Food requirement for ship and station crews

[Falcrack]

I would also think a limit to the NPC workforce would be a good thing as well. For one, it would limit the sprawl of the game. For another, you would have to compete for your workers, maybe by paying a higher salary than the next factory. Fail to feed your workers, and they simply put out a call for a transport to come dock, pick them up, and take them to someplace that offers them better employment, with food.

[RAVEN.myst]

Up to X4AP, and even XR, food is just a resource that counts for production. The idea here is to have it as constant cost: you have to pay it even if production is zero.

Except that not a single employer I have EVER worked for has been responsible for feeding me - granted, there would be certain exceptions (especially in the military, for example), but as I stated in my previous post, personal feeding is the responsibility of the individual, and serviced by the private sector. ... *twirls mustache*

Did you ever worked on an off shore petrol extraction base ?

Space stations are not equiped with access to roads. There are no road. Stations are isolated. You can pay your workers, if they cannot access to food, they starve.

AS I STATED (in the very bit you quoted, in fact!), there ARE exceptions (in fact, oil rigs and other isolated environments such as cruise ships were precisely what I had in mind when I cited the existence of such exceptions.) As for those space stations not having access to roads, incorrect: what exactly are the highways if not (main) roads? And the stations are constantly swarmed by mass traffic, which is (by the looks of it) nothing more nor less than civilian commuter traffic, "space cars" if you will. That's how private individuals get around from station to station within a zone, between zones via highways, and even from sector to sector via the superhighways. Some of those civilian ships are 'bulk carriers', which to me suggests the space equivalent of trucks or vans - those would be importing and exporting goods on a private sector scale.

However, the station's "central authority" would most likely (assuming contemporary thoughts on this - ie. not taking into account technological wonders that may exist in a milieu that includes cities in space, privately owned and piloted spaceships, jumpdrives, and what-not) be responsible for the provision of life-support: air and heating (unless we're to see the citizens constantly wearing EVA suits "indoors", heheheh.) As indicated above, however, even this may not be a truism given what the tech might be, but I'm willing to go with it. However, these would be energy-dependent tasks, and I would think not energy on an industrial scale, but rather that which can easily be generated by the station itself using solar collectors or the fusion reactors that go into its construction (though the latter WOULD require fueling in some way.)

[J.I.Gorkij]

Voted No. As stated before, you are playing X4: Foundation, not The X4: Sims... You should consider (as stated before too) bringing water, managing waste etc. You would even need to organize transport for employes going on vacation etc.

I would rather welcome to pay employes over time instead off recruiting them for one-time payment.

[RAVEN.myst]

I would rather welcome to pay employes over time instead off recruiting them for one-time payment.

Yes, I completely agree, and this has been a thorn in my virtual side since the start. The player is supposedly *hiring* staff - and yet pays them one sum at start, which is non-refundable if the employee is then immediately fired... That doesn't sound like *hiring* but rather *buying*, and staff aren't bought, slaves are.

I think the wages should be small but proportional to the skill level, much like they are handled in the CAG/CLS/TCS3 scripts in previous Xs, with maybe an initial handling charge if some sort of personnel agency were used (to automate/ease the hiring process, which is currently such a PitA). The more skilled the employee the more expensive to keep him/her, but if appropriately assigned then the associated operation benefits from improved productivity/profitability.

[J.I.Gorkij]

I think the wages should be small but proportional to the skill level, much like they are handled in the CAG/CLS/TCS3 scripts in previous Xs, with maybe an initial handling charge if some sort of personnel agency were used (to automate/ease the hiring process, which is currently such a PitA). The more skilled the employee the more expensive to keep him/her, but if appropriately assigned then the associated operation benefits from improved productivity/profitability.

Exactly. CAG/CLS/TCS3 works with crew exactly how i would like to have in Foundation.

No food, no water etc. Rather replace term "salary" with "costs", that can contain salary, fees, necessary supplies etc.

