Multi crew ships how to implement?

[nijineko]

it's not about accuracy... it's about the prestige of having a being running that thing. besides, if it can break down, than the gunner can fix it. ^^

[BobSongs]

Fascinating topic.

My first thought: if I'm paying for crew, somebody's manning other guns while I'm blasting from the front. Turrets would be the way to go, obviously. There's no firing from the rear gun if the aim is constantly "off" from the targeting based on the forward guns.

[Arexack_Heretic]

algorithm:
needs to check roles and add a multiplier to a cargospace based algorithm for minimum crew. As freighters by definition have minimum frills and maximum cargospace, crew are also expensive.

However, playerships tend to not have any roles besides 'player'

I feel also that lowertechlevel should mean less automation and thus more gruntwork.
High tech ships have autoloaders etc for cargohandling, even a python does, however an adder or so may require manual handling.
Droids should then logically be either standard issue on hightech ships or only available as addon equipment for HT ships.

The Navy Asp has 2 crew requirement due to Navy regs, private persons can perform the duties of both naval crew and save on wages.
CobraMk3 also is a double seater btw.

[pagroove]

algorithm:
needs to check roles and add a multiplier to a cargospace based algorithm for minimum crew. As freighters by definition have minimum frills and maximum cargospace, crew are also expensive.

However, playerships tend to not have any roles besides 'player'

I feel also that lowertechlevel should mean less automation and thus more gruntwork.
High tech ships have autoloaders etc for cargohandling, even a python does, however an adder or so may require manual handling.
Droids should then logically be either standard issue on hightech ships or only available as addon equipment for HT ships.

The Navy Asp has 2 crew requirement due to Navy regs, private persons can perform the duties of both naval crew and save on wages.
CobraMk3 also is a double seater btw.

Some good points here. Although I think autoloaders still need supervision. And therefore having a load master can mean certain bonuses like be able to store 2tc extra for example

[ZygoUgo]

Good ideas all
I was thinking to keep a little risk and to add further variation (esp over robotic employees) would be for crew members to have a hidden 'talent' factor. This would remain unknown to you, invisibly modifying their skill level up or down and the only way you find out is through their performance, IE spending out on a decentish mid range crew member only to find out he's a clumsy buffoon and breaks things every now and then. On the other hand you may find him/her/it repairing things you never would have expected, this would add a little risk and suprise to the lower level employees and a value to those top range employees who then turn out to be even better than the others.
Add that to the risk of crew being injured or killed if you get particularily battered and they become even more valuable as you try to collect that perfect crew.
Maybe their characters could also include a POS/NEG (also invisible to the player) modifyer which would essentially denote their level of selfishness/alterism, one being more likely to mutiny, the other loyalty, but then this is getting into having a crew morale factor, or could be taken even further than that.
I guess that takes interaction/management with your crew, maybe when docked there is an added option/screen to hold a crew meeting in which characters are better revealed and some proper interaction can take place, without doing this you will miss out on clues about the nature of your crew (New crewman Zooshma drops his iced bun in his coffee, hmmmn.. Nervouse or clumsy...?) and how to manage them if things get sticky.
Perhaps here are even a few missions spawned by crew who stay with you long enough, say if you collect yourself a crew of 'negative' characters, you run a higher risk of mutiny but get tip offs (once they trust you) from your piratey crew about places to rob/offers of lots of cash for favours/breaking out an old associate from a space prison etc.
A predominately positive crew could add a few more indepth storylines to get involved with/trading tip offs etc. These missions could be added to the OXP later at their own pace.
Perhaps time also holds a factor which begins in reverse, as in the longer a crew member is with you the greater their loyalty becomes (but by beginning in reverse simulates the intitial morale of taking on a new job). Over the first month the novelty of joining your crew wears off and the crew member reaches their lowest point and are most likely to leave/attempt to create a mutiny (depending on the POS/NEG modifyer), but this then reverses and their loyalty begins to grow instead, but slower.
This would mean that if you did manage to gather a suitably piratey crew for the piratey missions they bring, eventually the risk of mutiny would be replaced by loyalty.
Positive members would bond with you and be less likely to leave of their own accord if things are going badly (they keep getting injured/your butt gets wipped alot/you can't pay them)
Any how I'm getting way ahead of what I was initially posting which was the 'talent' modifyer

Damnit; If a mutiny occurs you are bundled into your escape pod and ejected and, most likely having a criminal record are not legible for insurance.
Actually this could be a seperate add on OXP so that there's a choice of implementaion.
Anyhow the idea being if you choose a life of piracey and you lose your ship you don't automatically get an identical replacement but some old rust bucket from further down the scale of evolution, not according to how much cash you have made but instead what is available in the scrap yard at short notice. Greater rewards but greater risk for the pirate life.
Where was I?
If your ship gets taken from you by mutiny there is a very small chance of bumping into her again (amusing taunts over the com.)and upon bashing her to near destruction can reclaim her (if rather damaged) butt.
Now I'm going to have a cup of tea.

