Posted by: ollobrains
« on: May 16, 2012, 03:40:39 AM »im liking the idea from steve of an abandoned ship crew dead hweover a salvage team with backup computer and droid assistance can get it going and back to some form of base
I've always thought that it would be nice to have Star Wars-esque escape pods, where you design a ship component that has life pods, which can be designed to have different ranges or speeds, or even large ones with defensive weapons.
Could crew also abandon (via lifepods) a ship that no longer had any offensive weapon capacity (fire controls destroyed or all weapons destroyed or reactor destroyed) or abandon when the negative crew grade is reached (and the ship is effectively out of control).
Double cool if when they abandon the ship keeps heading on its last course and heading (falling out of formation etc).
There are a couple of ways to handle something like this. One is to have some form of ancient wrecks that are recoverable as damaged ships. The other is to have damage that results in a damaged but non-wrecked ship that was abandoned for some reason. The latter is more realistic but more complicated. I think the best way to handle it would be to track life support during the game, not just during ship design. If life support is taken out and you fail to repair it, the crew starts to die. If all the crew dies a ship becomes abandoned rather than wrecked and can be recovered (Salvage Team?).
In addition, if I am going to track crew numbers and life support, I should also track the effects of the crew being reduced below the minimal level required to run the ship. The easiest way would be a negative crew grade modifier and perhaps an increasing inability to control key systems.
Steve
If crew can be reduced to below effective level then crew modules that give life support to more crew members then the required minimum should be able to house reserves. Say staffing on a ship is 550 and you put three full crew chambers in it for a total life support of 750. I should be able to have 200 reserve staff on-board. In a battle my reserves can fill in for casualties. The tradeoff is increased weight and building expense and less flexibility if life support systems are damaged in battle. A maxed out crew would suffer more when life support goes down. Alternatively I could add crew modules with no staff housed in them to have redundant life support systems. This also puts a unique spin on rescuing wreck survivors in/after a battle.+100
I guess what I am saying is how about letting us decided how many crew to put on board? A ship needs a minimum to fly and cannot house more then max life support but we can designate anything in between during ship design phase.