NPC Fleets: These are comprised of npc companions you employ. Each ship requires a minimum of 2 crew members to operate and if needed, defend itself. Simply assign the minimum amount of crew and select a destination. The player will be able to check the status of these vessels via a console on their bridge in a top down view of the playfield. NPC ships would have a simple registry on the console where they can be given individual orders easily or grouped together, according to the player's needs. This system would function like an RTS with an overhead view of the ship(s) and hovering over the icon would reflect the vessels current orders. All player controlled fleets are able to receive basic commands from the command ship: Attack Defend Patrol Hold Area Civilian: They will avoid enemy patrols automatically and will have specific orders set by the player to retreat if they encounter danger. These vessels have minimal defenses Military: A combat unit which can be an escort or an active Attacking or Defensive Force. Military units can be used to patrol the players sector or be commanded in real-time combat alongside the Command Ship (Player) in fleet configuration to fight alongside the command ship. Civilian Class and required crew: Mining Vessel (2-3) Freighter (3-4) Military Classes and required crew: Patrol Vessel (2-4) Frigate (5-10) Battle Cruiser (10+) Crew classes: Captain: Needed to command 4 or more crewmembers Pilot: Required for all vessels Weapons Officer: Required for 6+ Turret gunners Turret gunner: Required for each manned turret Engineer: Needed to operate warp drive Technician: Needed to operate Mining laser. Are able to slowly repair to blueprint if damaged. * Each NPC Class contributes to the overall effectiveness of the vessel. Each NPC has a skill level that will increase as they gain levels. Vessel Descriptions: Mining Vessel: Once the Mining Vessel is sent to the destination, they will collect 3 selected resources at the rate of a T2 Auto miner. Freighter: Unit may travel to a set point between 2 or more trade stations in real-time trading resources. From there they can click to assign new coordinates and control which resources they want the freighter to collect. Patrol Vessel: This Vessel is commonly used as an escort vessel. Local vessel which does not have a warp drive. Frigate: Medium range Military Vessel small enough to not require a Weapons Officer. Used for Military Excursions, Escorts and Support ships in Fleets. Battle Cruiser: Top of the line when it comes to defense or attack. These vessels are manned by all classes of crew members. A Battle Cruiser is required to form a defense fleet of more than 3 ships. It serves as the flagship of the fleet if the Command Ship is not present.
My vote: Other I very much like the segregation but I wouldn't trust Eleon to code it in. As far as I can tell they lack the technical knowledge, discipline and planning skills to bring a complex system like this together and see it through. As for your segregation, I would add that ships and crew should require various accommodations and resources to function. At the very least: NPC Ships should use supplies (O2, fuel, ammo, food, pentaxid, etc) just like player ship. NPC ships should need to travel to a friendly Base (or trade station) to replenish supplies. Each crew member should require X number of food point per day. This number might be static or may very depending on assigned task. Each crew member should require access to a bed. If the ship has enough crew to accommodate working in shifts than a single bed can accommodate up to 3 crew members via "hot bunking". Ships receives an efficiency bonus for having more beds, up to the number of crew members it has. Bunk beds count as two beds. Ships must have at least one toilet and shower for every X crew member. Ships receives an efficiency bonus for having more toilets and showers, up to the number of crew members it has. Ships receives an efficiency bonus for having medical equipment on board. Ships receives a sizable efficiency bonus for having gravity. Ships receives an efficiency bonus for having furnishings on board. Keep your crew happy and they will keep you happy. In addition I would want the system to be fully controllable by the AI. You can still assign tasks manually via the RTS UI if you want micro manage things OR you use the UI to assign a general location for ships to function and then allow the AI to do its thing.
In general I would like. I think it would add a lot of options to the later stages of the game, particularly in attacking things. I would love to be able to order a specific ship in orbit to land on a planet for a variety of reasons.
I'd like this, but before this, I'd like to have the ability to actually capture CVs in space and keep them. Besides keeping them for my own use, I could add them to a fleet with NPC fleet control.
