mh, should say i personally don't care for that kind of persistence in the simple way stalker does. it just sends squads to static points (smart terrains), so calling it simulation even feels wrong. i believe you can get a stalker trilogy like experience without it. and i've seen the backstage of how spawning works in stalker, so i'm maybe just... disenchanted from it? either way; i don't think it's 'cheaper' to not simulate everything, because it all is cheap tricks anyway. that said. in the trilogy, off-line a-life does have simulation. it's just not actual spawned entities interacting with each other. it's all dice rolls and changing coordinates and such. very simple. and of course not ran at the same frequency.
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