[Suggestion] Automatic crew health management

General discussion about the game.
Ighalli
Posts: 5
Joined: Tue Jun 19, 2012 1:47 am

[Suggestion] Automatic crew health management

Postby Ighalli » Wed Jun 27, 2012 1:27 am

I'm loving the game so far but it seems like the most annoying part, running your injured crew around, could easily be automated. I am imagining a slider in the ship->crew tab where you can set a health threshold where your crew should stop what they're doing and go to the medbay immediately unless it's damaged, on fire, full of invaders, or other unsafe situations. If they can't go, a health warning should sound, possibly depending on if your medbay is currently powered. Also on the slider would be how much health they should heal up to before going back to the room they automatically left. Sensible defaults might be 40% health = go to medbay and at 100% health move back to where you were. You could also add a check box for "automatic safe healing" that would cause them to go to the medbay if they were at less than 100% and the ship is in no danger. This system would be especially nice for your raiders: when they come back badly injured they automatically run to get healed and then report back to the transporter room ASAP. If you didn't want your crew to run around you could just set the "go to medbay" to 0% and they'd never leave their station, so this system would be completely optional. It seems pointlessly irritating to have to run your little guys around when it's a fairly brainless activity (when you're on your own ship).

Keep up the awesome work!
Snake Plissken
Posts: 104
Joined: Fri Apr 20, 2012 5:58 pm

Re: [Suggestion] Automatic crew health management

Postby Snake Plissken » Wed Jun 27, 2012 2:01 am

Love it
aepurniet
Posts: 8
Joined: Tue Jun 19, 2012 8:54 pm

Re: [Suggestion] Automatic crew health management

Postby aepurniet » Wed Jun 27, 2012 4:30 am

if you are gonna automate health managment, every one should just be healed upon jump (assuming no fires / breaches / all systems are up). adding new UI elements for something like this is a major design NO-NO.

imagine one of your crew members automatically walking through a fire and a oxygen-less breached room just to 'heal'. when the medbay is down. and he is a pilot. and the enemy is about to launch 4 missiles. there is something to be said for players calling the shots. i dont think the AI should move anyone, and the UI should not get complicated for non essential functions.

i do agree though it is tedious to heal before every jump, and sometimes i dont bother if they have just a scratch.
emlazz
Posts: 13
Joined: Sat Jun 16, 2012 3:54 am

Re: [Suggestion] Automatic crew health management

Postby emlazz » Thu Jun 28, 2012 3:37 pm

Disagree. Automating meaningful pieces of crew management is both 1: likely to get in the way, 2: automating away the game experience. I like managing my crew; that's why I play this game.

No thanks!
Luringen
Posts: 18
Joined: Sat Jun 16, 2012 3:54 pm

Re: [Suggestion] Automatic crew health management

Postby Luringen » Thu Jun 28, 2012 4:25 pm

The micromanaging of crew health doesn't take that much time to be worth additional UI elements, and I would never trust the AI to handle something as important as crew. Especially when they could be run through fires/no air/incoming missiles-lasers-bombs-whatever.
Overall, I'm voting no to this one, but it was a nice idea anyways.
patrickthomson
Posts: 6
Joined: Wed Jun 20, 2012 9:13 pm

Re: [Suggestion] Automatic crew health management

Postby patrickthomson » Thu Jun 28, 2012 4:44 pm

I disagree with the healing on jump - even when the ship gets to "safe" status, doing damage management is a big part of that. Some of my most hilarious deaths have been jumping blind out of a losing battle, and risking it to go forward to an unexplored sector ... right into pirates.
Ighalli
Posts: 5
Joined: Tue Jun 19, 2012 1:47 am

Re: [Suggestion] Automatic crew health management

Postby Ighalli » Thu Jun 28, 2012 9:11 pm

I guess I'm in the minority here, although I don't agree with the reasons people seem to dislike it. As far as wandering through fires and such, I'm not suggesting that they do things in the most stupid way imaginable (walk straight to med bay no matter what). Finding a safe path is a trivial problem for a game that already has path finding. Instead of a slider, you could just add a checkbox to the each of the crew so that the pilot doesn't automatically manage his health but your boarding crew does. Just set the default so that no one automatically moves and you make everyone who doesn't trust the AI to handle this happy.

