Citizen Posts on Ships

[Vectorus]

I started making a kilometre long ship, with some big rooms.

I hadn't noticed it on my smaller ships, but even with 39 crew it feels pretty empty. If you try to distribute crewmen to different rooms, you might easily have a bridge the size of a large boardroom with only three or four people on it.

How hard would it be to add citizen posts to ships? So that NPCs sit in front of screen textures or stand around by machinery and control panels, without actually doing anything. If it's a problem of AI calculations, they could be more or less entirely static, not reacting to threats or doing anything except swivel a bit and look busy. Or, if it's no worse than on planets, they could walk up and down corridors like the citizens who appear near you. Unlike real crew, they would only have to exist when someone can see them.

A nod in that direction would go a long way to making big ships feel less lonely.

[AnrDaemon]

Solution: Don't build a kilometer long ships.

[Vectorus]

Joking apart though, when every other element scales comfortably from a small ship to a very big one, it's not totally unreasonable for NPC population to scale too. I just wonder what the bottlenecks are.

Besides which, a feeling of emptiness is more to do with room size and number than overall ship size. Your ship could be no bigger than a wooden frigate and still feel pretty empty. If you have a clearly defined sensor room, there's really only one guy who can go there - the sensor operator. But a sensor room 'set' in an action game or sci fi MMO might have a small handful of NPCs who serve no real function as one of your 39 crew in Hazeron. So they are better off as non-sentient living furniture.


Also, this is the Arena not bug reports: we want new possibilities, not just solutions!  :)

[Deantwo]

...

I believe that we can already do this, at least for passengers. I am not sure if it is possible with crew.
I don't remember how though, I think there is a "seat" thingy?

Solution: Don't build a kilometer long ships.

Kilometer long ships is not the issue, but wanting to make an equally huge interior is.

[DFDelta]

...

I believe that we can already do this, at least for passengers. I am not sure if it is possible with crew.
I don't remember how though, I think there is a "seat" thingy?

Yup, if you add passengers to your ship then this is already possible.
You can add citizen stations that have the same standing/seating options as the crew stations, and you're allowed to add twice as many as you have passenger berths. If you have more stations then passengers they'll choose at random.

Take, for example, a look at my "Where did the volume go" design (that I had uploaded for bug report purposes, so don't wonder about the name) and the lobby I added at the lowest level.

[Vectorus]

Are you saying that passengers can now be added in excess of the 39 crew+troop berths? That would solve it entirely, I guess! Must check.

For the sake of camera angles and avatar movement, a roomy interior is good. But it then feels empty, unless you stick everyone in one or two rooms. 39 people spread throughout the ship just isn't that many when they are mostly tied to their spot (when they follow you around, as in cities, you don't notice as much).

[AnrDaemon]

Take a look at World of Warcraft if you want a lesson in designing big small scenery.