Hey all, Started playing again recently, tough start just to survive which was great. Bad (fun) starting location deep inside Zerax territory, major POI just outside firing range, other hard POI's nearby, a Patrol Vessel buzzing around and INSANE base attacks. Add to that, poor resource. Great time had. Finally "escaped" the hostile area I started in using a CV. Didn't do one single POI on the entire starting planet. I've now moved on to a new system and am tackling my first POI's, but I'm already loosing interest for one simple reason: It's near impossible to play tactically in this game when assaulting many larger POI's. Sure, we can neuter external defences, then land a CV for example to loot and have supplies nearby, perhaps within WiFi range, that's good tactics. However, once inside tactics go out of the window. Want to play it safe, advance slowly and carefully clearing a room at a time? I do! However, enemies just popping in out of nowhere is really quite ridiculous at times. I mean, you can have remembered the POI and know where they're going to spawn but it makes little difference. They will spawn and be shooting right away, you cannot get a jump on them. What if it's a new POI? Well, you're not going to know that the designer has set it so things will magically appear in the room behind you when you go through that door. They will pop into existence knowing exactly where you are, and be firing immediately. Even melee attackers will likely be rushing you right away...then they'll happily clip together, not blocking each other's access to attack you, not slowed down by repeated shots to the face. When they do die, they can often block your fire, while their fellows attack through them, able to damage you *sigh*. Early in Empyrion's development spawners were all visible and able to be destroyed before they spawned something. This felt cheesy and too easy to exploit when a Spawner was out there in the open and they'd only spawn enemies when you were close. Smart placement of spawners was key to keep the player on their toes. Back then, we knew to be careful proceeding through a door as a spawner might be behind it, so perhaps there's one on the floor below, so enemies will come up those stairs, or one above us so they drop-down. A cautious player could solo a hard POI if appropriately equipped and patient not rushing ahead. It was a genuine challenge and it was the gung-ho player who just ran ahead that was going to get into trouble. The key being that enemies would appear from more logical places in a well-designed POI, not simply right on top of the player. That gameplay simply doesn't exist any more since the invisible and invulnerable spawner became a thing. The difficultly feels artificial and contrived when something magically pops into existence thanks to a hidden sensor. Where's the challenge here other than coming with super-quick reactions, lots of armour and meds? As a player who prefers to be nimble and avoid getting hit, these situations are impossible to avoid in many cases. An example of this just happened to me, I'm in a fairly open, three-block wide corridor, no hostiles, I look around, looking for any sensors or areas that look like they might be hiding a turret or an invisible spawn pad. Nothing to see. I move very cautiously one block forwards and BAM, there's a Sentry Bot that's spawned right on top of me, quite literally, less than a blocks distance and where I was just standing. My first warning, the sound of it shooting at me and me taking damage. No agility or evasion on my part helps, it continues to perfectly track my movement and its shots are hit-scan. I have to take cover. Where's the fun in that? I had no counter other than a reactionary one to take cover. Sure, bringing better armour to mitigate the significant damage this enemy deals would have helped, but not that much. Would the damage reduced by heavier armour have been more or less than the extra damage dealt due to more time exposed as I'd be slower? I had no warning of this enemies appearance from nowhere. There was no delay before it could acquire me as a target and begin shooting. There was no clue it'd spawn in this random corridor with no indication of where it magically came from. Now, if that enemy had spawned a short distance away from me, say around a corner or from an adjoining room, there would have been some actions I could have taken. If that enemy didn't INSTANTLY know where I was, and took a moment to acquire me, perhaps I could have taken it out as it rounded a corner. What's more fun here. The sudden, "oh, I'm dead" from a magically appearing foe that was shooting the instant it appeared, isn't it. Here's the thing. I find a POI like this, full of cheesy spawn traps for the player when ALL they can do is react and hope they don't die to the aim-bot enemies and I go back to my ship and nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure. What I mean by that, is I return to my HV, SV or CV and blow holes in the walls and kill the squishy bits that way. If I know the POI, that's trivial, I will shoot the core location - or somewhere close to it - to make a hole. Or perhaps I'll dig underneath it and use C4 to access the interior. What I'm NOT going to do is explore the POI. POI gives me cheese, I return that cheese. What a waste though. There are many beautiful POI's out there that are totally ruined for me by this magic spawning mechanic. There's nothing I can do tactically to counter this when it happens. Some POI's