Crew Brainstorming Ideas

[StormWing0]

There's so many ideas out there for crew I wander how many of which the devs are planning? In the meantime lets see how many ideas we can list out.

• Automated Empires/Factions: Basically automated shipyards, crew generation, mining even in unloaded but explored space, AI Ship to Station auto docking/undocking even in unloaded space, etc. As we know people want to automate as much as they can and I also say make them work for their automation just to make sure they can't totally slack off in the game or vanish for a few weeks.
• Planetary Crew Generation: This one I thought up and a few others, why not make planets generate crew? The devs don't want too many things popping out of thin air so this would work rather well. Depending on how big the planet is and how well the Civilization is on it the amount of crew could vary per tick up to where crew would need to be removed from the planet in order for it to keep increasing. If under the control of a faction they'd request transport off or try to build that faction's ships to use as able. Transport them to a nearby station with a shipyard and things get really fun. Transporters could also be used to fairy NPCs off planets without the need for ships.
• Expansion: In this case the crew used to expand your territory would need at least faction blocks in their inventories to do this or maybe a station BP to spawn somewhere in a system to claim it.
• Crew Inventories: Crew like us would have limited personal inventories on them to carry things be it weapons or blocks. This loot would be dropped on death for them if they still have it on them and it hasn't be dropped off in a storage or another crew member.
• Anything I miss? :P

 

[jayman38]

1. Damaged Block Repair
2. Damaged NPC Repair
3. NPC "turrets" (stationary security)
4. Fauna-related Fleet Commands (attack, capture, ambush, avoid, etc.)
5. NPC guard-routing (strict point-to-point travel)
   
6. NPC mass-population routing (make an area look busy, just by having NPC crew wandering around from point to random point)
   
7. Logic interaction for advanced activation/deactivation of all the above.

 

[terra mining corp.]

I think just having the npc's able to perform a function you command would be great,and also generating npc's on a developed planet based on infrastructure would be good also,and it could be affected by damage from raiding by pirates or other factions.

 

[kleshchovand]

Planetary Crew Generation

With NPC faction update Population might become a useful resource, for example:
1. Both players and factions will need a populated planet or space habitat to hire crew
2. Population growth at controlled territory might be a good factor to limit faction growth (or cripple faction by capturing systems with settlements), also potentially making population as rare resource worth fighting for will give real reason for inter-faction hostilities (as opposed to normal resources that are plenty)
3. Population might become a consumer/supplier for some materials so it is a way for player to get rid of some resources (like water, trade station can buy only little of water before running out of space) and means that factions will have to "visually/virtually support" population - buy more specific resources, prioritize protection of planets with population e t c.
4. Currently Pirate stations don't respawn, overpopulated systems might be a way to implement pirate station spawning (and then pirate ships) for nearby systems as well as a way to control pirate presence for factions and players.

 

[Edymnion]

I'd like to see the current Bobby AI stuff remain dumb as a brick at this point, and instead have it require crew to pilot/control something to get "smart" results out of it.

 

[Lukwan]

I have some ideas about crew that follow the example of 'character-class' from role playing games. The roles should apply to NPCs as well as human players with certain skill-bonuses. (just a sketch right now...may flesh out later.) I hope XP points will automatically accrue in each of these categories whenever a crew-member operates the appropriate 'console' (or whatever the McGuffin is)

Helm/Command: XP-bonuses for maneuverability & acceleration-rate & ship-weapon accuracy. Buff to NPC crew morale.

Engineer/Tactical: XP-bonuses to weapon cool-down (ship weapons), Aux-reactor recharge rate. Buff to repair-rate (or cool-down of negative FX). Buff to scanners & stealth-detection.

Science/Medical: XP-bonuses to shield cool-down & recharge rate. Bonus healing from all med cabinets on board & nerfs for crew illness/ fatigue (if these element are ever introduced). Nerf sun-damage. Buff to scanners & stealth detection (stacks with ENG/Tac buffs).

Wing Commander: XP-bonuses that buff the maneuverability of all fighters in their formation. Buff to morale of NPCs in their wing. Buff to XP gained by NPCs in their wing. *XP only gets granted for kills if the wing suffer no losses during the sortie. (Re-docking the wing resets the sortie)

Security Chief/Gunnery: XP-bonuses for operating turrets or turret-banks boosting traverse speed of turrets. XP-bonuses when killing enemy marines on-board their own ship and buffs to NPC security personnel (red-shirts) when boarding enemy ships. (Enemy ship is one being actively targeted by your faction commander) Chief gets a small damage-buff on personal astronaut weapons.

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I want to leave it there for now. Obviously there are countless RP classes that could be added for flavor (like the cook ) but realistically I think it is a hard-sell to get a human to agree to 'serve' under a commander on a regular basis. They will need to have a lot things they can do in the context of being second-in-command.

 

[Edymnion]

Yeah, on board security personnel is obviously a big one. Boarding might actually be pretty darned fun if you had a small army of NPCs to mow down like it was a FPS.

I'd also like to see some rare NPCs.

Like if we had security personnel who's main job was just to fight boarders, I'd like to see a rare spawn Security Chief who would give passive bonuses to the other security NPCs nearby. Make them shoot straighter, do more damage, take less damage, etc.

Basically whatever types of NPCs we get, have one commander rare spawn NPC that makes all of them better at doing whatever they do.