Guards and Workers - Command Chains

Discussion in 'NPCs and Creatures' started by demisovereign, Feb 2, 2013.

  1. demisovereign

    demisovereign Void-Bound Voyager

    For bases on various planets and planetary bodies I would love to see command chains available for npcs you "own."

    For instance:

    You ask two people to be guards for your moon base and give them a placement order. They stand idle in front of the door you tell them to until told otherwise.

    Then you can bring up a menu to give them actions related to other friendly/unfriendly npcs as well as players.
    Example:
    Command 1: Warn Entity of restricted area at [10 blocks] "Restricted Area, do not approach further!"
    Command 2: Draw weapon and take aim[7 blocks], further warn "I will fire if you step any closer!"
    Command 3: Engage enemy and attack until death or retreat to 50 blocks away[5 blocks]

    This could probably extend to a minor workforce as well, substituting various research actions or menial tasks of flattening, digging, mining for ore or cleaning up/farming. Just equip your workers as you see fit and set the command lines.

    Example:
    Command 1: Flatten 50 blocks in each direction.
    Command 2: Plant Seeds along this plot of land.
    Command 3: Water every day twice a day.

    I am not sure how difficult this would be to add, but it would certainly be fantastic to be able to manage a small/large work force. Schematics and large scale building/mining projects would be an absolute blast as well. Say setting down a community work chest and depositing the needed construction materials inside and commanding a set of workers to start a project.
     
    FrozenFlame, Cloudhopper and §hifter like this.
  2. Pofinator

    Pofinator Scruffy Nerf-Herder

    Good idea! I think guards for a base are a good idea. But if you leave the base, then come back and the guards were killed and the base taken by bandits, that would be bad. Maybe an alert system so you know if your guard sees a npc, and maybe a setting to choose how he reacts.
     
  3. demisovereign

    demisovereign Void-Bound Voyager

    How about a set of commands that has one of the guards defend while the other makes an interstellar phone call to alert you ;D
     
    Pofinator likes this.
  4. Tea Mate

    Tea Mate Existential Complex

    Interesting idea to play around with. And it could be very useful in some cases as well. Could you equip your guards/workers with tools you find yourself, or do they have tools that fit their profession from the very start? Or pehaps you can simply upgrade them for pixels, so they have normal tools to start with, but after upgrading get better tools?

    Also, could any NPC do any job, or would you have to find a person with specific skills? A farmer to do farming and etc.?

    Finally, would you have to hire people, or could it be, that perhaps(since this is a sci-fi game), human working force is replaced with bots? You just program a gatherer bot to plant seeds and etc. and it does everything, with no need to be paid, only needing energy to do something.

    While this idea might be difficult to implement, I think that it would be quite useful and interesting.
     
  5. Pofinator

    Pofinator Scruffy Nerf-Herder

    Robots are good until they go bad and enslave you!
     
  6. Evangelion

    Evangelion Supernova

    Robots... to risky.

    Hmm... loyal and cheap workers....

    Que?
     
  7. ChaoticGamer

    ChaoticGamer Master Astronaut

    that why you don't have AI robots, that why its call "turrets" or "drones". Anyway I think best way not have robot to back stab, I think buying military guards or any guards who is loyal to you still or doesn't back stabbed.
     
  8. Tea Mate

    Tea Mate Existential Complex

    So then you can't hire robot NPC's either
    Loyal? Hah. Loyal until the Revolt of the Peasants comes and they burn down everything. Not unless you actually intend to pay them. But that is unheard of. Blasphemy.

    What about NPC robots? Could you hire those then?
    And what if you're a robot yourself? Should you go see a doctor once in a while in case of symptoms for "insane rogue AI"?

    The best way is to have a "fail-safe" button that detonates a planet-sized EMP grenade/send out an EMP impulse through the whole planet. Or simply to cut of their powers source and wait a bit until they run out of energy. Or better yet just slash through the things with a giant sword.

    Hey, maybe that could actually be a side quest? Your planet's computers get infected with a virus. All the robots and tech go crazy. Good luck.
     
  9. turntechGodhead

    turntechGodhead Phantasmal Quasar

    I like this idea. If you were to expand on it, we could potentially have our own fully autonomous bases (though this would clearly be late-game) and perhaps even armies!
     
  10. demisovereign

    demisovereign Void-Bound Voyager

    The cool thing is it could be taken in so many different directions that my personal vision for it is probably just 1 of many outcomes that would be incredibly fun to play with.

