Minor Faction Spawns

Insidious Diety Posts : 2523 Join date : 2009-07-17

I have been putting in some thought about how to handle NPC spawns. Now at the moment I believe the way it works is that there is a spawner "party" that in essence creates Minor Faction parties in a radius around it. If this is incorrect then please correct me, however if it is then I have these questions;

1. Can this radius be modified? Ie can we stick on in the centre of a faction's lands and tell it to spawn throughout their entire borders?
2. Can the spawn rate be modified?

I ask this because I have been thinking of a three tiered approach to Minor Faction spawns, at the moment in PoP3 we have 2; the normal spawns and the armies. Now I would would like to add a third which are "Elite" spawns, they are far tougher than the normal spawns but not armies. This is not simply done through increasing their numbers, but by making the very best of the Minor Faction units available to them.

An example of what I mean;

Imagine we are working with the Mystmountains in PoP3. At the moment we spawn normal parties throughout the Ravenstern lands and then armies randomly. Now, what if we added some actual Mystmountain territory to the game, and call the waterfall north of Rane their hotspot.

The Ravenstern lands being well patrolled by militia and lords, would therefore continue to spawn normal parties with warriors and shaman, together with the odd Mystmountain army however if you ventured into "their" lands you would face groups of Mystmountains larger than usual and fielding Bearclaw Berserkers. This makes those areas far more dangerous, but later on quite lucrative to adventuring groups (and fill a gap between early game and becoming a mercenary, your party has got to big to catch most minor spawns but is too small to take on lords).

This would therefore need 2 "spawners" one for the normal spawns, and a second for the hotpost which is far smaller in spawn radius.

We could even add a new type of hideout, the "Camp" which spawns in hotspots and use a proper castle scene for those battles! Who can say they've not wanted to face the Heretics or Rogue Knights in a castle?

Subject: Re: Minor Faction Spawns Wed Sep 07, 2011 10:09 am

About the last thing (castles / whatever for minor spawns): this can quite easily be handled by spawning an extra party... just some things we need to take into account: i wouldnt make it an actual castle (game-menu wise) (this will just complicate things) instead use the same approach like the hideouts. Just linking to a different scene and using the same mission_template (or slightly modified) like for sieges (in case of a real castle fight).

Also a full developed castle might be a bit too much, maybe more like a fortified camp...

Edit: Just posting the chat convo too, so i dont forget about it:

Spoiler:

Subject: Re: Minor Faction Spawns Wed Sep 07, 2011 10:47 am

abhuva wrote:: About the last thing (castles / whatever for minor spawns): this can quite easily be handled by spawning an extra party... just some things we need to take into account: i wouldnt make it an actual castle (game-menu wise) (this will just complicate things) instead use the same approach like the hideouts. Just linking to a different scene and using the same mission_template (or slightly modified) like for sieges (in case of a real castle fight).

If you make it like a hideout wouldn't you run into a problem of the player's army not fully being used? Or can we somehow avoid that so that play still uses his entire army? Like this idea, think it can work, and I'm sure the thinkers here will make it work, but was curious about that fact though Wink

Insidious Diety Posts : 2523 Join date : 2009-07-17

With the Camps, I meant use the castle scene for the battle itself, no menu's required... unless it is to choose what loot you get at the end of it! farao

Subject: Re: Minor Faction Spawns Wed Sep 07, 2011 11:28 am

Quote :: If you make it like a hideout wouldn't you run into a problem of the player's army not fully being used? Or can we somehow avoid that so that play still uses his entire army? Like this idea, think it can work, and I'm sure the thinkers here will make it work, but was curious about that fact though Wink

Always depends on the setup and the mission template, fully controll-able by script so no problem with using similar setup to the hideouts and still spawn full armys.

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