On crew positions..

Discussion in 'FAQ & Feedback' started by Ehkart, Dec 29, 2020.

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Would YOU be in favour of a feature of this nature?

  1. Yes, that would rock my socks off!

    7 vote(s)
    100.0%
  2. No, it's just not worth my interest.

    0 vote(s)
    0.0%
  1. Ehkart

    Ehkart Ensign

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    I don't know if this has been suggested before, if so maybe this post will help flesh out the idea more. I will preface this by saying I have zero coding experience though I believe I have some layman understanding of how some system infrastructure exists, I understand that a program has libraries to read from, databases etc.

    Crew positions on a ship/base; while reducing CPU is a great benefit to having crew members aboard a ship or at a base, giving them additional abilities could be great. Why not have the doctor produce more meds if there is materials available to make them? Maybe a weapons officer can reload on board weapons systems if there is ammunition available in a specific cargo container, assigned to the crew member. Maybe a first officer is able to provide automatic and constant scanner pinging. If the crew members were built the same way a constructor is built ie; a constructor is some type of entity I assume with its own set of switches/gates, why couldn't a crew member be the same?

    If the player harvests materials from grow plots and deposits them into a container assigned to a medical crew member, the crew member works similar to a deconstructor and assembles the materials into usable meds. Just one example as I haven't explored this idea more than a shallow layer at this point. The crew member doesn't use power, or maybe they do because if we're looking for immersion, in a real life situation they would use power. Perhaps there is a condition that must be met for re-placement as well, in that a cooldown must be performed once the crew member is placed, before they can be placed again as a different type of crew member. This would mitigate having one crew member and just placing them at each "station" on a ship or in a base to quickly and automatically hoard their skills/uses. A cooldown like 12 hours(or be set as a value in the scenario options with a default of 12?) would severely limit people taking advantage of having the benefits of crew members that provided these abilities.

    I believe an addition to the game with something like this could give the universe a much bigger and deeper immersion aspect. Have your own crew that actually performs useful tasks! Having this benefit would help automate some of the tedious housekeeping and busy work tasks that players find themselves spending hours sometimes. Simply organizing your vessel's inventory automatically would be great. Maybe a logistics officer could have a container assigned; you deposit items/materials in that container and they automatically start sorting it all, putting parts/devices into an assigned container while putting raw materials into another.

    Having an engineering officer aboard your capital vessel might afford you even more CPU usage reduction or perhaps you choose their thruster overload skill, giving your thrusters an added boost whether it's constant, runs on a cooldown acting like an afterburner etc. Maybe the engineer could lengthen the distance a warp drive is able to jump, allowing you to evade another player because you could jump 15Ly further intially.

    I realize even with a 12 hour cooldown on placement of crew members people will find a way to somehow exploit the skills provided by crew members, I think though it would be worth the implementation still. Maybe only specific crew member types can be assigned to specific roles? Something like that might help to mitigate the "everyone gets rich as soon as they loot one crew member" situation I could see arise. So a UCH crew member item might only be assignable to positions like engineer, doctor, first mate; positions congruent with a naval posting, while alien crew could do different roles. Alien crew might be assignable specifically to thruster engineering or perhaps energy weapons overloading, providing a small but noticable boost to weapon efficiency/effectiveness/tracking speed etc.

    If the crew member was built like a device I don't see why this couldn't be implemented and worked out, providing the game an entire new depth. Players could have customized load outs of crew to augment their ships/bases and help to make the universe just that much more immersive and layered.

    I wouldn't be in favour of having the ability to stack same-role crew members however. I can see how that would be an easy exploit to have 4 weapons officers that all provide more weapon effectiveness. Then again, maybe having a maximum amount of crew overall with other maximum thresholds of specific roles would work well. 2 weapons officers could get you the maximum weapon effectiveness but you may lose the ability to place a second systems engineer that would give some extra shield hit points. Obviously having trade-offs would pay dividends in this situation, if the setup is balanced well(which I have faith it could be, the complexity of balance in the game currently is impressive) then likely you would not have the majority just using one type of load out, making the whole feature stale after a short time.

