Ships already have crew, they’re just not a game mechanic. Yet. Hopefully one day they will be along with officers. I like the idea of implementing BattleTech’s officer mechanic.
The following is an excerpt from a previous post of mine called Space Commander , which was an rts feature that would allow players to control npc fleets when their pod was docked in a station. The specific ideas around crew though, could work with capsuleer ships as well.
The Crew:
When the player loads up Space Commander, whether its in the Eve Client or a stand alone client specifically for this feature, the player will be asked to create a company. Name, logo, chairman (could be the capsuleer character, or some other npc.)
Next, we run through a basic rts style tutorial (with the option to skip) to get used to the control interface. I imagine it being somewhat based off of the Homeworld interface for 3d movement of rts objects, though there may be better options available.
Regardless if the tutorial is skipped, the player will receive a handful of officers, basic crew with no stats (think of those marine or militant items we have in game currently,) ships, and other equipment.
New officers could be created from basic crew when enough experience has been accrued.
The mechanics surrounding the handling of officers will be something like this screen shot I’ve stolen out of a BattleTech gameplay video. These officers have traits which will provide different effects to the ships they are stationed on, and those ships will have requirements for the officers which are commanding those ships. (A rookie ship wouldn’t have any requirements, while a battlecruiser would be much more demanding.)
A minimum of a 1 month contract will be signed for an officers employment, (that payment will be paid by the tutorial npc during the npe for the first batch of officers the player receives.)
The player is going to go through a lot of officers during their game play, since the Space Commander gameplay will be designed around losing and replacing a lot of units. With this in mind, an officer market place would be required to sort through the available candidates from a local and global pool of applicants. (I imagine this as a mix of the EVE market with the filters of contracts.)
If the player does not keep up with the contract when payment is due, the officer will remove itself from the player’s employment and list itself in the officer market. Player’s could also voluntarily allow other players to buy out their officer’s contracts (for a set price paid to the initial Space Commander player plus the additional minimum 1 month contract price.)
XP will be gained on a per ship basis, based on the events that that ship partakes in. While the officers crewing the ship will gain traits based on the events they partake in, the experience the ship earns may additionally be spent on the officers to level them up even faster. This experience can be also be spent on upgrading basic crew to officers, as I mentioned earlier. (I suggest creating a template which will automatically level up the crew as it happens, so the player doesn’t have to mess with it mid battle.)
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