NPC gunners?

[JesusRocks1988]

If you equate NPC control to computer control, then you would be correct.

I want the NPC's to be individuals that have a narrative, and perform valuable functions on my ship.

Like I said, it's good in principle, but from a practical standpoint if we just look at the gunner part, what is that going to look like in your ship while it's happening?

- You'll have the standard voiced lines that the NPC has when flying the fighter.
- Your turrets will still behave like they did before.
- You might be able to look over and see them sitting there (in an ideal situation).

Now, if we expand that to other roles in the ship... what do you imagine they will do? Currently we have Helm, Gunner & Fighter. They already perform the Fighter role. You're proposing they start performing the Gunner role. They already handle the Helm if you're in a fighter, but I guess they would handle the Helm too if you wanted to be Gunner. But what else? Give them an extra pip like with multicrew?

What are you imagining here?

 

[iofhua]

Like I said, it's good in principle, but from a practical standpoint if we just look at the gunner part, what is that going to look like in your ship while it's happening?

- You'll have the standard voiced lines that the NPC has when flying the fighter.
- Your turrets will still behave like they did before.
- You might be able to look over and see them sitting there (in an ideal situation).

Now, if we expand that to other roles in the ship... what do you imagine they will do? Currently we have Helm, Gunner & Fighter. They already perform the Fighter role. You're proposing they start performing the Gunner role. They already handle the Helm if you're in a fighter, but I guess they would handle the Helm too if you wanted to be Gunner. But what else? Give them an extra pip like with multicrew?

What are you imagining here?

Gunner controlled turrets wouldn't behave like computer controlled turrets. I've made that clear throughout this thread.

The only person equating NPC's to the computer here are you.

 

[JesusRocks1988]

Gunner controlled turrets wouldn't behave like computer controlled turrets. I've made that clear throughout this thread.

The only person equating NPC's to the computer here are you.

I'm certainly not the only one here doing that. The only differentiation I'm seeing here is that the turrets would be immune to chaff and stuck in what is essentially the mode for firing at all hostiles.

Now, you haven't mentioned these at all yet, but there are some extra benefits you could mention to differentiate having computer control vs NPC control. The skill level you suggest - I guess Elite Crew would have basically 100% tracking. Regardless of rank, the crew would be immune to chaff, but also immune to the effects of silent running or using heat sinks. You'd also need to differentiate their behaviour when they fire at multiple hostiles. I think currently turrets fire at the closest ones or "highest threat" (still never figured out what that actually means for targeting, but whatever), so NPC crew should instead be able to pick out maybe the weakest hostile - such as smaller targets, or those that have taken significant damage, or even figure out that you are targeting a big, bad and difficult hostile and so stop aggroing others in favour of turning all guns on your target. Although in practice I'm not sure how well MoM can code AI to be able to do that automatically, so it would probably be left to the "orders" tab.

Yeah... I can see a way for it to work.

Although they'd have to come with some more significant drawbacks (aside from the fact they're using turrets, of course...)