    Having played since launch I've enjoyed this game a lot, though it definitely has a shallow depth to its immersion/storytelling ability. This shouldn't be taken as negative feedback, clearly the staff of developers are greatly skilled at building an astoundingly large environment with many, many moving parts. As it happens, at this point many other games on the market offer rich storytelling and immersion but lack the complexity of changing environments or are done in a way that only seems organic. I believe an addition zlile this would add an organic element to the universe as players would have the freedom to customize their playstyle, matching their various ship designs etc. We would begin to see an environment filled with different setups attuned to players' intentions and objectives. Maybe some alien crew are able to add some type of raised effectiveness against the Zirax or Legacy factions, whether it's weapons, shields, trade prices/quantities or some other benefit related to interacting with the denizens of the EGS universe.

    The modding community has already worked tirelessly with the tools given by the vanilla game, I'm sure they would love to have the ability to also build on an idea like this. As I said previously, my experience in coding is basically non existent however I understand the fact that things like this are possible. I understand that because this entire game has been built, the devices like constructors/deconstructors/ thrusters with energy use/etc already exist, so this discussion need not go down the "simply not possible" road.

    In conclusion I think this would bring a huge benefit to the existing game, adding a player base that may not have been as interested as before it's implementation, growing the revenue from sales as a result. Why shouldn't the community want more, it's a fantastic game as it stands currently, even with as many bugs as players complain about. As the saying goes 'you're your own worst critic', however I believe in early access games and video games in general the player community are by far the worst critics. Those who didn't spend late nights and time away from family to squash minor bugs, code something just right so it feels organic, get some animation just right so the arm doesn't look unnatural etc are the ones more demanding of perfection. Bugs aside, this game is epic and enormous in complexity and environment, I'd like to simply add more to that.
     
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  2. krosbonez

    krosbonez Lieutenant

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    Great ideas. I would love to have the crew more usable. I have enjoyed what some of the scenario creators have done to make them a nice added part of the game. If it were to be added to vanilla, I think there would need to be a few limits added. Like a max number of crew (maybe dependent on ship size) and specialized roles like they are listed (not just one device that can be placed as any option)...so maybe you have to find a tact officer or engineer at certain areas....travel to Alien planets to find the alien crew....ect. Maybe even level locked : basic crew at lower levels, more advanced crew at higher levels.
    And just for the builders side, it would be nice if their uniforms would change color using the color tool! (just fluff)

    I don't know much about coding so I don't know what is possible or not. I would not want them to be overpowered though. Instead of increasing damage or fire power, maybe more on the lines of just reducing times, cpu, and power usage? Tact officers could reduce shield recharge time or reload times of weapons. Engineers could reduce CPU or power usage. NPC assigned to a constructor/food processor increase production speed or reduce needed components. It would be nice if the Security Guards could defend their set area, but that could be exploited and may be more difficult to code in.

    Great thoughts. I am interested in seeing what if anything the Devs do with the NPC crew.
     
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  3. ChumSickle

    ChumSickle Captain

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    Good ideas! Not sure how the coding would work, or if even remotely viable.

    I am a big fan of the Reforged method of dealing with crew, in that they simple reduce CPU by a set number. What I would think would be even simpler than above, but still effective would be to have a bonus to this based on the type of crewman assigned...i.e. a gunner would reduce the CPU of weapons on the ship by 5-10%, an engineer would reduce thruster CPU by 5-10%, and perhaps a navigation officer that reduces warp cost by a certain percentage.

    Abuse wise, I really see very little way it could be (at least too much) we already can only have one of certain blocks on a ship (core, Pentaxid tank, shield, warp drive, etc).

    I have also seen designers build big ships with "slaves" build into the walls, dozens of them, just inside the wall standing there. In game they arent noticable, but peeking inside using GM and they look quite...silly.
     
