Allright, should NPC's have the ability to...

[Tribbler]

Disobey orders?

Be late for Duty?

Tinkle against the bulkheads?

Fraternize with the other NPC's?

Show up unclean, unshaven & out of uniform?

Play pong on their consoles instead of scanning planets?

In essence, what real characters do. To give the Captain more of the feel of a "real" environment and challenge? The captain can either choose to ignore it and the character does better or worse (as in real life).

Do Captains challenge every offense with reprimands and possibly create mutinys?

Do Captains use a "loose" idealism to provide harmony?

Either way you Captain your ship, should it affect the abilities of the NPC crew?

Your thoughts please...

[Lord_Xomic]

"Fraternize with the other NPC's?"

What is this? the sims?

[Socratesesq]

Wouldn't such activity, by an NPC, have to be pre-programmed into the given NPC makeup? ie: engineering NPCs are drunken louts, thus one should expect to get shouted at by their NPC, b/c he/she may or may not be drunk. (This is just an example.)

I'm not sure how this would be implemented. It certainly would require, as I say above, to be pre-programmed, and thus, IMHO, after people figure out which NPCs are just trouble waiting to happen, those NPCs won't be used by anyone, unless they just want to screw themselves/or have a laugh.

Now, that all said, I believe some sort of "morale" system needs to be in place, in order to have that "feel", but not sure how to make it work, other than the randomness of, "The helmsman just feel asleep, b/c you [the Captain] never let him/her take a break and ran them for a week straight." Kind of like the old Pirates! game where, if you ran the crew for too long they would either mutiny or be incredibly ****ed off at you.

It would be interesting to see some sort of variation on the theme...

[Tribbler]

Wouldn't such activity, by an NPC, have to be pre-programmed into the given NPC makeup? ie: engineering NPCs are drunken louts, thus one should expect to get shouted at by their NPC, b/c he/she may or may not be drunk. (This is just an example.)

I'm not sure how this would be implemented. It certainly would require, as I say above, to be pre-programmed, and thus, IMHO, after people figure out which NPCs are just trouble waiting to happen, those NPCs won't be used by anyone, unless they just want to screw themselves/or have a laugh.

Now, that all said, I believe some sort of "morale" system needs to be in place, in order to have that "feel", but not sure how to make it work, other than the randomness of, "The helmsman just feel asleep, b/c you [the Captain] never let him/her take a break and ran them for a week straight." Kind of like the old Pirates! game where, if you ran the crew for too long they would either mutiny or be incredibly ****ed off at you.

It would be interesting to see some sort of variation on the theme...

Maybe a low "Morale" will cause such episodes. Imagine the thought of not getting shoreleave before your engineer gets "snockered". The term "LOST IN SPACE" will take on a whole new meaning (smile).

[Tribbler]

"Fraternize with the other NPC's?"

What is this? the sims?

Hmmm, interesting thought. Definitely more realistic than automoton NPC's.

[walltar]

Disobey orders?

Be late for Duty?

Tinkle against the bulkheads?

Fraternize with the other NPC's?

Show up unclean, unshaven & out of uniform?

Play pong on their consoles instead of scanning planets?

Your thoughts please...

I think yes but i have one question too : Should i be allowed to toss them out of the nearest airock for that :D

[Captain_Intrepid]

Actually, it'd be interesting to see bridge crew during Red Alert after being called out of the Holodeck to go to their stations. :)

[Tribbler]

I think yes but i have one question too : Should i be allowed to toss them out of the nearest airock for that :D

I would vote yes, but if that member was real popular with the crew, you may be the next one going out the airlock.

"Captain Bligh and Mr. Christian" on "Mutiny on the Bounty".

[LordDave]

I think some randomized NPC personality traits would be nice.

[Tribbler]

I think some randomized NPC personality traits would be nice.

Coughing, sneezing, drinking Romulan Ale in the background of Ten Forward, but I am really talking about a gameplay affecting trait by npc's.

As each NPC develops, I believe it would be nice that their reaction times to events are slower because of certain "real life" traits.

