38,000 entities.... XD

This is something that needs to be fixed,the server i'm on tried bringing in custom factions and it locked up the server with all the faction interactions on startup.

And I was looking forward to the rp possibilities with the new factions,it would be nice to have a reason to explore.

It's quite unfortunate. On Light Vs Dark I was very much looking forward to utilizing the custom NPCs to enrich the game play by adding some solid PvE elements that could potentially draw players into cooperative play, while funneling opposing players into similar places to create a rich PvE/PvP experience.

Sadly, the current NPC behaviors, especially with Scavenger (not to be confused with the faction) fleets (The NPC behavior that would have produced the most interactions outside of NPC territory, an essential element). To clarify, scavenging ships will appear on nav as "Faction Attack Ships" despite behing controlled by scavenging fleet configs and using ships designated in the catalog as Scavenger. Scavenger fleets will dispatch from the NPC faction's territory and arrive in the sector of a player doing something, often fighting pirates or something like that. The overheating of a core is often enough to get scavenger fleets dispatched to an area. When the scavanger ships arrive is where the problems start. Since they have no programming in place for retreat conditions based on fleet health or even a simple timer, NPC ships will continuously pile up in peoples home sectors until things begin to lag horribly. I would get calls from players constantly asking for admin cleanups because they would just endlessly clown-car home base sectors. To make things worse, NPC factions will drop AI control of entire fleets after a period of time, leaving ships that will just sit there uselessly, with player attempts to clean them up resulting in a NPC wardec and even more NPC ships being stuffed into a home sector. What should be a feature that could make game play really really fun, is turned into a pile of crap by not having built in behaviors that frankly should have been an ABSOLUTE REQUIREMENT before any thought of releasing the feature came to mind. To summarize NPC fleets need: 1. Retreat conditions based on fleet health. 2. Retreat conditions based on a timer if that doesn't work. 3. NPC factions need to maintain continuous control over all fleets outside their territory and not abandon all AI control of vessels like thet currently do. This is mainly having to do with the scavenging fleets.

All fleets, player and NPC, still drop turrets and have been doing this for quite some time.

The simulation that spawns assets for the NPCs to use is not very well set up for out of the box use, it's required lots of time wasted on tweaking it to what is it is now, which is a sorely disappointing version of what I originally envisioned them as.

The fixes to current features must be prioritized or it will become harder and harder to get new players interested.

Do not forget about the despawn command. This has always been mandatory to keep the regular pirates in check. You might also be able to use it on the NPC ships if they have a common prefix.

For the Pirate Guild you would use:

despawn_all

• DESCRIPTION: WARNING: this will delete the entites that start with the given pattern from the database! It can not be undone!!
• PARAMETERS: ShipNameStart(String), Mode(used/unused/all)(String), ShipOnly(True/False)
• EXAMPLE: /despawn_all MOB_ unused true

Since all Pirate ships use the MOB prefix the command will remove all Pirate ships to make room for new ships to spawn.

You need to look for prefix common in the various NPC factions. Or maybe use the command multiple times on each NPC faction.


Do NOT TEST this on your Server!


The Despawn command is very powerful and has no undo option! Test this on a single player map created just to test this.

A new command to wipe all current NPC fleets would be very welcome. Servers then just have to set this command to run every few hours. It would give you a crude but effective fix just like the Pirates.

Batavium said:

Do not forget about the despawn command. This has always been mandatory to keep the regular pirates in check. You might also be able to use it on the NPC ships if they have a common prefix.

For the Pirate Guild you would use:

despawn_all

• DESCRIPTION: WARNING: this will delete the entites that start with the given pattern from the database! It can not be undone!!
• PARAMETERS: ShipNameStart(String), Mode(used/unused/all)(String), ShipOnly(True/False)
• EXAMPLE: /despawn_all MOB_ unused true

Since all Pirate ships use the MOB prefix the command will remove all Pirate ships to make room for new ships to spawn.

