Voted: Maybe There are too many problems and tasks that are still unresolved at the moment, and the proposed solution will add even more, besides it will distract a lot of energy from solving current problems.
On a smaller scale, AI-controlled drones or H/SVs commanded from a mother CV might be worth investigating. They would need to be able to land at/takeoff from a custom CV, navigate across a playfield to a specific spot, follow a specific ship, recognize when hostiles are nearby, and fight in an efficient and effective manner. This should be enough for some basic commands. This still a lot of expansion to the existing AI, but it's a lot more feasible than simulating an entire fleet operating across a system. Getting it right would open up new possibilities as well, like NPC interceptors for guarding bases and POIs.
Sadly this seems to be the demise of most good ideas in this and basic core stuff. Kind of wish they would just accept that and make it semi-open source (no independent release, and access only if you have purchased) so those with the skills can fix it, mod it etc if they have a mind to.
I like the idea.. assign AI to empty and process autominers is the first thing that pops into my mind.. in the long run/endgame that is the most tedious task imo. This feature would be cool, but I think other things have a bit bigger priority. this would be like the step after current end game. would open a whole new aspect, maybe even possible to conquer the whole galaxy at some point.. something impossible to do as it is now
I would be quite happy with the X series type fleet commands, but given how much time even a Zirax soldier seems to spend standing at a wall and trying to walk into it, I wont hold out much hope
I never did play that! And for some reason, I never got alerted that you had quoted me and asked me a question!
It's also buggy as hell hahaha... Many times we couldn't even progress further in the game because of some quest-breaking bug. But it was worth the laughs.
@Kassonnade Realistically, even if the npc's were simply counted among the personnel employed aboard the ship and couldn't move around the ship and couldn't pilot the craft within a planet atmosphere; this mechanic wouldn't add anything extra to the game besides the ownership of AI craft at the end of the day. It's not like back in the day when we only had the drones and this seemed absolutely unachievable in concept. All the freighter has to do is fly between stations and add/remove resources from an special inventory box you put on the CV/SV and it would fulfill the concept of AI trading. Hell, just add a friendly NPC Core and done (Player owned ofcourse). Not a hard concept at all!
It's not the concept that can be problematic, it's the implementation. Look at how unreliable some devices works, base attacks, constructors stopping in middle of crafting if we close the window and go somewhere else, energy states not being coherent with time passing, etc. Any mechanic that has to run for long periods of time without player intervention is at risk of experiencing these "interruptions". Having an autonomous parallel "storyline" with NPCs where the player is only a spectator that checks on the story status from time to time while even scenarios/ missions tend to break while player is focused on related actions shows me that from concept to reality there is a huge gap.
