Idea: NPC crew vs ship computer

[Shazbot01]

I would like to see more NPC crew member management like so: When you hire a pilot/engineer/gunner/whatever for your ships, you pay their fee, AND a wage over time. You also have to provide your crew with food items, either manually or have the crew buy supplies themselves as needed. Crew also only fly for a set time, then will not fly again until they rest at a station, so you need to have multiple NPC's flying in shifts. You could try to bribe a crew to fly past their shift in an emergency, but the more the crew dislikes you, the more risk they either dock the ship and ditch your employment, or just take the ship and go rouge.

OR you could just use the ship computer and automate your ships. You pay once for the software, then again when you upgrade the computer's components; flying, shooting, repairs, etc. The catch with a computer ship is it becomes vulnerable to pirate or Xenon hacking. Security upgrades delay the time it takes to hack your ships, but you either have to kill the hackers fast, or always flee, or risk your ships turning on you. NPC crew members however make hacking impossible, so you get the option of managing crew members in exchange for hacking immunity, or save money with computer ships and take a different risk.

[BmB]

I like the wage idea. Frontier Elite II did something like that. If I recall correctly they also required "shore leave" time. Not hot on computer flown ships again since that kinda dehumanizes the game.

It would be particularly cool if stations had shops that NPC crew would use in order to get their leisure time. But that's maybe out of scope.

[Kitty]

I love the idea.
I feel like it has been debated a decade ago and EGOSOFT gave good reasons not doing things that look like recurrent costs. In short, this is how they imagined the game mood should be.
I can easily imagine a lot of legacy players not wanting to pay recurring costs, or finding it unfair to loose a ship because of a hired NPC treason, etc.
These choices belong to Egosoft, but I think that if they go that way for our pleasure, it would be wise for them to make it optional. They really do not need to loose their core gamers once again.

[Reprisal]

This sounds like something that would either need to be a mod or optional. Most people would find it tedious after a while.

[Doomdog19]

Sounds like SC realism or those other realism simulator games. If this is implemented, it has to be optional

[gbjbaanb]

I like the idea too - the cost of keeping a ship crewed can be simplified, to a simple credits cost per time unit, you let the captain sort out the actual supplies from that, and shore leave is counted as the cost. Simple, easy and yet gives you a limit on your empire based not on cost of building or capturing the ships, but on your cash flow.

alternatively you could crew your ship with droids and a computer and it costs nothing... but the ship is dumb as a brick and gains no benefits or modifiers to its stats or abilities. So ideal for a freighter running boring cargo, but more easily captured by those pirates.

It also lets players have the option between early and mid games where crew becomes an upgrade to ships.

[BmB]

I like the idea too - the cost of keeping a ship crewed can be simplified, to a simple credits cost per time unit, you let the captain sort out the actual supplies from that, and shore leave is counted as the cost. Simple, easy and yet gives you a limit on your empire based not on cost of building or capturing the ships, but on your cash flow.

I'd say shore leave could simply be implemented as an amount of time you must wait before taking off again. Crew disembarks, go do their thing and then come back. Obviously you can't take off again until they are back or you have replacement crew.

Potentially this could tie in with some sort of recreational module that would reduce the shore leave time if installed on a ship and used by the crew?

[Golden_Gonads]

I'd like the option of having software or NPC's. Software would come at set levels (rubbish, average, decent or good), whilst NPC's would learn over time and eventually be the better, though more expensive choice.

[caleb]

This is ok... When you are flying a single ship.

Would be an immense pain when you have dozens or hundreds of ships. If an idea is implemented as you propose, then you would be "punished" with weaker crew, just to avoid tedium, and "rewarded" with better crew if you want to take the painstaking task of micromanaging crew on all your ships.

The X games need to work just as well for when you have 1 ship, or when you have 100. So these kind of mechanics would not work very well.

Ok, let's say you only control crew on your ship, and captains take care of crew on their own ships. That would make better sense, but would be a problem if I want to focus on economy and production chains. In the middle of my energy cell production chain building, my crew suddenly wants vacations... That would not go very well.

The game is too diverse. Mechanics need to work for all aspects of the game, and never become tedious, boring, or unfun.

[Falcrack]

What would you prefer? On the one hand, a one-time payment to basically make an NPC your personal indentured servant for life might be a simpler approach. On the other hand, I think it would be interesting to have to manage paying salaries over time to your ship crews and factory workers. Don’t have enough cash on hand to pay them their salaries? Then factory workers go on strike or leave your factories, resulting in lower production efficiency. Owned ships piloted by NPCs would return to some random dock and quit. If you are not currently making a steady income, then you should consider mothballing or selling some of your ships until you have enough cash and a steady income to be able to pay for your workers.

It would be an interesting dynamic to have to have to manage the payroll for your space empire, rather than simply accumulating ships with no maintenance costs. There would be a tradeoff to owning a large space empire, as there would be a constant need to be paying for its crew upkeep. Juggling the need for a constant profit to pay for your empire would be an interesting and entertaining game in its own right.

Slavery would be another mechanic that could be introduced. Slave crews would not require upkeep to pay them (other than supplying them with food), perhaps only the need to pay for security on the ships to keep them from fleeing. Operating costs for ships would be lowered because of no need to constantly pay the crew. The downside would be that it would be illegal in most civilized places, and owning slave operated ships would decrease your standing with those factions who cared about slavery. Also, slave crews would have a chance to revolt, flee, or turn on you if there are not enough security forces to keep them in line.

[Reprisal]

One time payment is slavery.

[Hero77]

For reasons of lore I would agree that real emplyment contracts should be implemented.

