11-01-2018, 04:02 PM
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.
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.