[euclid]

I do like the general idea of having food , water and medical supplies as part of the economy for all personnel. However, this would raise some issues some of which have been mentioned in previous posts here already:

• 1# How to maintain the supply for stations & ships? For stations the manager can take care of it and for ships the commander. But how should the delivery work? A station manager could add them to the "buy offers" but the commander of a ship does not have such option.
  
  2# What are the consequences if one or more of these resources are running short? Starving certainly is no option. On a station they could quit the job and disappear via mass traffic. On a ship this would not work unless the ship docks at a station and then you get the message that some npcs have left you. An alternative would be a revolt! As in Haegemonia - Legion of Iron the people could take over the station or ship and declare their independence.
  
  3# These additional resources (water, food, medical supplies) would require storage and corresponding ui option to check the amount stored. For stations that should not be a problem but for ships it's a different story.
  
  4# Based on the consumption rate of food, water and medical supplies, a warning system needs to be in place to minimize the micromanagement time. It would be based on a "wellness meter" of the personnel on each station/ship. If this "meter" gets too low a warning is issued and it's up to the player to react. Delivery of food, water and medical supplies is one option to increase it. But there could be other means, for example adding an R&R facility to your station and docking your ship at a station with this facility for the ship's personnel to take a break.

Cheers Euclid

[Alan Phipps]

I suppose that you could 'assume' that managers and captains would take necessary measures in the case of shortages of essentials that would cost the owners even more money than usual. For example, seeking supplies from very expensive or blackmarket dealers, paying expensive couriers, running down strategic corporate reserves that have to be quickly replaced by the owner or faction prestige is lost, etc. Allied to this might be decreases in staff/crew morale and/or work skills and efficiency.

I'm sure that some scheme could be thought up, but is the gameplay benefit really worth it?

Scenario: Middle of a tactical stealth approach by hacker drone towards a rival complex to gather trade intelligence. Suddenly "Hey, your ore mine epsilon halfway across the galaxy is running low on oxygen! How do you want me to handle it?"

[euclid]

......
I'm sure that some scheme could be thought up, but is the gameplay benefit really worth it?

Scenario: Middle of a tactical stealth approach by hacker drone towards a rival complex to gather trade intelligence. Suddenly "Hey, your ore mine epsilon halfway across the galaxy is running low on oxygen! How do you want me to handle it?"

How different would that be from X3 where one of your traders/stations is under pirate/xenon/kh'aak attack in the very moment when you are on a critical mission far away?

Cheers Euclid

[caleb]

......
I'm sure that some scheme could be thought up, but is the gameplay benefit really worth it?

Scenario: Middle of a tactical stealth approach by hacker drone towards a rival complex to gather trade intelligence. Suddenly "Hey, your ore mine epsilon halfway across the galaxy is running low on oxygen! How do you want me to handle it?"

How different would that be from X3 where one of your traders/stations is under pirate/xenon/kh'aak attack in the very moment when you are on a critical mission far away?

Cheers Euclid

An attack would probably be an exception to the rule, and not a rule. I mean, I don't think every station will get attacked every 15 minutes... Otherwise, it would be a pain. I could have a fleet close by, and send them there when needed. That would be part of the strategic planning, and I'm ok with that.

But something like getting food/water/whatever to keep the station running would probably be needed all the time, every 15 mins or less. That that would be a rule, not an exception. And with consequences if they don't get there. So that would be part of the problem.

Currently, stations have no upkeep, so if they run out of materials, they stop producing, but nothing else happens. And that's fine. But if some upkeep is implemented, then managing a station would become much more tedious. That would be fine if we have 1 station, but if we have 20? or 50?? or 100???

I have no problem with some kind of upkeep mechanic, I think the game needs it. But it cannot be something that takes 90% of the player time either, or something that the player has to go deal with it every 10 mins, or the game would become a chore.

I would still prefer something where if the station is constantly producing, it is considered self sufficient. If it's not production anything, it starts taking damage, until it becomes a derelict. So if setup properly there are no issues, and even if something happens (trader shot down by pirates), you still have time to get something done to get the station back on track. Once it's back on track, I would say it even starts repairing itself.

