This EXACTLY. Sometime even organized squads need to ghostcap for strategic reasons. But it is so friggen boring. NPCs necessitating a heart-pounding tactical stealth approach is a win for everybody. The defenders win, because it isn't just handing over a base, and the attackers win too, because they have a good time trying to stay undetected.
Oh I like that a lot, beautiful! And to keep it exciting instead of very base being identical, could do something where Strike Forces (equivalent of guilds as I understand it) get a certain number of resources to enforce certain areas with NPCs - again, still weak, but enough to present a challenge while the Strike Force mobilizes to deploy in the area. And with a low spawn rate (like once a day or so) so that as the battle builds up the NPCs will not be coming back to add to the area's load. And I am loving the idea of stealth kills and such - great especially for people playing things like Rangers and such - if they can take out the defenses without being noticed than the PCs will have to come in and take a base already turned against them, but if even one NPC gets an alarm off then they'll get an idea of how many people are known to be attacking so they can decide how many forces to commit to the cleanup (or defense)
On the server aspect of input lag and and all that. If there are a cluster of servers then im sure 1 could handle the npc for that battle while the rest handle players. That way its all seperate and shouldnt use any processing power on the players server cluster.
Even if detected, ghost caps tend to either have two responses 1. Organized counter assault by an opposing outfit/strikeforce/whatever (Happens rarely) 2. The odd pubbie will go try to help get killed and realize he can't do anything solo and leave. 2 happens a LOT more than one.
To prevent Ghost Capping i'm sure they'll have NPCs man a base after it has been legitimately captured. The question is how many should be present and what upgrades should be available?
The reason counterassaults don't happen is because most outfits don't think it's worth their time to go kill a handful of pickup gamers. NPC garrisons would remove that expectation since a handful of pickup gamers should not be able to take a base on their own. When the alarm gets raised, either you look at the map and say "ennh, looks like the NPCs can handle it", or there's a large/skilled strikeforce over there requiring response. And if the alarm isn't raised, well... maybe it would merit a response if you knew, but you don't, do you It could encourage skilled crack teams to go in and take out the NPC sentries before a main army arrives, preventing the detection of the larger attack force. That sounds like a fun activity for players who don't like being part of the horde, and adds a level of strategic depth to the metagame.
Maybe to avoid ghost capping the can have something like Planetside 2 implemented. I can't recall the name but an enemy could only capture a region adjacent to a friendly region.
Whatever you're thinking planetside does to stop ghostcapping, it doesn't. Or at least it doesn't work. That game is where I'm taking all my complaints from. Big fights concentrate in a couple areas, and everything else is game for ghostcaps - adjacency doesn't really help at all because the issue is the infinite boredom and pointlessness of herding pugs, and how nobody wants to deal with it. You can't stop ghostcapping. But this concept could improve it, and even make it fun.
I think you guys are understimating the player base, a few IG, cultist or guardian npcs are not enough to stop a single organized squad.
Not meant to stop an organized squad, meant to slow them down and add an extra layer to small group gameplay It would stop a few uncoordinated players though, but yeah it should be meant to be cleared by 5-10 (squad) players who are built for that purpose. That would suck if you go in with a solid team and get creamed by some NPCs lol.
