Stuff that's been hanging at the back of Wyrm's head over the last few weeks.

Gameplay has 2 targets:

Fun to play - eg what FTL does well and engineering/coms in artemis does REALLY badly

Fun to roleplay/interact with other players - what Artemis is trying to do well

These largely comply with during action and during downtime.

Personal objectives will motivate people to behave away from their normal behaviour and can be applied to people regardless of their role. Personal objectives should encourage consistant behaviour. You shouldn't be the nicest guy, always friendly and helpful 99% of the time and then for the sake of your objective demand that Cutey Lane IV, last home of the cutieponies, be nuked from orbit. A personality needs to be shaped - and every decision should be made with that personality in mind. Examples:

• Cruel/Kind - How far you're comfortable helping/hurting people generally
• Greedy/selfless - A scale of who's wellbeing matters (you, you+crew, crew, needs of the many, friends, love interests, career, money, reputation)
• Friends before foes - you'd sacrifice entire planets for your fellow crew members
• Loyalty - how pissed off are you willing to be before you can't take it anymore
• Ambition - desire to rise up the ranks
• Past life - Someone killed your best friend and you're after closure/revenge. You killed someone else's friend and you're after forgiveness. Mainly an opportunity to inject mistrust and suspicion to the PCs since your friend could've been killed by NPC, but neither of you know it (the killer has killed a lot of people, he doesn't know if he killed someone's parents specifically or not and initially he won't know that the other guy is hunting him...)
• Traitor - Only minor interference (smuggling/leaking intel, hampering sub systems)

I'd like to see the (role playing) gameplay pan out as the captain trying to do his best and then balancing the various factions of his crew, and if he fails to appease them sufficiently then they get "mutiny tokens" which they can use to do stuff the captain doesn't really want done (ignoring orders, sabotage, setting up illegal boxing ring, smuggling a cat on board, playing pranks on hated officers, etc). The captain to my mind should have no controls more than a nested chat wheel (orders -> pilot -> "RAMMING SPEED", warnings -> "Brace for impact!", communications -> Open channel -> Demand surrender, etc) and should largely involve providing strategic direction and helping out:

• Direction ** Go here/Shoot this/Power to that ** Chose a side in conflicts ** Communicating with NPCs: *** accept surrender *** adjudicate dispute (ie pick a side in an argument and then bully/persuade/bribe/fight to get the result you wanted) *** threaten *** bribe *** ask permission to trade/board/land/medical assistance *** trade (allies/maps of local areas/upgrades/repairs/extra crew/ammo/weapon upgrades)
• Helping out ** Brace for impact: everyone has a warning and can choose to brace for impact (pauses what they're doing, reduces damage to their section) ** Prepare to be boarded: Used to let security/engineering get a headstart on setting up troops/traps in the right places ** Evasive maneuvers: Pilot gains boost to dodge chance ** Red alert: red lighting on everything, massive penalties if you don't have it on while fighting/doing something dangerous

For the NPC interaction I'd like to borrow the "freeze time" mechanic from space hulk. Basically you had a slow filling meter of Freeze Time and when clicked the game would pause, but you could still issue orders, thus when shit hits the fan and genestealers be all up in your grill you could issue a load of orders in a short real time, but if it ran out you were boned as real time resumes. I think having a timer inherent on every conversation could be used to see if a captain is making quick, decisive decisions. If you fail to respond to a hail in time NPCs could decide to flee/attack/increase prices depending on species, and Also you should most certainly have a reputation which dictates how:

• easy to scam
• forgiving
• bloodthirsty
• merciful
• trustworthy
• dangerous you are as a captain/ship, and this is what the captain is shaping with every decision they make. If there are no survivors it shouldn't count though, and escape pods should also be targettable...

Role wise:

• Captain
• Engineering ** Idling: Some variation on pipedream/spacechem/graph theory to distribute power to other systems (autosave any local optimums for convenience) ** Actioning: hack enemy/defend against hacks, ie change the blueprints and try and keep stuff working ** Actioning: sentry guns, drones, traps ** Actioning: damage control
• Pilot ** Idling: Drives the ship (warp/hyperspace scale) ** Actioning: Drives the ship (realspace scale)
• Tactical
• Actioning: dakkadakkadakka
• Morale/Trader/Spec ops ** Trading, scouting local systems, infiltrate the enemy. Lots of downtime to plot/scheme
• Security - Manages passengers/prisoners ** Actioning: Boarding actions ** Actioning: Torpedo loading ** Idling: Keeping an eye on prisoners, investigating/spying on (N)PCs
• Psychic (balance will be hard...) ** Idling: Investigate people ** Actioning: Illusions, mind control sabotauge