As it says in the topic, just wondering if there is some sort of respawn rate or...whatever for creatures/bandits?

Every time you enter an empty grid

As Kendall said, they only spawn when you enter the grid. So if you kill all the creatures/bandits in a terrain square, you'll need to leave and reenter or travel to another terrain square to find more. The best setup is usually to have 2 empty grids that are adjacent to each other and alternate between them.

It's implied in their answers, but for clarity, any PC on the terrain will cause the creatures/bandits to not spawn. I believe it doesn't matter if the PC is active/inactive/arrested, as long as they're on the terrain square (in a Ship or actually ON the terrain) it stops the spawning. I'm not 100 % sure on the inactive PC though.

I have alternated back and forth on squares and on occasion..nothing will spawn. I assume this is due to a bad roll of my perception skill?

Bandits won't move once spawned, but creatures will. If your perception is down low, and your ship sensors are low, it's very likely you're just missing where the creatures are. That's happened to me several times, where I just kept flying around on the new square finding nothing, only to find the one pack of Kaadu off in a corner somewhere. On the slabs I've used scouts on, I've never had a no-spawn unless there was already a PC on the terrain.

Drop some scouts, perhaps, with Sensor Packs and see if it really is your perception.

I don't think that the Spawnchance has anything to do with PC perception itself. They spawn whether or not you can see them immediately.

I've found that 2x bandit groups and 2x creature groups tend to spawn on a terrain square. Just drive around the terrain for a bit and you should find them.

Terrain type is also part of the chance also-


5/ Terrains and Creature Spawning

Each Terrain type has a percentage of you finding a creature on it. It is more likely to find creatures on certain types of terrain. For more information on what creatures can be found on each terrain, look at Creatures

List of Terrains and their percentages:
Black Hole Terrain 0%
Cave 4%
Crater 1%
Desert 3%
Forest 15%
Gas Giant 1%
Glacier 1%
Grassland 12%
Jungle 10%
Mountain 4%
Ocean 9%
River 5%
Rock 2%
Sun Terrain 0%
Swamp 7%
Volcanic 1%

That is not currently implemented. A random 0-3 squads of creatures will always spawn.