do it right, I'm approaching a barracks and I hear enemies spawning in, I know going through that door, or down those stairs I'm in for a fight. When those foes magically appear on top of me though. Nope. Not fun. More and more POI's seem to be going for this magically spawning enemies approach. I know some try to make it not so blatant to give the player a fighting chance. However, it seems that spawners often don't go off right away when triggered, so that enemy that was supposed to appear in front of you as you entered that corridor, actually appears behind the player as they walk through it, due to a delay. I know from prior discussions with the creators of some of these POI's that spawns right on top of the player are not necessarily the intent. At the end of the day, there's little difference between these spawns right on top of the player and a random dice rolls that says "player suddenly take n damage". I want to face enemies in more logical and tactical manner, having them just appear right on top of me makes any actions I can do - other than armour up and bring excessive amounts of meds - pointless. Perhaps it's my own gameplay bias talking here to a degree, but I don't want to have to tank and heal damage hundreds of times during a POI encounter. No, I want to avoid damage through a more tactical approach. That option is denied me in many POI's. Anyway, just sharing some thoughts having become frustrated by enemies, once again, magically spawning on top of me with no real counter other than armour and meds. Final caveat: I'm writing about this from the perspective of someone soloing a POI. In a group, many of these spawns become trivial. The guy in front triggers the magically appearance of a foe? The guy behind him can be instantly on it. Extra armour and loads of Meds shouldn't be the only tactics at play here. Having the only option be to take damage and fix it (meds) rather than being able to tactically avoid damage wherever possible, isn't ideal. What do people think? Do you like the surprise of enemies spawning in right on top of you with no option other than to tank then heal? Would you prefer to approach a POI incursion in a more tactical way? Think of it this way, a skilled player but with lesser equipment likely stands a worse chance than a newer player but with good gear. The skilled player's skill cannot prevent them taking damage from something that spawns right on top of them. Perhaps their reactions will lessen that damage, perhaps not.
Solution: No more spawners. All enemies get spawned in with the POI + better AI with believable pathing. The current spawners are cheesy and encourage bad level design. The onus should be on POI design to not have magically appearing mobs in illogical places but we can see how well thats worked out...Elion really needs to have far greater QA standards for the builds they accept. It actually might not be a bad idea to start reporting these sort of issues as bugs. In any other FPS/survival game, if you cleared a room, went to leave and got shot in the back walking out the door, that would be considered a bug.
I'm playing the Reforged Eden scenario currently, but invisible spawners are present in many vanilla POI's I do quite like the idea of no spawners, with a POI being populated with inhabitants when it its self is rendered in. Having rooms that hold enemies and having a door open to let them out would be a better solution too in my view. When things pop into existence right in front of me it's jarring enough, when they pop in behind me...well, I don't like that. Including proper teleporter rooms in a POI, so reinforcements can be legitimately teleported in is fine, if those enemies then have to path to the player. If pathing remains poor, give POI designers the ability to "cheat" with user-defined paths for the enemies to take. Just to work-around pathing issues you understand. I'm not against visible Spawner pads being, in effect, short-range one-way teleporters. Say allowing troops to quickly deploy from the POI's barracks, but this popping in from nowhere and often behind the player needs to stop in my view. Here's the thing. The POI I was infiltrating last night is a particularly elaborate one, that's been recently updated. I was looking forward to exploring the path the designer had set, flipping the relevant switches to progress, shooting enemies etc. However, when I had that Sentry Droid spawn right on top of me the moment I entered the POI, I was like NOPE! I then wondered whether the Core was in the same place I remembered, so I blew a hole in the POI with a Minigun Turret from my CV and, sure enough, breaking through just ONE block was enough and there was the Core exposed. Now, to avoid certain death that was largely out of my control - not that death means much in Empyrion, but I role-play like it does - what I did was the only logical way forward to avoid frustration if the POI had continued to spawn things right on top of me. A real shame, but I simply cannot be dealing with this "surprise!" magically appearing enemies any more. It feels like a cheap jump-scare trick. As mentioned, far far less of an issue if you're in a group, but a deal-breaker solo. Do we know if POI's even have the ability to scale based on the number of players present? Many of these POI's seem to be scaled well beyond what even an amazingly well-equipped player can handle, unless constantly spamming meds to undo the damage rather than allowing play-style to reduce the damage taken.
