Add more NPCs

[Lordicious]

So, I did a little experiment and sailed from Tumbado all the way down to Santo Tomas to see how many enemy NPCs I can meet. 

-1 NPC Trader Brig (NPC did 180 and sailed away once I got close)

-1 NPC LGV (NPC did 180 turn and used turbo boost to speed away from me)

even if I wanted I could never catch them... also 1 LGV npc sailed through land I F11 it. 

I spent 1 hour sailing in my Essex looking for something to hit and I could not catch/find anything. So, after 1 year of stitch n patch we only get 2 npcs per hour and even they run away from you. Really? 

Edited June 26, 2017 by Lordicious

[admin]

there are lot of NPCs around belize if you are talking about that route and most of them are good for essex as target. Try sailing closer to shore and you will find a lot of good target on the route between ben salem and belize

Overall there are 1544 NPCs on the map. Evenly spread 

[Daguse]

15 minutes ago, Lordicious said:

So, I did a little experiment and sailed from Tumbado all the way down to Santo Tomas to see how many enemy NPCs I can meet. 

-1 NPC Trader Brig (NPC did 180 and sailed away once I got close)

-1 NPC LGV (NPC did 180 turn and used turbo boost to speed away from me)

even if I wanted I could never catch them... also 1 LGV npc sailed through land I F11 it. 

I spent 1 hour sailing in my Essex looking for something to hit and I could not catch/find anything. So, after 1 year of stitch n patch we only get 2 npcs per hour and even they run away from you. Really? 

It seems to be relative to the number of players in the area. If you continue to sail in the area, you should see more. 

 

[Sir Texas Sir]

1 minute ago, admin said:

there are lot of NPCs around belize if you are talking about that route and most of them are good for essex as target. Try sailing closer to shore and you will find a lot of good target on the route between ben salem and belize

Overall there are 1544 NPCs on the map. Evenly spread 

I honestly think some regions lack ships for that region more than others.  When we where flipping the ports around Mort we would find tons of French, US or other nations ships but not the ones we needed for the Spanish or British ports.   When we found a fleet we would cycle it.  Leave the lead ship alive and just jump out and it will reappear cause other wise it was taking for ever to find ships to drive agro up that was of the nation of the region.  Could maybe the problem is that it's to much of a mix of other nations in regions?   Why do I see more French and US ships in a Spanish regions?  Why do I see more Spanish and US in a British region. 

[z4ys]

3 minutes ago, admin said:

 Evenly spread 

evenly in numbers but not to regionsize. What i mean compare vast regions to compact ones.  At vast regions you can sail minutes without spotting anything while in compact regions are so many AI around passing in seconds that it isnt possible to attack someone.

[Salty Dog.]

1 hour ago, Lordicious said:

So, I did a little experiment and sailed from Tumbado all the way down to Santo Tomas to see how many enemy NPCs I can meet. 

-1 NPC Trader Brig (NPC did 180 and sailed away once I got close)

-1 NPC LGV (NPC did 180 turn and used turbo boost to speed away from me)

even if I wanted I could never catch them... also 1 LGV npc sailed through land I F11 it. 

I spent 1 hour sailing in my Essex looking for something to hit and I could not catch/find anything. So, after 1 year of stitch n patch we only get 2 npcs per hour and even they run away from you. Really? 

Was it in a heavy rainstorm with lots of fog?!?!?  Maybe you needed to turn on your monitor?  Did you sail Tombado to Placer before going to Santo Thomas? Because claiming only seeing only two ships is just "CrAzY TaLk".... Maybe two(+) ships visible at all times, cause those waters are crazy packed.

Short of throwing the "B.S. Flag", it must have been some sort of space time warp for you to only see only two ships.

[JollyRoger1516]

2 hours ago, admin said:

there are lot of NPCs around belize if you are talking about that route and most of them are good for essex as target. Try sailing closer to shore and you will find a lot of good target on the route between ben salem and belize

Overall there are 1544 NPCs on the map. Evenly spread 

I don't agree with the evenly spread thing. There can be days without any encounter in a region. I sailed along the coast line from Cartagena de Indias to Concepcion and saw a single fleet (way out of my league sadly). The presence and routes of NPCs apepar to be completely random or at least I was unable to ever detect a pattern I could hunt by... On top of that the randomness of what is being encountered can still mean that attacking is not an option.

