Last I heard bandits only spawned in locations where there were no characters/cities. However, as I was doing cross terrain travel I crossed through a section I knew to have a number of scout NPC's scattered throughout. When I first passed through there was nothing but a single squad of creatures in the area (literally nothing, the NPC's gave sensors for the entire map). On the second trip through I saw 2 squads of bandits in addition to the previous squad of creatures and a couple other squads. Did the rules on spawning change to ignore NPCs when calculating spawns?