For those of you who know about the ship / base crew idea I''ve been posting about, what do you think would be a good way to implement alert levels and their effects? What does it mean if a ship or installation is on Red Alert, versus being on Yellow Alert or Condition Green? The way I see it, being on heightened alert should increase your security and readiness for danger or disasters. But if that was the case, why not be on the highest alert at all times? Perhaps because this would be too stressful. I found a way that might with the variables I have (loyalty, morale) without adding too much complexity. Red Alert To implement the idea of stress I could use Morale. When Morale drops too far, Loyalty drops. Under Red Alert, normal means of recharging Morale, such as facilities that entertain or relax your crew, would be impossible. Crew members would move around at 50% faster rate (running). Any ambush would be impossible. Internal and external defenses would be charged, consuming full energy and ready for immediate use, but also slowly wearing down with use. Yellow Alert All facilities that recharge Morale would only function at 1/2 effectiveness. Internal and external defenses would be placed on idle, ready to use and consuming 1/2 power and placing slow wear and tear on the systems. Crew would move at normal rate unless a disaster or enemies were present. Condition Green All facilities would recharge Morale normally. Internal and external defenses would take several real-time seconds to bring online, and there would be a chance that in combat they could be directly subtargeted and disrupted as they were charging. I had thought about working in a drill / response time mechanism, but that''s probably overkill. Although it could be neat if the player could buy software that could simulate different emergency scenarios, which gave the crew increased effectiveness in dealing with the scenario. It would be like a skirmish mode they could gain in-game experience for playing. Thoughts? -------------------- Just waiting for the mothership...

A few things:

On "yellow alert", you mention that the crew will move and behave normally unless an enemy or disaster becomes relevant. Wouldn't that just warrant a bump to Red alert? Or were you referring to local disasters, like enemy boarders or a conduit explosion?

Otherwise, the system is good. I'm not sure how you're going to do things like duty schedules and the like, but it seems that this system could accomodate both on- and off-duty crew members.

The drill/response time could be used like this:

If you go on red alert eighteen times in the same four-day mission, and for dumb reasons, then it might be like crying "wolf!" Your "alert response" meter would be depleted, and when you hit the big button, nobody pays much attention. Quality of crew members would naturally play in here, since military men would do better than civilians, and so forth.

However, if you don't drill, then the adrenaline boost of having the klaxxon wail would be too great, and your guys might make stupid mistakes, or even panic.

So hit the red alert button once or twice a mission, just to keep everyone on their toes. You don't need special simulation gear to make the drills work, but it might be a good add-on to make the drills more effective and boost task-specific drew skills.

Managing "crew readiness" would be yet another bar to balance, but could be a welcome feature.

Editted to streamline.

[edited by - Iron Chef Carnage on April 1, 2004 11:06:32 AM]

Red Alert - General quarters, off duty crew members are restricted to quarters until the situation is resolved. Security personal take postion at all key systems. Shields and weapons systems come online. Duty shifts don''t change while under red alert.

Yellow Alert - Shields come online. Security personal are on alert.

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quote:
Red Alert - General quarters, off duty crew members are restricted to quarters until the situation is resolved. Security personal take postion at all key systems. Shields and weapons systems come online. Duty shifts don''t change while under red alert.

This sounds more like a lock down situation. I.e. you have a saboteur that you are trying to catch, etc. Seriously, would you want the chief engineer restricted to quarters when the engine fails in the middle of a battle? If you are on a war ship, you have to have the assumption that everyone there is interested in no dying. Exceptions being people in the brig, etc.

personally I would see:

Red Alert as you are actually in a battle or have just spotted/been spotted by enemy ships, a fire breaks out on ship, etc. All hands are at stations (on or off shift) only completely non-essential personnel are restricted to quarters in any way, i.e. cook.

Yellow alerts as more of a longer term situation. I.e. you just entered enemy territory, just got a report of enemies in the area, etc. This would be longer shifts, no or half recreation, etc.

Green alert would be normal operation conditions.

Red Alert (Battle Stations). Characters must at all times be at their assigned posts. Staff rotations are not automaticly implimented. Off duty personel must remain in their quarters. Because NPCs are where they need to be, security, medical, and engineering tasks should be more efficient than if everyone is wandering around.

Yellow Alert. Characters must at all times at their assigned posts. Off duty personel are free to move about the ship. Staff rotations are automaticly implimented.

Condition Green. All characters are free to move about as needed.

I'm thinking rather than affect the rates at which morale is adjusted, affect the character's ability to recharge it by themselves. I suppose it'd then make sense to stay at yellow all the time. But what if you have a crewmember at 100% morale, they work an 8 hour shift, the decay in morale is such that it'd be -10% by the end of the shift. (If zero is the minimum morale value, then say morale is at 0% for an hour or so). This has a small negative affect on loyalty as you described in other posts. But, if the ship is on condition green, a character could recognise that his morale is very low and he needs a break. He goes for lunch or a walk, comes back after a little morale recharge ready to go. Loyalty remains unaffected.

This, of course, assumes you want your NPCs to make the decision to go for a break as needed.

Further, I would like the ability to assign the ship's various systems to online/offline status when switching between conditions.




[edited by - kseh on April 1, 2004 11:17:37 PM]

quote: Original post by kseh
Further, I would like the ability to assign the ship''s various systems to online/offline status when switching between conditions.

