My thoughts on what I want to see concerning crew.

[LeHitGuy100]

Hi. I was bitching in chat, and decided I'd record my thoughts on crew.

I, personally, want to go full OCD when it comes to crew. While I know this is jumping the gun, I still want to get all of this written down for future reference.

I, specifically, want to worry about these things in the future of the game and ship designing in this game:

• How will this ships' crew feed themselves? Will they buy food from commercial sources wherever they're going? Will they be fully self-sufficient, sacrificing space for less maintenance cost? or something in between? Since it's the future, food probably shouldn't spoil or anything, thanks to, I dunno, nanomachines and megafridges and such.
• How will the crew get their sleep? Obviously, this would mean you'd have to rotate your crew, and you'd probably have to have 3 distinct sub-crews, rotating occasionally. Alternatively, maybe you could get an 'upgrade' for your crew meaning they don't have to sleep, and so you can have more dudes being productive instead of dozing off.
• Will they get space-aids/parasitic aliens/go full mutiny/go crazy from space? Space diseases will need medbays to fix, as will psychological breakdowns. Mutiny's will need designated security dudes, and parasitic aliens will sort of need both.

Of course, that's still a very simple list of things that I want to see myself scratching my head over and going OCD about, and I'm not completely certain how you'd do each. We already have medical blocks, so maybe they can pull all of that new medical stuff. Perhaps though, we'd need 'psyche scanner' blocks and "parasite remover' blocks? That'd be okay in my book. I'd also like to see them having some sort of upkeep cost, like "Panacea shot canisters" would need to be restocked occasionally.

Your security dudes would obviously need to worry about their guns and armor (if it'd exist). Sleep could also provide a "well rested" bonus to improve efficiency in whatever the crew is doing for a notable amount of time after they wake up, promoting crews and ship designs that have solid 'sleeping schedules', and good barracks. Also, I'd like to see the crew being able to 'oversee' certain systems and improve their efficiency. You could have dudes managing the ships auto-stock systems or whatever to make consumables like the aforementioned 'Panacea shot canisters' last a bit longer depending on how many/how experienced the dudes overseeing it are. Or maybe some dudes over-seeing the engines to reduce power costs and improve acceleration a little.

Just little things, nothing too serious, the efficiency of the design should mainly go to the actual efficiency of the design, and not what crews will be plopped into it. I know that sounds a lot like a certain other game, but I really do think it'd work great in SM. Of course, this obviously wouldn't be mandatory. I'm simply stating what I wish to see, and what sorta stuff the crew should be doing. That last part is probably already set in stone and I simply haven't seen what the crew'll actually be used for, but y'know.

This may be edited later as my thoughts change on this matter.

 

[sayerulz]

I would like to have crews be able to man stations to give bonuse, like in FTL.

 

[MeRobo]

To me this sounds like a great idea for a mod adding more realism to the game like TFC does in Minecraft.

 

[Ithirahad]

Could someone please tell me how the heck anyone's going to program all this? Even non-derpy basic AI coding (Let's say, just requiring a bed and some form of food every certain amount of time) is hard enough with player-made ships... I don't even want to know how long it would take to make all these mechanics work.

Besides, when I'm out flying a ship around exploring I don't really want to worry about whether Daihaal Idar'ainiir got enough vitamin B12 yesterday or if Aiika Intai'aman's randomly got a case of space bugs. I just want to fly a ship around, and explore, and worry about running into scary crap out in space. If they need to consume a certain quota of 'food points'? Fine! If they need a certain amount of rest? Fine! But this game is about flying spaceships around in space and interacting with other players and the universe around you, not micromanaging every little need of your NPCs. Realistically, this sort of thing would largely be managed without the captain even knowing about it unless it was an exceptional situation requiring his/her attention... And if we don't have to know about it, why simulate it? It's a lot of extra CPU load calculating and running all of that stuff, for almost no gain.

Mind you, status effects that lower the effectiveness of/slowly kill crew and require the use of medical blocks to cure might be a good thing for NPCs to randomly get from fighting certain fauna. Space-rabies? Space-malaria? Space-mad cow disease? IDK. But it would be cool. Just not NPCs getting random illnesses because that's a waste of time and resources.

If someone down the line wants to take on the massive pain of modding this in, they can go right ahead, but I doubt that this sort of thing will appeal to the majority of players. Many don't even want to micromanage things (crew particularly) at all, and personally, I just want them to be more or less a minor immersion thing and a minor drain on resources as well as a necessary 'component' of a competitive larger ship.

 

[Valiant70]

Could someone please tell me how the heck anyone's going to program all this? Even non-derpy basic AI coding (Let's say, just requiring a bed and some form of food every certain amount of time) is hard enough with player-made ships... I don't even want to know how long it would take to make all these mechanics work.

Besides, when I'm out flying a ship around exploring I don't really want to worry about whether Daihaal Idar'ainiir got enough vitamin B12 yesterday or if Aiika Intai'aman's randomly got a case of space bugs. I just want to fly a ship around, and explore, and worry about running into scary crap out in space. If they need to consume a certain quota of 'food points'? Fine! If they need a certain amount of rest? Fine! But this game is about flying spaceships around in space and interacting with other players and the universe around you, not micromanaging every little need of your NPCs. Realistically, this sort of thing would largely be managed without the captain even knowing about it unless it was an exceptional situation requiring his/her attention... And if we don't have to know about it, why simulate it? It's a lot of extra CPU load calculating and running all of that stuff, for almost no gain.

