best way to pause enemy AI when no players are nearby in roblox
My rpg has around 200 NPCs with pathfinding and the server chugs. I want enemies far from players to go idle. Do you check distance every frame, use regions, or something smarter?
Don't give every enemy its own while-true loop. Tag them with CollectionService and run one manager script that loops every half second or so, checks the distance from each enemy to the nearest player's HumanoidRootPart, and only runs pathfinding/attacks for the ones inside your range. Everything else just gets skipped that tick.
Two things that catch people out: if the enemy is unanchored and nobody's near, set its network owner to the server (SetNetworkOwner(nil)) or physics ownership can bounce around. And stop any running pathfinding when you "sleep" one, otherwise it keeps walking its last path.
If you use StreamingEnabled, don't rely on it for this - streaming is about what the client sees, the server still runs your AI.