You need to look for prefix common in the various NPC factions. Or maybe use the command multiple times on each NPC faction.


Do NOT TEST this on your Server!


The Despawn command is very powerful and has no undo option! Test this on a single player map created just to test this.

A new command to wipe all current NPC fleets would be very welcome. Servers then just have to set this command to run every few hours. It would give you a crude but effective fix just like the Pirates.

Click to expand...

A fix yes, but temporary and depending on admin/human control.

One could even write a script to periodically run such a command to keep the extra NPCs thinned out, but the fact that the game does not regulate this on it's own is a huge problem that needs to be corrected.

Been toying a bit with /despawn_all but i am not getting good results.

One common prefix seems to be GFLTSHP_ or FLTSHP_

Most have numbers like B100-10 but /despawn_all does not accept wild cards.

So /despawn_all B***-** unused true does not work.

/despawn_all FLTSHP_ unused true

Removes the Used Active ships near me and not everything else on the map.

Worse because the NPC are under fleet command. I am getting tons of sql exceptions. Maybe related maybe not speculating here.

The game does not like it when you despawn them. It all looks like it is woven together. Unlike the Pirates that are stand alone waves.

One could go into the world folder and attempt to remove them after shutdown, then bring it back up. Though I'd exercise extreme caution. Though, going back to my original point, one should not have to do such potentially dangerous things to simply regulate a server.

Agreed. This really needs to be fixed big time.

Jeez XD

Koloss_Meshuggah said:

Lately I've been having serious performance problems in my single player world. I went to server database folder and found 38,640 entities created by the NPC factions (this is not counting my own entities and derelict/pirate stations). I have 5 NPC factions in my world, 2 of them are custom. They've been quite busy.

I'm already fixing the problem, they are deleting from my recycle bin as I write this and I am going to switch off NPC factions before I start up Starmade again. I guess I'm just here to complain how unusable NPC factions are at this point. They are just something else to stay clear away from, like planets.

We are so close to fun content that will put our builds to some use, so damn close. All Schema has to do is put a cap on spawn population and decrease the number of ships a faction will send into battle....that seems minor enough to me. With that done I could interact with NPCs and stay entertained for months until the next big update drops.

I don't even know where to leave this, in suggestions or support, it's not really a bug but yet it kinda is.

Click to expand...

Were most of those 38 640 entities from the 3 default NPC factions or from your 2 custom factions? Wouldn't mind all of your NPC logs either and some of your normal logs too. If most of those ships are from your custom NPC's, I would like the NPC config you used for it too.

Some here have mentioned that NPC ships pile up at places, any idea if those are specific fleets? (Defense, miners, ...)?

EDIT: This thread should be moved to Game Support

We've seen issues with the NPC factions as well. Everything from ballooning the factions.fac file ( T1529 Server hangs on faction updates ), to causing whole-server lag at every tick ( T2076 Extreme Lag Spikes when NPC Factions are Trading, also unable to trade with NPC Factions from player end ), to extreme Lag Spikes when NPC Factions endlessly and continuously process peace treaties ( Login to Phabricator )

It's quite unfortunate, that NPC factions were dumped on us like this, as its basically turning into nothing more than an occasional auto-spawn trick that must be nuked every so-often (e.g. /despawn_all ), neutered by setting <TimeBetweenTurnsMS> (in file customNPCConfig/npcConfigDefault.xml ) to a really high value...and simply grinning and bearing through the seemingly continuous lag spikes as the game engine runs an already apparently very buggy/laggy factions.fac parsing and peace treaty processing routine.

Ya I've noticed this as well. This is one of those things that needs to be fixed badly.

Hmm...seems so pointless to leave NPCs enabled, if we're going to nuke 118,448 entities

Erth Paradine said:

Hmm...seems so pointless to leave NPCs enabled, if we're going to nuke 118,448 entities

Click to expand...

With the NPC as they are now i say remove them from the game. Especially on multi player servers.

Maybe they should add a way to enable or disable them outright? If I remember right setting their spawning to 0 should help.