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  4. The Big Brzezinski

    The Big Brzezinski Captain

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    More than functionality, I wonder about practicality. Where do you find crew? What should they cost? How do you maintain them? What cheeses and abuses might happen, and how do you curtail them? Crew are a nice idea, but whether they work or not depends on how well they fit into the rest of the game.

    Having crew agents performing tasks automatically sounds nice on paper, but I see it quickly becoming a nightmare to manage. It would be much simpler to place a crew station and assign one or more devices to it, improving their stats and generally making them faster, more powerful, and more efficient. A given device would only ever have one station improving it, so the number of crew needed would scale organically with the ship. It's not as sexy as a whole new automated management system, but it's a lot easier to make and use.

    I think a lot of required parts for actually managing crew are already in the game. Instead of buying whole crew blocks from TOP or Pax Purgatory, it would fit better to buy contracts from a human(?) resources vendor and use them as components to upgrade unmanned console decorations into manned crew stations. Retrieving a station would recover both the console and the contract. Crew stations would require livable temperatures, oxygenation, and protection from radiation similar to plants on grow plots. If the station is not livable, it would eventually revert back to a console block, similar to how plants become dead plant blocks. Crew stations aboard unpowered ships and bases would simply not appear at their station, as though they had disembarked. Finally, the crew would have to be fed. Prepared food items would be periodically taken from a ship's unlocked refrigerators at a rate based on the number of crew. Lack of food would also cause manned stations to revert to unmanned consoles. If you want to get really fancy, advanced devices may require more advanced stations, which in turn require contracts for more expensive crewmen. It would also be nice if specific character models could be detached from blocks and replaced with a reskinnable one.

    This may sound like a lot of work. You're right. It is a lot of work. Caring for a crew isn't easy. Then again, neither is clearing out POIs or designing ships. A crew system should feel like you're leading them through danger to accomplish the mission. If crew are just going to be glorified standalone CPU- or device-buffing blocks, they're better off staying as deco.


    Now all bets are off if you throw an AI overhaul into the mix. I wouldn't count on that anytime soon, though.
     
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  5. Ehkart

    Ehkart Ensign

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    I won't lie, I still like the idea of giving your thrusters a little more pepper or another 1k hit points to your shield, things of that nature. The crew members in the Reforged mod already reduce the CPU load by 2500 each, which is obviously favourable. It gets you through the portion of play when you haven't got the firepower to go get the alien cpu augments but definitely have left early game. What I'd like to see is small but impactful additions that each crew member could bring.

    I agree that limiting the amount overall of crew or of specific types would inhibit explotation as well. Having crew specific to loot tables in particular areas sounds great as well. Alien crew could provide slightly different additions etc.

    Thanks for the positive input from all so far, experience has proven to me often when posting in forums flame-fests begin but this has been constructive thus far!
     
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  6. Addy

    Addy Lieutenant

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    Having a crew would be nice, I could shout at them, and generally make their lives miserable :cool: so many ways to abuse the heck out of them :rolleyes: I am not evil...just a little bit on the dark side, and murderous to anything that is defenceless and can't fight back o_O
     
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  7. imlarry425

    imlarry425 Captain

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    While you could implement crew as a buff (the presence of a crew member in a role results in "+5 to succeed" sorts of thing) having roles where a PC was able to fill a role would be a big win in co-op play.

    One downside I'd never considered until it hit me a couple of days ago as it relates to CV crew as devices is that once placed and templated they become critical to the current implementation of "repair to template" functionality which is an all or nothing situation. While life is cheap for a player character (clone 'n go) an NPC crew member needs to be found and dropped into the little square insert resources here box before you can hit the repair button.
     
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  8. Chaiban

    Chaiban Ensign

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    I like the idea of crew having uses. A good way to make it so people don't over use them would be to have each crew found/Acquired require a cryochamber to be held in before placement (cant place in any box) and then when placed requires a bed and/or seat, a number of food points available per time period as well as O2 (when not in a breathable atmo) and maybe even money (depending on the job). Some could not have helmets and require a a pressurized area or breathable atmo. This would require larger ships for more crew and have to carry more food and materials with each extra crew. Crew could also NOT be re-added to a ship with repairs meaning if you lose one they are lost and you have to go get a new one. There could also be a requirement for them to have direct access to any containers/equipment they would be assigned to use so you cant hide boxes behind walls and expect them to be able to use them.
    They could also have a experience value for their given task so over time they become better at that task or even special crews that have boosts toward a specific job.
    If the required food, O2, Funds, housing, etc run out then NPCs could either start to leave, stop working or die. This would make them difficult to use specially in large numbers but totally worth having.

