Crew Cerebral Tempest Thread

[willvette]

So crews, my question for the community are how are they better than using bobby AIs? Should they gain experience and improve over time? Or able to be commanded on a moment’s notice? Should there be classes offering different benefits? Can they be used on a station? Man a turret? Or sub-command a ship?


My option leans toward different classes that gain experience and improve over time offering benefits to the ship, but the max crew size is based on a minimum ship mass (configurable). Each crew recruit has a low average set of stats (potential, pilot, accuracy, weapons, repair, restore, thrusters, stabilizers, reactor, shields, and security) that grows over time based on the station you gave him. Hiring a crew member has an upfront cost and an upkeep cost, both based on his current average stats. Crew members can be traded between players, bribed by another player to join his crew, or even killed. They will also attack boarding parties, acting as internal defenses.

The crew station block, a block you can set for one crew member to be his station when in combat. In any other time he just wonders around the ship, but won’t leave it. Entering the block will give you a list of crew stations to pick just one, you may change it later but doing so requires a reset at a shop.

 

[Zaphord]

I think it would be better to C+V a crew member to a specific computer/station if you want them to man that station, like a turret or a weapon computer. If your crew member is a security specialist, then he'll patrol the ship looking for intruders.

It all really depends on the class you assign your crew, a doctor should probably stay in medbay where injured players and NPCs can find him, engineers would man the jump drives or go around repairing damaged blocks if they detect any on the ship, and helmsmen would stay on the bridge to fly the ship. Having multiple NPCs working in shifts would be beneficial, as over time your crew would need to sleep and have time for recreation (to eat and relax mostly).

As to whether you hire specific classes when you hire your crew, or all NPCs start off as unskilled rookies that develop skills as they perform related tasks, I'd rather hire specific classes myself. They'd start off specializing in a specific job, in which they improve their skill at that job over time.