Personally, as long as I can physically see these AI ships in the game world (and not just on a "Fleet Map") and either escort them to their destination safely (my owned AI merchant ship) or aid them in the eradication of all Zirax in battle (my AI warships) then I will be happy. Being a mostly single-player I find combat to be slightly boring, especially considering how many other factions there are out there and that none are willing to help me in my fight. I do like the idea of a Fleet Map though that is controlled through a terminal at either/or your CV or BA. It would allow you to access fleet controls, crew recommendations, locations of fleet and so on. I think this should only be controllable through a CV or BA as it would be a little more immersion breaking and OP to simply access it through your HUD, though that's my personal opinion. I would like to see it expanded further in the future by having these crews inhabit your own ships and be capable of things such as flying in a rough formation with your own ship or being placed in a "holding pattern" around an object or a certain geographical area. I want to see merchant ships actually land at outposts, such as a delivery to Polaris, instead of floating by the planet and the goods magically sell. ^This 1,000 times over. One final thought: it seems as if these fleets would only comprise of CVs. It would be cool to get additional fleet/NPC options for SVs and HVs as well (there's always one person that has to ask for it). We could assign small interceptors to larger cruisers. I would love this idea yes, though as already stated I have high doubts that Eleon would ever be able to implement such a thing.
I do like this, indeed the idea of having other vessels - made by me - that I can give orders to is something I'd very much like. Be it giving it jobs to do - much of which happens in a low-attention "simulation" of what they might encounter - through to vessels (SV, HV, and CV) given orders to patrol an area / select points, such around around a Base or a resource deposit. This is all a big wish for me. However, as @Bigtoad states, I think there's a lot of supporting work that might be needed before such features could be implemented and work well. Things have progressed in this regard to a degree. Patrol Vessels are just CV's controlled by an AI. However, their AI isn't always so good, but that can be improved. Having the underlying game AI be able to do tasks similar to this - i.e. a Zirax "Oxygen Depot" or "Fuel Depot" sending freighters (SV or CV) into orbit to supply a Station, or perhaps Mining outposts shipping raw ores to a refinery etc. Basically, this is the start of an actual Economy and the ability to disrupt it in many ways. Something I'd LOVE to see. Once the AI is a little more robust - likely with the non-player factions having "jobs" to do - then assigning that AI to the Player via recruitable Crew members would be perfect. I do long for a Future Empyrion where the other Factions actually shift Cargoes around via vessels - vessels that can be intercepted or escorted by the player. Likewise having other vessel set to Patrol or do any number of other jobs would be dead cool. I do wonder if things like this are on the devs feature radar though. I imagine feature additions are likely to stagnate to a degree now, as existing stuff is given more polish. That said, if at some point in the future there was a DLC - I know, bad word for some - that introduced such things in a huge update, I'd be up for that. Scoob.
Yah basically, I was thinking most things would run in the background. Ship warfare could be an in depth "dice roll" based off stats of ships and crew. As far as the freighters and mining go, your money would slowly increase and you'd aquire more resources. The credits you make off the freighters would generally go right back into paying your salaries for you Fleets and you'd be able to make a little depending on a balanced roster of mixed companions. Some companions would have a higher salary cap; such as the Captain and Weapons Officer. The Engineer would be an steep price but nothing close to the salary of the officers. Your cheaper ones would be the turret gunner and the technician.
The biggest challenge for the concept I can see is out-of-playfield simulation, or lack thereof. You may recall the troubles we've had with teleporters we deactivated with a sensor on exit, only to come back to a station with no fuel. Imagine that problem compounded by a several ships draining not only fuel, but oxygen, pentaxid, and food as well. Chances are you would have to keep all your ships either constantly with you or mothballed. The solution other games have done is to simulate the unloaded play area in miniature. The theory is you can take a few important details from playfield, plug them into a smaller simulation, run it in the background using as little processing overhead as possible, and apply the details from that simulation to the normal playfield when it's loaded again. In a perfect world, you would be able to simulate an entire "meanwhile" galaxy like this. It doesn't have to be perfect. For instance, simulating the map is unnecessary. You just need to know Entity A is doing Action B to Entity C. When the playfield is loaded, you know to place Entity A near Entity C doing Action B to it. This is probably also how you would do long range communications to command fleets in other sectors. Even marines for attacking and clearing POIs would be simple to do in such a simulation. But, that's another thread. It'd be important to figure out how AI ships are supposed to work together. I doubt they would coordinate much, but having them stick near the lead ship is probably sufficient. Fighters and other small craft probably don't need any special treatment other than to be told where to park on a carrier, something that can be done at the ship design level with block placement. Pathing through hangar doors would be important, too. Crewing and ship roles should probably be defined by the players rather than a hard label. Empyrion is a sandbox block builder, after all. A ship's capabilities are defined by its design, not external nomenclature. If players want their miner to go buy a load of fuel and ammunition from a Polaris station in another sector, let 'em. If they want their freighter to carry attack SVs to another sector so they can raid a target, that's fine too. Crew requirements would similarly be defined by the ship and its components, a delightful little further complication for designers to juggle alongside CPU, mass & volume, and resource requirements. That's my thoughts for now.
