Noticing something odd when killing Nomads in the unknowns.

They seem to be dropping pharmaceuticals, silver, niobium, h-fuel, and consumer goods when killed.

The loadouts specified for them do not have any cargo listed other than Nomad guns, and the rmlootinfo file does not have the nomads added to those commodities.

Anyone have any ideas what else I should be looking for? This has been going on for a while apparently but this is the first I was notified about it.

I'll look at that. Interesting thing is that none of the no_fighters are carrying any cargo on scan, but the loot shows up on destroy.

edit: Checked lootprops.ini, no changes were made to that file but I do see what you're talking about regarding the toughness level. Any ideas what might be causing those drops when the ships don't even have the cargo on board?

I found two small issues that I'll need to rule out.
#1 I changed the fc_n_no_fighter_d19 from d19 to d1 - d19 but on d16 I forgot to put the 'd'. (d15, 16, d17...)

#2 I change the class of ship from FIGHTER to class_fighter as part of my efforts to have missions against nomads.

I made those edits and am waiting until the next server restart to see if that had anything to do with it. I can't find any other changes that would be applicable to the nomad fighter.

That's correct.
There is an entry for fc_n_grp in commodities_per_faction.ini but other than the section and the faction, those entries are empty.

[FactionGood]
faction = fc_n_grp

[FactionGood]
faction = gd_im_grp
MarketGood = commodity_beryllium
etc.
etc.
etc.

Now you know why it's called phantom loot. I noticed this when I was testing out something else - scanning Corsairs to see what cargo they had, which was none, but they were still dropping stuff. I guess one of the other changes has caused this to work with the Nomads.

The answer is at the bottom of Lootprops.ini. An entry like this:

[PhantomLoot]
nickname = commodity_pharm
toughness_range = 10, 10
percent_chance = 5.980000
num_to_drop = 7, 10

means that ANY npc level 10 will drop it when killed. All of the commodities you listed in your first post exist in this phantomloot.

Exactly. Nomads have never dropped any loot that wasn't in their loadout. Now for the last couple months apparently they do. I'm still trying to figure out why.

Noticed something else odd as well.
In all other cases, loot dies very shortly after there are no players in the vicinity. Usually scanner range. The loot spawned by the nomads in the unknown systems remains for hours after the last player leaves or logs out of the system.

Went through my notes and checked the content.dll file and yes indeed I had implemented Adoxa's hack that permitted nomad missions and also the hack that allowed Nomads to drop phantomloot. Removed that little edit and all seems to be working properly.