Nuts; Thinking about the manned gun turrets, these could be available seperately from other turrets as in they are specifically for a being to sit in, the gunner's skill could be simulated by making their 'level' affect the amount of damage the gun does and how quickly the gun gets repaired.
The gunners skill could also grow to a certain extent over time.

[DaddyHoggy]

Could one of your crew be a top notch trade negotiator? Getting you above std prices on what you sell and a small discount on that you buy?

Or, one of them's a bit of wheeler dealer on the side that can get you some fab deals on some special equipment which is great initially but then you find he's been doing some really dodgy dealing on the side and your clean rating gets busted to Offender or worse, Fugitive...

Possibly difficult to OXP?

[pagroove]

Good ideas all
I was thinking to keep a little risk and to add further variation (esp over robotic employees) would be for crew members to have a hidden 'talent' factor. This would remain unknown to you, invisibly modifying their skill level up or down and the only way you find out is through their performance, IE spending out on a decentish mid range crew member only to find out he's a clumsy buffoon and breaks things every now and then. On the other hand you may find him/her/it repairing things you never would have expected, this would add a little risk and suprise to the lower level employees and a value to those top range employees who then turn out to be even better than the others.
Add that to the risk of crew being injured or killed if you get particularily battered and they become even more valuable as you try to collect that perfect crew.
Maybe their characters could also include a POS/NEG (also invisible to the player) modifyer which would essentially denote their level of selfishness/alterism, one being more likely to mutiny, the other loyalty, but then this is getting into having a crew morale factor, or could be taken even further than that.
I guess that takes interaction/management with your crew, maybe when docked there is an added option/screen to hold a crew meeting in which characters are better revealed and some proper interaction can take place, without doing this you will miss out on clues about the nature of your crew (New crewman Zooshma drops his iced bun in his coffee, hmmmn.. Nervouse or clumsy...?) and how to manage them if things get sticky.
Perhaps here are even a few missions spawned by crew who stay with you long enough, say if you collect yourself a crew of 'negative' characters, you run a higher risk of mutiny but get tip offs (once they trust you) from your piratey crew about places to rob/offers of lots of cash for favours/breaking out an old associate from a space prison etc.
A predominately positive crew could add a few more indepth storylines to get involved with/trading tip offs etc. These missions could be added to the OXP later at their own pace.
Perhaps time also holds a factor which begins in reverse, as in the longer a crew member is with you the greater their loyalty becomes (but by beginning in reverse simulates the intitial morale of taking on a new job). Over the first month the novelty of joining your crew wears off and the crew member reaches their lowest point and are most likely to leave/attempt to create a mutiny (depending on the POS/NEG modifyer), but this then reverses and their loyalty begins to grow instead, but slower.
This would mean that if you did manage to gather a suitably piratey crew for the piratey missions they bring, eventually the risk of mutiny would be replaced by loyalty.
Positive members would bond with you and be less likely to leave of their own accord if things are going badly (they keep getting injured/your butt gets wipped alot/you can't pay them)
Any how I'm getting way ahead of what I was initially posting which was the 'talent' modifyer

Damnit; If a mutiny occurs you are bundled into your escape pod and ejected and, most likely having a criminal record are not legible for insurance.
Actually this could be a seperate add on OXP so that there's a choice of implementaion.
Anyhow the idea being if you choose a life of piracey and you lose your ship you don't automatically get an identical replacement but some old rust bucket from further down the scale of evolution, not according to how much cash you have made but instead what is available in the scrap yard at short notice. Greater rewards but greater risk for the pirate life.
Where was I?
If your ship gets taken from you by mutiny there is a very small chance of bumping into her again (amusing taunts over the com.)and upon bashing her to near destruction can reclaim her (if rather damaged) butt.
Now I'm going to have a cup of tea.

Nuts; Thinking about the manned gun turrets, these could be available seperately from other turrets as in they are specifically for a being to sit in, the gunner's skill could be simulated by making their 'level' affect the amount of damage the gun does and how quickly the gun gets repaired.
The gunners skill could also grow to a certain extent over time.

Hi ZygoUgo welcome to the boards and what a great entry! With the above description of the talent modifier a lot of depth and meaning can be given to a crew. Sadly I can't exactly remember what the crew in Frontier elite did but I remember that you had to pay their wages. I think the multi-crew implementation in Oolite can be much deeper than in FFE.

Till now we've seen many ideas. Now we need a brave coder to make a basic version of a crew. I assume we make a very basic OXP at first with only the formula (earlier mentioned in this thread) in it so that you have to buy crew. Only problem is that if a player is now in a big ship he/she has to buy a lot of crew in an instant.

