As it is right now, most of the time when you destroy a bot, you see a flash nearby as it respawns in the same general vicinity. I think a delay and a more distant warp-in location would make it feel less like an artificial invisible bot factory (like the purple areas in Descent 2).

Now, I do enjoy sitting at the point where bots warp in and pummeling them as soon as they are vulnerable, then turning around and getting the next one, ad infinitum, but maybe it shouldn't be that way.

I know our favorite pastime is to whine at the bot AI, but it would really be nice if there were apparent reasons that certain bots are in certain sectors - rather than idle infestation. Maybe some of the low-level bots could appear to be mining asteroids, even if it's just flying up to one and sitting there for a moment - animations to be added later (drilling, blasting, etc) - and flying back to somewhere else like a transport ship.

Drifting a bit from my original topic.. and I keep telling myself that the devs are working on it, but maybe this calls for a bot AI wishlist.

I agree thginkrej...

I also think it would be cool to have some sectors where bots grew progressively harder. i.e. if players killed 20 drone II's then assault I's would start to warp in. It could go all the way up the list until finally a "boss" warped in like a mothership, or maybe even a frigate? :).

> As it is right now, most of the time when you destroy a bot,
> you see a flash nearby as it respawns in the same general
> vicinity. I think a delay and a more distant warp-in location
> would make it feel less like an artificial invisible bot
> factory (like the purple areas in Descent 2).

I think I overheard A1k0n mentionioning that it's currently possible to spawn camp the bots. So it i already a known "problem".

Didn't the transports fly to and dock at the stations, when they where introduced? Or did I imagine that?

Anyway it'd be nice if the bot's would be like protecting the transports. Would give them a nice purpose :). Somehow it looked like that in the 18 sector universe. But it's very likely I imagined that since they spawned at the same point. :)

It takes some careful observation or dumb luck to find where you can destroy a bot and have it respawn nearby, but spawn camping is a good mindless way to level if you get one of those adv. combat missions that keeps calling for D2's.

Bot stations would be a really nice touch. Especially if they kept track of supplies and had supply lines and protection bots. As a sub-plot in the story, each nation has to thwart the intrusion of bots by cutting supply lines, etc.

Yes, it's a bug. They aren't supposed to spawn so close to the center of the sector.

Waylon made a mothership (a real mothership this time.. more like a queen bug.. but anyway) model -- there is a subplot behind why the bots are there and what they're doing. They will dock with and spawn from the 'queen' once this is implemented.

There are transport NPCs that randomly carry cargo from one station to another but they aren't being run right now because there's no escort for them; that will come, uh, pretty soon.

right on.. will players be able to use these NPC escorts, too?

And will cargo hauling make an actual difference in station production rates?

more importantly will there be missions allowing players to BE the escorts for the NPC convoys?

That sounds like a good range of missions to grant XP and rep to all levels of characters. Noobs can escort a single ship across 1 system, experienced players could take group convoy escort missions where they have to defend an entire fleet against a different groups "plunder the trade convoy" mission.(perhaps that mission would be availible to the people on the "pirate" mission tree. :))