Edit July 8th, 2021: A quick TL;DR (sorry, I posted this almost 2 years ago). Basically, this was a suggestion for something similar to the new Captain system coming with 2.0, but also covering lower tier officers. My original inspiration was a combination of Star Trek Online (multiple officers per ship; rank/level up) and Masters of Orion 2 (just flat bonus stats or abilities). Not the idea of special combat moves or whatever that you can only achieve by having one of these officers and training them in these abilities, etc.
Original post follows:
(This post originally was going to be multiple suggestions on crews (such as decreasing crew requirements of turrets, notably low tech/small turrets... throwing that out there cause this suggestion results in an increase of crew), but after seeing the wall-o-text this turned into, I've decided to just do this and will post the others at a later time in separate threads.)
My suggestion is to add special officers that the player can hire to gain bonuses for their ship/station (from here forward just referred to as "ship") in various areas.
For those that have played Star Trek Online, that game's Bridge Officers is where I'm pulling this from, though mind you it has been years since I played (a quick read through their wiki suggests that they've changed a lot since then).
Basic concept would be the ability to hire officers to fill certain stations/roles (Tactical/Combat, Engineering, Science/Navigation, etc (don't know if mechanic type stuff should be rolled under Engineering or as a separate position?)) that would then give minor (but worth the trouble) bonuses respective to the position being filled (ie, Tactical/Combat would give bonuses to damage, rate of fire, etc, while Engineering would give bonuses to speed, maneuverability, etc, etc, etc). These positions should require officers that have been trained specifically for that position (so no using untrained crew or generic officers). They should require and use available crew slots.
If you really wanted to get fancy, make it so each officer is their own unique individual, each having their own set of bonuses and quality (much like weapons and system upgrades) and allow them to level, resulting in improving their given stats. Having their stats randomized would be good, too, but the range that the RNG can pull from would need to be kept in check to keep them from becoming too overpowered (like some turrets...). There can even be negative stats for some lower quality officers or officers with super strong bonuses, but these would need to be kept in check as well to not completely offset their bonuses.
There should be a maximum number of officers for each station/role (variable, see below). Anything over this maximum adds no benefit (much like overstaffing the other crew positions).
As an optional, have there be a minimum requirement as well (variable, see below). Rather than affecting moral like corporals, etc do, not meeting the minimum requirements for officers should result in some performance degradations related to that station. The performance degradations should scale with the minimum requirement, though. IE, instead of having a -50% damage debuff for having zero Tactical officers regardless of the minimum requirement, it should be something like -10% for having none when you only require one, and -50% for having none when you require 20, etc (and these values should have diminishing returns with a theoretical limit to avoid greater than 100% (or a lower figure) debuffs).
The maximums and minimums mentioned above should be based on ship size (determined through volume or other metric, like processing power/system upgrade slots) and current crew requirements, and applies to each officer station individually. So for example, a small ship with a small crew probably shouldn't require any officers and only allow one or two max per officer station before capping or whatever, while a really large ship will have minimums and higher maximums, but these figures for each officer station will vary based on their respective crew compliments (example, a ship with 25 gunners/miners and 100 engineers/mechanics would have a minimum requirement of 1 Tactical and 4 Engineering Officers, and a maximum of 2 Tactical and 6 Engineering Officers). I feel as though these numbers should not scale in a direct X for every Y (like corporals, etc), but rather more like how processing power and system upgrade slots are where each subsequent one requires more than the previous. Minimum and maximum officers should also scale separately, not a direct min * X = max kind of deal, and perhaps even differently between each officer station (so a 5 slot, 25 gunner, 25 engineer ship could have a different Tactical Officer min/max than Engineering). As another "if you really wanted to get fancy", also allow the player to specify a "focus" role of the ship, thus giving a boost to the min/max officers of that respective focus, perhaps at the cost of the min/max of the other officer stations.
Suggestions for the different officer stations/types and the different types of bonuses their type awards:
Tactical/Combat/Weapons Officer
Related crew positions: Gunners and Miners
General bonuses to turrets, to include damage, RoF, overheat/cooldown, rotational speed, range, etc
General bonuses to torpedoes, to include the above plus flight speed, acceleration, maneuverability, HPs, etc
General bonuses to security and boarding crew
General bonuses to hanger capacity, # of simultaneous launches per hanger (maybe a more rare trait if using unique individual officers?)
General bonuses to fighters, to include similar stats as turrets and torpedoes
General bonuses to pilots
Shield penetration chance (of your weapons to enemies)(I feel as though this shouldn't apply to weapons that wouldn't normally get this property, like chainguns and salvaging lasers?)
