"You are forgetting that if you are within 1km of a ship when it warps out, you can see where it went. "

I had forgotten that. Would it be so hard to simply have them make in-system trips? Save the inter-system voyages for the "mission" 'voys, while the newer ones undock from "System X, Station A" and jump to "System X, Station B" and dock there.

Seems to me to be killing two birds with one stone.

Dent.

Good idea. Edras and Pelatus only have one NPC station each, so that wouldn't work there, but for the rest of the systems it would work.

Obviously there are many simple and not-so-simple ways these bots could be improved. There's nothing dearer to me than the goal of NPCs with "lives" (for lack of a better short description). The bots that this thread are about, are the furthest thing from my ideal, but that's for some good reasons:

1. When lots of bots undock at once, player-undocking can be delayed and/or accident-prone. Those issues could be improved, but that's probably substantial time.

2. Ignoring the undocking issue, and Pelatus and Edras, giving every group an in-system source and destination, leads to more uneven traffic where there are odd numbers of (friendly[#3]) stations, when convoys encounter storms, and when they get stuck [#4].

3. Having the convoys arrive from other factions' stations, or just changing their faction, means having the currently-very-simple traffic manager be aware of faction friendliness (not that hard, but a tangent from the objective).

4. These fake convoys are a short-term attempt to improve on the long-term goal of "liveliness", but more importantly, they provide a stress-test of some of the fundamental mechanisms that need to be 99.999% solid before we can have tens of thousands of extra bots doing more interesting (and therefore harder-to-debug) things.

#4 is the overriding consideration. We may or may not improve directly on this mechanism, now-ish[tm], or after it's served that purpose. So, keep suggesting, but know that other things we have all been talking about for years might provide the liveliness in the not-so-distant future.

Thanks for reply, mom... so, simplifying:

Keep traffic "fake", as now, coming from nowhere and "go away", i.e., bound to "local" sector that is already active due player presence. Only pirates do use cargo scanners, and they'll know those are part of scenario.

A) All Stations:
1. Reduce number of incoming ships to compensate outgoing NPCs
2. Make them draw a faction from a list of friendly factions, relative to local faction
3. Make a FEW npcs Launch+Depart when player arrives. Make them GO AWAY.
--> No big deal if they are followed and player sees it goes nowhere. It already happens a lot, like convoy's capships.
---> Make a single NPC ship launch every (random (1...15) sec.) and go away, or mine if mining station
So we keep overall number of NPCs present as they are now; just make them more diverse...

B) Barracks
4. Add a parked HAC or Teradon to every Barracks station.

C) Capitals
5. Add a parked/drifting CONNIE to every Nations Capital, (also to TPG and Corvus)
There is one parked in Odia M14, and Corvus capital looks much more alive now!

D) Mining Stations
6. When player enter, spawn a FEW mining ships, or bots.

E) Station Guards:
7. Diversify the number and ship model for station Guards, simply:
7.1. Increase to 5 Guards around capitals, and 4 around barracks
7.2. Make Nations' Station Guards use national ships: WTD/Prom/Valk

That's all... long list of SIMPLE changes. Is that feasible, or still too much?

Doing so we're adding DIVERSITY and extending the already improved feeling that VO universe is alive, and not depending on the player.

Thanks!

Alloh, I think you missed the point mom was trying to get across. I believe what he is saying is that is no point in implementing these half baked solutions to make the "fake" traffic look real when in the near (tm) future bots will be smarter and do cool stuff like have stories and there will be no need for fake traffic any more.

Good points mom, and the current fake 'voys certainly add life to station sectors. These were just some thoughts I had regarding immersion.

One other thing I'd suggest is similar to Alloh's "periodic single NPC spawn and leave" idea.
Flying around yesterday, I spied a lone NPC centurion off in the distance. My IMMEDIATE thought was "Hey, whats THAT guy up to, out here all on his own?"

I was actually dissapointed to then see a small 'voy of moths jump in after him. The lone Centurion was intriguing, as it seemed to add diversity to deep space traffic as the fake voys do in station sectors, but once it was apparent it was just a "vanguard" for a small voy, my interest waned.

I realize adding lone or small non-voy groups of deep space traffic has similar issues to voys going from station to station, but some of them really don't matter.

Who cares if a single ship gets stuck in a roid field? Some one will kill it.
Who cares if it enters faction space hostile to it? I'd love to enter a station sector and see the guards dispatching a "rogue" vessel?
The same goes for NPC miners. If a miner gets killed in a roid field and no-one is around to hear... does anyone care?

As for the undocking while a voy is undocking, there are some problems there, sure. Many of us have "bumped" an NPC in the NFZ and triggered a temp KoS. That needs addressing, but a "undocking" queue would be somewhat realistic. I'd have no problem with hitting the Launch button, and getting a message like "Cleared to Launch in 5, 4, 3, 2" etc, as I got "slotted" into the undocking queue.

Anyway, this is just me "spit-balling" some thoughts.

Dent.