[Regarding AI NPC crew,] what is the difference between AI NPC crew and AI server blades for spacecraft?

I'll take that one. No, they're both AI. They are definitely both AI, especially from our perspective; they are going to be running the same behavior. An AI needs to aim a gun to shoot down a ship exactly the same way a human is going to aim that same gun to shoot a ship. The same behavior is going to run through all of this. Now, gameplay-wise, there are differences. A blade is a subcomponent on a ship. You will plug it in and assign a turret to use that blade, and the turret knows how to do it. There are disadvantages here. First of all, blades are going to be worse than NPCs. We have this grading: if you take an average player, they're going to be better than an average NPC, and that's going to be better than an average blade. So pretty much, automatically, it's not that good at the job. The turret blades are also going to occupy a blade slot, which means you can't equip another blade for other functionality you might want on the ship. So that is a valuable slot that you're losing just to have one turret start shooting without an NPC there. Basically, you're a cheap bastard; you don't want to pay someone to take that slot, whether it's a player or an NPC. Just pay the money and hire someone and get them to shoot. You can pay for a blade as a cheap alternative. Don't do that. I mean, do it if you can't afford anything else. And then the ship is only going to have enough blade slots to run a part of the turrets. Let's say you have a ship like the Hammerhead. You won't be able to have enough blade slots to make all the turrets functional. So there's that downside. So this is mainly where the difference lies. AI-wise, if some of the programmers want to chip in with how the behavior for this works, maybe they can clear some stuff up.

Yeah, the behaviors are just the same behaviors that NPCs run. Most importantly, the behavior will be the same, the activity will be the same, and how you characterize the blade will go through skills. So sort of editing the skills, the capacities, in this case.

I think, as Dan said, not all the seats can be replaced. So there would be crew members that would be purely NPCs. And I think the critical part here is that, the same way we let designers in a specific environment ask NPCs to do things, under the hood it's the same way as when the player gives them commands. If you ask an NPC to go and be the turret guy, what will happen is the same as when a designer sets up a mission and has an NPC sitting on a turret seat. If you ask a guy, you know what, I want you to fix that panel, you can do it. And it's the same way as when a designer asks an NPC to go exactly to that panel. The way we build the behaviors, and especially all this crew management, the guys in the crew, it's made in a way in which they can perform their jobs by themselves as best as they can, based on their skills and their traits. So imagine you have somebody who likes to procrastinate: you will have your engineer that goes around and sometimes finds a smoking spot, or some resting area, and just hides there and doesn't do his job. But you might have a supervisor that goes around, sends tasks to people and tries to supervise them. We have the same on the bridge crew. The captain can go around and supervise the NPCs and see if they're doing a good job or not, and maybe just tell them something. And it will basically be the same for the player. And then they can assign them. And also, I think there is more gameplay. You can find who's best at doing a specific job based on the ones you hire. You may hire somebody really good at shield management, but who kind of sucks at shooting from a turret. Maybe you need both, but you don't have enough money. You have one guy, and then you live with whatever covers most of your needs. But the good thing is that these skills and levels just carry through the game. So it's kind of cool that you see the guy maybe getting better at some of those. Some of those will allow you to train. Some others would just be your character traits. Somebody's a coward, and you put him on trying to defend you, he's just going to be a coward pilot. So he might just give up defending you if things are bad, something like this. But maybe somebody super skilled costs much more money. So it is going to create this extra layer of gameplay as well.

What I would like to mention is that we're already building all of our behaviors to take skills and traits into consideration. So basically, even the guys you are fighting in Kareah have skills and traits that are going to be driving some of the decisions. The behavior tree is exactly the same, but there are branches where it goes, well, do I have the skill to do this thing? Or how good am I at doing this specific thing? It's exactly the same stuff we will be using for NPC crews, because we built the system in such a way where we thought a bit ahead, and we're like, well, we want crews. Let's start building the skill and trait system that's going to dictate how the behavior runs or how efficient someone is at the job.

And you as a player discover that; you don't know. Some traits might enable a tactic, some traits might just make a tactic different. It's like, oh, maybe you do that and you're really not that good at it. Or the NPC thinks he's good at doing it, but he's not really.

If you have a very confident but stupid NPC, you will have some problems.

That's actually what I've been working on this sprint. We've been defining some stuff like cowardly and show-off for pilots. A show-off pilot would be more likely to do tricks, but his piloting skill would determine how actually useful those tricks are. So you might get a ship pilot who just really sluggishly rolls for no good reason and actually makes himself a better target.

I think it would be cool to have readability there with the messages. It's like, ah, look at me, you're never going to catch me. And then you destroy me.

So it sounds like Blades are a personality-less, skill-less, bottom-tier automation for turrets only. And then above that, there are AI NPCs who will have personalities and characteristics and aptitudes, things they're good at, things they're bad at, and they can operate not only turrets but other crew stations within ships.

Yes, exactly. And you mentioned something very important. There is the state of your NPC crew, which is going to be important. It's not just their skills. Are they well-fed? Are they happy? If they're almost about to leave your ship, then they're not going to do a great job shooting someone or manning the station. They're going to be upset. They're going to become careless. So you will need to maintain your crew. You'll need to make sure they're happy. You will need to make sure that you provide food. That's why our ships have a kitchen, have a food dispenser. So you really need to take care of them as your family. There are so many sci-fi shows that do this, that small unit on a ship where there's interpersonal relationships. You have to occasionally talk to them and see what's going on. You have to watch their stats, make sure they're in peak working condition, while a blade is just a blade.