Well in all honesty, a lot of your comments based on your latest game have nothing to do with Eleon. Meaning the patrol vessel, the nearby zirax poi when you start. That has to be directed towards Vermillion and Ravien When it comes to spawning, there are guidelines to build poi's to. So if there are vanilla ones, then make a post (preferably with pics and / or a video). Detail what you feel is unfair,let us know. But if the poi is not in vanilla, again that's nothing to do with vanilla. People like me who likes to do poi's do end up reading constructive criticism, but if no-one posts specific........
What is the name of the POI? Without the name, there will be neither changes nor evaluations. Most of the time complaints such as these are about a vanilla POI that no one's touched in years, a spawner taking too long to initiate a spawn, a spawner that was approached from it's blindspot, or a spawner that was functioning correctly but user error killed the player. An example would be a streamer doing the certain POI; where the player did a poor sweep of the room from the door, missed the legs sticking out behind a cryopod and was immediately rocketed in the back when they turned around, resulting in a 30 minute angry rant about spawning enemies on top of them.
It would help if mobs spawned faster a player can casualy Walk about 4 blocks before they kick in. One if the issues is the earlier they spawn the greater chance of them getting stuck. This becomes a timing issue between the player and poi. If the idea is to spawn the mobs in with the poi you'll be pulling them out of the rafters. Also honestly if the player is going to shoot a hole in the wall and go through the poi backwards they probably can expect a lot of stuff on their head
And to add to this, that's especially true in space when people are using jetpacks that make you move even quicker.
Spawners in general are a good way to handle NPCs inside of a poi as they potentially allow a lot of freedom in how spawns are set up. The problem is they currently have a few issues that cause them to not work as a poi designer might intend, and not all POIs have spawners set up properly. Spawners need to spawn NPCs much faster when a player enters their detection area, though what little I know of game programming leads me to believe this is not something that is easy to fix as more accurate detection usually means a bigger performance hit. Spawners need to be able to have their spawn area set in all 6 directions as currently you cannot set the spawn area to be lower than the spawner itself. There should be a way to direct NPC behavior from specific spawners, such as giving them a fixed patrol route through the POI or ai just needs to be improved in general so they don't bunch up in the corners. If you find a poi with problematic spawns write down the full name or even better use the di command and look at the poi to get it's blueprint file name then post it up along with a screenshot of the area inside that has the issue. This can help get these POIs fixed regardless of if they are default or scenario specific.
POIs are a nexus of the worst parts of Empyrion's combat. Attrition is everything. The skill ceiling is at neck level, while the patience floor starts atop a three story staircase. There's a concept in Dungeons and Dragons called "taking 20". It's the idea that your character will, in a situation with no risks, try as long as it takes to successfully accomplish a take. An example would be a barbarian searching a room for hours to find a key, even though they have a bad spot modifier. It's brute force of time and patience applied to obtain a desirable outcome. This process is what clearing POIs in Empyrion feels like. Open a door. Spot a target. Shoot it. Reload. Heal. Open the door again. Spot a target. Shoot it. Reload. Heal. Repeat until you don't see anybody. Inspect each contain for loot. Inspect each surface with your multitool. Destroy anything dangerous, like spawners. Open the next door. Spot a target. Shoot it. Reload. Heal. Open the door again. And again. And again. And again. There are no choices. No creativity. No chance for player expression. Which armor should you wear? Your best armor. Which weapons should you use? Your most damaging ones. Which path should you take? The one built into the POI. How many supplies will you need? As many as you can bring. What should you do if you run low? Go get more. A significant chunk of the problems stem from the enemies themselves. They fit every negative stereotype about AI opponents. They have perfect aim, perfect reflexes, and zero tactics. They struggle to navigate more than basic environment. They defeat your interface rather than outfighting you. And they're all strangely resistant to area-of-effect weapons. I hardly ever run POIs anymore. They're not interesting, challenging, or fun. They're work. Boring, tedious work that people only seem to tolerate through heroic acts of cognitive dissonance born from not knowing how to make decent mining vessels or trade commodities.
