Over the past few years a lot of us have accumulated a number of large multi crew ships. Can you give us an update on your vision for NPC crews, and what limitations, if any, we are likely to see?asked by Dex
TL;DRLarger ships will need NPC crews who follow specific tasking, can't think ahead like players, vary by experience, and must be paid, with most people met in the universe expected to be AI.
Well you are definitely going to need to have NPC's for some of the larger ships because they are so big. It will probably be a case of you'll not be able to get enough friends to manage a ship with you. Obviously not a Constellation but when we get up to an Idris you'll probably would want to have some NPC crew members. They will be running AI just like the same way we would run AI in Sq 42 AI; running a big NPC or AI ship. They won't be as self aware as a real player would be. You would have to be more specific for instance in tasking them "You are now the gunner you need to do this" They won't be thinking ahead the same way a real person would, but they will fill the various roles effectively depending on their ratings. The more experienced crew members will be better than a rookie would. Then of course the more experienced folks would cost more to pay because none of these NPCs are going to be working for free, so you will have to pay for your crew and make sure they are taken care of. You will be hiring folks whether it's to help run the ship you're flying or fly escort with you, that's actually going to be a large part of the game. I've mentioned before a nine to ten goal ratio between AI and real life players in the world and we'll scale that way. So just in general nine out of ten people you meet will probably be an AI and the last one would be a real person so therefore we have to make them believable and make them go about their daily activities and make them perform their jobs pretty well which is one of the big focuses Tony is making with his subsumption system for the persistant universe.