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[BillyRueben]

So my big question is this:

Are we going to have Mount & Blade style officers, where they can be "disabled" in combat, but cannot be perma killed. These officers having a backstory and personality?

Or are we going to have something like the soldiers from XCOM, where they are randomly generated, you train them up, but a bad move causes them to die forever?

Personally, I'd prefer the perma death approach.

[xenoargh]

Perma-death for this title would be problematic. 

Let's be real here; no matter what buffs you put on the AI officers, sometimes the AI is going to turn its shields the wrong way and eat a bunch of Reapers at some point

In short, it'd make save-scumming by far the preferred method of serious play... just like X-COM.

[Bjørn_in_the_Sector]

Heh, too right, Xeno. I've had WAY too many battles lost by random suicidal AI...

[PCCL]

idk, I think it'd make iron mode the preferred method of "serious play"... just like X-COM

That's the thing about warfare, isn't it? People you care about sometimes die at some point

Whereas in SS (theoretically) officers die of some AI problem (or just from being in a hopeless battle), X-COM soldiers die of a particularly bad dice roll

Maybe, to alleviate that death chance to some extent. After an officer's ship blows up, there's a chance for him/her to escape outright (in a pod) and, if that didn't happen, he/she might still be alive so that if you win the battle, you can start a search for survivors in the battlefield

both survival chances can be adjusted for balance

[Doom101]

I'm with gunny on this one, i don't think permanently dieing officers would leave people to save-scum anymore than they already do, people who already do it will never change over to iron mode unless they're just doing it because they're new to the game. And those that already play iron mode only aren't likely to stop just because a new thing to keep track of appears.

also i love the idea of escape pods, and if that didn't work being able to search for survivors, this might also work for prisoners from enemy ships or crew from one of your ships that got lucky and got stuck between two bulkheads when the ship went. Trapped with only hours of air left and then a team of armored marines cut through the bulkhead and pull the survivors to the safety of a shuttle. That might make a good addon for the construction skill, say at lvl 5 or so due to the better design of your ship you get a % bonus chance to find living crew who survived the ship's initial destruction.

And possibly an addon to the crew training skill in leadership again at lvl 5 or 10 thanks to rigorous training the crew knows exactly where the escape pods are and how best to get to them, % bonus to number of sucessfully launched escape pods in the event of ship destruction.


Although one thing i'd like to add, if one of your officers doesn't get to a pod, and doesn't get found in the search for survivors ( if you choose to do that) that they don't always 100% have to die, maybe you missed them but a wandering traveller picks them up a few hours later, then that officer is randomly put back into the game in a similar state to when you initially found him but he remembers you, your fleet and any training they receive under you.

[Mavolio]

Having officers that never die sounds like a terrible idea. You will just have the same few because they have been with you for ages and have become super well trained. I hope mine die all the time so I can train up new guys with different skills so I can try out different stuff.

[TheHengeProphet]

Except that I would expect it takes as much time and effort to train your officers as it would to train yourself in skills.  They are "people", too, and having to retrain officers all the time would be devastating.

[VerifiedN]

An Officer would obviously have access to a priority escape route, being at more or less at the nerve centre of a ship. The chance to lose them should be significant, but not so far that it happens too often and makes improving them pointless. 15% loss chance? Of course modified by the traits of that officer; a highly aggressive captain would be a bit more likely to go down with the ship than a cautious one, for example.

[dmaiski]

Spoiler

[close]

can't I just have zee captain? Zee captain is prettymuch unkillable...

why not just have randome negative/neutral traits added to captains that die, like insanity, paranoia, and batshitcrazyawsomeness!!!
so you can have your epic captain that "died" a few times and spent a fair bit of time going koo koo in a escape pod

sorta lore friendly explanation:
http://romanticallyapocalyptic.com/162
http://romanticallyapocalyptic.com/165
http://romanticallyapocalyptic.com/166
cause you got a fashionable red scarf of evil

[Mavolio]

a highly aggressive captain would be a bit more likely to go down with the ship than a cautious one, for example.

Maybe the ship type can make a difference as well. A front line combat ship where the officer can do the most good has a higher chance of getting killed. But if you stick them in a long range missile boat or a carrier there might be a good chance they will live even if the fleet loses as they are so far back they can escape.

[miro]

I think it would be a mistake to make them unkillable. I think it would be at odds with the rest of the game's dystopian nature. Also, in regards to training them, wouldn't you not get to pick what skills they upgrade? I think I think it would be cool if they had certain aspects of their character changed depending on what kind of role they for filled in the fleet.

Another thing. If they were to die, the second in command would take over, not some greenie. This would mean losing an officer wouldn't mean the new guy started out with no idea what he was doing. Perhaps the crew level would decide how good he was at his new role.

Making the officers immortal would be a mistake. The one persistent thing in the universe, besides the player. I think Alex should avoid it.

[Jazwana]

+1 to all the reasons officers should be kill-able.

a highly aggressive captain would be a bit more likely to go down with the ship than a cautious one, for example.

Maybe the ship type can make a difference as well. A front line combat ship where the officer can do the most good has a higher chance of getting killed. But if you stick them in a long range missile boat or a carrier there might be a good chance they will live even if the fleet loses as they are so far back they can escape.

Maybe the manner in which the ship died could make a difference.   Logistical fail? - 99% survival, the engineering staff saw that coming.  Plinked by a MG during combat? - 50/50.   The staff puke's Condor ate a Reaper when already low? - <1% chance of living.  Some code to track how much extra damage was done on the killing blow (much like how shield overload duration is checked) to calculate survival chances.

[Mavolio]

Another thing. If they were to die, the second in command would take over, not some greenie. This would mean losing an officer wouldn't mean the new guy started out with no idea what he was doing. Perhaps the crew level would decide how good he was at his new role.

Second in command type thing would be a nice addition. Some thoughts i had on that were

• Second in command can be transferred to become a new commander
• Second in command are trained up by their commander
• Takes X amount of time to train them, so its not instant
• They get similar skills to the commander (for example commander has 10 in accuracy, 6 in speed and 4 in logistics. Then Second might get 6 in accuracy, 2 in speed and 3 in logistics)
• Second in command contributes some or all of their skill points to the commanders, so they lose a small amount of total points till they get a new second trained up (not sure about this might be too complex)
• Second in command has a separate dice roll for survival when commander dies

It might be too complicated to keep track of though if you have lots of officers. Depends how complex the rest of the game is, you dont want to spend all your time in menus messing abound with officers when there are ships to PEW PEW!! at 

[Dex]

^this

i like this.

Your officers can die, they are replaced by their second, these new officers have identical stats to original though at a minus 2 or 3 or whatever, these stats are regnerated to original officers levels after a period of time/after payment of an xp debt.

This means you have to be careful else you may find all of your fleets power insufficient in a crisis, but also means that you dont lose 10 hours play time if your officers flagship decides to burn drive into a floating hulk or whatever.

[ArkAngel]

I personally like the idea of being able to casting my officers into space for failing in a  battle. not to mention it would inspire you to be a bit more cautious with your ships, almost like X-com with your soldiers. I suppose firing them would work just as well though.