Two questions about it really. First - What happens to orbital patrol vessels if you disable them? According to info given here https://empyriononline.com/threads/spawn-respawn-destruction-settings-of-ai-vessels.95121/ they should despawn after a while if I take out their thrusters but, then it also says that they won't self-destruct if the core is destroyed. So will they still despawn if the core is destroyed or not? Either way, in both situations, nothing happens. In the early game, I disabled a Zirax corvette by taking out it's weapons, thrusters and generators but, many hours later and it's still there just as I left it. Similarly, the coreless wreckage of all the pirates I destroyed over the course of the game is still present as well and no new ships has spawned in their place since then. There are respawn and self-destruct timers in the game files so, does it just take many, many hours for them to blow up and respawn? Or do I have to go around manually cutting up wreckage and cleaning up after each battle for them to respawn? Because that would be insane. Second (provided despawn/self-destruct/respawn actually works) - Do OPVs in a playfield change over time? Freighters appear to come and go but I haven't seen OPVs do the same. I noticed in the game files that factions can spawn between 0-2 OPVs on most playfields. So, for example, if a playfield spawns a Zirax destroyer when I first visit it, is there a chance that there might be another type of OPV when I visit the playfield again at a later time? If not, what will happen if I destroy that Zirax destroyer? Will a random OPV spawn in it's place or will the same Zirax destroyer respawn?
As far as I see - patrol vessels never despawn until the core is destroyed. If you destroyed the core - yhe vessel will be removed after reload of the playfield. They never self-destruct too. Only reinforcement vessels do, no matter if you was fast enough to replace the core or not. Also, opv's spawn once you entered the playfield and they will remain there until destroyed. No new vessels will spawn, even after clearing the sector. You can use admin command to wipe the sector though.
Did some more testing but, I may have to test this out on a default random game, there's clearly something wrong with my savegame or a problem with my custom scenario because nothing despawns or respawns. It could also be related to the fact that I turned on POI regen later in the game after I already destroyed some ships and bases. Don't know if POI regen is related to patrol vessels though. My custom scenario is not much, all I did was rearrange playfields in the starting system, added more asteroids to some asteroid fields and reduced asteroid and POI regen time to 90 min. Maybe 90 is too short and messes things up? I will probably have to start a new game (too much wreckage and disabled ships around already) but, I need to get to the bottom of the problem first. I don't want to start over and rebuild everything just to get stuck in the same situation again.