An ensign will be more apt to not fire a phaser in a timely fashion because their playing solitaire. As the NPC grows in strength, ability, wisdom etc. they learn to put away childish things.

How the Captain governs his ship will either increase or decrease the NPC's reaction/abilities as it does in real life.

Do you think possibly, that the game play can get that deep? Would it be something you would like to deal with maybe once a week with one of your ship NPC's? Maybe once a month?

Remember DATA while dealing with Ferengi, was playing with a "Chinese Finger Puzzle" that slowed his report to Captain Picard.

Wesley Crusher was in trouble for stepping on plants in one episode that caused an entire episode of getting him out of trouble.

Each member of the NPC crew should cause these random events in a small degree.

[marscentral]

While I'm all for NPC personality traits and featuring in story lines (we've discussed it before), I don't think it would be helpful if that impacted their performance. A First Officer that disobeys orders or a Tactical Officer that's asleep on the job would probably be more frustrating than immersive.

[Tom-Follett]

lol tinkle on the bulkheads xD, some of those yea, and how the captain commands the ship should greatly effect the moral or confedence of the NPC crew. you should have the NPC's be social with other npcs on the ship, and be late for duty, and other things like that

[ParkerHayden]

Disobey orders?
Maybe

Be late for Duty?
No

Tinkle against the bulkheads?
No

Fraternize with the other NPC's?
No

Show up unclean, unshaven & out of uniform?
No

Play pong on their consoles instead of scanning planets?
No

[Leenidas]

ha ha Never would you see that happen on a Klingon ship, If so then you would see alot of Klingon hangin on the out side of the ship! LOL :D

[Tribbler]

While I'm all for NPC personality traits and featuring in story lines (we've discussed it before), I don't think it would be helpful if that impacted their performance. A First Officer that disobeys orders or a Tactical Officer that's asleep on the job would probably be more frustrating than immersive.

Remember that these traits will also affect the other crew on the enemy ship.

If you are a "Good Captain" your NPC's will perform better than a captain that likes to ram other ships per se.

[Tribbler]

ha ha Never would you see that happen on a Klingon ship, If so then you would see alot of Klingon hangin on the out side of the ship! LOL :D

Yes, that is why their ships still have the "plank" extended behind the warp nacelles LOL.

[Angelphoenix12]

i too would love too see, some kind of emotion from npcs, instead of only standing around and hitting buttons, or walking from 1 station to another.

[WinterPark1701]

"Fraternize with the other NPC's?"

What is this? the sims?

I never understood that game, a game in which you have to go to work and pay bills? I play games to get away from that not to do it more.

[Trekkie]

This thread definitely raises some interesting questions, and it will be interesting to see how varied non-player character behavior is in the game. I think that, in general, non-player characters should follow orders without question, but changing that dynamic might make for an interesting mission!

[jasonadlai]

The problem is that it would all have to be scripted. Otherwise, there would likely be no way you could really respond to the situation. Of course, being scripted isn't a bad thing. But I don't see these interactions mentioned being a realistic possibility in terms of the A.I. itself. Besides, it would likely be more buggy than a player-controlled senior staff in the end. You wouldn't want a bug in the programming to result in your medical personnel refusing to heal somebody.

The more complex the A.I., the more room for error. :) Really, when they have minds of their own, they usually just end up doing the most senseless things they could possibly do. I kind of want to avoid that...

[RookActual]

This is just not in the spirit of Star Trek. Aside from Torres and Barclay what Officers do you ever see misbehaving? Starfleet has some kinda perfect discipline probe shoved up everyone's....:eek:

[Tribbler]

This thread definitely raises some interesting questions, and it will be interesting to see how varied non-player character behavior is in the game. I think that, in general, non-player characters should follow orders without question, but changing that dynamic might make for an interesting mission!

Thats what I'm talkin about.

Not everytime you give an order, but every once in a while, an NPC can do something to damage a mission.

For instance, what if the mission was to "Discipline a unruly crew member".

How you disciplined them would give them a certain characteristic such as for Klingons, a harsh flogging would probably raise their Intelligence, or for Starfleet, it would lower it, etc.