If the basic implementation is there then it is time for adding more modifiers.

[pagroove]

Could one of your crew be a top notch trade negotiator? Getting you above std prices on what you sell and a small discount on that you buy?

Or, one of them's a bit of wheeler dealer on the side that can get you some fab deals on some special equipment which is great initially but then you find he's been doing some really dodgy dealing on the side and your clean rating gets busted to Offender or worse, Fugitive...

Possibly difficult to OXP?

Thats an excellent suggestion. What if you could get such crew only at planets with a certain political system or tech level.?

[DaddyHoggy]

Thats an excellent suggestion.

Occasionally, such things do happen - it's the infinite Monkeys/Shakespeare thing!

[ZygoUgo]

@pagroove, thanks, was rambling a bit, no idea what sort of level of detail is realistic to expect from the OXP system, thought I might have overshot the mark a bit.

@daddyhoggy, yes that's good, maybe such could be some randomly distributed personality benefits. The selection screen displays a kind of personal statement to explain the applicants skills? These extra benefits could sometimes be mentioned so the employee is asking for slightly higher pay, other times it could be the employee is making it up with a bit of the old interview blag, and other times the applicant has a skill he/she/it is not yet aware of that appears or becomes apparent later on.

Like I said not really in knowledge of what OXP's are capable of so sorry if I'm being neive.

[KZ9999]

Here's a quick though on how to code a crew

Crew name generated by the same algorithims that create passengers.
Each crew member is rated on: weapons skills (0 none, 7 average, 15 amazing), engineering skill (0-15 again), merchant skills (0-15), and reliability - how likely they are able to perform under combat conditions (15 unreliable - 0 never fails). Experienced is based on average weapons+engineering+merchant - reliably.

The base wages could be calculated as 50 cr month adjusted by the experience rating (100 per month for highly skilled, 10 per month for poor) with an additional annul bonus based on experienced. If the crew member stays with you for the year, then their skills adjusted by one and their wages increase. The length of the contract could effect the price, longer contract being cheaper per month.

On the day to day basis the the crew total skill is average on each class to effect a beneficial effect for the player less the average total of crew reliability. Weapon skills improve damage of hits by a small percent. Engineering reduce the chance of equipment damage by a percent, merchant improve prices by a small percent. Class average of 8-11 get 5% change, 12-13 gets a 10% change, 14 is 15%, 15 is 20% (etxreamly rare.)

Crew can be hired though a bbs on stations where there should be 20-40 of them, via the F4x2 key. They are managed on the manifests screen: showing when they hired and when the contract will expire, their monthy cost, and their general rating. Through this menu you can chose not to renew a contract or break it with a penalty payment.

An so it could be expanded on from this... Crew members going on strike due to missed wages. Random crew killed during hull strikes. A flu hits the crew and reduces their ability to perform for a while. Someone jumps ship or sneaks on-board. A crew member has a pet trumble that escapes into the hold. ....

[pagroove]

Here's a quick though on how to code a crew

Crew name generated by the same algorithims that create passengers.
Each crew member is rated on: weapons skills (0 none, 7 average, 15 amazing), engineering skill (0-15 again), merchant skills (0-15), and reliability - how likely they are able to perform under combat conditions (15 unreliable - 0 never fails). Experienced is based on average weapons+engineering+merchant - reliably.

The base wages could be calculated as 50 cr month adjusted by the experience rating (100 per month for highly skilled, 10 per month for poor) with an additional annul bonus based on experienced. If the crew member stays with you for the year, then their skills adjusted by one and their wages increase. The length of the contract could effect the price, longer contract being cheaper per month.

On the day to day basis the the crew total skill is average on each class to effect a beneficial effect for the player less the average total of crew reliability. Weapon skills improve damage of hits by a small percent. Engineering reduce the chance of equipment damage by a percent, merchant improve prices by a small percent. Class average of 8-11 get 5% change, 12-13 gets a 10% change, 14 is 15%, 15 is 20% (etxreamly rare.)

Crew can be hired though a bbs on stations where there should be 20-40 of them, via the F4x2 key. They are managed on the manifests screen: showing when they hired and when the contract will expire, their monthy cost, and their general rating. Through this menu you can chose not to renew a contract or break it with a penalty payment.

An so it could be expanded on from this... Crew members going on strike due to missed wages. Random crew killed during hull strikes. A flu hits the crew and reduces their ability to perform for a while. Someone jumps ship or sneaks on-board. A crew member has a pet trumble that escapes into the hold. ....

Thats probably a decent way to start. I don't know if all is possible. It seems like a big task. First task is to decide which ships actually need to be controlled by a multicrew. What also seems a problem is the transition when a player that owns a multicrew ship experiences when he installs such an oxp. He has then buy one or more crew members instantly. In Fontier Elite the ship wouldn't fly if you did not recruit crew members.