying the core they could retake the base.
Another point is that enemys should be smarter, not yust hanging around in some rooms or corridors, they should use advanced tactics and come for me, try to hide or trap me etc..once i got spotted by the base and even try to raid my own base on foot.

Anyway, i think we need a better solution for an advanced degree of dificulty then those visible spawn block - i dont want to "see" the games mechanic so obviously and feel this hurts the games experience at all.

[Wisp Cat]

I agree that this is weak right now - which I think means it should be not too difficult to improve. I am aware of several weaknesses:

(1) AI movement needs some more work.

(2) Right now, you can destroy the pad, walk away far enough, and the enemies will vanish. (They should probably keep a count of active enemies and respawn even if there's no pad if they have not been killed yet.)

(3) Enemies appearing could use some particle effects and maybe even sound effects. Right now it's anticlimatic.

(4) Pacing (timing between spawns) could use some work.

And, yes, I agree with you that spawn triggering range should exceed hand-held weapon range. (Edit: but I guess it is nice that you can sometimes destroy that bot spawning pad before it spawns any bots.)

[jfinney66]

Everything has to have a balance, we know about the spawn blocks, a new player will not, that has to be taken into consideration and I'm sure that is something the devs are constantly working on.

The blocks are glitchy, i've seen some with 3 enemies stacked in one spot and they never attack you and then I've seen one that instanly spawned a turret as soon as I killed the first, 20 deaths later and I had to resort to getting my ship and firing around 50 rockets just to take out that general location.

For me the enemies have allways been kind of weird, they either totally destroy you or act like they're high on weed and just wander around aimlessly.

I'm not to bothered about it, I know that they will get around to it eventually. As long as its not a game breaking bug then its going to get resolved eventually,

[Wisp Cat]

I agree, that turret spawner really needs better pacing.

But there are various ways to get rid of it.

My favorite is to get an angle where I can shoot the pad and the turrets cannot shoot me. But, failing that, a minigun works well enough - first get rid of the pad, then get out of line of fire and heal up and reload, then take out the turrets and heal again. (It might help if you take a large health before you start shooting, but things are hectic enough when I'm fighting turrets like that that I have never verified that that helps.)

Another way, though, is to destroy the core, then use your R&R tool from your personal drone to dismantle the pad. This works so well, though, that it feels like cheating.

[doomslay]

I think that there were always spawner block but before once they spawned they disapperared. The idea now was to despawn enemy when you leave an area so as to cut down on the bookkeeping needed to keep track of entities. the problem is as the OP said they just keep spawning which is a real ♥♥♥♥♥ if you are trying to destroy the pad (ie the pad that spawns the dalicks in the weapons factory they respawn so fast you cant damage the pad) oh well it is an alpha build after all.