Crew Members... With personality

I am Very Very Disapointed with the officers plug

Poll: Crew outfits? (21 member(s) have cast votes)
What do you want in a Crew Plug-in
Personality, interaction, and past histories, sounds good.
(19 votes [90.48%])
Percentage of vote: 90.48%
Just boost my stats and be done
(1 votes [4.76%])
Percentage of vote: 4.76%
I don't need no steenking crew.
(1 votes [4.76%])
Percentage of vote: 4.76%

I am Very Very Disapointed with the officers plug.

It has crew you can purchase. They're a one time buy, and are bassically massless stats boosters. Oh, yay. We have another word for Massless stats boosters. Cheats.

Okay, I don't mean to give offense, and i know that whoever made that plug put time and effort into it, which I appreciate. But the plug just rubs me wrong. It would not be difficult to make the crew more like crew and not robot servitors

A basic upgrade would be to set up the crew memebers so that they were time limited and signed on for only, say, a year. After which, of course, the outfit would change into a outfit with stats affect value and price of zero, whcih you could then "Discharge" (sell) anywhere. For more realism, make keeping a crew who has finished his tour of duty for another month change the outfit into one that LOWERS your stats, showing that he's getting annoyed with you not letting him off at port. Or even better, have crew link with an periodic misn or an honor that takes away money for salary, instead of "I pay you 2 million and you work for me for eternity as my SLAVE!"

Okay, i'm going to stop complaining now, and talk about what a crew plug-in could be.
Let's have some personality. Crew memebrs should have names, histories, special abilities, and also flaws and tragic past that catch up with them and their employer. I mean, try this:

1. Crew talk. Crew should have an active role in you dealings, it's their pay too. Nova has this ABSOLUTELY LOVELY feature where you can change the text for a mission depending on which bits are set. Lookit all the possibilities this offers. Have a veteran first officer who knows his way around people and plannets both? Add in text where if you have him, he warns you off bad deals, or clues you in to good ones in misns. Have a innocent idealistic new pilot? Have him object when Commander Krane has you ship a political dissident. I mean seriously, this feature is DRASTICALLY underused.

2. Cew Actions. Sure, a mechanic obviously boost engines and a radar tech gives reduced interference. But what else are they doing with their lives? Maybe yoru radar tech knows someone in Pyrogensis mining and gets you an introduction so you can get work from them. Maybe your mechanic is well travelled and offers you hints on good trading and minings prospects nearby. Maybe your hotshot new pilot has a criminal record and lands you in a heap of troubl by getting in barfights; or alternatively, gets you out of trouble with his contacts with identity card forgers. Have a quiet, mysterious type around? Have her be a spy/illegal immigrant from Polaris/Aurora, and have a misn set that comes out of that. Have a first officer with some political pull? Have him grant a bitset/honor that gives you discounts at certain outfiter/shipyards. Lots of interesting possibilities.

In conclusion, I would like to point you to that moment in EVC when you board that derelict Bulk Freighter and find key Kestrel Sub-Assemblies. Your First mate speaks up and suggests that you could sell this at Blackthrone. That's the kind of thing i would love to see more of.

And if anyone is interested in spicing up EV or your TC with some crewers with character, I'd love to help with the writing. ^^

This post has been edited by Satori : 10 May 2006 - 04:00 PM

I'm doing just this in my TC. The 'npcs' in it have very definate roles and affect changes in gameplay based on which ones are part of your ships' crew at plot point moments- even the crew size of your ship can affect some things.

I would love to see the crew of a ship playing a more major role in storylines. The Pirate string did this to a point, at least for the beginning of the string, but it could have been much more.

On another note, I remember awhile ago people discussed the idea of using the nickname field as a name for a second character, maybe a co-pilot or something.

Great ideas and all, but they do increase complexity in the game. There's a lot of extra work to be done even for mild changes to the mission setups. People are having enough trouble creating well fleshed-out plugins as it is because of all the work involved; no sense making things even more complicated.

I've always this kind of idea. It feels so lonely sometimes, playing EV:N. You imagine this pilot going about on his own, but then you see that your scarab is meant to have a crew of 20--which makes perfect sense. The crew is so silent, though, all the time. It might as well be just one man all on his own in that beast of a manticore.

I'd love to see some crew personality in there now and then.

Sounds cool, but very difficult. It would seem to involve all sorts of invisble misns and crons.

EVN Firefly has a high degree of crew interaction, in addition to recurring off-ship characters.

However, you can't just hire and discharge crew at will. The storyline determines that. Minor mission strings will be restricted so that they're only offered if you have the right set of people onboard, but that's the extent of the acrobatics I'm willing to go through.

This post has been edited by Lindley : 11 May 2006 - 10:28 PM

That would take the time required for a TC and multiply it horrendously.

But it would add a whole new level to the game.

This post has been edited by The Apple Cřre : 11 May 2006 - 11:39 PM

@the-apple-c-re, on May 11 2006, 10:39 PM, said in Crew Members... With personality:

That would take the time required for a TC and multiply it horrendously.

But it would add a whole new level to the game.

I think you guys are being over-ambitious. It doesn;t have to be extremely time consuming. simply add text that only shows if certain bits are set to some missions, and make those bist set or clear depending on whether you have X character. Eg, when certain missions are offered and you have the approriate crewer, he/she comments on the mission, giving hints (That krane's is a evil *****, Just say no!)

Is this gonna be made? It sounds nice. I would make it but I dont have the patience to make something so elaborate. Well, atleast not make it and have it be a good peice of work.

I really hate to double post but nobody seems to be reading this one. Is anybody gonna make it? Not tryiong ot pressure anyone but I would like to know so I could help with atleast ideas.

Funny that I should find this topic. I am currently experimenting with this very concept in a plug-in I began working on this week. So far it's just in the "can I get it to work?" phase, but so far it's promising. The only reason I didn't announce it was because I wasn't sure if I could make it happen, but I think I may have figured out a way to make your crew more of NPC's with personalities, personal missions, etc--along the lines of the Baldur's Gate II NPCs.

Like I said, it's just an experiment right now, but I'll post more in a couple of days if I can get it working to my satisfaction. It's good to know that there's more than just me with that interest, at least.

Edit: Spelling error...gah!

This post has been edited by Wazoo of the SpaceChicken Mallet : 03 June 2006 - 12:27 PM

I have a very limited form of this implemented in SFA, considering virtually all the "outfits" are crew members.

Huh. That would be absolutely awesome to play, but actually implimenting the feature would take a load of time, especially for TC's. It's daunting enough to have to write several storylines anyway, and that would add a lot of daunting-ness. It would be just excellent though.... I think I'll reserve that train of thought for another day.

Actually, it's not that hard. It might take a little more time for TCs, but so far I've been making pretty good progress for only a week spent working on them. You just have to really think out what you are planning on doing or else you will mess up a branch (as I've done once or twice) and fixing that can be a pain. On the whole though, it doesn't take any more time than any other story-intense plug-in.

It takes a hell of a lot less time than "any other story-intense plug-in", believe me

You could have it out by August if you work on it regularly

@pace, on Jun 4 2006, 11:16 AM, said in Crew Members... With personality:

You could have it out by August if you work on it regularly

Maybe, but I'm developing it alongside another plug-in as well. I was going to integrate it fully with the storyline, but decided to release them as two separate plugs in case someone doesn't want to explore the story I'm developing. We'll see, August is a possibility. I'll set a tentative date once I get a few more strings done on it.