NPC Spawn Rate

Game Talk The Drawing Board
1

It would be nice to be able to configure a lower NPC Spawn Rate, in setting. There are lots of further improvements that could be made to where NPCs spawn such as not spawning as many in underground areas or in the middle of the wilderness, but I see those as lower priority. Currently I have trouble playing with npcs enabled because they pop up everywhere like weeds. If I could configure a lower spawn rate it would add a lot of sanity. Perhaps have a spawn rate instead of toggle in the setting dialog. Setting it to 0 turns off dynamic npc spawns. Maybe it could even be set to a low spawn rate be default for the next stable release?

This is a duplicate of this, but that was before NPCs were as stable as they are now.
http://smf.cataclysmdda.com/index.php?topic=6349.msg114193#msg114193

2

Should be quite easy - NPC spawn rate is a roll of one_in(number). The number is currently hardcoded to be 100 + 15 * number of NPCs in current overmap tile. Both that 100 and that 15 could be easily made into settings.

This roll is invoked on two separate occasions: once when shifting the map (every 12 tiles of fully horizontal/vertical movement, less if going diagonal) and once every 10 minutes (40 if you have the inconspicuous trait).

3

Weird that a trait affects npc spawn but good to know.

4

Leftover from Dynamic, and about the only thing it affects, so yeah.

5

I agree. I’d like to play with npc on, only if I could make them spawn in much smaller numbers. It becomes too messy when they are so many.