Dalas120 So in general I really like the idea of using crew rooms as the fundamental organizational unit for crew. It's one of the ideas I've been thinking about, and I think you make a compelling argument in favor, so I'd say now I'm leaning fairly strongly in that direction.
Some nitpicky comments:
Dalas120 players can assign a single target to each crew quarters
Why not multiple targets as an advanced power-user feature? They would either be in priority order or all be equal priority, not sure which is better. Seems like that would be useful for things like thrusters that you are likely to have many of but are individually low consumption.
Dalas120 if crew are assigned to a weapon, thruster, or similar, they will focus on supplying that part with power/ammo. So if I assign a crew bunks to a small cannon, those crew will prioritize supplying ammo to that small cannon (and power to the ammo factory) over all other jobs.
I assume this would also include operating the controls? Like the first N crew assigned would operate the controls, and then the remaining would supply ammo/power?
Dalas120 if crew are assigned to a reactor or factory, they will focus on delivering that part's power/ammo to any other nearby parts that need it.
Factories also need their own power. Should assigning crew to a factory make them supply that factory's power, or should it make them deliver the factory's ammo to nearby parts? Or both, with probably supplying the factory's power taking priority?
Dalas120 if crew are not assigned to any part (their crew quarters either has no target or is destroyed), they behave like they do currently.
Does it really make sense for crew to forget their assignment if their quarters is destroyed? I get how that's desirable for gameplay to encourage protecting quarters and discourage ejection, but it's a bit strange.
Dalas120 if there are excess crew (either their assigned part doesn't need crew right now, or too many crew are assigned to that particular part), they can help out with other nearby parts, but will never stray far from their assigned target.
Then the question is, how far is too far? Is that something the player can set? I want to make sure it's predictable and understandable when and and why crew will go do an unassigned job.
Maybe the player can set a radius around the quarters in which they will look for jobs, which applies whenever they consider working an unassigned job? (Even when the quarters has no explicit assignment.) Or maybe the radius is fixed, possibly different for each crew room size? (Incidentally, it could be beneficial for performance to limit the area in which crew will job search.)
Alternatively, perhaps if crew are given an a specific, they will simply never help out any parts which they aren't specifically assigned to? This is simple and might work fine if you can assign multiple parts, but could be unintuitive (why are my crew just idling in their quarters when there's a fire next door??) and weird.
Dalas120 crew are permanently linked to their crew quarters, instead of wandering around between them. Crew are included in the cost of quarters instead of being hired separately. Dead or permanently separated crew count as "damage" to the quarters, and can be "repaired". Selecting a crew quarters will highlight the crew who are linked to that quarters, wherever on the ship they may be.
I don't see why this is necessary, and it conflicts with my plan for the campaign mode where crew will be essentially their own kind of valuable, limited resource that must be hired separately at space stations and such.
Why not allow the player to assign individual crew to different rooms (up to the room's number of beds, via the crew panel) while still having the rooms be the fundamental organizational unit for job assignment?
Dalas120 it's easy for players. Targeting crew quarters is an intuitive way to assign crew since it makes use of existing UI and mechanics, rather than having a separate crew behavior UI that players need to learn. This also makes it unintrusive, so new players aren't immediately overwhelmed by the amount of menus and buttons at their disposal - important IMO since the learning curve is already very steep.
I'm not 100% convinced that this shouldn't be done via a separate crew management screen. (Which will still need to exist in some fashion in order to customize crew aesthetics and manage individual crew.) Perhaps you can do it simply by selecting a part and giving it a target like normal, or you can go into the crew management screen to see an overview of all assignments?
Dalas120 when boarding is added, this makes it simple and obvious how to choose targets for your boarders. Just select some crew quarters and target them where you want them to go on the enemy ship. Same deal when repelling boarders.
It sounds pretty inconvenient to have to look back at your own ship simply to select your assault troops that are actually on board the enemy ship. Assault troops should probably be a special case where you can select a squad itself (probably still originating from the same room) and give them orders. And if you're defending, you can either select your own shock troop squads, or the quarters for your regular crew and tell them to attack the enemy quad.
Equalizer To precisely control crew behavior would require crew not only being linked to the part they are to supply but also the ammo/power source they are to bring the supply from.
I'm thinking that you could select the weapon (or whatever parts needs the ammo/power) and target it on a factory/reactor which will prioritize bringing supplies from that factory/reactor.
Nordwolf I really wanted to be able to assign single crew to tasks, also priority should mean that you assign priority, not one part, so from max priority to 0 priority (0 would mean that crew doesn't care about that part at all.
My original plan was to have priority customization similar to Rimworld where you could assign priority scores for particular tasks. (Essentially you could create different "roles" with their own priority scores and then assign crew or quarters to a specific role.) But this would obviously add a lot of complication and I'm not sure how useful it would actually be if you can also assign specific tasks. I'm leaning towards adding the task assignment first and then only doing priority customization if crew assignment is insufficient.
A random thought: It'd be cool if you could assign shirt colors for each crew room. Probably not that useful but would be neat to be able to recreate Star Trek style uniform colors, like have weapons crew have red shirts, engine crew have yellow shirt, command crew have blue shirts, etc...
