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Original post by Iron Chef Carnage 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.
Good idea. Depending on what the systems are, with such a feature you could really manage power output and positioning, such that as you switch status you see the change in both available power for essential systems (defenses, sensors, weapons) and see your crew move out of less functional areas.
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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.
Yeah, like that! This will make ambushes, btw, very effective for players who engage in stealth and sneak up on a ship in Condition Green, and it will also make getting ambushed particularly ugly. In both cases, a mix of essential and non-essential crew will be all over the place. You could have your security personnel wandering different parts of the ship interacting with facilities and crew right at the moment boarders breech your hull. That would be a nasty scenario to play out.
-------------------- Just waiting for the mothership...
--------------------Just waiting for the mothership...
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Original post by Extrarius When something is unusual, people take notice. If it isn''t unusual, it might be ignored.
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.
Okay, but what if you''re actually in the midst of enemy territory and getting attacked frequently? If you have to switch to Red Alert often but it''s effectiveness goes down then not only are you penalized as a player for being in danger (and getting caught), the crew would not be taking their own self-interest to heart.
I see what you mean in principle, though. This would be like if the player decided to drill every instant (so maybe it''s useful there?)
I think the deciding factor is going on alert and having nothing happen. But I don''t want to get into gameplay logic that has to detect "was the player attacked?" or "was the player actually boarded?" There seem to be too many complicated situations that could fall into the cracks, logic-wise.
-------------------- Just waiting for the mothership...
--------------------Just waiting for the mothership...
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Original post by Wavinator Okay, but what if you''re actually in the midst of enemy territory and getting attacked frequently? If you have to switch to Red Alert often but it''s effectiveness goes down then not only are you penalized as a player for being in danger (and getting caught), the crew would not be taking their own self-interest to heart.
Red Alert should effect moral because of hightened tension. Also since this is presumble a military ship, the action of going to Red Alert should significantly change the internal readyness and other internal conditions.
Even with shocking moral, you can still fire the 1st shot faster if you have taken the time before hand to prepare than to go straight from Condition Green to Red Alert in a firefight.
So to combat this, you would use moral to effect preformance. But there should be significant differences between various states (Red alert, Yellow Alert &Condition Green) regardless of moral.
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I think the deciding factor is going on alert and having nothing happen.
Yup, I agree on this one.
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But I don''t want to get into gameplay logic that has to detect "was the player attacked?" or "was the player actually boarded?" There seem to be too many complicated situations that could fall into the cracks, logic-wise.
Actually, it shouldnt be too hard to clasify what should automatically should trigger various condition changes. Determining if there is a threat isnt the problem, determining the threat level is and any potential automatic responce.
I would want last-chance anti-missile defense to start automatically attacking anything looking like a missile heading towards me, unless I explicitly turn it off. But I dont want the main-guns to start taking pot-shots without my permission.
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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.
I must admit when I made my sugestions I was thinking of a ship with a larger crew. They might not be appropriate for small crews.
I was thinking that a player might not want the crew rotations to occure if a shift change is scheduled to take place during a red alert. Even if you had crewmembers wait for their replacements before leaving, do you want to suddenly find a different character at a post with a different set of abilities? Maybe. It might be a good thing to have an uninjured character with high morale replace someone so they can limp to sick bay. Then again, maybe you need your weapon specialist to stay put no matter what. Is this an option to consider including in the list of things to turn on or off when changing status?
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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?
Yes this makes sense and would be a good element to include in your game. My suggestion was shooting for yellow alert being stressfull to those on duty but not to those that are off.
I was trying for an option other than an equipment effectiveness rating adjustment. I assume you''ll have such ratings for other equipment so it''d probably be a breeze to impliment such a rating. But maybe affecting crew movements instead would open up some interesting game elements. (or it could just create new problems).
