Cosmoteer 0.15.0 Preview 1 - Crew Squads, Roles, and Priority Customization

SpaceCat

Walt with the caveat that higher-priority crew are always chosen regardless of distance, so an 8 priority crew will always do a job even if there's a much-closer 7 priority crew.

How i was seeing it is that crew still does the nearest task but when a higher priority soul arrives they swap their task - so the low prio soul is free again.

Also the other way araound when a soul has taken a task but has higher priority to another task it would still do it but get swapped by a lower priority soul - so the high prio soul is free again.

... phew it's RLY complicatet ...

The outcome should be that ideally all crew doing their higher priority tasks - and only temporarily jump in to do low priority tasks.

regards,

Walt

SpaceCat hope it does not lead to crew running across the whole ship to deliver one energy cell or ammo again ...

It won't override the specific part assignment, once I have that implemented.

SpaceCat in the meanwhile i had the idea that there could be a priority above 10 that means "always do this job before other crew members" and only then similar rules to what you described above would apply, plus other crew would only jump in when there is no (more) dedicated crew available.

That's an interesting idea. I'm trying to keep things as simple and understandable as possible, though, so let's try my way first.

SpaceCat But the whole priority concept is still very complicated.

What are you finding complicated about it?

SpaceCat How i was seeing it is that crew still does the nearest task but when a higher priority soul arrives they swap their task - so the low prio soul is free again.

Also the other way araound when a soul has taken a task but has higher priority to another task it would still do it but get swapped by a lower priority soul - so the high prio soul is free again.

... phew it's RLY complicatet ...

The outcome should be that ideally all crew doing their higher priority tasks - and only temporarily jump in to do low priority tasks.

You can basically think of the new system like this:

First, any crew with priority 10 tasks get assigned to those tasks.
Then, any remaining crew with priority 9 tasks get assigned to those tasks.
Then, any remaining crew with priority 8 tasks get assigned to those tasks.
And so on, all the way down to priority 1 tasks.

This includes replacing any crew with a lower priority number, so if a task has a priority 9 guy already doing it, he can still get swapped with a priority 10 guy if there's one available.

SpaceCat

Walt What are you finding complicated about it?

As it is now it is simply hard to predict what job a soul will go for next - when you have set up multiple squads/roles.
I also suspect that @Equalizer ran into inpredictability rather then a bug.

See how this goes in the next preview that will behave very different - i read from your responens.

What i also noticed is that crew behaviour hardly changed when you leave priority settings standard.
Shields still get powered up very late. Crew still transports energy/ammo across the ship when starting with empty ships mainly because they go for the first powered source first - and not the nearest when it is unpowered.

feeling a bit lonely with testing on interconnected ships here

AnonimusPrime

Walt Idea: Be able to give more than one role to the crew, and assign it to ship status.
For example:
Customize the red crew and call the configuration "all power to the engines", then...
Assign another configuration to the red crew and instead of prioritizing the engines they now prioritize reloading the weapons, and call it "reload the weapons"

Equalizer

Walt Some comments:

Operator priorities seem to have no effect. (Has this been mentioned?) The only way to force certain crew to be operators seem to be to disable operate for other crew.)
Very severe crew task thrashing between equal priority tasks (Need to set all tasks to distinct priorities to reduce crew wandering.) Even with this crew loading weapons seem to swap back and forth between nearby weapons of the same type.
Crew are very indecisive.

Note: Crew choosing to bring power/ammo/missile parts from a far away sources remains the main issue that forces the use of modules (worse cases is when source is over drawn).

It looks really odd to see crew idealing next to a full factory and empty weapon due to crew bring supplies from a far away source.

By the way, there is a noticeable delay to open edit role menu.

Walt

Equalizer Very severe crew task thrashing between equal priority tasks (Need to set all tasks to distinct priorities to reduce crew wandering.) Even with this crew loading weapons seem to swap back and forth between nearby weapons of the same type.

Can you show me an example of this? I'm not sure why it would be any worse than before.

Equalizer Crew are very indecisive.

I haven't experienced this problem, please send me a save.

Equalizer Note: Crew choosing to bring power/ammo/missile parts from a far away sources remains the main issue that forces the use of modules (worse cases is when source is over drawn).

Yeah, that's not addressed in this update.

Equalizer

Walt I've put the saved game on discord under bug-reports.

clojelo

Tea break 🍵

One word, "role decals",

A decal is reusable for zero or more roles.
A role's decal is not tie in with its priorities.

Walt Currently only CrewSource can provide a color. PartCrew potentially could, but what color would it pick if multiple roles are crewing the same part?

Errr... surprise us?

RandomCommander

clojelo

I mean, that's two words, but I am in FULL AGREEMENT that this should be a thing. Maybe for the default decals, it's kept simple, like different hats.

Walt what color would it pick if multiple roles are crewing the same part?

If you want simplicity, turn the part into a color that has the most of one role, EG if a Sensor room has 3 redshirts and one specialist, it turns red, and if vice versa, it turns purple. In the case of a tie, the color is picked by the Role ID (going back to the example, if a sensor room has 2 of both redshirts and specialists, it would default to the redshirt color because that role is first).

Walt

clojelo One word, "role decals",

Really cool idea!

Jhaerik

Personally it all just sounds like a lot more effort than I'm willing to put into in. Maybe leave in default functionality and have a check box to swap to "advanced crew control"? Otherwise I personally would stick with an earlier version and just not update.

While I'm sure there are people that want to get super in-depth with this sort of stuff, I think those people might mostly be the vocal forum minority and the type that like to do contests and such. I don't think the 95% of the people that play this game casually really want to click through menus with a dozen options for each and every bunk.

