thats all good^^ i would like to try something new, but i have allso grown quite happy with the assertive mods, stealing those thrusters have become keind of a lifestyle that fits very well with stealing prototech from the factorium :D :D :D

CDClone: technically yes, it can run alongside the MES. But the NPC provider requires it's own NPC packs, it can't use the MES packs.

can this mod run on the same server as MES ? like the assert enemies for a specific example?

Not yet, I already have a feature request to make it compatible with water mod. I will do it at some point, but I will not throw estimates when. There are a lot of things I want to finish that are already in the pipeline.

I want to use this over MES (And I will for more conventional NPC mods) but I have a question. Will this work with the water mod? I want to have naval ships to add a bit more flavor to the game and I know I can do it with MES. Problem with MES is that it's clunky and the naval ai got very little love and making custom ai for MES is a pain.

I use NPC Provider a while, mostly since the problems with MES and new releases. It's different, it's something new, but honestly said I like it! the NPCs behavior, the economy, territories make the game better. There are no vanilla factions (you need to remove them manually), but I can live with that.

CDEEKS, when the Provider is set up, the planets are randomly assigned to NPC factions from the Provider NPC packs you are using. Territories then affect random spawns on and around these planets, and mission encounters (especially siege missions). Players do not hold territory as such, but can affect which faction does through the mission system.

But keep in mind, that adding such a mod to already created world may have some drawbacks, not related to the MES, but more related to vanilla Keen economy. Provider can work with it, but you will cut decent portion of the Provider's functionality if you are running on a map with vanilla economy.

OK ty 2nd question plz. can this be added to an existing save that has MES if i remove mes and im particularly interested in the territory control stuff how does this work? do we get to take and hold that territory and will other NPC factions try to conquer territory and defend there own?

as Abisius states, it has some overlap with MES, but it is less focused on providing wide range of tools for NPC package devs, and more focused on providing as complete PVE experience as possible. Scripted quests, Reputation, Territories etc.

@CDEEKS
fro mwhat i got of ti so far its neither better nor worse than mes but a different take on how to do the npc stuff.

Kinda shame this isn't compatible with MES as i don't think i can play SE without MES. Is this any better or just more the same of MES?

right on, the territory system is extremely cool

Black Tortoise: custom economy system, mission system, dynamic territory system

Other than that, it is a different take on how to implement NPC ships/buildings, their packs, behaviour etc.

Whats this got that MES dont got?

cheese, I use my private repo, but I can provide code examples or full source on my discord if you elaborate what you are looking for :)

github?

Fine Gentleman, NPC's will behave as they would have no shields if you add deflector shields on them. It is not directly implemented in the provider. NPC Provider has only defense shield api integration. (I haven't even checked deflector shields yet, so I don't know what could be read out of them)

weapon randomiser is already in feature requests, and I will try implementing it in the future. As for NPC's using modded weapons, they can if they are implemented.

our server's NPC pack uses our server weapon pack without issues
Alien NPC pack uses custom weaponcore weapons

so, no randomiser yet, but if you are making server NPC pack or custom scenario NPC pack, having modded weapons on NPC ships will work.

also Senpa1 was referring to deflector shields, not defense shields, which I'm curious about too.

is there a way to give NPCs modded weapons like you can with MES?

Y0ur Senpa1, compatible with weaponcore and defense shield. AI Enabled is not technically supported, but it should work alongside it. NPC Provider however does not spawn AiEnabled bots by itself.

Or Deflector Shield

Compatible with AI Enabled?

This mod takes a different approach compared to MES, the incompatibility lies in the fact that both NPCProvider and MES handle NPC tracking and NPC cleanups differently. Thus they would interfere with each other. Imagine NPCProvider deleting MES NPC's because it considers them as "dead ships" without running Provider AI and MES cleaning NPCProvider NPC's because of it's own cleaning triggers.

Technically, there is no direct incompatibility. The game won't crash, when you use both. But there are lots of potential indirect conflicts between the mods.

I think compatibility/merge with M.E.S., and Economy/mission mods (can't remember what they're called) with this one would be a great asset to this community; someone please consider doing that!

but we do track military and economy stats for each faction, based on what is happening to NPC ships, traders, stations etc. So I can imagine some logic behind the scenes, simulating NPC -> NPC wars, with battle events and such, which players may affect, or not, if they choose.

The spawning and combat encounters are basically there, now used for Fleet Battle mission type (two NPC fleets, fighting each other, the one from the NPC faction employing player is smaller and player has to turn the tide).

So if these battles would be spawned not based on mission difficulty, but based on faction's relative military power. It would definitely be doable :D

acoirac7 not as of yet, basically NPC factions encroach to each other's territories by employing players and assigning them combat missions, and siege missions.

