Starship Corporation

As I was testing Crew Management, I realised that some of the technicians just stop looking for malfunctions during their patrol.
Though it might be interesting to add this later (on purpose, and in correllation with morale maybe), it is not good that you cannot rely on your crew to keep doing their work. Especially with large ships it is a must that you can trust them.
I tried different approaches for the AI to deal with it - seems I have to find a new one...

I don't know the actual code you have, but I think the best solution would be to add waypoints for different purposes. In this special case a "check & repair" waypoint at which the crew member checks the room for any damage and repairs it if necessary. This way one could also exactly control who should repair which room.

while i do like the concept of tecnicians being too lazy to work due to low moral i think it's just not a good mechanic for the game, while it is a funny idea unit reliability is very important for games that require large amounts of micromanagement, even more so for this game since it is very much impossible to keep eyes on every part of a ship at once. The whole point of patrol routes is so that we can take our eyes of slower paced or less important areas to manage thing that require our immediate attention. It could be especially painful if a red alert situation occurs where our attention may be distracted from other parts of the ship for extended periods, you can't be expected to keep a watchful eye over every single technician if you have a pirate or xenomorph invasion which means if a technician decides to get lazy at that time it could be crippling.

I'm not saying that i don't want to see the idea in the game but it would need to be worth having without causing too much trouble. an example:

i'm thinking that maybe the crew could have a level of professionalism so during green alerts or all clear situations there is a chance a technician could get lazy and ignore a malfunction since there is no impending threat and therefore need to be told to repair it but during higher priority alerts such as yellow and red alert a technician will never miss a malfunction because simply they do not want it to come back and kill them.

i know nothing about game coding (yet) so i don't know how easy/hard any of this is to do but at the very least i can say this: it would be nice to have but if it doesn't seem worth it, don't do it.

_________________
"Sleep after toil, port after stormy seas, ease after war, death after life does greatly please."
"We are here and it is now. Further than that all human knowledge is moonshine."

Lazy techs would be for the impossible level game play.

It would add to the difficulty and keep the player on their toes.



Dave Chase

I think you don't understand, guys.
The technicians are not supposed to be lazy.
It's a bug.

Why can't we just space the ones who don't do their work and hire new competent engineers?

_________________
"Sir, we are surrounded!"
"Excellent! Now we can attack in any direction."

Obvious you have not worked with too many engineers and techs. There are always minimal/lazy people out there, specially when someone else is writing the check.



Dave Chase

Minimal and lazy?

I guess I now know what I'm going to be after I finish school

_________________
"Sir, we are surrounded!"
"Excellent! Now we can attack in any direction."

yes but ratakari was wondering if we'd like to see such action in the game on purpose, i personally think it's not necessary



but if this becoms an option... :3

_________________
"Sleep after toil, port after stormy seas, ease after war, death after life does greatly please."
"We are here and it is now. Further than that all human knowledge is moonshine."

Add it as a combination of factors. Add complacancy to a list of skills when hiring and the lower the level the less likely moral is to effect him

You can always send lazy technicians repairing airlocks:)

Laziness can be side effect of low morale (food, money, work load), but this can be done by simply lovering efficiency of unit.

if you look at strategic game Close Combat, units in this game not alway do what you tell them, they are scared, pined down, panic, we can have some of this things too in this game.

If you give suicide or hi risk order, unit can choose be selfish and save yourself or be heroic and try save his friends and ship. When we have something like this, hi trained crew, with hi morale will be much better, that poorly trained, low morale crew.

Or technician is near explosion, you give him order to exhaust fires, but he can panic a do something stupid/run to safety/or just do what needs to be done, exhaust fires, repairing.


And I have one more interesting mechanic: hidden failures, every component in ship can critically fail (low chance if you make maintenance right or don't buy cheap and crapy parts), technicians can spot problem in time, depend on theirs skill level and time they spend in room. To find critical failure, you can send technicians to test room, its take time (time increase when room is in bad shape).