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[Ad Astra]

How's it going fellas? I was thinking about the tedium of hyperspace travel lately (every time I get sent to a corner of the map), and came up with a possible way to make it a little more entertaining.
Just like how AC4 had sea shanties to make travel more interesting, the game could add some form of chat you can read where your crew makes random comments and banter. This would make you feel you're on the ship more and serve as an opportunity to add more light hearted interactions between people of the sector (like the Ludd cyborg, or the space station ghosts).

I feel like campaign map feels a little "dead" when travelling, and doing this would serve as an entertainment while not needing the implementation of a complex mechanic.

If something like this doesn't fit with the vision of what basegame should feel like, would this be interesting as a mod? (kind of like the campaign version of combat chatter I guess).

An idea to get a substantial amount of chatter, so it doesn't repeat all the time is to have the community come up with interesting lore friendly quotes (they could scratch the fourth wall from time to time for comedic effect), and any and all the acceptable ones could be collected into the repertoire you'd read as you fly around.

What do you think? Would it be way too out of place? Would it ruin the solemn atmospheric experience of deep space travel? Would "What do you do with a drugged up spacer" not be a hit? Naah, there's no way it wouldn't be a hit.

[JUDGE! slowpersun]

First, there is a mod out there that adds crew radio chatter during battle (can't remember name), so maybe possible to adapt that to campaign map.

That being said, beyond sea shanties, honestly should just have some random crew events in general.  Like attempted mutinies if you run out of money way way out on the edge of the sector and don't pay the officers/crew for a few months (although perhaps such changes should wait until after the save story point debacle shakes out).  Otherwise only thing that happens are ships being damaged and/or destroyed with crew  being lost when you are hard up for supplies.  Or maybe two random officers want to get married and you have to decide yes/no (regardless of gender identity/roles etc., better to avoid that can of worms).  Maybe also you choose location (like you get a different bonuses/maluses if you choose to do it in space vs on a personal colony vs on an uninhabited planet)...  You get the idea.

But, yeah, only other thing that seems to happen on the campaign map are distress signals and random ass derelicts (not that random, never seen a capital ship derelict, and derelicts never turn out to contain desperate marines that steal one of your ships).

Finally, having little random chatter bubbles pop up from individual ships in the fleet if way zoomed in would be cool, though only if way zoomed in.  Plus different chatter based on what is nearby (like screams and freaking out if in quasar or over suns, but awe if seeing a binary system, relief upon getting back to port after a long trip, minimal/no chatter or morse code if going dark).  Seems like it would just be annoying if such chatter was popping up when way zoomed out and trying to avoid some interdiction patrol...

[Ad Astra]

Yeah, I talked about that mod, it's Combat Chatter by Histidine.

The chatter could also be assumed as normal conversations inside your flagship, were "you" are in basically, so it wouldn't even be ship to ship theoretically. So even when stealthing there would be no problem with making noise since it wouldn't generate signal of any kind. If these were submarines, which involve acoustic detection, then being silent would make sense, but out in space people could easily be singing karaoke or having a disco party while running a stealth mission.

More events would of course be nicer, but that would take some more substantial amounts of work, so the idea of this would be a little something to add flavor while being lightweight dev time wise.

[JUDGE! slowpersun]

True, said hypothetical chatter could only be on the ship you're commanding, I had just assumed it would include orders to officers on other ships (and crew in general).  After all, how else would I be able to say

"DAMN THE TORPEDOES GRIDLEY, FULL SPEED AHEAD!!!"

Although would be pretty legit to also have some "This is the captain" announcements.

[Sandor057]

Quite a good idea. I don't know whether everyone would welcome "overworld" chatter as part of the base game, but it would definitely be a welcome mod.

I am also using Histidine's Combat Chatter mod, and it provides some useful info at times, regarding ships running out of missiles, or getting overloaded, which sometimes help in giving commands to save said ships just in time, or change the formation a bit, so that they get better cover. Some similar responses or comments would be nice from, say, the nav officer, saying, that "Fleet X is pursuing us", or "Pirates are maintaining following distance", or something along those lines. Also terrain could affect the frequency of chatter. So while just travelling, you could get idle chatter between ships or just the crew of your flagship, but entering an asteroid field could prompt related orders, preparing the crew to brace for impact. Going dark could result in radio silence, etc.

All in all, sounds like good stuff. Space shanties would also be awesome, though implementing them is another matter entirely. Reading chatter is one thing, reading a song however is not necessarily much fun. The only idea that comes to mind (short of replacing the game's music) is to make a few second recordings of songs, then play them when certain chatter messages come up, the same way a sound effect is played when an expedition comes to one of your colonies, or you complete a mission.

[Ad Astra]

Yeah lol, I was mostly joking about the shanties, fishing for some funny comments if someone comes up with a good space adapted shanty 

Context comments would be cool, probably quite a bit more work but certainly immersive.

[JUDGE! slowpersun]

Yeah lol, I was mostly joking about the shanties, fishing for some funny comments if someone comes up with a good space adapted shanty 

Context comments would be cool, probably quite a bit more work but certainly immersive.

What do you do with a drunken sailor?  Shanghai him!