On the other hand I think it would make the game very tedious in just the wrong place. (Tedious-ness can also be a good thing, sometimes!)

When I played X3 I always liked the Idea of automated computer software over the idea of actual employees working for me. Unforunitly it seems egosoft wants to embrace the Idea of dealing with people over the user of software modules in the newer games.

[DavidGW]

@Hero77 It's OK. They aren't real people, they are augmented reality avatars of automated computer systems. That's why sometimes they clip through chairs, or ourselves. Because they aren't really there. We're just paying for the rights to use the personnel simulator software of different grades.

[Vandragorax]

Some sort of salary/cycle would perhaps make sense if done in the correct way. It definitely shouldn't be just another spreadsheet with a bunch of outgoings for staff that we need to manage.

I'd opt for some sort of station-integrated system (per-station) so it could match with the current 'cycles' of production. Show it as a percentage of the profit from each cycle that would be siphoned off for wages and we get to control how much the percentage is to match with an employee happiness stat or something.

This would be more of an overall view of the employee wages and happiness on a station rather than individually micromanaged, but could have interesting consequences like paying wages too low causes unhappiness and sabotage on your station by workers, or they get lazy and don't work very hard. Conversely, pay them too much and you kill your profit margins but perhaps attract a higher calibre of workers who don't take so many breaks. It could also be that you can get away with paying workers on say, a wheat farm, less than you could paying workers on a technologically advanced product, so you'd need to increase those high-tech salaries more to reach the same level of worker happiness on that station.

I think it could be really interesting if done well, just not another management spreadsheet with a list of personnel and costs taken out "monthly" from your bank account

[Alan Phipps]

Merging with existing thread.

[gbjbaanb]

Some sort of salary/cycle would perhaps make sense if done in the correct way. It definitely shouldn't be just another spreadsheet with a bunch of outgoings for staff that we need to manage.

I'd opt for some sort of station-integrated system (per-station) so it could match with the current 'cycles' of production. Show it as a percentage of the profit from each cycle that would be siphoned off for wages and we get to control how much the percentage is to match with an employee happiness stat or something.

This would be more of an overall view of the employee wages and happiness on a station rather than individually micromanaged, but could have interesting consequences like paying wages too low causes unhappiness and sabotage on your station by workers, or they get lazy and don't work very hard. Conversely, pay them too much and you kill your profit margins but perhaps attract a higher calibre of workers who don't take so many breaks. It could also be that you can get away with paying workers on say, a wheat farm, less than you could paying workers on a technologically advanced product, so you'd need to increase those high-tech salaries more to reach the same level of worker happiness on that station.

I think it could be really interesting if done well, just not another management spreadsheet with a list of personnel and costs taken out "monthly" from your bank account

What matters here is the concept of running things for profit, or running things for your benefit - the difference between running a transport carting good about the place, and a warship that produces 0 profits. You would then need enough of a trade or production empire to be able to afford to keep those fun warships.

So yes, a station or trader could easily have a percentage lopped off its profits (though frankly, a fixed rate would be better - or a trade selling top-end goods would cost vastly more to do the exact same job a transport hauling ore does), so a fixed-rate per station or ship is better. It could also reflect costs of general maintenance and fuel for ships without having to micro-manage it. All ships have fuel bought automatically, at a fixed cost of x per hour or day, just like the crew costs and included as a single number.

Then your warships and missile factories cost money to run, so you need something else running to make you the cash to keep them supplied with crew wages and/or supplies.

Such a thing should be simple to implement and understand: each station or ship costs you x per hour. That should be seen as part of the object's description, and the player account should be able to see the overall costs.

Its also the kind of thing the game is about - thinking about your cost base, rather than just blindly acquiring a huge fleet of warships with no consequence. [/b]

[Morkonan]

Wages, definitely.

But, other than the additional costs of training Pilots (incidental) or buying weapons for Marines and paying for their training, I don't think extra costs like "food" should be included. They get paid a wage and that should be assumed to include a food allowance.

[gbjbaanb]

Also - I don;t see the problem with slavery as an option, not for ships but for stations for sure. think of those workers toiling in your agricultural factories or ore refineries, kept in check by your pirate overlords. You'd still have costs, but just not as costly. Might make an option for the pirate players who don't run trading empires to afford their fleet's upkeep.

And that allows for missions - free the slaves from a station/transport ship, or go capture more slaves to work in the salt mines.

[sd_jasper]

I would rather have it that crew were payed a percent of the trades they made. This could be based on skill (higher skill results in higher percent), or fixed. In either case, it might be interesting to "under staff" a ship so you can make more.

OTOH, the business model of the X universe might assume that there is a fixed cost on each buy/sell that the crew (in total) split (however they decide). And if this is a fixed amount or precent, then it could be "hidden" and backed into the money for each sell (so maybe 10% of all purchase/sell prices is actually going to the crew). In which case the whole thing is in the background and the player doesn't even need to know that it is happening.

This breaks down a bit when we talk about the player piloted ship (make more when you do it yourself ?). But one could assume that the player character also takes a fee to buy food/clothes/entertainment, and all the other things that aren't simulated in the game.

[gbjbaanb]

I would rather have it that crew were payed a percent of the trades they made. This could be based on skill (higher skill results in higher percent), or fixed. In either case, it might be interesting to "under staff" a ship so you can make more.

OTOH, the business model of the X universe might assume that there is a fixed cost on each buy/sell that the crew (in total) split

the trouble with this is that warships become freebies. Your freighters cost loads but you can have as many warships as you like. That doesn't seem right.

So a fixed cost (or sliding based on crew skills and number, and ship type) would be much better. Adds to the Think and Trade aspects of the game.