What server has what npcs right now?

[JinM]

Hey guys, do you know what server is the most fun to fight npcs or to explore npc stations right now?

Most importantly I want to know where you think fighting pirates makes the most fun. I have not even a good pve battleship, (thats why I can't try it out myself right now) but I am currious anyway, and I want to know what you guys think too. I like to fight against ships that are a longer than 40m at least when it comes to PvE. The reason is pretty simple: Everything smaller is way too hard to hit, and guided missiles miss 70% of the time. ( I hate the second problem :D )

People who played on Brierie, Freaks or LvD, what are you experiences?

I, for example, didn't like the custom stations on some servers, as they were not walkable, doors where closed and had no public access buttons. Docking bays had no public docking rails... (I don't remember if Freaks or LvD but I remember that it wasn't a great experience to explore it. ^^)

Another example are the trading guild defend ships on brierie, when you attack a npc trading station: they are simply insanths. How boring.

 

[Snowtiger256]

When I was playing on Brierie, it had a plain vanilla set up as far as it comes to pirates and other NPCs (to be fair, the server only got NPCs in after I and my faction mate walked the server owner through on how to actually add them manually, since the server was failing to automatically convert into the NPC system). Only after my faction mate got admin rights on the server and started fiddling with the pirates the server got some more robust pirates.

I don't exactly know the current setup on Brie at the moment, because I'm not playing there anymore, due to getting fed up with the server and it's free-roaming PvP nuisance (who was actually visiting me daily, trying to hunt me down and kill me just for kicks) as well as the admin not doing their job (they basically suggested that I'd start policing the PvP crowd on the server (which would be a part of their job), even though I didn't have the resources, the expertise or the time to do this, and I was just a single-person faction at that time). Also, the server has had at lest two or three resets during the time I've been off it, so that might have changed the setup drastically.

 

[JinM]

Pff I just tried the pirates on Brierie. All vanilla. Thought they had custom pirates since a few months. Well. Too bad. I am going to finish my wip station and then I go on another server and try the pirates there. =)

 

[NaStral]

On LvD we're constantly trying to expand that aspect of play. We have custom NPC factions but, many players avoid them because even after extensive config changes they are still not an attractive alternative to doing the old pirate hunting bit or straight PvP.

The main reasons are:

1. The NPCs for a whole host of reasons that would require a novella's worth of explanation are garbage and not attractive from both a player or admin perspective, they like so many features that were pushed out too early were filled with promise but ultimately proved to be too much of a headache to truly be useful. In their current form our NPCs are made to be as unobtrusive to the player experience as possible. I have done as much as I can to make the NPCs unable to project themselves beyond their own borders and this has been the best compromise so far.

2. They are not attractive from a resource perspective because fleeted ships are unsalvagable and Schine still hasn't fixed this.

We are however developing our own methods of delivering an NPC experience that Schine currently cannot by utilizing Benevolent's excellent and constantly improving wrapper. I already have a host of assets ready to be deployed in conjunction with this.