There are a number of pois in RE that just make me laugh and go NOPE. Off to creative to find the core so I can snipe it. I legitimately wonder if anyone has ever taken on some of these pois on foot and thought... "man, that was fun!" Just as an example, I'd love to see a stream of someone fighting in an abyssal research facility on foot (and weren't just constantly dying). Give me a break. This is coming from a player who loves the mod, but some of those pois are just ridiculous.
Scenarios you can at least fiddle with yourself. As far as I know, there's basically nothing Rav or Verm can do about the underlying AI combat mechanics.
NPCs are doing double damage in the scenario. That won't be fixed until RE2. Even still, I personally made that POI and it's completely doable with appropriate equipment and tactics. You did what is probably the top 5 hardest ground POIs in the entire scenario so of course you will die if you are badly prepared and not good at hitting headshots. That POI does not suffer from the issues described in this thread. I was very careful to set up the spawners.
I would agree that spawners are the ideal solution for populating POIs but as you say, they have issues. There needs to be a better, stricter QA process of detecting these problems BEFORE they get released to the public. That and the game is in desperate need of a QA pass to clean up and fix some of the old POIs. Does Elion even have QA testers? Because they kind of need them. I would still rather have all the enemies spawned in with the PIO though. It would avoid a lot of the messiness of using spawners and combined with better AI would make the whole experience more believable. It depends on how the spawners work under the hood. If the game is constantly polling on each spawner to see if the player is in range then that is really, really bad. Ideally you would a set up a listener that catchs a detection event pushed from player collision with an invisibly volume, aka, the spawn area. This should be very performance friendly, especially if you are only catching a small hand full of these event at a given time. Or just calling the spawn code directly on player collision with the spawn volume would also work. Again, this should be very performance friendly. Its less flexible then the above approach, but it would work fine. Where you do run into issues is processing all the AI. But unless we are talking about having 100+ entities, all running complex AI it shouldn't be noticeable. This isn't 2001 anymore. AI and processing power has come a LOOONG way in the last 20 years.
I think a number of the above complaints are pretty valid. Jank enemy spawns are a problem. However, it's both a result of the limitations of the game, and also poor POI builds in relation to working around the spawning. To be clear, I'm talking about this specific issue when I say "poor builds". The POIs themselves are amazing creations. But many are just too cramped to have any other option than to function the way they do. Examples of this are the Zirax Missle Base, Abandoned Bunker, one of the drone bases too, can't remember which. (small, walled-in, has a drone spawn in a pit, ends with two long corridors before a room of glowing rods). I think all of these are Vermillion builds. For a lot of the spawns, it's a mix of being cramped + bad AI that gets stuck, accidentally hiding and then appearing to spawn behind the player. However, he did not go out of his way to make sure nothing spawns behind you or in rooms that you've cleared. In fact, there are areas in each of these POIs where enemies spawn directly behind you while progressing as intended. Vermillion is too meticulous for these to be an accident. It occurs in both Vanilla and Reforged as of quite recent playthroughs of these POIs. Frankly, I just plain disagree with the design philosophy of having enemies spawn directly behind you with essentially no cover and no warning that they spawned. But I think more people enjoy the challenge than are frustrated at the annoyance. I don't know. Other notable POIs are the notorious Deep Space Radar Station, which is full of endlessly respawning enemies that will continually repopulated rooms you've already cleared, even right on top of you. I think Escarli has a few of the Kriel POIs which dump creepy crawlies right on top of you as you enter rooms. Could be wrong. It's a while since I've been through any Kriel stuff. Yes, and I greatly appreciated that. In my opinion, the game just plays much better when you're more or less working your way through enemies in a linear fashion, when enemies are mostly in front of you. One of the few examples of a POI I can remember that does have enemies spawning all around you and not being linear is the Epsilon