Let me remind you of several things. (1) This is not a pet thread. Reading the first few words of the post would make that painfully obvious " Not pets. Sentient beings who you could recruit and equip." (2) This part of the forums is for suggestions. Suggestions cannot be wrong, as the entire point of the place is for posting ideas, regardless of what it may be. (3) After finally realizing this is not a pet thread, you should see that it is for sentient beings, such as a mercenary or ally. Much different that a pet.
Since they will be sentient beings, why not give them dialogue too? commenting every once in a while on the status of the team, the status of the current mission, or even just making sure you're alright when you're hurt. Good visual ques can let you know when allies are in danger, and when you should probably fall back. To up the ante, why not give the ability to give them orders? CTRL right mouse click on them, they'll say, "what's up boss?" or something along those lines, and you can double CTRL right click somewhere to make them move there (or die trying) or even pull levers or make them attack specific foes. This will make things much more strategic, add a higher level of NPC interaction, and even increase possibilities for bigger and more advanced puzzles for NPC created dungeons, military bases, etc. All of these ideas can lead the NPCs to feel more alive and not just meat for the oncoming meat grinder. You'll have the possibility of also getting NPCs you end up REALLY liking based on their behaviors, and how they react to things. A REALLY awesome example of this sort of NPC to character to NPC dialogue can be found on Survival Crisis Z, or SCZ, at http://ska-studios.com/files/scz.exe For more information on this game, go to http://www.ska-studios.com/category/scz/
Here's my companion thread http://community.playstarbound.com/index.php?threads/followers-companions.3079/#post-48686
Apparently Sarzeel will be a completely loyal mercenary for anyone willing to catch him/her with a net. We mean hiring a worker.
Sounds more like a pet system what has been confirmed by the dev's but what really would be cool is if we could lead a complete task force to conquer other planets...all your pixels belong to me *haha*
A more clean way of putting up my ideas, I REALLY wanna see this in the game. I'll make my own thread if I have too. Dialogue from NPCs and Human enemies, separated into different behavioral archetypes. For instance some characters will be cocky, and be headstrong, and you'd get text like, "Let's get in there and finish this thing!" and "I thought These things were stronger!" Devs could make more and more as patch releases come through. and f this game ends up with optimal mod support, we could end up seeing some AWESOME dialogue from NPCs that hardly ever get reused. NPC tactical system. These ideas are taken basically from any other game that uses this feature. Give players a way to indirectly control their NPC companions, a la, go here, push this, kill that. The setup can be given different key bindings so as to not get the game confused with attacking or dropping items or something instead. For instance, CTRL + right mouse click on a currently following NPC could start a string in the code that brings up a different cursor, and a short text that cues the initation of the feature, like, "What do you need boss?" Then you CTRL + Right mouse click somewhere and depending on what was clicked and where, the NPC will act out the most appropriate AI for the situation. Click on another NPC, perhaps, and he could be more focused on defending that NPC. Variations are limitless if the coding goes right. Oh and to clarify, those links ARE safe, SCZ is from a indie dev team known as Ska Studios, the guys behind The Dishwasher, and some other XBLA exclusives. It just so happens SCZ is one of their older games. The first link leads directly to the download of the .exe, and the second one is the page where I got that download link from.
I want catch Sarzeel to! Then he will be my slave, and i will make him eat penguins all the days! -Sarzael
