Or at least a greater pose variation for the existing models? For example, that male commanding officer who stands behind a map table. Why not have the exact same model also available without the map table? That pilot who sits in his cockpit, he could also be available in a standing pose. Instead of all the uniformed crew members who sit at consoles being female, we could have the same consoles also available with male personnel. Is such a thing possible?
I feel if possible this would be a good idea to add more variety. A human version sat on the sofa as well as the alien version. Also if possible android versions as well
There's a very good chance we'll see a whole lot more done with these, though probably not this year. Maybe around this time next year, but I wouldn't hold my breath. Right now these just aren't particularly important. They're decorative, or they act as very limited actors for the sake of generating pre-written dialog, and not much else right now.
I This is definitely on my top priority for Empyrion and has been since 2016. Variety and crewmembers is a huge factor in what Empyrion needs. Empyrion lacks a decent ground game, bosses, combat AI, and thus a purpose. There has been a ton of work to add a narrative and that is great! However Empyrion lacks some features that other ga.es in the genre excel at without nearly as much detail as Empyrion. Empyrion truthfully only has the protagonist as the only living breathing person in the galaxy. The rest of the game plays like an early 90s first person shooter and the npcs are just assets built into the POIs and don't actually exist. What Empyrion needs is some NPCs that traverse the galaxy, exploring, trading, mining and pirating. This would give the player the assumption that the galaxy they are exploring is actually lived in. NMS does this rather cheaply, but I wouldn't consider it revolutionary. Perhaps just something as simple as some freighter traffic and some npcs walking around the station interacting with each other and trading, and leaving the station.
Well, we do have NPC's that walk around in station POI's, so we are getting there. Pirates might be a bit more challenging, as we don't have a mechanism for actual Piracy - that is, as a Pirate (NPC or otherwise), how would cargo be obtained? We don't have a means to eject cargo to be collected. If it were necessary to actually board a ship to pirate cargo, there isn't really a mechanism to permit this. Having to "space walk" to a ship one intends to rob, well... I could see a lot of would-be pirates being left floating when the seemingly disabled ship goes "nope, we're out of here" and simply leaves, as it wasn't disabled, just playing opossum. I would 1000% love to see NPC-controlled ships and vehicles coming and going though - taking off and landing at POI's - but then this raises some additional considerations, such as, how to designate an area for landing. In NMS, this is actually pretty simple - you build a landing pad. You can then land on it, or NPC's can, and often do, land on them. Here, we don't have anything that indicates any particular construct as a landing pad, so this would need to be addressed, as would ensuring the vehicle landing there will actually fit the landing pad. I can think of at least one way of handling this - by means of a device, akin to how a motion sensor is set up - with an X by Y by Z adjustable "area" that could define the region it covers as a "landing area", and could include a setting for "Public" (meaning NPC's could use this area) or "Private" (meaning NPC's cannot use this area). The genuinely difficult part lies in path-finding and maneuvering - since NPC's can't really "see", making sure they are able to avoid things in the environment, such as the big hole we've dug to keep NPC-controlled HV's at bay, or a giant rock we've built just behind for aesthetic reasons, becomes a pressing issue, and given the nature of Empyrion, one that is somewhat vital to address to keep a "living universe" alive and in motion.
