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Distinction between Worker NPC's and Executive NPC's

#1
the split between Worker and Executive NPC's has been in the game for quite a while

i assume that the knowledge
that workers are just bought and slavishly loyal, behaving like your classic RTS minion, and
that executives are the only ones with "free will", having to be hired and can betray you and whatnot
is commonly known around here

but what can workers and executives actually do in the players corporate structure isnt established at all

my ramblings from here
Cornflakes_91 wrote:
HKY09 wrote: Perhaps it should be a thing among high pressure occupations - keeping your administrators and admirals happy or you might lose them to defection or worse.
What do you think?
Well, this goes into general AI interaction and is less directly connected to planetary control.


Im a bit torn on that myself.

Loyal commanders or permanent threat of defection and treachery.


How about this:
Execs can do everything on their own, think strategically in flatfingers scale.
You just give them some money and a task and in theory they'd build a trade empire to get the money to destroy a designated target.
Creating fleet structures, designing ships, everything to do your bidding.

Worker npc's can only think in operational scales.
So they take the assets you give them, maintain them, replace them.
Basically being an abstraction layer for micromanagement.
but they cant think big and independent.
If you give them the task "build up mining operations in this system" (without extra informations) they cant do it.
You have to tell them "build a trade station, 5 mines and asorted transporters in this system".


So workers use structure.
Executives create structure


In this frame it depends on what you want to do with the planet/colony.

If you just want to tell "make money" you have to use a executive NPC.
If you are willing to manage the colony to a level "build 5 factories and 2 spaceports" you only have to use worker NPC's.
No NPC control of the colony would need you to sort out resource aquirition too (and all other minutia like maintainance).
brush on that, but i guess its time to discuss this properly and not between other topics in disjointed threads



what should workers be able to do in terms of commandeering and controlling your assets?
less than execs? equally? more?


so what are your thoughts people of LT?
Last edited by Cornflakes_91 on Tue Oct 07, 2014 9:38 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Distinction between Worker NPC's and Executive NPC's

#3
In reply, perhaps to help set context, I quote my own ramblings from viewtopic.php?f=5&t=3495
So in an effort to retain a distinction between workers and executive NPCs (let's call them ENPCs) we might be able to generate a rough framework on how we interact with our subordinates, and what it means to be a subordinate:

Firstly, ENPCs are, in principle if not in precise implementation, on the same standing as the player. ENPCs, like the player, have access to assets that they have to manage on a continuing basis. Workers, on the other hand, behave purely as assets, much in the same way as ships or cargo, perhaps. Under this description, ENPCs may manipulate their workers in the same way they would their other property. In principle, therefore, so would the player.

Under such a framework, logically workers do not influence the culture of the universe, only ENPCs or the player. In the context of an evolving universal culture, then, properties of age or other temporal effects would be best exhibited by ENPCs.

ENPCs can be brought under your 'control' by hiring them. They are autonomous - in other words, you pay them a wage (or a 'hiring fee'), and they complete the job as you describe it. They may in turn subcontract to other ENPCs, etc etc.

In this way autonomy is maintained within the control hierarchy of a faction. Pilots of ships are considered non-autonomous, and therefore do not exist within the active hierarchy of a faction.
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Re: Distinction between Worker NPC's and Executive NPC's

#4
eww.. 'ENPC's? :sick:

Am I odd for finding the the application of the term 'NPC' to Josh's one-of-a-kind-and-hard-won-smarty-pants actors inexplicably repulsive?


I humbly suggest simply 'LT workers'/'LT execs', or, with established context, merely workers and executives (as is Cornflakes' habit).

Edit: Yes, I agree that the terminology is a triviality Scytale, therefore I'll carry my complaint no further than this. Also, I have no issue with the meat of your musings.
Last edited by Baile nam Fonn on Wed Oct 08, 2014 6:07 am, edited 1 time in total.
"omg such tech many efficiency WOW" ~ Josh Parnell
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Re: Distinction between Worker NPC's and Executive NPC's

#5
Baile nam Fonn wrote:eww.. 'ENPC's? :sick:

Am I odd for finding the the application of the term 'NPC' to Josh's one-of-a-kind-and-hard-won-smarty-pants actors inexplicably repulsive?