As to automating away the game, they put in buttons to repeatedly shoot the guns when they're ready. The game doesn't make you frantically click around to recharge the shields. I don't see why *any* excessive micromanagement is a good thing from a game perspective. You can pause and issue orders, so it's not even a matter of being limited by your skill or reaction as a game mechanic.

Automatic healing at jump if everything is safe (no fires, vacuums, breaches, etc.) should definitely be added in any case. Patrickthomson, no one suggested automatic healing when you're trying to escape fights or getting burned by supernovae. Aepurniet specifically said "assuming no fires / breaches / all systems are up."
Luringen
Posts: 18
Joined: Sat Jun 16, 2012 3:54 pm

Re: [Suggestion] Automatic crew health management

Postby Luringen » Fri Jun 29, 2012 12:20 pm

Ighalli wrote:I guess I'm in the minority here, although I don't agree with the reasons people seem to dislike it. As far as wandering through fires and such, I'm not suggesting that they do things in the most stupid way imaginable (walk straight to med bay no matter what). Finding a safe path is a trivial problem for a game that already has path finding. Instead of a slider, you could just add a checkbox to the each of the crew so that the pilot doesn't automatically manage his health but your boarding crew does. Just set the default so that no one automatically moves and you make everyone who doesn't trust the AI to handle this happy.

As to automating away the game, they put in buttons to repeatedly shoot the guns when they're ready. The game doesn't make you frantically click around to recharge the shields. I don't see why *any* excessive micromanagement is a good thing from a game perspective. You can pause and issue orders, so it's not even a matter of being limited by your skill or reaction as a game mechanic.

Automatic healing at jump if everything is safe (no fires, vacuums, breaches, etc.) should definitely be added in any case. Patrickthomson, no one suggested automatic healing when you're trying to escape fights or getting burned by supernovae. Aepurniet specifically said "assuming no fires / breaches / all systems are up."


If automatic healing at safe jump is implemented, so should insta-charge cloak (which I have suggested before). I'm not to happy about there being checkboxes next to all my crew though, and really, most of the time I don't want my crew (with health at <20%) to run to the sickbay. Sometimes it's OK, most of the times I need them at their posts to reduce weapon charge time, shields charge time, or actually give me my ~45% dodge chance from engines or piloting. The excess crew who do not man stations are not usually targeted anyways, unless they are helping with repairs (in which case they should DEFINITLY not run away).

TL;DR: If crew is hurt, they are probably repairing a vital system and should not run, manning a system where the ship is f**** if it goes down (like shields, weps, piloting), or in a crew vs crew fight (where micromanaging is the key to success). No thanks.
rawls
Posts: 13
Joined: Tue May 22, 2012 4:50 pm

Re: [Suggestion] Automatic crew health management

Postby rawls » Fri Jun 29, 2012 1:48 pm

Ighalli wrote:Automatic healing at jump if everything is safe (no fires, vacuums, breaches, etc.) should definitely be added in any case. Patrickthomson, no one suggested automatic healing when you're trying to escape fights or getting burned by supernovae. Aepurniet specifically said "assuming no fires / breaches / all systems are up."


It would prevent the player from making mistakes like not healing the crew and then ending up in a very tense situation after the jump. Making mistakes is half the fun. Thus I think automatization of crew management should not be implemented at all.
AJTilley
Posts: 37
Joined: Fri Apr 20, 2012 1:02 pm

Re: [Suggestion] Automatic crew health management

Postby AJTilley » Fri Jun 29, 2012 2:27 pm

automatic healing at jump, is in the same cateogory as automatic repair at jump when in a safe area. And I imagine the team will have the same opinion on it and that is that they wont offer it.

Ultimately part of the game is getting to the end of an event and thinking do i want to spend a tedious minute healing my crew and repairing a system or do i want to take a risk and jump into the next sector.. that is part of this game that they wont want to remove, so for that reason i find it unlikely it will be put in and i do believe it will take something away from the game.

As for a setting for people to move automaticaly to the medi bay if they get to a certain health level, then i think its a good idea. But I think it should have some severe limitations. Ie. no pathfinding (at the moment if you click on a room to walk to your people go the quickest route no matter what they encounter.. the auto walk to medibay should be done the same way. If you dont want them to walk through fire, you then have to micro manage. But in some situations e.g. when 4 scientists appear on your ship, tuirning this one would be a life saver. etc.

Ultimately it needs to be set so that it will always be better for a player to micromanage this, but it gives the options for people not to if they want to take the risk knowing that their crew could walk into rooms they shouldnt.