Maybe I'm wrong though... but I just don't see it. Personally I'd much prefer just seeing some more legos to play with. 🙂

Nordwolf

Jhaerik Nothing changes for you if you don't want to delve into it. Also pretty sure the majority of dedicated cosmoteer players want this (and next patch) functionality.

Additionally crew impovements benefit everyone.

Walt

Jhaerik Personally it all just sounds like a lot more effort than I'm willing to put into in. Maybe leave in default functionality and have a check box to swap to "advanced crew control"? Otherwise I personally would stick with an earlier version and just not update.

You don't have to mess with the priorities if you don't want to. They are indeed for "power user" players who want to get really deep into their crew's behavior. But the default priorities should work fine for most players.

Jhaerik I don't think the 95% of the people that play this game casually really want to click through menus with a dozen options for each and every bunk.

To be clear, you do not (and cannot) assign priority options to every individual bunk. What you do is set up general "roles" (could be things like gunner, engineer, etc...), and then assign different bunks to different roles, so it's not nearly as bad as having to manually tweak the priorities of every single bunk, which would indeed be crazy. (And again, you don't even have to do that if you don't want to, you can just use the defaults.)

SpaceCat As it is now it is simply hard to predict what job a soul will go for next - when you have set up multiple squads/roles.
I also suspect that @Equalizer ran into inpredictability rather then a bug.

Agreed, and I think the next preview will make this way better. Wanting to make crew more predictable was the #1 reason I added the new priority system, so that's super important to me.

Was talking to Equalizer on Discord, I think I sorted out most of those issues for the next preview. In my limited testing I think it's now actually better than 0.14.15 at reducing the frequency with which crew walk across the ship.

SpaceCat Shields still get powered up very late.

By default, shields have the same priority as supplying ammo/power to weapons. Maybe it should be higher by default?

SpaceCat Crew still transports energy/ammo across the ship when starting with empty ships mainly because they go for the first powered source first - and not the nearest when it is unpowered.

Not really sure what you mean. Can you post a ship that has this problem?

Jhaerik

Nordwolf

I sort of already said that the dedicated players would like it. However like any game that's ever been released the casual players make up the majority of the player base.

Personally I'd just prefer a higher priority to the nearest systems, and leave it at that. Then again I don't even bother painting my ships. To me it just seems overkill to have a multi-tabbed scrolling window for each and every bunk, and don't much see the point of shirt colors.

I do understand that it might possibly free up resources to assign it manually, but I worry that this method would break how it works currently which works just fine for me. I mean unless some much harder enemies are added to the vanilla game I just don't much see a reason for it, other than adding more busy work.

Also unless every enemy in the game also uses this system it sort of seems like it would make an already fairly easy game, even easier.

SpaceCat

Jhaerik Don't panic!

There is no:

Jhaerik multi-tabbed scrolling window for each and every bunk

also:

Jhaerik like any game that's ever been released the casual players make up the majority of the player base.

Casual gaming is a relatively young term - some say it is a an euphemism for dumbed down ...

though:
I agree the game should be palyable for new players without going into priorities or deep crew management.

Jhaerik

Walt I'd say it should go to whichever is closest, shield or weapons. Or failing that... whichever module has a door from the crew bunk.

SpaceCat

Walt By default, shields have the same priority as supplying ammo/power to weapons. Maybe it should be higher by default?

maybe - will test this more - since now we can.

Walt Crew still transports energy/ammo across the ship when starting with empty ships mainly because they go for the first powered source first - and not the nearest when it is unpowered.

Not really sure what you mean. Can you post a ship that has this problem?

Pretty much every ship that is symmetrical & intercon - most noticable with missiles.

Crew seems to see that a source is ready and queue up for collecting "stuff" neglecting unpowered sources.
This is mostly the case when a completely unpowered ship has to "start up".

This pretty vessel has that problem when starting up from empty (watch the missile bays):

(hope imgur works with ship files - a pity the forums internal image attaching does no longer work.)

CursedPh4nt0m

Jhaerik Just a moment, what exactly is your definition of the term 'module' here? Crew can't go anywhere without doors, so....

Jhaerik whichever module has a door from the crew bunk.

Walt

SpaceCat Crew seems to see that a source is ready and queue up for collecting "stuff" neglecting unpowered sources.
This is mostly the case when a completely unpowered ship has to "start up".

I don't understand what you mean by "source is ready" and "unpowered sources"? What is a "source"?

Do you mean that a reactor/factory on the other side of the ship will happen to power up first, and so crew will go to that one to pick up power? Because that's definitely a problem, but it's always been a problem and isn't new to 0.15.0.

SpaceCat

Walt I don't understand what you mean by "source is ready" and "unpowered sources"? What is a "source"?

With source i mean a source of energy or ammo ie.: reactors, factories etc.
I will try to specify wich "source" i mean when i use the term "source" like "souce source ..."

As it is now (15.0 preview2) when a ammo/missile-factory is unpowered crew will immediately decide to take ammo from another "source" ie. factory or storage, even if the source is on the other side of the ship.
With reactors this works different because souls wait for a certain time until batteries are available again.
So maybe factories could still be available for jobs for a certain time when they run out of power (or before they started up initially) so crew could wait until it gets powered instead of pickign a job from another factory.
Perhaps it even could be timed with the distance of factories so that a far away factory is less desireable than a near but unpowered one + a check if the factory even has a connection to a power source would also help ofc.

It turned out that the "Dragon" ship i sent earlier is very good to demonstrate this matter - you will always see that missiles and ammo are transported across the ship just because some factory has run out of power for seconds.
(Most noticeable when starting up empty in MP.)

I'm aware that my theories about this are unfinished and raw ...

... checking 15.0 preview 2 in depht soon ...

Isolation

Brank Good to know im not the only one hoping for more freedom with the people.

Brank

Isolation
cough cough you mean, Freedom FOR he people