Pilots and Crew for hire

[Shadow dream]

god, that's just too much to read for me I'll just post what I think:

Every ship has it's basic "skills" (that arn't very good) Those skills are tested stadard and for that they won't fail. They can be upgraded with Fight/Trade-software,... But the best was to get the pro-computer. Computers are most accurate and most effective. They can even set the laser (if they have) to the most effective according to his aim. But they can't work alone. It the OS crashes or if anything breaks the computer is helpless -> The ship has no owner anymore and can be overtaken by anyone!

Humans are able to keep the ship in their hands, but in fight or logistics they are very bad. Depending on their rankings they would be better/worse. The only positive aspect is, that you won't loose your ship (as long as it's in no fight - but the human would need food, what makes the thing expensive)

If you set up your ship with compter AND human, the effectivity would be the best. The computer does fighting/trading and the human looks after the system.
-> For each turret (and cockpit) should be one human to check those. For bigger ships (M6-M0) should be more people to check the inner systems (the bigger the more).
The Player, as the "ruler", can take over any turret (and cockpit) he likes, but he'll probably lower the effctivity.

Shadow

[AmadanLegre]

Originally Posted by Chris Gi

When I went through these postings for the translation, I came up with an idea.

How about the pilots get certain personal characteristics assigned: e.g. experience, expertise in dealing, expertise in fighting. The payment of the pilots depends on experience. A dealer (particularly if it is Teladi) negotiates a small discount, thus he gets goods somewhat more cheaply, but he can't fight well. A fighter can fight well, but is not good at trading. A fighter flying around in a trading vessel is disappointed etc..

If you're near a station ( < 5 km), you can go through the "applications" of the various pilots in the local bar by means of a new command, and you can hire a pilot, if you like what you see.

Interesting post. What type of command? Special/Custom/General/Station/Ship??

How this would work exactly? I'm very new to scripting/modding, but I'll take a guess how things might be organized...

Might be something like (with lots of changes/bug fixes):

Ship/Custom/General/Special Command:
1) Browse Pilots...
- This would send you an incoming message detailing their resume/record.
- It would only browse pilots located on your ship.
2) Browse All Crew Members...
- This would attempt to give you a summary of your crew in one logbook message (is this possible?)
2) Dismiss Pilot...
- This would dismiss the pilot you're looking at in your latest logbook entry.
- It would only succeed if you've browsed a pilot in past few minutes.

Station Command (located on dock tab):
1) Browse Pilots...
- This would send you an incoming message detailing their resume/record.
- It would only browse pilots located on a station. Infinite number of them.
2) Hire Pilot...
- This would hire the pilot you're looking at in your latest logbook entry.

If it's a large ship, this would obviously need changes. You wouldn't want to cycle through 50 crew members (pilots,engineers,etc). That and a million other things probably would need attention.. This is just my first try. The limitations of the scripting engine and interface are very frustrating, but think looks like it might work - though it kind of cumbersome. It's very annoying that you can only had a relative few commands (32 max or something for each type.. which is about 16 on avg).

What am I missing? Is there an easier way to do it?

[AmadanLegre]

Assuming that there's a crew member onboard your ship (in a scripted global array), is there a way to gauge the passing of time? Is there a way to tell how long a crew member has been on your ship via a script? Or would you do this by indirect means. For example. you might add up the number of combat encounters or the number of gate jumps to estimate the passage of time.

[Chris Gi]

There's a script command in the 'General' section, 'get playing time'. Time based things are best realized if you store the information when something happens together with the other variable. In the case of the bording of the crew member, I'd store the time together with the name (or whatever). I later compare the bording time to the actual time (determined by another call to 'get playing time').