Something to add an upkeep, but not make it a pain. Adding more products that you have to feed the station is not such a good idea. Starting the 1st station, if you need resources + water + food + energy + air + living necessities... I think it just adds far too much complication to the game, and it would only get worse the more stations you have.

[Falcrack]

As far as investing time for upkeep of stations by creating a need for food, it could be set up so that if food stocks on a station get too low, a call is sent out automatically for NPC traders to sell food to the station. They could be self-managing. You would still have to cover the cost of food for the station, but would not necessarily have to think too hard or spend too much effort on it as long as you are content buying food from an outside source rather than have it produced yourself and sent to your own stations.

In this case, only when NPC traders are unable to fulfill the demand for food would the NPCs on the station automatically send out a cell for some ship to pick them up, and drop them off at a nearby station that will feed them. Leaving you with a station that has a labor shortage until you can ensure a steady supply of food.

[Seanchaidh]

I don't think you'd necessarily need to have stations starve to death or whatever. We could assume people could go elsewhere for food-- or have something in the pantry or garden, even, or order an inter-station pizza delivery-- without abandoning their living quarters, as mass traffic is a thing. Or is it, in X4? In any case, a station running out of food could just end up being a way in which the station doesn't make money from its inhabitants for the amount of time it's out of food, depending on how detailed or abstract the people in living quarters are treated.

To borrow from the Stronghold series as an example, in that game you could have no food and still keep people around if you kept them happy enough by other means (some combination of alcohol, bribe instead of tax, religion, maypoles). The logic of population happiness from Stronghold seems like it could actually be used for station living quarters in an X game just by replacing taxes/bribes with rents/stipends and having populations consider the value of services provided in an intuitive way.

Perhaps you could give the workers at your Meatsteak Cahoona factories free food and pay them less; or maybe you want to build a worker's commune where no one pays for anything. Maybe you want all business conducted on the station to be purely transactional: every good and service must be paid for as it is used for a tidy profit to the station owner (and somewhat increased exasperation for people living there, but on the flip side they might be paid more credits for their labor). Or maybe you want to just pay your workers more and expect them to find food, entertainment, and whatever elsewhere.

How we deal with food could turn out to be very interesting because it implicates a whole host of issues surrounding how people are dealt with in general. And issues are opportunities for customization and immersion, not just micromanagement.

And as far as micro is concerned: I'd imagine a fairly simple way of keeping a station stocked with food would be to just include modules that produce food and its inputs. Seems like a pretty intelligent thing to put on a station that's going to have people on it. But before that (or instead of) a need for regular deliveries could also prompt improvements to UI that would make facilitating that easier.

In XR you'd likely just assign a container ship to the manager of the station and hope for the best: something a bit more structured might be good. In X3, I think I remember being able to order deliveries to be repeated a large number of times without any mods, and with mods there were even smoother ways of getting deliveries between your own stations to happen over and over again.

[RAVEN.myst]

On the topic of micromanagement (not only with regards to population upkeep, but in general) - it has been a signature feature of X games that almost all tasks have to be handled personally by the player the first few times, then gradually they can be automated ("delegated") more and more as the player's resources and "responsibilities" grow. Managing such upkeeps could (should?) be handled in the same manner: at first, upon first inception of a station, the player has to personally provide whatever it is (be it food/water/etc. or simply cash - I would actually suggest the former, less abstracted option, with increased abstraction being a benefit of increased delegation/automation later), then at some point maybe a logistics expert approaches the player, offering to take these tasks off his/her hands for a salary. Now, instead of having to keep an eye on the station's "pantry", the player simply automatically pays the logistician a periodic salary plus supply costs. The more skilled the logistician, the more efficiently the supplies are handled (less breakage/spoilage/shrinkage, better deals, etc), so the lower the running costs. Also, the logistician has connections in his/her industry, so now the player can hire additional logisticians for subsequent stations, and circumvent even the initial personal disposition of supplies to those stations.