If "getting fancy" and using unique individual officers, then some rare/high quality traits could also include more drastic things like Individual Targeting for all turrets, etc
If using unique individual officers, then I feel as though weapon related bonuses should apply to all turrets, regardless of their crew requirements (ie, even turrets requiring mechanics/engineers should receive the bonuses to keep things simple), otherwise turrets that require mechanics/engineers should get these stat boosts from the Engineering Officer position (below)
Potentially separate the fighter/pilot/hanger related stats to a new Officer position (like Flight Officer) and similarly for security and boarding crews (though I'd suggest using existing Lieutenant/Commander/General positions?), but don't know if that might be starting to make things too complex
Could potentially also separate out miners to their own officer position with correct stat bonuses, but as with the rest, I don't know if this might be getting too complex
[*]Engineering Officer
Related crew positions: Engineers and Mechanics
General bonuses to hull/shield HP, regen, etc (perhaps even to individual block durability)
General bonuses to speed, acceleration, maneuverability, etc
General bonuses to energy and energy storage amounts, rates, etc
General bonuses to production capacity, speed, etc
Shield penetration chance (of incoming fire on your ship)(should basically reduce (or increase if a negative trait) the chance of enemy fire with a chance of penetrating the shields of actually doing so, not a straight immune or not, if possible)
If "getting fancy" and using unique individual officers, then some rare/high quality traits could also include more drastic things like Shield penetration immunity (more so if the above percentage reduction of incoming enemy fire is not possible) or mechanics being able to replace destroyed blocks on a ship, etc
If NOT using unique individual officers, then general bonuses to turrets requiring mechanics/engineers similar to the general turret bonuses given by the Tactical Officer
[*]Science/Navigation Officer
Related crew positions: ?? (maybe there doesn't need to be for this one to make it different from the others?)
In sector scanner range
Radar sector scan range of energy signatures (green dots) and mass (yellow dots)(potentially separate traits if using unique individual officers)
Loot collection range
Hyperspace jump range, cooldown, and calculation speed (though for the calculation speed, the base value may want to see an increase to be of value)
If "getting fancy" and using unique individual officers, then some rare/high quality traits could also include more drastic things like detection and highlighting of valuables in a sector, jumping rifts without the need of an Avorion hyperdrive, etc
Suggestion
FuryoftheStars
Edit July 8th, 2021: A quick TL;DR (sorry, I posted this almost 2 years ago). Basically, this was a suggestion for something similar to the new Captain system coming with 2.0, but also covering lower tier officers. My original inspiration was a combination of Star Trek Online (multiple officers per ship; rank/level up) and Masters of Orion 2 (just flat bonus stats or abilities). Not the idea of special combat moves or whatever that you can only achieve by having one of these officers and training them in these abilities, etc.
Original post follows:
(This post originally was going to be multiple suggestions on crews (such as decreasing crew requirements of turrets, notably low tech/small turrets... throwing that out there cause this suggestion results in an increase of crew), but after seeing the wall-o-text this turned into, I've decided to just do this and will post the others at a later time in separate threads.)
My suggestion is to add special officers that the player can hire to gain bonuses for their ship/station (from here forward just referred to as "ship") in various areas.
For those that have played Star Trek Online, that game's Bridge Officers is where I'm pulling this from, though mind you it has been years since I played (a quick read through their wiki suggests that they've changed a lot since then).
Basic concept would be the ability to hire officers to fill certain stations/roles (Tactical/Combat, Engineering, Science/Navigation, etc (don't know if mechanic type stuff should be rolled under Engineering or as a separate position?)) that would then give minor (but worth the trouble) bonuses respective to the position being filled (ie, Tactical/Combat would give bonuses to damage, rate of fire, etc, while Engineering would give bonuses to speed, maneuverability, etc, etc, etc). These positions should require officers that have been trained specifically for that position (so no using untrained crew or generic officers). They should require and use available crew slots.
If you really wanted to get fancy, make it so each officer is their own unique individual, each having their own set of bonuses and quality (much like weapons and system upgrades) and allow them to level, resulting in improving their given stats. Having their stats randomized would be good, too, but the range that the RNG can pull from would need to be kept in check to keep them from becoming too overpowered (like some turrets...). There can even be negative stats for some lower quality officers or officers with super strong bonuses, but these would need to be kept in check as well to not completely offset their bonuses.
There should be a maximum number of officers for each station/role (variable, see below). Anything over this maximum adds no benefit (much like overstaffing the other crew positions).
