Ranger Archive
Thread: Towards a Theory of Forced Spawning: The Bad Axx Quotient (BAQ)
There's some common wisdom about how wild, non-mission spawns work ingame. Generally, if no one is in an area, nothing spawns. Someone enters the area and outside of needing a few seconds to play catch-up the game responds by spawning critters and/or NPCs to suit. If everyone leaves an area, the spawns present despawn as server load is allocated to wherever it is needed most.
What I want to propose in this thread is the idea of an overall "number" -- the Bad As, er, Bad Axx Quotient or BAQ -- as a means of describing the number and difficulty level of the spawns in a certain area and how the BAQ can be manipulated to produce the level or types of spawns you desire.
- Your combat abilities,
- the presence of other PCs in the same area, and
- minimum and maximum difficulty levels of creatures for the planet you're on.
If you've ever taken a few missions from the mission terminals, this should sound pretty familiar -- your own skills, the size of your group, and what planet you're on. The BAQ for an area begins with the same ideas. If you are looking for a game-rich area, you go to a place where lots of PCs frequent and you'll find lots of wild spawns.
- Increased numbers of PCs in the area,
- increased time spent in the area, and
- "beating the bushes" or the amount of hunting/culling done in the area.
In other words, it's not good enough just to bring some friends and wander around. The harder you pound on an area, the higher the BAQ and, in response, the harder and/or more numerous the spawns. It's your way of saying to the game, "You call that bad? C'mon and REALLY show me what you got!" By raising the BAQ of an area, you'll see three possible results from wild spawns: you get more of them, you get more difficult spawns and/or they will appear more densely within that area.
The Ride to the Village - The path between Dathomir's Science Outpost and the Village of Aurilia may be the single most traveled path on Dath, and it is one I fear when playing my Master Artisan/Armorsmith/Tailor alt. It's not just the spawns that get kicked up by the player 200m in front of me or the player coming from the other direction. The constant travel of lots of players down this track raise the BAQ of the area so that more difficult spawns (Rancors and Singing Mountain Clan Dragoons instead of Brackasets) appear once you enter the area, and the spawns are more numerous and more dense.
Wild Feral Gurk Lairs - When I hunt for wild Gurk spawns, I keep a sharp eye out for Feral Gurks in particular. Feral Gurk lairs can spawn "bosses", so there is more to harvest from these. I have noticed that the type of boss spawn can escalate based on how consistently you hunt them. In particular, I've seen Feral Gurk lairs go from (1) no bosses to (2) a group of Shaggy Gurk Youths and a Reclusive Gurk King or a Crazed Gurk Destroyer to (3) a group of Crazed Gurk Destroyers to (4) a group of Crazed Gurk Destroyers and a Reclusive Gurk King. This is an example of "beating the bushes" to pump the BAQ up.
Spawning a Gorax - Back in the days of the Great Gorax Hunt when these critters were seen by only a select few, I lead a hunt that tried to test the BAQ theory by "summoning" a Gorax. At first, my party of around ten players hunted the highlands of Endor indiscriminately and widely. Although we saw lots of tough spawns for Endor, 30+ minutes of hunting was not getting us our quarry. We then set up a basecamp and restricted our hunting to within a range of 500-750 meters or so of that camp. 15 minutes later, we got our Gorax spawn.
The first example shows what numbers and frequencies of players can do for raising BAQ. The other two examples demonstrate more how through your own efforts to challenge the system by taking on all it spawns with impunity, you can get the system to up the ante with a more difficult challenge.
Jedi Knight Trial Targets - The creatures on the Knight Trials Hit List may very well be affected by BAQ. Sure, any Knight-Candidate may be able to wander around the northwest corner of Dantooine and eventually stumble upon a Graul Marauder. Any Ranger might spend a few (or more) hours tracking the Western Mountains north to south looking for signs of them as well. Instead, try getting the Jedi to bring a friend or two and have them grind wild spawns while you track. There are a number of Jedi guides that list areas where you can find Stintaril Prowlers, Ancient Bull Rancors, Enraged Kimogilas and so on -- try applying the ideas of the BAQ to your hunt, tho, and see if these ultimate Badaxxes of the animal kingdom spawn more quickly and reliably for you.
Hero of Tatooine Quest Targets - Here, on the other hand, are spawns that may have nothing to do with BAQ. I have a TKM friend who found the Moisture Farmer far more often than I did, simply by riding between the Squill Cave and Bestine while grinding XP for his Force-Sensitive questing. I've had two Pirate Leaders spawn on opposite sides of a bantha lair I had as a mission. For these targets, "being there" may be the only thing in your control. To be sure, I've found quite a few Hermit Quest targets through my tracking abilities, but usually it involved spending time in areas where they are known to spawn more than anything else.
How big of an area matters? Do Master Rangers have a 500m tracking radius for a reason related to this? How big or small of an area does the BAQ you are generating apply to?
How long do wild spawns actually last? I live on the outer edge of a metropolis-level city on Rori, and wild spawns encroach right to the edge of town. I have several factories outside of town and as I move between them dropping off runs (while playing my crafter alt) I keep a close eye on the overlay map for red dots. I can leave for a day or more and, given no server reset, the same lairs and creatures will respawn where they "despawned" after I left the last time. So, to get tougher critters to spawn when raising the BAQ of an area, how much do you need to clear out the old spawns before there is enough room for some new ones?
How intentionally can you "force" a high-level creature spawn? Take Grauls, for example again: Grauls (lvl 30), Graul Maulers (lvl 35), Ancient Grauls (lvl 50), Frenzied Grauls (lvl 56) and Graul Marauders (lvl 173). If you keep pounding wild Graul and Graul Mauler lairs, will that get the game to kick out lairless Frenzied Graul spawns? Will pounding Frenzied Graul spawns lead to getting a Graul Marauder to pop up? Or will hunting anything (or everything?) do the same or a better job?
What impact do mission spawns have? Are they effective for jump-starting a spawn-free region, particularly if you draw missions the same direction and distance over and over? Will pulling Graul Mauler missions in the same place get me a Marauder faster than not running the missions?
This all comes from about 8 months experience as a Master Ranger on the Lowca server. It took about 4 months to stumble upon the idea, and another 4 months of testing it out leads me to think there is some good measure of truth to it but also that it probably isn't the whole story. I'm interested in hearing what your experiences are that support it or contradict it ... I came up with this trying to figure out how to make myself a better tracker for high-end hunts, and if there is any merit to BAQ then it's something we all can use!
BA'ness of PCs in an area
BAQ = -----------------------------------
BA'ness of Critters/NPCs in an area
where the BA'ness is determined by the factors mentioned above -- how many, how hard they hit, how long they are there, how active they are. As long as BAQ > 1, then I'm guessing the Spawn Engine is going to boost the BA'ness of the NPCs to compensate.
Message Edited by finelinebob on 03-22-2005 06:10 PM
I've said the same sort of thing less coherently