Maybe this belongs in the "Suggestions" thread... but I believe that it is more useful here.

In order to reduce lag, sectors with lots of traffic will group nearby item drops into single drops (i.e., if X number of Hive Fast Charge Batteries have been dropped within a certain perimeter, then you will end up with a single drop of X HFCB, instead of X individual drops of HFCBs). This bandwidth-reducing tactic makes complete sense in a sector with bots... but in sectors with humans, this procedure can counteract good player vs player tactics.

Here's what I mean: when a pirate kills a voy or trader, a second player may attempt to defend that cargo by spreading the cargo into smaller drops (so that the cargo is harder to pick up in one fell swoop). If the drops then regroup after being spread, the tactic is worthless, and the cargo becomes very easy for an aggressor to run off with.

As I said above, given these tactics, I believe that cargo drops should not auto-coalesce in sectors where there are no bots (or where there are fewer than Y bots, etc).

They group only if they are within 100 + numitems*10 meters, where numitems is the number of cargo drops in the sector, but only when numitems > 15.

This algorithm could be tweaked a little, i suppose.

Thanks :). I'm not sure how these mods would affect server-load (the end-all-be-all of algorithm modification, I know), but a couple suggestions:

1) If items haven't been touched for more than X minutes, don't group. Allowing some semi-significant time (i.e. 15 min) before regrouping will probably not affect PvP scenarios much.
2) If number of total items in the sector is less than 40 (an 1cu XC load divided by 5 unit drops), don't group. This is a more ideal solution (though if two XC's get blasted in the same sector we're screwed, though the likelihood of that is decently small given the current size of the player base).

Keep up the good work!

Thanks.

Items only stick around in sectors for about 15 minutes already.