Hello players, and welcome, to the Aperture Scien... ah, wait, wrong game.
I have worked countless hours past my usual sleeping time at NPCs and have come to a split - Synchronizing the AI over the entire World proves to be a [insert swear word relating to female dogs here], and therefore I can offer you one of two solutions:
Solution A:
I am going to create Missions, and NPCs on a per-client basis for now, giving me room to create AI scripts, better spawning mechanisms and more
Pro:
- Missions
- Random NPCs to shoot at
- Faster Development Cycle
Con:
- No NPC Hunting with your friends (for now)
- Prone to abuse from "special" players
Solution B:
I will force the server to accept any NPC data, making it highly instable, requiring many restarts, fixes, patches, the game might break and become unplayable for a while, but you might be able to go hunting with friends.
Pro:
- NPC Hunting with Friends
- Scalability with Player amount
Con:
- Crash-prone
- Security holes for commands
- LONG Time until something works.
Your Decision?
I'd much rather go with Solution A, since I can deliver that one quick, it gives you stuff to do and me a tiny bit of free time before that one obnoxious holiday where everyone pretends to be happy.
Would you like to see NPCs flying around? Transporters going inbetween stations, drones and pirates roaming around in remote belts and other places?