Realistically, you want people to be strapped in while your ship is getting thrown about by enemy fire/evasive manoeuvres. My suggestion is that during red alert, personnel are at posts or strapped in at the nearest safe position when the klaxon sounds. Yellow alert, non-essential movement is restricted, and leisure facilities are offline, but shift-changes and regular maintenance continue as usual. In red alert, food is emergency rations grabbed as you can get them, personnel changes are also as needed - generally to replace wounded - though it may be necessary in an extended engagement to shift change (probably better done by dropping briefly to Yellow during a lull) - if in red alert, shift change would have to be staggered (one for automatic systems to handle?)
To clarify my thinking, Red Alert should reflect actual engagement or emergency, either current or very imminent. Yellow Alert would be a long term status reflecting high risk, and could be maintained for periods of weeks to months, but long-term maintenance of critical systems would be impossible, and morale would generally be affected by long periods at Yellow. Condition green would be the preferred default status for civilian ships, and military ships in safe territory during peace-time - critical systems could be temporarily down for maintenance, crew could be off duty for extended periods or on shore leave, upgrades and research could go ahead, and generally morale is high, fatigue low, but critical systems/crew could be unavailable in emergency.
So:
Red alert: fatigue accumulates, all systems suffer stress and non critical systems failures are left. Morale is largely irrelevant - given a choice of fight or die...
Yellow alert: fatigue recovers slowly, morale recovers slowly at best, and probably has a lower cap on recovery, critical systems degrade slowly, other systems are generally kept in good repair, but may be offline.
Condition Green: fatigue and morale recover rapidly, systems remain in good repair (morale permitting) but any system not directly in use may be temporarily offline and any offshift personnel may be temporarily unavailable. Limited upgrades and medium-high quality repairs take place. Automatic defense systems may be partially offline. Active defenses probably are.
Downtime/repair/refit: most systems offline, most personnel unavailable, but morale, fatigue and repair improve rapidly and, at the end of specified duration are maxxed. Automatic defenses are down.
It seems that "downtime" would only be used when you''re in port. In space, there''d be no reason to go past condition green. Really, I don''t think of condition green as a setting, I think of it more like condition white in situational awareness terms. You can have a yellow alert, or even a red alert, but when that''s over, you don''t institute condition green, you just stand down all the alerts and start reading status reports.
If there''s reason to believe that danger is present, you''re in yelow alert. you might even be in yellow alert for days at a time if you''re cruising through enemy space.
If you were damaged or something and you needed to repair systems, then condition green would just look more like downtime than cruising. I see no reason to specify an alert level below green.
I only really mentioned downtime to make the contrast with "green". I agree that downtime is something that would only ever happen either in space-dock or in "standard orbit" around a friendly planet with no expectation of hostiles anywhere nearby, but it seemed appropriate to include it for completeness
Fair enough. I suppose that, considering all the systems that would be disabled in order to facilitate the repairs and refitting, it would be an enhanced level of vulnerability. If being in a state of near-dereliction and constant repair work would affect the behavior and morale of the crew, then it may very well be a valid ship condition level.
[edited by - Iron Chef Carnage on April 5, 2004 8:50:20 PM]
Red Alert: Need stress... if they have been under stress too long they can pose a threat to the crew.
When a crew member should still be on alert, but the alertness should steadily drop when he/she is on high alert then going to a low alert (helps when you get multiple waves, and they do get some rest).
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Original post by Iron Chef Carnage If you were damaged or something and you needed to repair systems, then condition green would just look more like downtime than cruising. I see no reason to specify an alert level below green.
Yes, this is how I see it too. "Condition green" is just the default that occurs when you stand down from either Yellow or Red Alert.
-------------------- Just waiting for the mothership...
--------------------Just waiting for the mothership...
Yeah, like that! This will make ambushes, btw, very effective for players who engage in stealth and sneak up on a ship in Condition Green, and it will also make getting ambushed particularly ugly. In both cases, a mix of essential and non-essential crew will be all over the place. You could have your security personnel wandering different parts of the ship interacting with facilities and crew right at the moment boarders breech your hull. That would be a nasty scenario to play out.