    My personal idea is to basically have this work like "staffing" Where your staff(unless they are gratified in some other way) has a consistent drain on pixels or other valuable resources to do work for you. Say you pretty consistently make 1000 pixels an hour. Let's say a guard costs 5 pixels per hour, a researcher costs 10 and a construction works costs 8. The construction worker would work until finished then stop drawing payments and take off. This way it will keep new players from amassing large armies or from hiring the large amounts of workers needed for end game stuff as it would drain their pixels rather quickly(on top of needing the raw resources.)

    As for choosing what each character does and how they're labeled...Could be done many ways. The easiest would be to have a predefined list of NPCs that you could call down from a terminal that lists what they can do, how much they cost and how quickly they work. Alternatively each NPC could be "molded" into their profession by being given similar commands. Example: Someone you want to work as a researcher gets better and walks/does work faster the more often he is given commands to do that particular activity. Perhaps a guard gets better aim over time as he learns to be a better guard. This system would inspire you to care a bit more about your employees than the other call-down system due to having to invest time AND money into staff.
     
    turntechGodhead likes this.
  11. PantaloonRazorblade

    PantaloonRazorblade Void-Bound Voyager

    This is starting to sound like the game from the Digital Estate Planning episode of Community. Which would be amazing.
     
  12. Pofinator

    Pofinator Scruffy Nerf-Herder

    The most loyal work force? YOURSELF! Cloning could be used to respawn and make guards!
     
  13. turntechGodhead

    turntechGodhead Phantasmal Quasar

    I like this idea. I do have one question. Are we able to customize the equipment of our soldiers/workers? Say, we give one guard an assault rifle and one a shotgun (which is where an ability to mass-produce weapons would be great), or workers a drill, or explosives? Basically, can we specialize parts of our workforce.
     
  14. Jaguarkia

    Jaguarkia Big Damn Hero

    Loyal underlings to do my evil deeds bidding? Perhaps I could use something like this :sneaky: I don't, however, like the idea of them being plentiful or a non-personal resource. I prefer the idea of having to level/take care of these NPCs, sort of like in Pokemon (What? Why are you looking at me like that?). By that I mean they could learn jobs over time and eventually become specialists. My reasoning is that if they're easy to get or consistently productive from the start, you won't have any reason to go mining/farming/exploring because you can get a bunch of replaceable NPCs to do it all for you! I don't want my character to be a slave master, I want an adventurer. Then again, I've always preferred the theme of a lone warrior or a small group of heroes conquering vast alien worlds X3
    Overall, a big YES PLEASE to being able to give orders to NPCs.
     
  15. demisovereign

    demisovereign Void-Bound Voyager

    I don't see why not, though I'd imagine that's up to the people making the game if they were to incorporate this idea.
     
  16. Jaguarkia

    Jaguarkia Big Damn Hero

    Well it doesn't necessarily HAVE to be in the main game. It could be a mod. In the case of it being a mod instead of hardwired, what would your answer be? :)
     
  17. demisovereign

    demisovereign Void-Bound Voyager

    I meant it in the sense that those creating the feature would have to make that decision based on difficulty, time willing to be spent on such a feature and the like.

    Personally, if I have the ability or someone were to design it per my exact specifications I would absolutely include gear customization/optimization. Also depends on how the inventory system works as well, seeing as how you will be limited in what you can actually bring to planets. I think a tech tree(or tech trees) would be in order here so as to keep things varied and yet be able to quickly and easily balance the power of the workers.

    Tech trees could be race specific as well so that certain races have particular strengths and weaknesses in regards to what equipment and expertise that they bring to the table.
     
    Jaguarkia likes this.
  18. Hugt

    Hugt Phantasmal Quasar

    Just thought of this!!
    You could hire workers once NPC's start to inhabit your planet.

    Cook: Makes food for you and your people.
    Lumberjack: Chops down trees to gather wood.
    Hunter: Hunts and kills animals for food.
    Fisherman: Fishes... :badpokerface:
    Scientist: Does DNA tests and creates new creatures!
    Farmer: Plants crops and watches over pets.
    Enforcer: Keeps on the lookout for crimes committed by other civilians!

    The list goes on...
    I would make my own thread but I wouldn't want to steal your idea :down:
     
  19. demisovereign

    demisovereign Void-Bound Voyager

    Hey go for it man!
    If you're worried about it you can always just link to my post and I can link to yours if you want!
     
  20. FrozenFlame

    FrozenFlame Giant Laser Beams

    Yes yes yes, smart NPC's always rock you know. @Hugt, nice ideas too.
    But I think this should be really high tier privileges, or hard to achieve large numbers.
    Could balance that out, plus I thought if the NPC worker finishes their duty, you have to re-order them to do their things, that way they don't plant and cut to infinity for basically free. (You can probably order them too via your communication device)
     
    demisovereign likes this.

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