Ahnìon

I see where you're going. If your theory is correct, then this should have started when they introduced barrels (simply because tents are a lot more rare and thus there won't be enough of them to make that much of a dent in the economy.) Trying to think about this from BI's perspective, I would probably make stored loot affect the economy to some measure, but not enough that it unbalanced things too much for a new player on a full and laden server. Also, stored loot probably counts toward the maximum amount that Eugene mentions in his post about the central economy (for load limiting purposes.) If it doesn't... well... let's just say I think the devs are smarter than that. :) (As for tent detection—that would be entirely dependent on how far the effect stretches. If it's only a few metres, you'd have to be really close to notice anything, and if it's too far, you'd never figure out where the tent was.)

Hmm. Well, if I understand the loot economy right, there is a maximum amount of loot spawns server-wide, so the only way that the amount of loot would rise above that is if it is stored in containers which contents are ignored. Considering my own testing, it would be even more strange if items in tents and barrels counted toward local loot spawns and not the global max. (It's possible though, if they're testing things out.) Still, with all the reports of loot avalanche bugs, it would hardly be surprising if there are still issues with this system. It is also possible that the loot spawn system prioritizes populated areas. Either of those might account for your experiences. Respawns are definitely quick in general, though. When we've raided the military base near Myshkino, we've usually done two sweeps through the tents, because once we've gotten to one side, loot has respawned on the other (and two sweeps is just about what we have time for before the zeds start popping back in.) Most likely, we're going to see the loot economy change again more than once before the beta, but it's still interesting (at least for server admins) to get some idea of how things work for the moment.

If crash sites reposition hourly based on server time (which seems to be the case) then how long it stays put depends on the time acceleration. Our server runs at 4x time acceleration, meaning the crash sites move every 15 (60/4) minutes. On a server with an even quicker day/night cycle, it could be as low as five minutes, and you'd have to be quick indeed in getting to that site when you spot it. I've also been in the situation where I was fiddling with my backpack to fit more loot and the crash disappeared on me. Until we get control settings for how often the sites move, this is likely to continue happening.

So, the answer seems to be "yes—as of now at least—items in permanent storage do affect local item spawn behaviour." As we moved our stuff away from Gorka, the spawns in the police station started increasing again. We tried putting barrels with stuff inside residential buildings and found that while spawns weren't completely nullified, they got decidedly more rare in that building and nearby outbuildings (if they were close enough.) Recently, I tried putting a tent on top of the police building and filling it with weapons, attachments and ammo. Very soon, the drop rate fell to one single item in the entire building. I tried moving the stuff to a barrel with no discernable difference. When the items were removed, spawns slowly rose to their normal levels again. I haven't seen any effect from items in vehicles, though this may simply be because they never get close enough. Since it takes a while for items to spawn and despawn, I haven't had time to do any tests on this.

(Excuse the late response. I finally managed to get my account working, although the database has apparently decided to connect posts I never made to it.) Thank you for the link to the link to the thread about the central economy system. It goes some way toward making sense of the server's behaviour. (I threw some beans at your last post to get around the account hiatus, but they're meant for the one with the link.) The storage isn't there specifically for looting the police station. Gorka is just where we have our camp. As for why we have stashes, uh... well... it's for exchanging and keeping stuff that we're likely to need in the short term. I'm fairly sure this is common practice on cooperative and/or RP focussed private servers. Guns and ammo are part of that (although there are only three actual guns) but it's also various other useful stuff that's tricky to come by. Also, if this were related to the population of the server, the issue would have presented itself earlier, as population has been fairly stable and we've been using Gorka as our base for at least a week. Our present plan is to move the camp well away from Gorka to see what happens. If loot starts spawning again, that is a pretty sure sign that loot in containers does affect spawn rates in the vicinity. I'll make a point of updating this thread with the results, for future reference (and probably making a bug report on the matter, as—regardless of the reason—it's pretty strange behaviour for a building to suddenly stop spawning loot.) I don't, in fact, agree that high-population servers are necessarily more fun than low-population ones. I'm pretty sure it's entirely dependent on your gameplay style and how well you get along (or "fit") with the other players. Personally, I've never been much of a PvP fan. I don't hate it, but because of the way those who love PvP tend to act, I prefer to avoid open or large servers. The other folks on our server seem to generally agree with that, at least in the case of DayZ. Once the administrative side of DayZ SA servers have developed far enough for private shard admins to enforce rules (i.e. more verbose logs and such) we may join an RP server, but for now, we enjoy playing on our own server a great deal more than we would in the death-match climate prevalent on the public ones. Again—cheers for the link. Have fun out there!

What is the point of having wolves if they are not dangerous for players? Too many things in this game are far from realistic not to have aggressive animals.

So what if they kill you?! You will be more carefull next time. Same with zombies. Life should be hard for fresh spawns, even on zero pop server. Yes it will be unrealistic for wolves to atack people for no reason but we need as much enemies in game we can get. People will have to change their paths considering what gear they have. If you have AKM/M4 you can fight wolves easily (if you see them in time) if you dont have weapons you avoid woods. Same with zeds, if you are fresh spawn you get the f.ck away from Cherno/Elektro/Svetlo and loot smaller setlements. Im still waiting for real PVE elements in game. There are even less and less bugs that can kill players :)