concepts for a new aspect

Basically I was thinking about how you have a certain number of people on you ship that don't help with anything except capturing other ships. So I devised a few ideas for having crew slots in your ship. Then have a few required crew members that you automatically get with your ship, but you can hire other crew for bonuses. Such as a weapon's expert that would give your weapons a rate-of-fire boost. Or a navigations expert who will give you energy boosts. Or engineers that will repair your armor over time.

Then on a small run off of this concept you could even have apprentices that pay you for teaching them how to work on a ship. They'd pay you money over a period of time for teaching them. Though they would remain less effective until they learned how to properly work equipment. So they would have a temporary handicap on your ship while they provide you with money in the long run.

SFA anybody?

we can have all our favourite starfleet officers on the wessel keptin... including mister chekov of course

This post has been edited by lastsummer : 31 March 2008 - 03:14 PM

My first thought when I saw the thread title, Orca.

As Orca commented, Thawdragon, this is an idea that's been tried before, in the Starfleet Adventures plugin - though admittedly, that's actually not quite finished yet, and it could be interesting to see your take on things. Regarding apprenticeships, though, generally you still pay them as apprentices, or else they simply work for a room and a board. An apprenticeship is different to straight learning in that they're expected to work as well - if they paid you for being able to work on your ship, they'd have to hold another job in order to earn the money to pay you, which doesn't really make much sense.

@thawdragon, on Mar 31 2008, 06:06 PM, said in Meet the crew:

Basically I was thinking about how you have a certain number of people on you ship that don't help with anything except capturing other ships. So I devised a few ideas for having crew slots in your ship. Then have a few required crew members that you automatically get with your ship, but you can hire other crew for bonuses. Such as a weapon's expert that would give your weapons a rate-of-fire boost. Or a navigations expert who will give you energy boosts. Or engineers that will repair your armor over time.

Then on a small run off of this concept you could even have apprentices that pay you for teaching them how to work on a ship. They'd pay you money over a period of time for teaching them. Though they would remain less effective until they learned how to properly work equipment. So they would have a temporary handicap on your ship while they provide you with money in the long run.

Uhm, PlugPack anybody? Oo

Yeah, I think most TCs have implemented -- or at least tried to implement -- this. It's much like other outfits, except they're called crew and add 1 to your chance to capture. Some things, such as firing faster or improving your weapons, are impossible, at least with just purchasing one crew member. This crew member, however, could unlock other outfits that would also be hampered from appearing by a contribute bit from the guns that could upgrade (swap out the outfit you have for another, slightly more powerful but still the same) gun. You get what I'm saying?

ARPIA 2 has officer outfits, too; they're based to some degree on the PlugPack ones.

@belthazar, on Mar 31 2008, 04:16 PM, said in Meet the crew:

As Orca commented, Thawdragon, this is an idea that's been tried before, in the Starfleet Adventures plugin - though admittedly, that's actually not quite finished yet, and it could be interesting to see your take on things. Regarding apprenticeships, though, generally you still pay them as apprentices, or else they simply work for a room and a board. An apprenticeship is different to straight learning in that they're expected to work as well - if they paid you for being able to work on your ship, they'd have to hold another job in order to earn the money to pay you, which doesn't really make much sense.

The apprenticeship idea is an interesting one. We're dealing with science fiction here, so you can design how the economic balance works out however you want. You could even mix it up: there could be some prospective apprentices who attended pre-apprenticeship schools and expect to be paid, and others who are greener and willing to pay for the rare opportunity to get off backwater planets. These might have a greater chance of actually being harmful to your ship's operation.

You can have officers that increase turn rate, increase accel, increase top speed, decrease hyperjump distance, give you multi-jump capability to various degrees, have senor modifiers, allow you to detect cloaked vessels, and that's just what I can think of off the top of my head.

You can have officers that... whips out the Nova Bible and reads off the list of oütf ModTypes add more cargo space, add more shield, add more shield recharge, add more armour, increase acceleration, increase speed, increase turn rate, increase fuel capacity, add a density scanner, add an IFF decoder, add an afterburner, make more systems visible, add a cloaking device, increase fuel recharge, act as an auto-refueller, act as an auto-eject, clean your legal record, reduce time spent in hyperspace, allow you to jump closer to the system centre, reduce radar interference, improve your capture odds, increase outfit maximums, reduce murk, increase armour recharge, allow you to scan for cloaked ships, allow you to pick up asteroid fragments, add multi-jump, increase jamming, make your ship fast-jumping, make your ship inertialess, increase your ion absorption, increase your ion dissipation, add gravity resistance, add immunity to deadly stellars, change the colour of your ship, act as a reinforcement inhibitor, change the maximum number of guns or turrets, act as an IFF scrambler, and repair the ship when it's disabled. You can even make a gun that shoots Red Shirts, or make one a bioloid that explodes at random intervals. You can also make an officer that does the opposite of many of the above.

If you're gonna start listing possible officer abilities, Josh, why bother starting if you're only going to stop at seven?

Your choice of crew members can also determine the jobs you are offered, the unexpected adventures you face, and the descs of existing missions.

Events can also be determined by the combination of officers that you have.... How about a plug where ship performance suffers due to many of the crew being socially incompatible buffoons who are constantly making demands, fighting, threatening to quit, or sulking in their quarters because they can't deal with each other? Something like "The (Space) Office" or a plug for the EVO port that uses the personalities of those races -- secretive Iggies, over-dramatic Zids....

On a totally different note, with a bit of work someone could make a Trade Officer outf that affected the profitability of selected trade routes.

I always thought it would be cool to have some bodyguard type crewmembers. Turn around those pirate planet muggings or "drop bear" attacks, or what have you. Someone tries to take your money and your own gang of toughs pull out their guns and ask them politely to leave. Also to hand over anything they happen to be carrying.

It would require messing around with missions some, but it would be amusing.