Mind you, status effects that lower the effectiveness of/slowly kill crew and require the use of medical blocks to cure might be a good thing for NPCs to randomly get from fighting certain fauna. Space-rabies? Space-malaria? Space-mad cow disease? IDK. But it would be cool. Just not NPCs getting random illnesses because that's a waste of time and resources.

If someone down the line wants to take on the massive pain of modding this in, they can go right ahead, but I doubt that this sort of thing will appeal to the majority of players. Many don't even want to micromanage things (crew particularly) at all, and personally, I just want them to be more or less a minor immersion thing and a minor drain on resources as well as a necessary 'component' of a competitive larger ship.

Since you don't seem too cozy with the idea of crew, let me run this one by you:
Stats:

• Nourishment
  • High nourishment gives buffs while low nourishment gives increasingly severe debuffs
  • Decreases over time without eating
  • Better food grants higher nourishment, while lousy food may only fill nourishment up to a certain percentage
• Oxygen
  • Simple: run out and the crew member falls unconscious after a few seconds, then dies shortly after.
• Health
  • Typical health mechanic
  • Nourishment may buff or debuff max health
  • Status effects may also affect health or max health
• Psychological durability / happiness
  • Affected by nourishment, health, oxygen, and status effects.
  • If it gets too low, the crew member may go postal or commit suicide.

Status effects would be stuff like big infestations and diseases. These shouldn't happen randomly or without a specific cause.

I suppose the actual function of crews could be up for debate, but it seems likely that they'd be used for combat (manning turrets/fighters or fighting on foot) or perhaps to boost systems or provide customization options on the fly like "rerouting power" to shields or weapons to boost one system at the expense of the other. If player characters need food and oxygen on some servers, crew could supply those and eliminate the potential tedium of tending hydroponic farms or preparing provisions.

The overall effect would be that supplying your crew with appropriate facilities (life support, hydroponics/replicators/whatever, etc.) and keeping them safe from outside sources of parasites would keep them out of your hair. Since they'd be optional anyway, do you see any reason something like this shouldn't be added to the game? Obviously some things I referred to like ship maintenance or player hunger would be optional or part of a particular game mode, but NPC crew could really fit in with any game mode IMO.

 

[Edymnion]

The short term answer for crew that I'd like to see is to simply have them act like limited Bobby AI.

Like say I want a rear mounted torpedo tube with enough firepower to seriously spank anybody that tried to sneak up behind me, but I wanted it bigger than would be practical for a turret. I could build the array, stick a camera in the back, and switch views to fire it while it took up precious space on my hotbar (though these days I could just make a new row on my hotbars for that view).

But if I could have a crewman that I could assign to that weapon computer that would act like a Bobby AI and fire it automatically as if it were a limited direction turret, that would be awesome.

 

[LeHitGuy100]

Lovely seeing so much discussion on my humble little post.
However, I'll admit that in my mind all of this would be in place mainly to discourage a few things;

big block ships (somehow), 'core tunnel interiors', and severely oversized ships. Somehow. I'm still not sure specifically how myself.

And, I'd be totally fine with making this a mod; hell, I plan to learn how to code relatively soon, I may just do it my damn self! Valiant is getting most of my idea as well, and explains it better then I did.

 

[Ithirahad]

And, I'd be totally fine with making this a mod; hell, I plan to learn how to code relatively soon, I may just do it my damn self! Valiant is getting most of my idea as well, and explains it better then I did.

Modding this into Starmade isn't as easy as you might think... A lot of the code is obfuscated and there isn't a modding API in place yet (And there won't be until the core game is in a more completed state.) Sadly, we have to wait on Schema.

 

[SpaceChief]

Lovely seeing so much discussion on my humble little post.
However, I'll admit that in my mind all of this would be in place mainly to discourage a few things;

big block ships (somehow), 'core tunnel interiors', and severely oversized ships. Somehow. I'm still not sure specifically how myself.

And, I'd be totally fine with making this a mod; hell, I plan to learn how to code relatively soon, I may just do it my damn self! Valiant is getting most of my idea as well, and explains it better then I did.

Echoing a few comments already made, once the modding API is in place adding crew as an optional add-on would be really cool. I don't think crew should be completely mandatory, and I don't think it's the place of the game mechanics to discourage how a ship should be built.

Just for example, I could build a big death-cube, and include a completely arbitrary interior, like a 10x10x10 area for NPCs to do whatever they do that grants the ship buffs. The rest of it could be completely surrounded by shields, reactors, guns, missiles, etc. Including a mechanic that arbitrarily encourages a certain kind of design will ultimately be defeated by players who want to build around it anyway.

 

[Valiant70]

Crew should NOT be a mod or add-on. It should absolutely be an optional but beneficial part of the unmodified game.

 

[LeHitGuy100]

I'm perfectly fine on waiting for an API, and I think I could do it. Over a long period of time and maybe losing a few hairs over it but I think I could.

 

[Ithirahad]

I'm perfectly fine on waiting for an API, and I think I could do it. Over a long period of time and maybe losing a few hairs over it but I think I could.

I mean, like, there won't be an API until after there's a crew system. And that may be a 'little' while.

 

[Lone_Puppy]

I'm happy treating the NPC's as android style machines, but it would be cool to have a living humanoid with all the limitations to make managing them a little more difficult. I see them as being kind of like SIMs in space, or Starmade in this case.

This would also make more use of planets, with them having a use in producing food, medicines, shelter, breeding grounds or whatever for a living race of beings.

Would they have to be humanoid?
Can we have weird Species 8472, Jabba the Hutt, Replicator or other style creatures?

All this could get really complicated. Perhaps a SIMs plugin where we bridge the two games.
Perhaps we could have a vortex open up in Starmade, to a local copy of SIMs and we abduct them for our purposes. ;-)