Radar Station. What makes that one work, I think, is the much more roomy layout. Enemies spawn in areas you've cleared, but there's a ton of room to move around, and they're not right on top of you for the most part. OG Doom, Serious Sam, etc work with spawning enemies all around you because you can continually move fast as hell and have decent enough health not to get killed in a couple hits. And in those games, 90% of the enemies aren't hitscan, so if you hear incoming fire, you can still react. Empyrion doesn't lend itself to that type of level design unfortunately. Because a lot of the weapons and mobility would otherwise work fine in a more arena shooter type experience. But the frequency of high-damage hitscanners, non-existent directional audio, poor AI pathing, and limited spawn options all work to make the success of a more run-and-jump style of gameplay all but impossible. I think traps do have a place in the game, even some really nasty ones, but again the game makes those often more frustrating than anything else. Unfortunate really. Overall, due to the varying nature of so many different people contributing to the game, there's no standard whatsoever for how POIs function. If you've not played a particular POI before, you have no idea what you're in for or what to expect. I really like that about the game. But it can also mean a lot of unexpected frustration if the POI author either missed some stuff, or was just plain trying to be mean and cruel. Oh, and on a note related to the OP about enemies' persistent awareness. Remember you're playing Reforged, and the goal of that was specifically to make the AI much faster and more aware. So on that note, you get what you signed up for. Oh oh, and... You're in luck. POI proper starts at around 12 minutes in. Only two deaths I think. My first and only time taking on that POI. The particular enemy that gave me my second death got a nerf at some point, I think. Ravien can probably comment based on the date of the upload, more accurately as to what else might have been changed.
The drone base (Xenu Dronebase with the satellite dish on top) you're describing was originally an older build that I updated with an upper area and deco, but spawns were left largely unchanged. It suffers from spawn pad issues where the player approaches from downstairs and the spawn pads don't trigger until the player is on the floor. All of the Drone Bases need to be overhauled/replaced/updated since many of them are from Alpha 8 or earlier. The only drone base that's new is the Epsilon Drone Base. The abandoned bunker doesn't spawn enemies on top of you, except in the final room. This is not unique, and has largely been the design of the original abandoned POIs. Some places will spawn enemies in places you've cleared for the same reason. The Rados Missile Base does NOT spawn any enemies on you. The freight corridor is the only place that has issues with spawning because the spawn pads have a maximum spawn range of 16 blocks and the tunnel is 32+ blocks long, so enemies will spawn in plain view from invisible spawn pads. Visible spawn pads will NOT be used here because you would be able to destroy them without coming into range. ____________________________________________________________________________ AI all spawning only once when the POI generates would crash most people and servers on anything but small POIs. The Infector Dungeon alone has an area where the player will spawn 30 or so AI (in different rooms, not all at once) and it's enough to grind many player's FPS into single-digits if they intentionally avoid killing the enemies. Finally, "hitscan, hitscan, hitscan". All your guns are hitscan. All their guns are hitscan. These aren't magical insta-kill weapons, they have built-in accuracy modifiers (bulletspread) that causes the shots to miss (they are not aimbots. They have a very limited field of view). If they WEREN'T hitscan, 100% of enemy shots would hit you. You cannot dodge a 900m/s projectile and the AI doesn't need to lead a projectile that fast. Projectile weapons aren't subject to bulletspread, so they're 100% accurate as long as you don't make an erratic movement after the weapon has been fired; Which once again brings us back around to not being able to dodge a 900m/s projectile at a distance shorter than 200m (the distance troops render in). Also, as of 1.8 the majority of AI in vanilla move faster than they do in Reforged. Side note: In the old Doom games, Imps fired slow-moving fireball projectiles. Anything else ranged was hitscan. Even in arena games, (e.g. Unreal Tournament) Enforcers, Minigun, Sniper Rifle, Shock Rifle, Pulse Gun (secondary) are all hitscan weapons with bulletspread. My preference is for the Flak Cannon or the Minigun.
