Enemies respawn?

[playoftheyear]

Is it normal for them to respawn? I killed military dudes that were asking for toll money by the bridge, and they never came back...but in the next area, I slaughter a group of dudes who were trying to take over a junkyard from some friendlies, and they come back every time I go through there. Is there a flagged mob I have to kill to stop the group from respawning?

All in all I think that this game has difficulty spikes- going from easy to hard in not so far amount of exploration.

[kaay]

Yes, respawning is normal in this game, and its sequels.
Critcial quest related mobs like the military guarding the bridge should not respawn, but a lot of other mobs wil respawn, thats normal.
Difficulty spikes dont come from respawning, for the simple reason you can ignore the junkyard skirmish, just like you can ignore a lot of other stuff.
You have choices, use them.
Also when the game goes from easy to hard abruptly, its time to take a breath and think about a strategy.....this approach always works, take it from a player that spent over 1k hrs in these three efin games and all their mods.

[playoftheyear]

Stealth then? I found onw of the first storyline quests, to retrieve some documents from a base just after the junkyard, to be frustrating due to high number of aggroing mobs. Is CoP better to start with than SoC for a newbie?

[HunterKiller]

I think SoC is fine to play first. I actually got CoP then went to SoC. I enjoyed SoC much better. As for spawns, the military only posts a limited number of soldiers at check points, although, regular NPCs can spawn at any given moment due to the fact that, they come to support their brothers.

As for Easy v Hard? I think Hard (master) is best to play for one reason, it brings less NPC but, they're more accurate than the easier level ones so, there's less of a mob of them at any given moment. I play them all on Master difficulty and enjoy the games much better. Your weapons are more accurate than when playing on the lower levels. Also, keep checking your weapon in the inventory for weakness and always swap it out for a better one when you pick them up. There's no upgrades in SoC as there are in CS & CoP, keep that in mind. However, you may find some upgraded guns either in stashes or, by picking one up from a dead NPC. I'm only talking aobut the Vanilla games, not using mods.

Don't forget, the Bandits are criminals all around. They only take from the Zone, they also take from everyone else, mainly, Stalkers. Most Stalkers are Loners so, there's always less of them in most camps. They aren't really there to take over camps so, once you kill the enemies at a camp and leave, more will return at a later time.

[playoftheyear]

Yeah, this series of games tell me one thing for sure and that is " Be prepared for the unknown " Thanks for the reply

[terryt3535]

Except for some scripted spawns, just about every area on a map you find with hostile animals/people will spawn replacements of some sort. They don't always spawn in the location, sometimes competing enemy factions will spawn at map entry points and walk to the location and battle. It's great for farming weapons and selling them to the replacements if a faction that isn't hostile to you wins the battle for the location.