These would be unique, named officers that you could have as the crew on your ship. They'd be sort of like allies, but different in a few crucial ways. Most importantly, there would be a larger officer pool to choose from, but a limit to the number that could be on your ship. This would allow for some customization based on your play style, and hopefully they would be balanced in such a way that there wouldn't just be a small number of 'good' officers that everyone picked while ignoring the rest.

Officers could be unlocked in various ways, such as completing missions, GP purchases, resource purchases, medal rewards, holiday events, and so forth. Unlike allies who are gone forever if dismissed, officers would simply return to your pool of available officers when dismissed. You wouldn't need to pay for them again to re-hire them, but whenever dismissed, the officer has a cooldown of several days before they can be re-hired. This would mean that while you could swap them in and out to help with an invasion or mission or something, you couldn't do so constantly.

A major advantage of them as opposed to something like Homeworlds is that they'd be fairly easy to code - they'd essentially be like a ship module, just a picture and some numbers. The key difference would be that they provide unique abilities and personalization. Most modules are kind of a no-brainer - if it's a big gun, you install it. Apart from smaller ship builds, everyone essentially has identical ships - you'd be crazy not to install Gemini cannons, so everyone that can, does. Officers would not be so one-dimensional.

Players would start with one slot for officers and could unlock more, maybe three or five total. There should always be many more possible officers than available spaces for them.

Some possible examples:

Science-Fictiony-Sounding Alien Name, Konqul Squadron Leader
Your invade timer is now 22:00 hours.
Invasion Attack: +3%
Total Ship Defense: -5%

Zolazin Envoy

For the purposes of artifacts and missions, you are considered a Zolazin in addition to your chosen race. You gain no other Zolazin abilities.
+8% cloak
Total Ship Attack: -3%

Dark Smuggler Defector

You gain +25% attack against all Dark Smugglers' Guild NPC's
+3% Defense
Upkeep: 500M/day

Captured T.O. Scientist

Your Shield Recharge rate doubles.
For the purposes of artifacts and missions, you are considered a Physicist in addition to your chosen profession. You gain no other Physicist abilities.
Upkeep: 1B/day

Genetarr Spirit Guide

While this officer is active, the ship has access to a daily mission similar to The Klorvis Aftermath. Completing the mission provides a cache that provides a small amount of resources, ctp, or unique artifacts. The mission would require energy and some common-drop artifacts.

Maintenance Officer

Your ship's hull also regenerates at a rate similar to shield regen. It does not regenerate if your ship is disabled.
Upkeep cost of hull modules doubles.

Black Market Contact
Your cargo space doubles.
Your tariff for selling minerals increases by 5%.


In any case, these are just brainstorms - there's all kinds of other possiblities for what they could do.

+1

this idea seems to be similar to generals in Castle Age - each general has unique ability to boost a parameter, action success etc and are limited per size of the player's army.. bigger army = more generals. There is over 100 generals in CA and some are available only for equivalent of GP others are from mission, loot sets etc.

I mentioning this as example how to limit the number of avaiable Officers - maybe per crew on ship or other ship stats
TOs/rank>10 --> you can have the "Konqul Squadron Leader" or eventually several of them:
one "Konqul Squadron Leader" per each 1000 TOs (both numbers only examples)

I would also mention, that not all negative effects would be needed for balancing:
Total Ship Defense: -5% ---> rather: Your invade timer is now 28:00 hours (+4) Being strong against planets should be balanced in planet related actions I think.
Upkeep: x00M/day ---> I would apply per each commisioned Officer (they are commisioned)

Captured T.O. Scientist
Your Shield Recharge rate doubles. (could be ability for limited time 2 hours upon activiation?)

Black Market Contact
Your tariff for selling minerals increases by 5%. ---> maybe rather decrease 5% when selling minerals? or increase when purchasing and decrease when selling -> like on black market

EDIT: btw CA generals can gain 4 levels and thru bonus items additional level, each level slightly increase the bonuses... thus maybe the same to be applied for "Officers"? This would be in line with new modules have % update to certain max limit.

