The following is an attempt to flesh out the “office system” first proposed in the Ozone Ad Astra Design Document. The particulars of this proposal will obviously be heavily dependent on the game mechanics, and any of the details following may be accepted, modified or discarded according to the agreed-upon game mechanics, as long as consistency is maintained.
Assuming that the main character of the game is the captain of the ship, and that the ship in question is not a tiny shuttle or other vessel capable of being piloted by one person, the captain will need a crew to help him operate his ship. The officer system will account for the highest ranking members of that crew and add an extra dimension to game play.
Non-officer members of the crew are not considered individually, and do not affect the performance of the ship in any way. Officers, however, contribute their special skills and abilities, influencing the operation of the ship either positively or negatively. Each officer is a unique individual with a personality reflected in the bonuses/penalties they bring to the ship.
The officer types will reflect the various aspects of ship operation, and will have a direct effect on gameplay. The five basic officer types below are a tentative proposal, as are the titles, bonuses and penalties associated with them. (For ease of writing, all officers will be referred to with the masculine pronoun, although officers may be either male or female.)
To put the above into more concrete terms, the following five officers are offered as examples of each officer type.
There are two possible methods of officer selection, each being suited to a particular type of game. I will call one type “Mercenary” and the other type “Faction”. These two types are very distinct, and will have an effect on the details discussed in the following sections. The type of officer system adopted will be determined by which type of game is ultimately developed.
As the captain gains in experience, so will the officers who have served under him or her. Any officer who has served the full time between the time the captain achieved the last level of experience and the time he or she achieved the current level of experience will also gain a level of experience (this would not be a problem in faction games, as officers would be attached to the captain from the start). As officers rise in level, their bonuses will increase and their penalties will decrease. If a mercenary system is used, the fee they require for service will also increase. Ideally, it should cost less to retain an officer who has gained levels with the captain then it would to hire a new officer of the same level. If an officer is released, his level of experience remains the same, but his fee is raised to the standard for an officer of his skills and training at that level. None of this will be need consideration in a faction game, though.
If a faction game is developed, each faction should have enough officers to go around, and there should be some similar officers to make sure players are not limited in their choices. Static officer templates could be created by hand.
In a mercenary game, each officer should be unique, although there may be officers with similar skills and abilities. The number of officers required for the universe will depend on the maximum number of players in a game, and this number should be carefully calculated to provide just the right amount of competition between players for highly coveted officers (which may only be available at higher levels—officers may, for example, refuse to serve with captains with a lower experience level than them). If the maximum number of players per game was 16, then the very minimum total number of officers would be 80, although at least two or three times that amount would be required to provide depth. Writing backgrounds for each of several hundred officers would be very time-consuming and tedious—the use of basic templates for each officer type would probably be most efficient (if possible, random, yet logical and non-repetitive, templates could be generated for each game).
Even if a fixed number of non-random officer templates is used, each new game could assign these templates random names (generated from a fixed list). This will make the officers unknowns, and players will have to learn about each of the officers they encounter from scratch.
This is a fairly simple issue for a faction games—all officers would start at the same level as the captain, level 1.
It is a bit more complicated for a mercenary game. In this case, there are two options for officer starting levels: either all officers could begin at level 1, or officers could be evenly distributed over the various levels (e.g., 1, 3, 5, 7, 9). The former would encourage players to keep officers from the beginning of the game, as releasing an experienced officer and picking up a new one would mean that the new officer would have to be trained. If enough players released experienced officers, though, this could result in a natural, even distribution of officer levels implemented by the players themselves. It could also lead players to “trade” officers.
The latter would be more realistic, reflecting a universe filled with people of varying levels of experience. Players would be more willing to release experienced officers if they knew that other experienced officers were out there (albeit at a higher price). This method, though, would require far more officers to ensure that there are enough officers for each player at each of the levels. If this were to be done, a random generation solution for officers would seem to be the only feasible option.
My initial idea was designing an officer system for a mercenary-style game. However, it should be obvious that the officer system would be far easier to implement in a faction-style game. I personally think a mercenary game would offer more variation, but there are other advantages to a faction game. This is obviously one of the ways that the officer system depends on the game mechanics.
Submitted by Suho1004