The way I see it is...
You all are arguing with each other on here...
When there is nothing any of us can do to change any of the NPCs.
Why fight one another?
Why quit playing a game because there is too much or too little res?
You shouldnt at all.
IF you have a genuine love for the game you are going to play whether you like everything or not.
I sincerely hope that BFG makes changes to the NPCs especially in the hydro department.
So that if there is not an active player around I have something to hit.
But in the same token if there is an active player who has a fleet down that I can hit, beware if I do find it I am coming after it.
In all seriousness, I hope we get the genuine players back and kick the fakes to the curb.
Ok, but..... we have to be honest here. New players don't join old unis. They just don't. I'm critical of BFG, everyone here knows that, but I will applaud them for trying to create a system in Nova that could attract new players to a game that has been running for years, through some of the protection systems. But that is sort of a tangent. Point is, players don't join old unis.
I played this game before NPCs existed and I had a ton more fun before NPCs existed than after when I came back to play Nova. NPCs may help revive some of the long-gone "good times" in a dying uni, and if all this stuff was confined to just uni2 and X2, then I wouldn't be saying anything. But since they started in the newest non-dead uni, and trickled down, it's clear they want one NPC system that applies to all unis. Therefore I think it is worth "fighting" about to get it right. Again, if the mega NPCs was nothing more than a life support that was kicked into the old unis, I'm not going to try to tell you what uni2 is like, how boring or exciting, or whatever. I wouldn't really care.
I will say that in Nova, from the beginning, NPCs were over-done (several causes which I won't go into here). It lead to months of grinding NPCs to keep up on the leader boards. It killed PvP play for the most part. And those who had fun grinding NPCs were bored to tears after a couple months of grinding their way up the RSP ladder. So I can say, there's a long term downside to over-done NPCs, even for those that have fun with them.
Me, I liked the old SFC, and I like it less with each new change. There have been some improvements, but mostly things that make it worse. But I won't play another uni that has the NPCs like they were, as of yesterday.
Honestly though, if you like the PvP interaction the most, why not join a new uni? Does it really matter if you are smashing 10 Apollos with 5 Athena, or does it have to be some really biiiiig number of ships for it to be fun? Smashing is smashing, and new unis always have lots more targets, more things to build, more stuff to do on a daily basis. Instead of waiting for all the new players to come to you, go to where the new players are, which is the younger unis. It's something to think about... instead of worrying about what the next life-support feature needs to be done to alleviate the current boredom.