I humbly suggest simply 'LT workers'/'LT execs', or, with established context, merely workers and executives (as is Cornflakes' habit).
Let's call them LTE's. :D
Image The results of logic, of natural progression? Boring! An expected result? Dull! An obvious next step? Pfui! Where is the fun in that? A dream may soothe, but our nightmares make us run!
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Re: Distinction between Worker NPC's and Executive NPC's

#9
Cornflakes_91 wrote:
HKY09 wrote: I always assumed the separation would be there upon being hired, right?
the separation is more or less "racist"

Workers are created and traded like commodities and have reduced AI

Executives have the same status as the player, running the full AI, need to be hired and can betray you
I like this, but there needs to be a way to keep executives on my side forever... or maybe I could just do a better job at hiring them? xP

Actually... wait... that is feasible, with the introduction of cultures.
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Re: Distinction between Worker NPC's and Executive NPC's

#10
HKY09 wrote: I like this, but there needs to be a way to keep executives on my side forever... or maybe I could just do a better job at hiring them? xP

Actually... wait... that is feasible, with the introduction of cultures.
There shouldnt be a way to make them loyal forever, if you need a slave, get a worker.

You may lower the probability of them leaving to arbitary low values, but it should never reach zero.

You can do this by paying them well, giving them jobs they like etc.
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Re: Distinction between Worker NPC's and Executive NPC's

#12
Cornflakes_91 wrote:
HKY09 wrote: I like this, but there needs to be a way to keep executives on my side forever... or maybe I could just do a better job at hiring them? xP

Actually... wait... that is feasible, with the introduction of cultures.
There shouldnt be a way to make them loyal forever, if you need a slave, get a worker.

You may lower the probability of them leaving to arbitary low values, but it should never reach zero.

You can do this by paying them well, giving them jobs they like etc.
It should be near enough to zero that it basically is - hiring execs with good cultural traits (low greed, low aggressiveness, etc) and paying them a good wage, giving them the jobs they want, etc.... should be an option so players aren't constantly complaining that their best admiral suddenly decided to take half the fleet and form his own faction xP
Last edited by HKY09 on Wed Oct 08, 2014 10:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Distinction between Worker NPC's and Executive NPC's

#15
Cornflakes_91 wrote:Dont confuse workers with executives, theres an in-engine difference between them
Who said otherwise? But this was my point. That difference is well-delineated:
I've got an item class up and running for workers and I'm in the process of making the switch to the player / worker split once and for all. Moral issues aside, I'm pretty much set on workers being commodities like everything else, with no 'special' stuff going on. It just simplifies so much. This was really the original motivation behind the worker scheme - to introduce an easily-understandable manner in which labor (or the potential to produce it) can be bought and traded. More importantly, it can be easily-understood and quantified by both the player and the AI.

Interestingly, we already have a fantastic mechanism for 'producing' workers - planet colonies! You've already seen in the last update that we had a planetary colony operating as black-box production process. In that case it was simply consuming Viritium and...nothing else (not much of a production process eh :| ). But I spoke a few weeks ago about how we could imagine having different types of planetary colonies that represent different processes - agricultural, industrial, technological, militaristic, etc. Well, it certainly makes sense that, on top of the other commodities produced by these colonies, workers could be produced in the same way!
I have no desire to get into ethical issues with my game design decisions, but being able to throw around and generally send workers to their deaths when and how you please does beg the question "are they human?" Part of the point of a worker is that, once under your control, it does as you desire. It does not have a high-level thinking process that would allow it to reject your orders in favor of some other course of action. What if we considered the low-LOD lifeforms to all be advanced robots / androids / whatever? Maybe even partial clones? You see, we could get creative here to help explain and further characterize the thinker-worker separation :think:

To me, it doesn't even seem like a stretch that, in the distant future, the ratio of 'humans' to artificial laborors would be quite low. As we become better and better at creating machines that perform a specific role more capably than our own bodies allow us to, it seems perfectly natural that the place of the human would be more and more as the place of a thinker, managing large amounts of non-thinking workers that are actually carrying out the labor.

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