Scientists/NPCs extremely passive and slow to react — what am I missing?

[Tibau]

 

 

Hey everyone,

I'm running a Windows-hosted Rust server (Oxide/uMod) and my NPCs (monument scientists) are behaving terribly — slow to react, barely aggressive, sometimes ignoring players who are right next to them. They feel "dumb" compared to how they should play. Looking for help figuring out the cause.

Server setup:

OS: Windows

Framework: Oxide/uMod

RAM: 16GB

Map: small/custom map

Running several plugins (Monument Addons, GatherManager, BetterChat, TimeOfDay, FancyDrop, etc.)

What I'm seeing:

Scientists react very slowly to players in line of sight

Low aggression / they often don't engage at all

General "laggy" AI behavior, like they're thinking in slow motion

Things I think might be relevant:

My server FPS sits around 24 with players online — could low server FPS be starving the AI loop?

I'm getting intermittent server restarts (still diagnosing the cause)

I run a custom day/night cycle via TimeOfDay plugin

My questions:

Is slow/passive AI usually a server performance issue (FPS/tickrate) rather than a config one? Could my ~24 FPS be the root cause?

Which ai.* convars actually still work in the current build for tuning reaction time and aggression? I've seen a lot of outdated guides referencing convars that no longer exist.

Could any common plugin interfere with NPC AI? Is there a known conflict I should check for?

Does ai.tick directly affect responsiveness, and what's a safe value that won't tank performance?