[surfimp]

3 hours ago, Daguse said:

It seems to be relative to the number of players in the area. If you continue to sail in the area, you should see more.

I've noticed this correlation, too - the fewer players there are in a area, the less NPCs I seem to see, and vice versa. All areas do seem to have NPCs, it's just that the concentrations within each area seem higher where there are more active human players.

I'm not sure if this is something dynamic, or if it's hardcoded based on the devs knowing where human players congregate, but it's a correlation I've seen many times as I've sailed around the map.

It makes sense from a gameplay perspective for the devs to choose to code it this way - AFAIK there is a hard limit of 1544 NPC ships in the entire map, so they have to make the most of them.

[Lordicious]

7 hours ago, Salty Dog on Global said:

Was it in a heavy rainstorm with lots of fog?!?!?  Maybe you needed to turn on your monitor?  Did you sail Tombado to Placer before going to Santo Thomas? Because claiming only seeing only two ships is just "CrAzY TaLk".... Maybe two(+) ships visible at all times, cause those waters are crazy packed.

Short of throwing the "B.S. Flag", it must have been some sort of space time warp for you to only see only two ships.

I am not on drugs if that what you mean. I did this test specifically for new players. British coast is the worst for NPC fleeting and still has many bugs. 

P.S. I've tested US coast. US coast has the best npc population and almost no bugs. Confirmed!

Also, making npcs turn and run from you is just simply brutal. NPC OS intelect is so simple it raises questions. 

Edited June 27, 2017 by Lordicious

[Lordicious]

19 hours ago, admin said:

there are lot of NPCs around belize if you are talking about that route and most of them are good for essex as target. Try sailing closer to shore and you will find a lot of good target on the route between ben salem and belize

Overall there are 1544 NPCs on the map. Evenly spread 

1544 is too few. Did you make them run on purpose? Because I am not chasing them at 100 mph for 20 minutes even if I see a couple. This is either a bug or some wise thinking. Honestly I have a feeling I am playing Galaxy Legend money grab time sink. 

Read this review from Steam I am not alone with this problem:

If you like sailing around doing nothing, than this is the game for you!
I do love my ships, but boy is this game grindy!

The map is huge! But is it too huge?
Sailing from one port to another where there's nothing but sky and see sounds good, until your sitting at your PC waiting for anything to pop up in the horizon.
Traveling is slow, battles are slow, everything seems too grindy.

When I first started the game I waited a while for the UI to load, only to find out that it was fully loaded. If only there was things to look at. I hope you know you ships, because there's no images until you buy and set sail.

I could go on; but over all it's a good game idea, just not fun to play.
Not sure if I'm going to wait to see if the UI at least gets better or if I'll cut my loses and use my refund on a game where I feel I'm not waisting my time watching a small gunboat sail in a stright line for hours.

Good graphics, but......... yeah, I got my hopes up.

 

Edited June 27, 2017 by Lordicious

[Vllad]

1544 isn't enough. Their are many regions that don't have enough ships. Not all area's are equal. Most importantly the regional capitols don't put out enough non owner related ships. i.e., Bridgetown produces French Fleets if owned by French but it puts out 2 non French related fleets. You will wait 30 minutes depending on wind for those fleets to sail back from St George. Terre De Bass is covered in fleets because of the high density of ports. NA could do a better job at balancing area's.

 

 

[Cmdr Thrudd]

Agree 1544 is nowhere near enough. I even put up a suggestion a few days ago regarding this but specifically on the PvE server where NPC's are our content. Some spots on the world have enough for example around Spanish town but other areas are totally devoid. Please increase the number of NPC fleets by a large number and by a lot on the PvE server. If you want to get people to stop doing missions all the time the open seas should be full of varied targets