    Some crew could be slaves (for those who like to play the bad guys) and work for mostly free but a reduced efficiency.
    Some can be loyal to your cause and once acquired act as normal crew.
    Some can be hired hands that require to be paid as well as fed, outfitted and housed for their services.
    Some could even be hostile such as criminals or of a hostile faction and would damage things if given a chance. (this would make a fun mission to transport an enemy warlord to a prison or something)
    Some could be Neutral or friendly and just be temporary passengers.

    Jobs I would think are useful:
    Navigator = auto plots jumps between current location to a target system.

    Gunners = assigned to a single gun for much better automation control features or a device folder with weapons to auto reload (if possible) while guns are off/not in used and slightly enhances stats like fire rate, range etc.

    Mechanic = slowly repairs ship blocks and equipment OR repairs damaged docked ships in a defined area OR lowers the cost of repair bays and slightly speeds them up.

    Logistics officers = can boost efficiencies of what they are assigned to like CPU, fuel, thruster speed, scanning range, shield recharge rate, jump range/cost and so on but only ever one item per crew. Can auto refill tanks and ammo as needed.

    Guards/Soldiers = can be equipped with guns and armor and either stands a post or patrols a given area. Acts similar to a sentry turret (can even man them) and requires an ammo box to reload from. This could include mercenary Crew that have special abilities or something.

    Drone control officers = can launch and control drones (player faction drones would be a different topic)

    Medic = can be used to make med production more efficient, heal crew over time and auto heal players that come into a given area removing bad effects and giving good effects based on the medical devices in his area. When spoken to they can give info in crew health and any requirements they might need

    Communications officer = increases scan range and auto scans, can increase wifi range or even teleporter range. can get better info about POIs, ore deposits, planets and when spoken to can give intel about things in the playfield like if a POI is part of a mission, how to best deal with certain local mobs, things to do/not do inside a faction area to raise standing.

    Trader = can get better deals with trade stations in range and auto trade stuff from a given container. Requires credits/gold coins to be able to trade. They can also be given certain items to look for.

    Miner = They can increase mining speed, man a mining turret auto harvest and/or refuel nearby autominers of the ships faction.

    Farmer = can harvest a 3x3 area of plots, gets better yield and shortened growing times.

    Cook = keeps food in the fridge(s), feeds crew more efficiently and gives info on crew morale.

    Materials handler = keeps certain quantities of certain materials in specific containers, moves stuff around.

    Salvagers = can be activated to salvage wreckages

    Fabricators = Can shorten build times and costs. These guys can also allow construction of devices with buffs like thrusters with extra speed, weapons with better accuracy etc (specialty dependent) or even allow construction of a specific device not normally allowed.

    Copilot = can be set to turn shields on/off before and after jumps, activate guns when attacked

    Companion = Morale booster for other NPCs such as a dog or entertainer that raises effectiveness of the other NPCs on the ship or when spoken to can give player special buffs similar to using meds or medical devices.

    Special mission NPCs could also be added that you have to protect while going from one location to another such as passengers on a transport freighter or a high ranking official.
     
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  9. Ehkart

    Ehkart Ensign

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    Yep! I love it! This is exactly why I started this thread; in the hopes that others with more defined ideas would step forward and produce something worthy of possibly throwing to the devs for further review and possible implementation. I'm absolutely new to this forum while I've played the game since launch in early alpha, this type of discussion is exciting to me as it's a route to contribution that everyone can benefit from. Where do we go from here? How do we get the attention of the developer team in the hopes they might consider some of these ideas as paths to the future of the game?
     
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