Character stats

[Gliese852]

Аt the moment, any character has 5 basic parameters:

• luck
• intelligence
• charisma
• notoriety
• lawfulness

It is almost not used in the game, but still the choice of these 5 parameters seemed strange to me and we talked about it in the chat:

11:48 <Gliese852> impaktor: do you know what determines the choice of these 5 character parameters (luck, intelligence, charisma, notoriety, lawfulness)
11:49 <sturnclaw> IIRC they're set to default (maximum?) values for the player and generally not used except in one place (the "repair ship" button)
11:49 <sturnclaw> *generally not used for crew members except in one place
11:50 <Gliese852> sturnclaw: I think it's something unfinished
11:51 <Gliese852> I'm interested, for example, where is the kindness?
11:53 <Gliese852> Are these 5 parameters the most representative of the character? (I want to say that we should not increase their number, maybe we should change some?)
...
13:16 <impaktor> Question is: what skills can be made relevant in the current game? Charisma = can get better missions, with lower reputation?
13:17 <Gliese852> impaktor: yes, maybe better bargain
13:18 <Gliese852> more money for the mission, cheaper crew
...
16:43 <Gliese852> impaktor: Here are my top 5 character traits: strength, perseverance, intelligence, honesty, empathy. What do you think?
16:48 <impaktor> If you can think of a way to hook them into the game, go for it.
16:49 <impaktor> If we want traits that are unused, just as place holders, for what's to come, the 4 usual ones are ST, DX, IQ, and ... HT
...
11:46 <sturnclaw> Of the stats we have right now: notoriety is a measure of reputation not intrinsic physical or mental attributes (remove); lawfulness is only really useful if the player is a pirate or some other evildoer and there is appropriate gameplay to support that (keep); luck is completely redundant given that we're already rolling dice (burn with fire) and intelligence should probably become knowledge. Rolling a simple stat+skill check (of any sort whether GURPS specific or homebrew) should suffice for NPC actions.
11:51 <sturnclaw> Gliese852: of your list of character attributes, I'd generalize it to Strength, Vitality, Knowledge, Lawfulness, Charisma, and I'm very iffy about Strength as it's too broadly generic (every action taken could be a Strength check / it overlaps with Vitality too much)
11:53 <sturnclaw> Intelligence generally maps to the wrong thing - Knowledge encompasses both theoretical learning and wisdom or "street smarts", instinctual knowledge and reasoning gained from experience
11:53 <impaktor> Sounds good to me. A single variable "reputation" doesn't say if it's good or bad, but I guess lawlessness captures that.
11:53 <sturnclaw> Same with honesty -> Lawfulness (more accurately, Morality, but it's less clear and can have different definitions to different people)
11:54 <impaktor> At the moment, I don't see any place where strength would be used in pioneer.
11:54 <sturnclaw> impaktor: reputation / notoriety would most likely be a signed number, high positive values mean you're known for good deeds and high negative values means you're known for bad deeds
11:55 <sturnclaw> Lawfulness isn't a derived stat - it controls things more like whether the crew member would try to skim some extra pay on the side, or rat you out for piracy if you try to dock in a lawful system
11:56 <sturnclaw> rep/notoriety would be the traditional "lawless / goody two shoes" divide, influenced at character creation from lawfulness and a random dice roll and then modified over time from actions in the crew and a limited impact from the player's actions
12:00 <sturnclaw> of the five stats I mentioned, they would be "intrinsic" to the character and not easily modified (if at all) - skills could be modified by actions taken (learning/atrophy/damage) during the crew member's tenure, and "reputation" stats (e.g. Reputation, number of kills, rating etc.) would be controlled the most by the character's "history"/"event log" during generation and as an active crew member

In total, there is a proposal to make the following basic parameters:

• strength
• vitality
• knowledge
• lawfulness
• charisma

It is very interesting to hear additional opinions on this matter.

[clausimu]

Looking at this from a crew and emergent game play standpoint I can easily see the value in several of these parameters.

lawfulness - may become critical for crew response to certain actions the player does or places they visit

knowledge and charisma - can be implemented in places where crew is helping the player (get missions, be smarter about choices, get info etc.)

strength and vitality - not sure where to use at the moment?

reputation/notoriety - would go very well together with lawfulness and can get the player into trouble if they get into places where a crew member is known for bad deeds?

I'm actually dabbling with extending the crew module right now to extend the "life aboard the ship" gameplay. These parameters could come in handy there, although I may have to add a few "custom" ones for this purpose.. I was thinking of using the already implemented playerRelationship attribute of each crew member as a kind of "happiness" level. If this drops to very low levels crew will start to desert the player at the next station and it will also become hard to hire new crew.

playerRelationship would be impacted by simple "thoughts" that get added to a stack. Things like a very lawful crew member getting upset about trading on the black market, the ship hull integrity (=ship condition) being low, months in space (good or bad, depending on desire to explore), being involved in battles (good or bad, depending on thrill seeking), etc. The four most recent thoughts could be shown in the crew details window.

Anyway, I don't want to hijack this thread - but just wanted to give an example where some of the proposed stats would be very useful.

[impaktor]

@clausimu Sounds like an interesting direction. I'll just throw out my thought, that the player need to some how understand how the actions they take affect the crew. Maybe some progressbars show crew standing (or that's exposing too much of the underlying interface?), or crew has a mood towards you: "Loyal" / "Fatigued" "Anoyed" "Troubled", etc.

Also, I'm very sketchy on exactly what the current crew does (except being dead meat for taking off ships with min crew requirement), so feel free to do a short summary of current mechanics in the future (Draft?) PR.

[clausimu]

I'm currently trying to distill my ideas and tests down to the smallest useful and functional unit. That way it is easier to get agreement from all parties, easier to approve the PR and less danger of "death during approval process".

@impaktor - I agree. Exposing this to the player is actually crucial to provide motivation in dealing with the crew. I was going as far as showing the "happiness" level in a progress bar. But let me get a rough version ready for a "WIP" PR and then it's easier to shape the direction of the project.