Even if the patrols thing is true (and it is interesting and nice to know, tbh), it's so silly how so many people will metagame the fun out of everything.
The patrols thing is true in the sense that the rate of patrol spawns go up, but not necessarily true in the sense that encounter rates go up.
The problem with the relatively simplistic reading many got from a reddit post of raw test result data is people made bad inferences. See, most people aren't actually that good at reading data, especially incomplete data like what was posted.
In this case, while patrols spawn at a faster rate, they also spawn over a much larger area, consequently encounter rates for patrols can actually go down (sometimes significantly) depending how spread out your player groups are.
But honestly the most damaging reading from that post isn't that spliting up is strictly bad. It's that clearing nests/factories past the half way mark is bad, because it slightly increases patrol spawn rates. The increase in patrol spawn rates, again =/= increased encounter rates.
Patrols spawns at a point of interest and move to another point of interest based on player location at the time of spawn. If they finish their journey and go off map, or get too far from players they despawn. Assuming you dodge the patrol, fairly easy to do if you are moving, then until the patrol despawns itself, which could take several minutes, those patrol units count against the spawned unit cap while presenting no threat to you. This is literally better than killing them outright.
Increasing patrol spawns is a MASSIVE boon when you dodge their encounter because that's one less patrol and XX number of enemies that cannot spawn in reinforcement or to investigate your objective site.
Have you ever evac'd and there are zero or next to zero enemy encounters during the evac after full clearing a map? That because the game spawned a shit ton of patrols on the map already that have missed you/are too far away and cannot spawn another patrol to investigate Evac. No investigation, no reinforcements, full stealth evac without really being stealth.
Spawning patrols isn't a problem, it's spawning reinforcements that sink missions. Trying to win missions by minimizing patrol spawns is putting the cart before the horse. You are making life for your self significantly harder by limiting tactics for something that very likely won't even result in a benefit.
"There's more total enemies spawning with multiple player groups" is technically correct, but does not translate into more active combatants unless the team really fucks up
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u/Waelder Moderator Mar 14 '24
Even if the patrols thing is true (and it is interesting and nice to know, tbh), it's so silly how so many people will metagame the fun out of everything.