Btw, if you check the link in my signature, there is an old suggestion of "Captains" with some bonus effects etc.

Like the concept overall. A tweak that I think would be more interesting:



Another two possibilities (both would be more complicated to code than the above...):

Vygoid Trap Specialist
20% chance of resetting your ship's traps when they are tripped.
5% chance of not tripping a ship trap on an action that would have otherwise tripped one.

Inergon Relay Technician
In charge of one relay. Will uninstall the relay automatically on an action that will rank your ship up, and then reinstall the relay once current energy is less than max energy by 110% of the amount the relay will deduct.

Love the concept, well thought out...

This ability/passive is quite op since nearly everyone within the rank 800+ bracket has the chassis. Maybe cut the +25% Attack Bonus against Dark Smugglers to half? Overall, a great concept.

I should clarify, I meant against Dark Smugglers' Guild NPC's only.

Ahh I see lol.

I love it. May need a little tweaking, but...

Switch them, half the cargo for 5% less tariff

Normally, whenever I read through this section of the forum, I end up laughing at how terrible most of the ideas are. This one, however, does not fall into that category. Big +1! Very cool idea!

+1

i do like that every officer would have positive and negative effects.

maybe maximum 3 officers on ship at a time. this way you could have 'bonus' effects for each set of officers.

the race-based ones would be mutually exclusive, so if you have one, you can't bring on the others until the first one is dismissed back into the pool.

I like this idea alot .. opens up alot of potential avenues for expansion of the game .. I can see a new research tree for diplomacy that would allow for various officer themed planet structures .. in conjunction to new mission chains... opens up a bunch of follow up missions to current story lines..


big +1 for me I think this could really be hashed out and explored.

As suggested above Could make an Envoy for each Race and "specialist" for each class and make these gp unlockable officers..

IE

Agricultural Minister -
Bonus - Qualifies you as a Biologist for requirements/arti/base buffs that requires such profession
Penalty - 500Mil Upkeep
Cost - 20 gp

Master Engineer -
Bonus - Qualifies you as a Fixer for requirements/arti/base buffs
Penalty - 2B Upkeep
Cost - 30 gp


While I may NEVER dump 20 gp to race change to a biologist just to place the arties that are in my inventory... I MAY drop 20 gp for the officer...

Obviously I don't get the profession bonus from being a biologist (planetary pop) and if there are any "medals" out there that specifically require you to be a biologist you wouldn't qualify for them either.

As far as cool downs I was thinking a 72 hour cool down between HIRING officers and a 12 hour "Lay Off Officer" before being able to hire a new one with a 5 gp "Fire Officer" option So again this would force this to be a tactical decision, not a let me dump all my officers and pick up all offensive officers for this planet alert invade I want to do right now. This gives you the flexibility for an "emergency" hire of only ONE officer

Like these ideas another +1, it would be great to see this implemented

Oh, yes, please. This is a great idea, and it would add several new dimensions to the game. +1

5% chance?

it is 'useless' - no offense

let's say that any trap has a 20% chance to activate - excluding QFT.
If you kill a ship in 10-20 hits, then it is 'guaranteed' to still trip the trap.

It would be better with 20% chance
or

Target an enemy ship - your action against that ship has 90% chance NOT to trip any trap - (a halc bypasser) - 1 minute duration - 5 min cooldown

+100 to content that doesn't require that one thing called artifact points.

I'm all for the idea of the officers I would be another nice option for customizing without burning up deckspace. but i did think a couple of the ideas would need tweaking.


Immune would be a bit over powered, but say cutting it to 50% instead like the biovaps would make sense.



I would agree to counting as the profession for arts or mission reqs, but it is WAY overpowered if it counts for bases as well, you could have everyone be excavator for themselves but give 600% hull buff and every repair full for 4 ap.