Good observation. You should consider prioritizing certain systems and tasks as "non-essential", so that non-essential systems are disabled during green alert for maintenance and repair. Likewise, "superfluous systems" like entertainment and comfort systems could be disabled during red alert.

I assume that the vast majority of time will be spent in Green Alert status, or "cruise ship mode", with your engineers keeping everything at optimal performance and your other personel practicing a few hours each day, responding to the occasional drill, and spending the rest of their time on the holodeck with a virtual Liv Tyler.

I think one reason for not always being on alert is that they would loose their meaning. If the ship goes to red alert once a month, it''d be something different and special and people would pay attention to it. If it goes to red alert every other hour, it''d just become annoying and people would act as if it were condition green.<br><br>When something is unusual, people take notice. If it isn''t unusual, it might be ignored.<br><br>A mechanical implementation would just keep track of duration and frequence of alerts and lessen their effects based on the statistics. If you''re always on red alert, after a while everybody will act like red alert is the same thing as condition green and not gain any benefits from the alert.

quote: Original post by Iron Chef Carnage
On "yellow alert", you mention that the crew will move and behave normally unless an enemy or disaster becomes relevant. Wouldn''t that just warrant a bump to Red alert? Or were you referring to local disasters, like enemy boarders or a conduit explosion?

Yes, I meant that they''d respond more quickly near mild internal troubles, like a part that''s about to fail or a security sweep. When there are enemies onboard or an explosion occurs, that should be a Red Alert.

It may be that such events, btw, should AUTOMATICALLY bump the ship up to Red Alert. This might be one of those default choices the player would want to make, and so should be made by the computer automatically.

quote:
If you go on red alert eighteen times in the same four-day mission, and for dumb reasons, then it might be like crying "wolf!" Your "alert response" meter would be depleted, and when you hit the big button, nobody pays much attention. Quality of crew members would naturally play in here, since military men would do better than civilians, and so forth.

However, if you don''t drill, then the adrenaline boost of having the klaxxon wail would be too great, and your guys might make stupid mistakes, or even panic.

So hit the red alert button once or twice a mission, just to keep everyone on their toes. You don''t need special simulation gear to make the drills work, but it might be a good add-on to make the drills more effective and boost task-specific drew skills.

Managing "crew readiness" would be yet another bar to balance, but could be a welcome feature.

Hmmm... I like this idea. Perhaps you need to drill more with green crew members more so than with seasoned veterans? So this adds another incentive for retaining a crew and making it loyal?

btw, with the special simulation gear I was thinking something like "simulate an explosion in engineering." If you did that many times (with or without gear) then you could gain experience without having to actually endanger yourself. It would be less than for a real conflict (say 1/4), but it would be like mock fighting in combat.



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Just waiting for the mothership...

quote: Original post by Kars

quote:
Red Alert - General quarters, off duty crew members are restricted to quarters until the situation is resolved. Security personal take postion at all key systems. Shields and weapons systems come online. Duty shifts don''t change while under red alert.

This sounds more like a lock down situation. I.e. you have a saboteur that you are trying to catch, etc. Seriously, would you want the chief engineer restricted to quarters when the engine fails in the middle of a battle? If you are on a war ship, you have to have the assumption that everyone there is interested in no dying. Exceptions being people in the brig, etc.

But what if you''re being boarded? Don''t you want all the doors in certain sections locked? I can see not trapping your people as being important, though. Maybe there is a general Red Alert and then a lockdown Red Alert?



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Just waiting for the mothership...

quote: Original post by kseh
Red Alert (Battle Stations). Characters must at all times be at their assigned posts. Staff rotations are not automaticly implimented. Off duty personel must remain in their quarters. Because NPCs are where they need to be, security, medical, and engineering tasks should be more efficient than if everyone is wandering around.

Good ideas, but why do you think staff rotations shouldn''t be automatically implemented? If you have a large ship, you''ll want to not have to hand pick people to rotate in and out. You have 15 principle characters, but if you take on more the 15 principles are supposed to manage them. So if you have a ship of 200, hand rotating staff would be a bear.

quote:
I''m thinking rather than affect the rates at which morale is adjusted, affect the character''s ability to recharge it by themselves. I suppose it''d then make sense to stay at yellow all the time.

The way I see it there are two ways to boost morale: Interact with an NPC, or let him wander the ship and use the wonderful facilites you''ve installed. The reason I made the facilities only 1/2 as effective on Yellow Alert is that it seems to me that it would be harder to relax under the impending strain of uncertain danger.

quote:
But what if you have a crewmember at 100% morale, they work an 8 hour shift, the decay in morale is such that it''d be -10% by the end of the shift. (If zero is the minimum morale value, then say morale is at 0% for an hour or so). This has a small negative affect on loyalty as you described in other posts. But, if the ship is on condition green, a character could recognise that his morale is very low and he needs a break. He goes for lunch or a walk, comes back after a little morale recharge ready to go. Loyalty remains unaffected.

This, of course, assumes you want your NPCs to make the decision to go for a break as needed.

Yes, I do see them taking care of themselves, or you being allowed to go into a mode where you direct them as with the Sims. You can also interact with them as a character and tell them that they''re relieved. But when they go for that walk in your arboretum or VR museum or whatever, if you''re on Yellow Alert I think they should not be able to get as much of a bonus because of stress. Does that make sense?

quote:
Further, I would like the ability to assign the ship''s various systems to online/offline status when switching between conditions.

Okay, great, I''m definitely sensing a need for settings here. Thx!

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Just waiting for the mothership...