Characters

Characters are the primary means that the player uses to enact change or carry out their desires within the game world. There are characters that the player has direct control over and those that they do not. The properties of a character are defined below.

Character Types

• Station Employed

  • Commander - This is the executive officer on the space station and on who the burden falls to ensure the successful operations of it and all it's facilities (This character is the embodiment of the player character).

  • Station Officers - These characters help the commander run the station. They staff specialized workstations that help to automate many of the systems or give greater coverage for station tasks.

  • Station Crew - These are the least skilled within the organizational hierarchy and are responsible for the broadest number of individual tasks.

    • Maintenance - Insure the proper functioning of all non-specialist hardware.

    • Housekeeping - Does standard janitorial work for both the station at large as well as all standard plots.

  • Security - The station will need some group to maintain the peace and ensure that unauthorized individuals do not wander into areas that they shouldn't.

    • Guard - Make sure people do not enter a level or plot without authorization.

  • Specialist - When the player need someone smart enough to run the technical equipment that the station has come to rely on, these are the people to recruit.

    • Mechanic - Staff ship hangars and are responsible for maintenance, refueling and organizing the on-boarding and offloading of contents.

    • Medical - Treat wounded and sick station inhabitants often utilizing sophisticated, expensive, equipment that require specialized knowledge to operate and maintain.

  • Fleet Crew - In order for the station to extend it's reach, ships must be dispatched to distant areas but in order for them to function they need a crew.

  • Fleet Officers - The executive officers of the stations fleet.

• Station Guests

  • Traveler - These characters have many different reasons for visiting the station but in order to keep them from filling up the Promenade and make a few credits in the process.

Character Statistics and Attributes

All characters will have statistics which denote their interaction with others and their environment and attributes which denote key elements about the characters personality and preferences. With the combination of these two data points a wide range of personalities can be expressed.

Statistics represent world interactions and are thus single data elements that are either a numerical count or are a time-stamp denoting when an event occurred

Example Statistics:

• Has a home
• Has eaten in the last 12 hours
• Last cooked meal
• Last personal grooming

Attributes, on the other hand, are sliding scales that represent two polar opposites. These values, when taken as a whole, can describe the character's personality. When coupled with character statistics it's possible to numerically derive potential responses to in game situations and conditions.

Examples of Attributes:

• Hardworking/Slacker
• Empathic/Callous
• Dependent/Independent
• Altruistic/Selfish

Station Officers/Crew

A set amount of crew quarters are immediately available when a player starts the game. These crew quarters allow the station commander to start to recruit and utilize human resources for given station tasks. In the event that the number of required crew exceed this baseline, then additional plots can be used to extend the number of crew available.

Station crew are either recruited with a set of base skills or they are trained for a given task.

Recruiting crew members are requested from the Galactic Employment Treasury. Once the player GETs a new recruit they will be sent to the station via the warp network. This transit is not instantaneous and will require time for request to be fulfilled. Recruit requests can be more quickly expedited by spending credits.

Station officers/crew that are assigned to ships are changed into Ship Officers/Crew while any ship crew that are removed from ship assignment revert back to their station equivalent. This can be problematic if the number of station crew exceeds that which the station can support. In this event, the excess crew is considered "homeless" and will attempt to find sleeping and grooming accommodations within the public spaces of the station, however, their morale will drop quickly and will be prone to leave station in pursuit of better opportunities elsewhere.

Special Characters

As the name implies there are unique characters that have expanded interactivity within the game world. Attracting these special characters will open up new services and objectives while also providing a means of establishing character development via the player's influence within their lives.

Prototypical special characters include:

• Station First/Executive Officer
• Bar Owner/Operator
• Chief Specialist
• Chief of Security
• Fleet Captains
• Notable Socialites
• Nefarious Agents