The universe has some freedom, but it does revolve around players. So unless players are trying to actively fight specific faction and to siege planets for example, the planet won't change hangs.

hmmm so there's no way to make NPC factions encroach on each other's territories on their own? I've been searchign for the best NPC mod for faction battles for the longest time

acoirac7, yes, but mostly outside NPC faction territories or during certain missions (such as Large battle missions), since random spawns are affected by territories.

Can I watch NPCs fight each other with this system?

DrakoMT, if not on discord, can you provide some details here at least? I am trying to pinpoint what might cause the issues for you, but I don't see any unchecked issues on the first glance. I would like to know what basic map setup you tried, and which NPC packs you included?

Visit my discord, and we can try debugging where the problem is

I made a new world found some stations they were selling the usual vanilla ships but no
Missions. I also had an encounter with an unknown signal 150km away went to investigate
a bunch of drones pirate ships spawned then game speed froze to zero and I had to manually end task my game.

DrakoMT all mission types are enabled out of the bag. You just need to generate the economy system when you star your map. If you want to start from the pre-created maps, check the scenarios and perhaps alter them. If you want to create your own map, I suggest to add all planets you want to have and then select NPC packs you want, and add them alongside the provider. Then run /npc economy generate to generate NPC trade stations, save and reload your world, and you are good to go :)

for other questions you can visit my discord, I am active there more often then here :)

Does this work for single player or Missions have to be made by admins?

WeaponCore switched from hard to soft dependency, NPC provider will work with vanilla weapons. Unless you add Alien NPC Pack, which has hard WeaponCore dependency for it's custom alien weapons.

New Red Ship scenario created without Alien Pack, to showcase how the system works with vanilla weaponry.

@BookBurner
automaticaly via the steam dependency list you cant change dependencys dynamically on the run.

but you could go the defense shields way and write it down in the moddescription, in that case it states that it isnt compatible with a weaponframework that isnt build to work with it and said that you need wepaoncore or another compatible wepaonframework build to work with it.

or the modular encounters system way by having the basic requirements in the automatic requirement loading list and then a list of mods in the moddescription that it can use for more functions that are then either switched via detection or via user input.

most mods i know of though do seperate uploads for seperate requirementchains.

To be completely clear, you don't need to use the replacer as WC itself has built-in vanilla replacer. But it is true that weapons do behave slightly differently compared to vanilla play.

I already noted the idea, but I can't tell when I am able to get to it, I have like 10 things that I have to go through (NPC Provider related mostly), so maybe a month or two until we have a version of the NPC provider which can work without weaponcore.

I still am not sure how to load dependencies dynamically, or if it is even possible :D

besides that wc itself has novadays a basic replacer buildin which just makes the wepaons se brings by itself wc compatible with no changes to ranges or adding higher wc functions, only exception is the fireworkslauncher (and its a big question why it is a weapon) that ne got put onto the whitelist for stuff wc isnt allowed to remove.

you just wont be able to use weapons based on another weaponframework as weaponcore togetehr with it, so if you use only the weapons se brings with itself you can easily build stuff you can use with and without wc without needing to do major changes, just need to change aroudn the toolbar setups.

@Adi - You can use the vanilla weapon replacer mod and still be vanilla. The only changes are turret behavior being switched to weaponcore, increased performance, and much better damage and projectile handling. Making blueprints shouldn't make any changes.

I understand! I was looking at this as a replacement for MES since the retirement and it looks like a good solution. But I dont use weaponcore so that I can have vanilla ready builds and no changed/weird weapon interactions.

Adivrsity, I can try. We use weaponcore for bunch of AI targetting stuff. But I can definitely write some wrapper around it.

Can you do a non Weapon Core version?

meaning, it will not register NPC factions from other mods. It will deal with them as they would be player factions.

@Abisius, it does not register factions outside the ones that are defined in the NPC packs. it registers modules in a similar manner to weaponcore, meaning adding a faction is just one part of it, the packs contain definition script which holds the actual faction setup which is then registered by the NPC Providered.

@BookBurner
how deep does it touch factions?
i ask cause i use aienabled as one of my mainstay mods and it is nto working with stuff that messes too deep with faction. an example for a mod that messes too deep so that aie doesnt work anymore would be eem.

@KEJWII, nah, those are Gebil Miner purchases :D since the modapi does not provide a way of putting grids for sale on trade stations, I have to do it through "ship purchase" contracts.

But there is a mission in which players are tasked with finding specific materials in asteroids.

If the thumbnail is correct, I see "miner mission"
I will wait for further development of this mod because I see potential in it

Interesting
MES alternative mod
I like that it mentions that NPCs can react to shields and escape using jumpdrives