Ville wrote:I don't like the idea of tieing npc farming and assignments together.
And this is one of those reasons Why I hated dynamic ore fields, because I have allready had to mine two fields near annoying light bots and ewar, and being ecm'd while mining pisses me off.
I can see where you're coming from on both those points, Ville, but I wouldn't want to go back to fixed ore fields. I like it that you have to put a bit more work. Before: got to ore field, sit for four hours, come back, sell ore/build stuff or go to best spawn you can handle with appropriate fit/logi, shoot stuff for four hours, come back eat kernals/sell plasma. The lack of challenge just doesn't do it for me.
I have, since posting, thought of some flaws in my hastily scribbled idea, though. If an assignment was taken concurrently by many players the assignment area would be mass confusion. Maybe each assignment could have multiple areas on island ... and then what if different assignments were in overlapping areas and taken concurrently. Maybe a new tag/background colour in landmarks window could help differentiate "your" NPCs from others.
I dunno, I'm just firing some ideas about to solve a problem I think many of us agree exists - not enough spawns.