Placeholder Crew Features

[Koloss_Meshuggah]

I don't know if Shine plans to implement a crew system anymore. They keep saying "we have no plans for crew in the near future". They may have found it too hard to implement and dropped the idea.

But while we all wait for the "near future" to pass, why can't shine implement some placeholder features just to give our interiors some life ? We (and even shine) have built so many ships and stations with beautiful interiors, it's painfull to know that they have no practical function and actualy hurt the performance of the build.

These are some placeholder ideas I think would be performance friendly and easier to implemnt than full-blown AI crew.



Place holder crew features:


> Dave spawner
This block is more for asthetics, it would simply spawn a Dave to wander around in one place. If he falls through the floor and out into space, the block will simply respawn him. No more lossing crew just by moving too fast.

I'm not sure about patrolling the ship, but atleast he can make the hallways and lobbies seem more alive.


> Crew as a "resoarce point"
To simplify things, crew should be treated as resource points. The actual Dave model should only be an asthetic representation. The ship should have a block (or just a menue) that stores "crewmen" points, then the Dave spawners and command chairs can pull points from the store and display a Dave.

This would make transfering crew between ships simpler as "crewmen points" could be litteraly transfered though the docker like storage is. No need for Daves to pathfind their way through airlocks and open their own doors.


> Placeholder quarters system
If shine ever does implement a quarters system and it becomes mandatory for a competitive ship, alot of us (especially PVPers) will be rebuilding our ships yet again. Shine should implement something, even if it's just blobs of non-physical blocks that buff ships somehow.



Future crew features:


> Crew on rails
If crew absolutly have to be physical entities, they should be on rails. This way there is no pathfinding, colision checks or random falling through the floor.

There could be a non-physical rail block that crew clamp on to by their hips (their legs will be inside the block). They could freely slide forward and backward on the rail and will have to do some pathfinding to find the shortest rail-path to their distination. Alternatively, the rail could be one-way, crew acting like a docked entity, and you would just have to build rails going both directions.


> Abduction/bording
I'd like to be able to abduct crew by shooting a beam at the crew rail or crew storage. Crew would have to be significent enough to abduct though. I'm not sure how Shine had boarding planed but I'm guessing there would be a boarding beam you shoot at the enemy ship's teleporter.

Here's a dumb idea I just got. You could board an enemy ship, shoot the crew down to a certain health, and then suck them into a small handheld ball (poke-ball). It could even look like a miniturized ship core :D


Opinions? Schema plz?

 

[NeonSturm]

Pathfinding is all circles around obstacles and passable areas.

If you cannot go through an obstacle (door), you find your way around it.
Left around, right around.

The problem starts with 3D shortcuts like TPs and an upper floor.
But the same problem we do have with navigation and wormholes/gates or jump-inhibited sectors

 

[Brokengauge]

What about having npc's be 2d sprites? The npc would still occupy 3d space, but instead of having to render a character model, have a 2d image that changes based on character orientation, direction, and activity. Then you could handily differentiate between players and npc's and the sprites would be less strain on the engine. I think.

It's ok if it's a bad idea, just spit-balling lol

 

[Koloss_Meshuggah]

Pathfinding is all circles around obstacles and passable areas.

If you cannot go through an obstacle (door), you find your way around it.
Left around, right around.

The problem starts with 3D shortcuts like TPs and an upper floor.
But the same problem we do have with navigation and wormholes/gates or jump-inhibited sectors

Yep, this is why I think shine is not working on crew. I remember it took Keen a long time to work on AI for Space Engineers. They started off with player-made waypoints for ships to follow.

What about having npc's be 2d sprites? The npc would still occupy 3d space, but instead of having to render a character model, have a 2d image that changes based on character orientation, direction, and activity. Then you could handily differentiate between players and npc's and the sprites would be less strain on the engine. I think.

It's ok if it's a bad idea, just spit-balling lol

Hmm....it would definitely be less to render. I would even settle for a placable Dave "statue" I could set in front of windows.

 

[NeonSturm]

We humans simplify a lot.

We prefer for example hallways for moving because we recognize them by their length and number of connected rooms and pretty-even build style.
We also try to avoid ladders and stairs if we can - both in building and navigating.

And we find a hallway or elevator in the middle before we plot a path in our minds.

 

[BDLS]

Might be cool if just having a crewman sitting on your ship gave free systems buffs (thrust +5% or whatever) up to a certain amount obviously. Could be more useful on larger ships.

Would be easy enough to implement probably.

 

[Koloss_Meshuggah]

Might be cool if just having a crewman sitting on your ship gave free systems buffs (thrust +5% or whatever) up to a certain amount obviously. Could be more useful on larger ships.

Would be easy enough to implement probably.

I could see PVPers sticking a bunch of crewmen in 1x1x2 coffins in the center of their ships. XD