Lets Talk About Spawn Rate Issues
Lets Talk About Spawn Rate Issues
So I've been defending democracy quite a bit - currently level 22.
In the past week or so, I've noticed a spawn rate bug that seems to happen randomly - enemies just spawn forever.
I've seen this happen for the bots and bugs, on both challenging and hard. Just randomly out on the map you'll encounter a patrol, then suddenly you're entirely surrounded.
Using stratagems constantly, getting 30+ kills each one you throw, and still the enemies never stop coming.
No, this is not a bot drop/breach, it's constant patrols spawning right on top of your group. On some areas the bots do hop off a ship, but as soon as the first ship leaves another comes to take its place. Talking 4 or 5 hulks/chargers at a time spawning within a minute. Destroying the ship just makes the next one come faster.
Once it happened midway through a mission and one of my squadmates got kicked - the spawns instantly slowed and the remaining 3 of us were able to stop them from spawning not 60 seconds later. Squadmates joined back and we were back to normal. I know this is a one-off as the missions prior to/after this one were no problem.
Anyone else have something similar happen?
I play scout in my group so I constantly look at the map to check for patrols. There are times I'll check a spot for automatons, turn around and back again to see a new pack spawn there behind my back, just standing there menacingly. When you're in a fight and moving around it very easy to walk into a freshly spawned pack.
Clearing outposts reduces the pack spawn rates. There are patrols that spawn from there before patrolling around the map, but I think the game spawns them around the players to reduce tracking random mobs on the map.
We have one or two guys hunting outposts with grenade launchers, so about halfway through a mission we have free reign on the map with little to no patrols and other pack drops.
I think the many patrols spawning is intended, but the spawn location was bugged. My group is playing on Suicide, and with the Nuclear Radar upgrade it's easier to see patrols on the map responding to your activity. Kill some bugs/bots at an objective and you're guaranteed to get one patrol responding to your activity. Drop an orbital or a strike at an objective and you're sure to get multiple patrols. In rare instances I've seen a patrol spawn right on top of us, like literally blink into existence, but the patrol itself wasn't the issue.
Using stratagems constantly, getting 30+ kills each one you throw, and still the enemies never stop coming.
That's why the enemy keeps coming. My theory is that the game director responds to your activity. The bigger yours actions, the bigger the response (orbital > eagle > support > primary > secondary). To keep this from being an infinite loop, I would guess the director has a reinforcement budget. The game "going back to normal" was the budget running out. It would make sense if the budget scaled with the size of the squad, so a player dropping could explain why the reinforcements ran out at that time, or it could just be coincidence.
Manipulating this system is how my group clears the "impossible" civilian rescue mission vs. bots on Suicide. If everyone stacks on the extraction area then it gets overrun with dropships within minutes. But if three people run around outside the civilian extraction area, making as much noise as possible and kiting the reinforcements around, then the drops are pulled outward and the extraction area stays mostly clear. One person is the Button Man and focuses on summoning civilians while killing any stray bots in the extraction area with as little noise as possible. Eventually there will be some drops in the centre, usually when the Button Man runs out of secondary ammo and the distraction crew runs low on orbitals/eagles, but the objective is usually 80% done by then and we can converge on the middle the get the last few out and extract.