having revisited this area for AEing recently, I'd just like to advise these mobs still despawn mid-engage / mid-nuke
I just tested this and it's not despawning for me. (uncharmed) Despawning while charmed is something that requires additional server logic and is broken for all charmed despawning NPCs. Charmed mobs should be considered in combat. Unfortunately our code uses a hatelist check as an in-combat check, so this isn't a simple fix but needs to be done because it makes charm too strong due to the regen.
Thank you for looking into it. Quite odd, maybe only specific callers or waves might be affected. Seems like it would be difficult to troubleshoot, and probably not worth the time. All I had was visual of a subset of caller mobs despawning while being stunned+nuked without a kill message or corpse. Only happened two or three times in the span of many hours, and I wasn't keeping track of what 'wave' we might have been on. This was about two weeks ago. Sorry I couldn't be more helpful with more detailed info.
Could add a check of state check when it is supposed to depop. And if certain conditions, like mezzed, feared, charmed. Then update the timer to check again later. Keeps it from using more cpu. Thats a maybe. Havent looked at code yet.
The problem will be with depops handled in scripts. Would need a new method to use in select cases. Not so trivial when a script controls things.
oh so you need like a checker state for every npc, that is triggered thru the script. so i would say let the script do check on npc, rather then depop. so it just calls for for a check, then the mobs that are tied to the scripts should have the method of despawning being a unique feature for the npc, rather then handled by the script. but i dont know if this is too much of a change in generel
I have some ideas how to do it. I will put it on my list. I need to spend more time getting cpu usage down anyways. H