I'm all for npc crew and thought it was one of the few things the DEVs said would make it in at some point?
I might suggest a less ambitious or less complex implementation out of the gate. For example, the crew member be assigned a role that simply adds bonuses. If you play with Reforged Galaxy mod, @Vermillion has crew members that add to the CPU allowance. For greater complexity (but still limited in scope) a crew member assigned to a duty could carry out certain functions. A crew member assigned as "guard" acts like a sentry gun or assigned to "console operator" could give bonuses to shields or turrets. If you wanted by be more complex you could design them to be assigned to things like "agriculture" and allow for auto-harvesting of crops within a certain radius. This could be combined with a number of @Inappropriate suggestion like presence of Medical devices that increase the crew members rate of automatic healing when "damaged". Or, as he suggested, increase their own performances of their duties with the addition of a certain number of growth plots, beds, showers, etc. I think those things could be done without a huge need to upgrade the game's AI. IMO, AI in games is one of those things seems to lag these days in the industry as a whole. I remember in the days when MP was still a clunky thing due to common internet speeds and so SP games would tout their combat AI sophistication and really work to give it a certain unpredictability or sense of tactics (F.E.A.R. was one of those where you had to worry about the AI actually flanking you in fire fights). Now days is easier to offer a player combat challenge by the addition of MP against living opponents and so combat AI gets neglected. I wonder where we would be now days with it if MP wasn't a thing?
Perfect example, I always reference Halo when I am looking for a good AI example for Empyrion's devs to mirror since it's in a similar genre
This sounds like a great overall game mechanic that could spice things up and offer a better mid-to-late game as well. The RTS idea would be very nice, but maybe overkill for the scope of the developers. If you want to see a game where this is done well, Natural Selection is a FPS/RTS hybrid originally created as a mod for Half-Life by the makers of Subnautica, where you had a commander who sits in a chair, sees the map as a top down RTS style and gives commands to the FPS troops. If you have ever played Final Fantasy Legend III (doubt it...) in that game you acquire a space-time battle cruiser called the Talon, and across your journey you find numerous (sometimes optional) NPCs who become the Talon's crew members, providing services on board the vessel.
Hi, I like the basic idea. What I don not like so much is the classification of vessels. This is, after all, a sandbox game. If a vessel is military, private security, civil, logistics or nibbler-poo transportation (for the dark matter drives out there) should be the creators buisiness. Also, if a military ship should be a corvette, cruiser, ship of the line or whatever should be the creators decision. And if a commander that compiles a crew for a vessel puts mining specialists on a ship without mining equipment, well, his fault.
I'm for the idea to be sure. I would like to see it carry farther with not just vessel operation, but with NPC crew doing certain tasks like harvesting from the greenhouse or patrolling base perimeter.
This is actually a great idea and I was surprised to see it in a mod rather than vanilla. Honestly a lot of reforged galaxy and eden stuff should end up in vanilla, would be neat if they all collaborated.
Definitely agree, I guess it could just be defined by class size after all. I just didn't want to come up with more than it needed to explain the premise of the feature. After all debate and elaboration from many sources of the community is more beneficial than one person's opinion. Whatever is the simplest way to implement it and categorize ship classes and companion roles, will probably be the way the feature would be designed.
Absolutely, it would be great to see this happen with all vessels and have them complete tasks at the base as well. Definitely would enjoy leading some troops to the slaughter against a POI. Can you imagine organizing an assault with CAS, Dropships full of companions, and HVs swarming a massive Zirax base all in unison!!
Well update 12.3 added some things that Reforged Galaxy was already doing (SV turrets for example). As long as it and Project Eden are popular mods with the players they are going to have an influence on how the devs work with the vanilla game going forward.
