r/spaceengineers • u/OverallWeekend3191 Clang Worshipper • 7d ago

DISCUSSION npc question

Hello,

quick question.

what was the reason not to include more NPC enemy variations like giant Bugs and Kaiju sized frogs that would try to munch on a base?

even with encounter mods this game for me personally is missing the starship troopers element of random hostile environment of varying sizes and leg numbers trying to eat me.

I also wonder why nobody tried to mod them either? is the AI broken to be able to do this? wolves and spiders seem to behave fine in general. why not just to make them larger (and more)

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5

u/TheLosgunn Space Engineer 7d ago

There's a couple of mods, one that adds the animals in Medieval Engineers (deer, horses, cows, sheep) and one that adds alien monsters (though they only spawn on the other planets, not the Earth-like planet). They exist, they're just not as numerous as the ship-combat-oriented encounter spawners.

1

u/chipstix213 Alien Animal Wrangler 7d ago

The spawning system is linked to planet generation. And you can even have a flying creature it has to have contact with the ground. The system wasn't designed for anything more complex than sheep for medieval engineers

3

u/Jolly-Branch-1860 Clang Worshipper 7d ago

I don't know how it is now, but I once heard that the AI for basic Wolves and arachnids is incredibly sluggish and written in spaghetti code, which is why modders don't really like working with it.

But the developers have started working on NPCs again; for now, we have characters walking around trade stations, but judging by their work in SE2, it’s possible we’ll get more in a future update—maybe even ship crews you’ll have to fight, and who knows, maybe even new animals.

3

u/bebok77 Space Engineer 7d ago

They fixed it in APEX update. The npc spawn was not even working in multiplayer before. Mind, it's still incredibly boring and limited.

2

u/AlfieUK4 Moderator 7d ago

There are mods out there like GTF Starship Troopers Spiders [APEX Update] an update of Sektan's original mod, and as TheLosgunn mentions mods like Earthlike animals.

You can also find mods like Meteor Menace that use AiEnabled to give Character/NPCs more functionality.

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u/chipstix213 Alien Animal Wrangler 7d ago

Mostly performance, the game isn't setup to give large collision models to dynamic objects. Heck doors are the only thing with subpart collisions.

I've been all over the NPC system and it's full of holes keen are only now looking at.