As mentioned in a previous thread I made a review of "Canyon" zones (as these seem to be the ones traditionally populated by Firemobs). There are some I consider to work fine and are well populated, and some, especially some OP zones, which are practically empty, leading me to believe runners are probably only in that particular zone when OP fighting for it or doing a bit of tradeskilling (and you could narrow this down further to only ressing and consting). Uplinks and Fortresses in this regard are pretty much redundant.

Why have I decided to review Firemobs you may ask. The simple reason is because they are probably the best high end mobs that provide good experience and loot that are soloable. However, due to their sometimes borked damage, these need to be engaged at range. This means the traditional Warbot hunts many generations of runners have taken part in have been replaced with a firemob hunt, as PEs/Spies need/prefer all their INT in weapon lore to use rifles succesfully over hacking, and Heavy Combat tanks never could hack. (The issue with WBs probably needs it's own thread too, but that's for another day).

The fact that range is a factor means that terrain is also a factor. To this end, probably the only zone in game that truly works is Grant Mine. It has an excellent spawn rate, lots of ridges to snipe from, open terrain, and has an OP where you can buy ammo and stash items in the gogo, and you don't drop a belt, and it's been that way since NC1. I doubt there is an OP that gets 10% of the traffic Grant Mine does. This means however that zone gets busy and is a focal point for people hunting, leaving other zones empty and underused.

I appreciate part of these issues are to do with how the game is currently set up, but it may as well be looked at while the game is in that state.

So the tl;dr version: Populate empty zones, encourage exploration, reduce clustering of runners in a few zones.

Now the research part. Basically I drove around the zones I considered not to be well populated on my quad, perving on firemobs for a bit from hills and shit. Here's a nice map showing the good, the bad, and the sort of OK zones (good = green, bad = red, sort of OK = yellow). On the subsequent zone maps I have annotated in Red Xs where in my opinion mobs should be spawning, looking at similar areas in other zones.



Let's start with Devereaux Fortress:

Devereaux Fortress - No discernible firemob spawns. One Small Reaperspider encountered.



Blackhill Fortress - One Terrormauler encountered at the Tower WNW of OP. One Terrormauler encountered on the road NNE of the OP.



Tezla Factory - Encountered one Mauler and one Doomreaper just NNE of the OP.



Gaia Mine G13 - Good pocket of mobs in West of Zone. Area infront of mine entrance poorly populated.



Nemesis Lab - No discernible firemob spawns.



Syncon Lab - Lots of Arachnids and some DoY Guards. Some Desert Beasts. No firemobs



J15 - Arachnids and Desert Beasts again. DoY outpost in centre of zone. Could be put to better use?



Cajun Uplink - Nothing bigger than a Reaperspider. Zone practically empty.



Soliko Lab - Nothing bigger than a Desert Wolf. Cool as fuck zone with maybe the coolest OP. Excellent open areas at bottom of zone but totally unpopulated.



Eastgate Factory - Reaperspiders. Tower in south of zone where the road loops. Ideal for mobbing but again no population.



Awaiting constructive criticism/flaming