As an optional, have there be a minimum requirement as well (variable, see below). Rather than affecting moral like corporals, etc do, not meeting the minimum requirements for officers should result in some performance degradations related to that station. The performance degradations should scale with the minimum requirement, though. IE, instead of having a -50% damage debuff for having zero Tactical officers regardless of the minimum requirement, it should be something like -10% for having none when you only require one, and -50% for having none when you require 20, etc (and these values should have diminishing returns with a theoretical limit to avoid greater than 100% (or a lower figure) debuffs).
The maximums and minimums mentioned above should be based on ship size (determined through volume or other metric, like processing power/system upgrade slots) and current crew requirements, and applies to each officer station individually. So for example, a small ship with a small crew probably shouldn't require any officers and only allow one or two max per officer station before capping or whatever, while a really large ship will have minimums and higher maximums, but these figures for each officer station will vary based on their respective crew compliments (example, a ship with 25 gunners/miners and 100 engineers/mechanics would have a minimum requirement of 1 Tactical and 4 Engineering Officers, and a maximum of 2 Tactical and 6 Engineering Officers). I feel as though these numbers should not scale in a direct X for every Y (like corporals, etc), but rather more like how processing power and system upgrade slots are where each subsequent one requires more than the previous. Minimum and maximum officers should also scale separately, not a direct min * X = max kind of deal, and perhaps even differently between each officer station (so a 5 slot, 25 gunner, 25 engineer ship could have a different Tactical Officer min/max than Engineering). As another "if you really wanted to get fancy", also allow the player to specify a "focus" role of the ship, thus giving a boost to the min/max officers of that respective focus, perhaps at the cost of the min/max of the other officer stations.
Suggestions for the different officer stations/types and the different types of bonuses their type awards:
-
Tactical/Combat/Weapons Officer
-
Related crew positions: Gunners and Miners
-
General bonuses to turrets, to include damage, RoF, overheat/cooldown, rotational speed, range, etc
-
General bonuses to torpedoes, to include the above plus flight speed, acceleration, maneuverability, HPs, etc
-
General bonuses to security and boarding crew
-
General bonuses to hanger capacity, # of simultaneous launches per hanger (maybe a more rare trait if using unique individual officers?)
-
General bonuses to fighters, to include similar stats as turrets and torpedoes
-
General bonuses to pilots
-
Shield penetration chance (of your weapons to enemies)(I feel as though this shouldn't apply to weapons that wouldn't normally get this property, like chainguns and salvaging lasers?)
-
If "getting fancy" and using unique individual officers, then some rare/high quality traits could also include more drastic things like Individual Targeting for all turrets, etc
-
If using unique individual officers, then I feel as though weapon related bonuses should apply to all turrets, regardless of their crew requirements (ie, even turrets requiring mechanics/engineers should receive the bonuses to keep things simple), otherwise turrets that require mechanics/engineers should get these stat boosts from the Engineering Officer position (below)
-
Potentially separate the fighter/pilot/hanger related stats to a new Officer position (like Flight Officer) and similarly for security and boarding crews (though I'd suggest using existing Lieutenant/Commander/General positions?), but don't know if that might be starting to make things too complex
-
Could potentially also separate out miners to their own officer position with correct stat bonuses, but as with the rest, I don't know if this might be getting too complex
-
Related crew positions: Engineers and Mechanics
-
General bonuses to hull/shield HP, regen, etc (perhaps even to individual block durability)
-
General bonuses to speed, acceleration, maneuverability, etc
-
General bonuses to energy and energy storage amounts, rates, etc
-
General bonuses to production capacity, speed, etc
-
Shield penetration chance (of incoming fire on your ship)(should basically reduce (or increase if a negative trait) the chance of enemy fire with a chance of penetrating the shields of actually doing so, not a straight immune or not, if possible)
-
If "getting fancy" and using unique individual officers, then some rare/high quality traits could also include more drastic things like Shield penetration immunity (more so if the above percentage reduction of incoming enemy fire is not possible) or mechanics being able to replace destroyed blocks on a ship, etc
-
If NOT using unique individual officers, then general bonuses to turrets requiring mechanics/engineers similar to the general turret bonuses given by the Tactical Officer
-
Related crew positions: ?? (maybe there doesn't need to be for this one to make it different from the others?)
-
In sector scanner range
-
Radar sector scan range of energy signatures (green dots) and mass (yellow dots)(potentially separate traits if using unique individual officers)
-
Loot collection range
-
Hyperspace jump range, cooldown, and calculation speed (though for the calculation speed, the base value may want to see an increase to be of value)
-
If "getting fancy" and using unique individual officers, then some rare/high quality traits could also include more drastic things like detection and highlighting of valuables in a sector, jumping rifts without the need of an Avorion hyperdrive, etc
Edited by FuryoftheStars[*]Engineering Officer
[*]Science/Navigation Officer
Added a TL;DR at the top
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