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Re: CREW MECHANICS

#16
In my Limit Theory universe, all ships other than single-seat fighters definitely have crew complements.

The only question for me is whether I have to use my imagination to simulate those crew, or if Josh (or a really energetic modder) adds code to offload some of that simulation by providing some logical and visual representation of crew members.

LEVEL 0: Code to simulate crew and their actions could be as simple as we used to do it back in the Dinosaur Era of gaming:

Code: Select all

Helm says, "You have 137 crew. What is your command, Captain?"
> 5
Fire Control says, "Firing torpedos: angle?"
> 135
Fire Control says, "Torpedos away! You do 37 damage to the enemy ship."
Engineering says, "You have taken 23 damage."
Helm says, "You have 122 crew. What is your command, Captain?"
> 
In other words, you could get away with just displaying a single number. When that number drops to 0, you either have to do everything yourself (if the developer is feeling nice) or your ship explodes (if the developer wrote BASIC games in the 1970s).

LEVEL 1: A deeper level of simulation would have roles associated with ship functions, and NPCs with characteristics associated with roles, so that you could play an optimization mini-game with assigning crew to roles in between firefights. They'd be represented as pieces of text: names and attributes.

LEVEL 2: A deeper still level of simulation would treat NPCs as characters who have personalities that affect how they fill their roles, and who can talk to each other and have some level of in-world autonomy. They'd be represented as static portraits or icons.

LEVEL 3: At the deepest level, these NPCs would be rendered as animated persons in a 3D space.

Personally, I'd be fine with a Level 1 simulation of crew, but I certainly wouldn't mind a Level 2 simulation as long as it didn't take three months to code.

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