To be clear, I do like that RE has buffed the AI to be more of a challenge. But there's challenge and there's frustration that's not that far away when things don't work perhaps quite as intended. As I always take a slow, methodical approach to any POI, I'm not rushing ahead too fast and getting "spawner lag" so to speak, due to my speed. No, I'm progressing through POI's slowly yet still often having things spawn right on top of me. Hitscan - aka, weapons that are simulating a sufficiently high shot speed that it makes no difference if they hit you instantly or after a 0.01 second travel time - aren't the issue here. It's that an enemy can spawn in, perhaps not even facing you, yet instantly turn and shoot you. Sometimes they don't, sometimes they'll spawn in and not even notice you, easy to kill, other times they turn, lock on to you (aim time) and shoot in an instant. Very inconsistent. I've seen this outside too, when Troop Transports land. I see troops rushing right to left on my screen as I pop out of cover. When I do, they instantly react to my presence and are facing and shooting me. They may not hit with every shot due to spread, which is good, but that impossible reaction time - especially if I'm not in their field of view (though I'm unsure how wide that is) - is what frustrates. It's like from one frame to the next they go from running perpendicular to me, to facing me and shooting. I have detailed specific POI's in the past that have given me excessive "spawn on top of me" issues and this was certainly not the intended spawn behaviour of the POI's designer in certain instances. Why spawner triggering can be so unreliable, I don't know. However, having that room's foes spawn as you approach that room, is a very different experience to having them spawn behind you as you leave that room that was empty but moments ago. One is a fun fight, with enemies pouring out of a door you just opened, the other is likely instant death from multiple perfectly-aimed shots/fangs/claws/stings in the back. I love having to proceed carefully in a POI, looking out for Sentries tucked into corners, or reacting quickly to the sound of one deploying (will be SOO glad when they get 3d sound positioning working). I like when enemies spawn on the other side of a door or around a corner from me - again, cannot tell where the sound is coming from of course. The various core issues compound here, that's were things get really frustrating. A common scenario might be: Player cautiously enters a seemingly empty room, stepping through the door to look around searching for Sentries and other threats. All being clear they move further in, continuing to look around. No danger present. They, proceed forwards to leave this clear room. Sudden scorpion sounds plays, not sure where from, could be ahead, could be behind, due to the non-functional 3d audio in Empyrion. Player turns quickly to look around and a Scorpion as spawned right next to the player. Player jet-packs away (very nimble in light armour with supporting boosts) just as the Scorpions attack animation starts. Player is now 10 metres away when the animation completes, yet the player still takes damage. In that common scenario, various things have happened: - Scorpion spawned in late, as it perhaps should have been waiting for the player before they entered the room (Bad) - Player cannot be sure where the sound is coming from due to broken audio. - Scorpion did not have instant reaction to the player presence (Good) - Player had time to quickly dodge out of the way (Good) - Player still got "hit" despite not being near any more (Bad) Things can often go worse, like the Scorpion spawning quite literally on top (clipping into) the player. Critters can attack from this position, but player shots often do not connect when clipping. The Scorpion may not have spawned close, but was able to react instantly upon spawning in, attacking before the player can move. What I'm saying is that the same room, with the same enemy can play out in several ways. Issues with spawner timing and this random ability of melee critters to "hit" you when you're not there any more and / or their crazy extended attack range all contribute. Change that Scorpion to a ranged attacker and the player is often in for an even harder time. Add to that the classic mob rush of melee attackers - think the rush of loads of Nightmares. This is cool, but many a time I've found myself in a scenario where they all clip through each other. So, rather than being able to shoot the first, then the second etc. etc. they all clip together and it's pot luck which one will be hit by my shots. They then proceed to all attack me attack me at once as they're not blocking each other. Basically, they're not solid objects in that regard, so any advantage the player might have of them "lining up to attack" is lost. Another example might be the classic (in several POI's) walking down a narrow corridor with other short corridors joining it. At the end of those short corridors is an invisible spawner, usually for some sort of critter. Triggering of these was, I thought, designed to happen after the player passes. This would be fine IF the audio worked and the player would hear where this was coming from and have ample time to react. Sometimes though, I've gone past these and hear nothing, so I've gone back, waited, waited, then, after a number of seconds, the critter finally appears. I've already been past the trigger point, but it didn't actually spawn until later. All that