We all heard about planetary landings, and walking around stations/ships, which i'm looking forward to It gave me an idea as how to expand the joy from it at the same time.
How about introducing a RPG element to it? like hiring staff for the bigger ships, and the crew could have some experience counter to determine their effectiveness at what role they have?
ex. Engineers (repairs, system installment and system improvements)
Soldiers (for boarding and planetary explorations)
Scientists (research of things found on explorations and ways to improve ship systems in cooperation with engineers)
Pilots (for lunching fighters or flying your ship on a sort of autopilot)
Players could be officers, that way you can have a co-op experience, or you can just hire the officers if you want to play solo. The officers is the main way of having a overview of the crew, as a large capital ship can have thousands of crew members and a "level counter" for all of them would be chaotic. So the officers have a experience level that slightly improve the overall performance of the crew, and the number of crew relative to the size of the ship dictates the effectiveness gained from the crew on board. Officers can have special abilities like being an expert in firearms, frameshift drives, different types of weapons(beam/ballistics/pulse/missile etc), shields, miner etc. but only at a max of 1 ability and you as a player can get up to 2. that way a solo player can hold out on his/her own and players in coop get a boon for playing together too.
This way you get a much larger variations between ships as some ships have much better crew and some may not even have enough crew to operate proper.. (one man cant fly a capital cruiser all alone)
This would mostly be focused on some of the larger ships as some ships (mainly fighters) is an one person ship. but even the Adder has 2 seats and is quite big, big enough to hold a crew of 4 or 5? in this situations you would most likely be the sole officer of the crew.
I think this is needed because i would hate to be able to walk around a big ship or land at a planet just to see it empty of life..
There is 400 Billion star systems in the game, most of them is unexplored. There is bound to be some extinct races or cultures somewhere. They could have left some artifacts of technology etc. If you can find these with an exploration team, get them back on board, have your researchers figure out what it is, and have your engineers implement it, that would make a whole new element to exploration. In the case you don't have a scientist, or he is not able to find out what it is, you can sell it for a profit. or if you don't think you need the new item implemented in your ship, you can sell it. there could even be a risk when trying to research it or even just have it on board, so you would have to figure out if you want to take the risk, sell it right away, or even have it on board. maybe you could even have the opportunity at research stations or just some bigger stations to have them research the item for you at a cost, if you don't have any scientists in your setup.
As new ships are added to the game, i think we can expect to see some larger designs, which means slower ships, these ships is perfect for boarding and would provide big enough space for the boarding to take place on as a mini game of some good old fps-looking game. BUT its done in real time, so you still have to have someone steer the ship and defend it from outside attacks too.. boarding in space is not done with a bridge, its done with a capsule or boarding vessel, so its not impossible to have a scenario like this. Soldiers are AI driven but can take commands like, attack - follow - hold - defend, and can be split in pre-setup teams. Players will be the in the fight, co-pilot will take over the steering of the ship with order to either defend, attack, avoid etc other ships. or if you are more then one players on a ship, one player can stay behind to pilot the ship.
I know there is a lot of holes in this ideas and its not perfect, but i just hope what any future expansions in the game doesn't turn out to just add more isolation and emptiness, and i think something like this would make sure it doesn't end like that, plus it would add a whole lot to the diversity of the game as every ship could have different crew setup and therefore act differently.
Original Thread: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=103386
How about introducing a RPG element to it? like hiring staff for the bigger ships, and the crew could have some experience counter to determine their effectiveness at what role they have?
ex. Engineers (repairs, system installment and system improvements)
Soldiers (for boarding and planetary explorations)
Scientists (research of things found on explorations and ways to improve ship systems in cooperation with engineers)
Pilots (for lunching fighters or flying your ship on a sort of autopilot)
Players could be officers, that way you can have a co-op experience, or you can just hire the officers if you want to play solo. The officers is the main way of having a overview of the crew, as a large capital ship can have thousands of crew members and a "level counter" for all of them would be chaotic. So the officers have a experience level that slightly improve the overall performance of the crew, and the number of crew relative to the size of the ship dictates the effectiveness gained from the crew on board. Officers can have special abilities like being an expert in firearms, frameshift drives, different types of weapons(beam/ballistics/pulse/missile etc), shields, miner etc. but only at a max of 1 ability and you as a player can get up to 2. that way a solo player can hold out on his/her own and players in coop get a boon for playing together too.
This way you get a much larger variations between ships as some ships have much better crew and some may not even have enough crew to operate proper.. (one man cant fly a capital cruiser all alone)
This would mostly be focused on some of the larger ships as some ships (mainly fighters) is an one person ship. but even the Adder has 2 seats and is quite big, big enough to hold a crew of 4 or 5? in this situations you would most likely be the sole officer of the crew.
I think this is needed because i would hate to be able to walk around a big ship or land at a planet just to see it empty of life..
There is 400 Billion star systems in the game, most of them is unexplored. There is bound to be some extinct races or cultures somewhere. They could have left some artifacts of technology etc. If you can find these with an exploration team, get them back on board, have your researchers figure out what it is, and have your engineers implement it, that would make a whole new element to exploration. In the case you don't have a scientist, or he is not able to find out what it is, you can sell it for a profit. or if you don't think you need the new item implemented in your ship, you can sell it. there could even be a risk when trying to research it or even just have it on board, so you would have to figure out if you want to take the risk, sell it right away, or even have it on board. maybe you could even have the opportunity at research stations or just some bigger stations to have them research the item for you at a cost, if you don't have any scientists in your setup.
As new ships are added to the game, i think we can expect to see some larger designs, which means slower ships, these ships is perfect for boarding and would provide big enough space for the boarding to take place on as a mini game of some good old fps-looking game. BUT its done in real time, so you still have to have someone steer the ship and defend it from outside attacks too.. boarding in space is not done with a bridge, its done with a capsule or boarding vessel, so its not impossible to have a scenario like this. Soldiers are AI driven but can take commands like, attack - follow - hold - defend, and can be split in pre-setup teams. Players will be the in the fight, co-pilot will take over the steering of the ship with order to either defend, attack, avoid etc other ships. or if you are more then one players on a ship, one player can stay behind to pilot the ship.
I know there is a lot of holes in this ideas and its not perfect, but i just hope what any future expansions in the game doesn't turn out to just add more isolation and emptiness, and i think something like this would make sure it doesn't end like that, plus it would add a whole lot to the diversity of the game as every ship could have different crew setup and therefore act differently.
Original Thread: https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=103386
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