said, I think in some POI's there are "jump scare" type spawns that are right on top of the player deliberately. If a trap door opens in the ceiling and spiders rain down on me, well, first, YUK, but second, that's quite cool that they spawned in a logical place then fell on me. However, if they just suddenly pop into existence right next to me, that's just not as good an experience. So, while there are doubtless many issues here where things are not working as they should, sometimes, POI designers pick a cheesy way to "challenge" the player. Compound that with those issues and it can be a bit of a mess. I've been playing since 2016 IIRC, so I've done LOTS of POI's. I have over 1,500 hours in various versions of Reforged Eden alone. There are numerous core issues that need to be addressed that would vastly improve the experience of POI's, I'll summarise some here: - Get that 3d audio working. I rely heavily on audio cues in games, Empyrion's sound still being broken is a problem. - What's causing Spawners to not activate as the designer intended? This can totally change the POI experience. Negating cautious tactics. - This weird "I'll count that as a hit" bug, when a melee critter starts their attack animation in-range, but the player is far out of range when the animation completes, yet damage is still taken. Negates more nimble builds that should work well. - The general "I have two metre long arms, but a six metre reach" thing of melee attackers. - Enemies alternating between totally unreactive after spawning in, to being absolute ninja's able to turn, aim and fire in an instant. - Critters clipping with each other and the player. This has ruined many a spawn-rush situation. - The classic LoS issue. Perfect aim on a target? Think again! Can go both way, for or against the player, usually the latter though. - Critter melee attack animations clipping them into blocks, allowing them to attack through them. These are why I sometimes struggle with POI's and it's not due to the challenge they intend to offer. This is why I posted in the general forum and not specific to Reforged Eden, as I don't think it's natively a RE problem that tactical play is compromised. Sure, some POI's like their "surprises" which can be a bit cheesy, but most of my frustrations are down to core game mechanics that just don't work well. Throughout my time playing Empyrion, I've had a fairly strong PC for the game. Started off on a 2600k @4.6 Ghz, 32GB DDR3 RAM, SATA SSD's in RAID 0 and a GTX 1070. Ran the game well, generally a reported 60fps (my vSync). Moved on to a 3900X, 32GB DDR4, M.2's in RAID 0 and most of the little snags and stutters went away, FPS counter unchanged though. Got a 3070 and a 1440p monitor (up to 1200p) and the game played great. Replaced the 3900X with a 5800X3d and the game played great. Game has always run really well, so I don't think the issues I experience are in any way hardware related. PC is a clean gaming-only build to, so quite lean.
One thing that can cause frustrating problems with POIs is the use of invisible thin plate spawners. These should never, ever be used in enemy POIs. Spawners should always be visible and identifiable, they are high priority targets. If there's a spawner in a room, you destroy it before moving on, otherwise things will spawn behind or on top of you. They're like teleporters linked to a central barracks, you simply don't turn your back on an intact spawner. You destroy it as fast as possible. If there's too much open space in a POI which allows the player to take out a spawner before getting in range to trigger spawns, than that's a POI design fault that should be addressed, at least until we get improvements to spawn area range. Of course, user-made scenarios doesn't matter but, when it comes to vanilla, there should be a rule against the use of invisible spawners for enemies. Only in very specific circumstances should they be allowed, like population on a civilian POI for example.
It's not as simple as that Dragon. Thin spawners are perfectly legit if used properly, there are rules for building poi's for vanilla which we are expected to follow. Sentries for me are not included in this topic because they can be spotted if you're careful and know how to identify them visually. Personally I'm only interested in vanilla poi's so custom scenario stuff doesn't concern me I'm afraid. Npcs spawning behind you is fine as long as its believable, go into an empty room for example and an npc only spawns behind as you leave is either a case of a spawner not setup correctly or bad design. This is why I say that people need to post details so they can be looked at. For the comment about the kriel and scorpions, yes this is true and intentional. If you look at where they spawn I'm always using the same texture. Bugs coming out of a grating is a thing in real life unfortunately and is what it's meant to simulate.
Can't really see the difficulty in using the physical spawner pads. They're both exactly the same, one is just a physical object whilst the other is invisible. That's the only difference between them as far as I can tell. Is there more differences between the two? I suppose using invisible spawners is fine for once-off spawns, intended to spawn from a distance. They become more troublesome for ones that have respawn enabled. Respawning ones should be physical spawners you can identify and destroy. Still, since Empyrion is based on teleportation tech, we should be able to identify where enemies come from/may come from.
