Re: NPCs
Posted: Mon Apr 01, 2013 8:34 am
I like the idea of finding a primitive village of NPCs on a planet, like you would in normal MC with squidward village (except they could be normal MC people, four-armed Martians, floating squirds, dwarves, or some other alien), and building it up from nothing.
When you start the game, a box pops up and says: "your ship has crashed on an uncharted planet, you are the sole survivor." Then you would start the way you would normally start a Minecraft game; gathering resources and exploring.
Before too long, you'll find a village populated with primitive savages that you can exploit for cheap labor; after you've won them over, or course. The villagers would have the same growth mechanics as the original squidwards and you need to build dwellings for them to grow their population. After you've built a few new homes, their numbers begin to expand.
When their population has reached a certain number, say 25, you can challenge their chief, kill him, and become the leader of the village. When this is accomplished, you can then begin assigning simple tasks to the villagers; lumberjack, miner, hunter, and farmer. You assign them tasks by giving them the tools they need for the job (an axe for a lumberjack, pickaxe and a stack of torches for the miner, spear for the hunter, and a hoe and a stack of seeds for the farmer.
After the population has reached another hurdle, say 100, you can assign them more complicated tasks like building simple structures (villager houses, walls, and roads), soldier, etc.
When you've built a city of 300(?) NPCs, you can begin training NPCs to be used on your ships like engineers, gunners, comms officers, and so on. Eventually producing a surplus of workers so you can hire them out to other players for a profit.
Or, you could just skip all this, find some other player's city, and hire their crews.
EDIT: This would be a second waves release. Allowing the player to get to space quickly, giving him a comfy economic base to fall back on when his ship is destroyed, and adding another element to the game (a place to call home, cheap labor, something to defend if he wishes, etc.).
I think for the first release of the game, we should insert a trade station in orbit of each new server and populate it with NPCs to trade with and hire. That would solve the problem of stumbling on a futuristic city in the middle of a jungle. Or, come to think of it, colonies might work too.
When you start the game, a box pops up and says: "your ship has crashed on an uncharted planet, you are the sole survivor." Then you would start the way you would normally start a Minecraft game; gathering resources and exploring.
Before too long, you'll find a village populated with primitive savages that you can exploit for cheap labor; after you've won them over, or course. The villagers would have the same growth mechanics as the original squidwards and you need to build dwellings for them to grow their population. After you've built a few new homes, their numbers begin to expand.
When their population has reached a certain number, say 25, you can challenge their chief, kill him, and become the leader of the village. When this is accomplished, you can then begin assigning simple tasks to the villagers; lumberjack, miner, hunter, and farmer. You assign them tasks by giving them the tools they need for the job (an axe for a lumberjack, pickaxe and a stack of torches for the miner, spear for the hunter, and a hoe and a stack of seeds for the farmer.
After the population has reached another hurdle, say 100, you can assign them more complicated tasks like building simple structures (villager houses, walls, and roads), soldier, etc.
When you've built a city of 300(?) NPCs, you can begin training NPCs to be used on your ships like engineers, gunners, comms officers, and so on. Eventually producing a surplus of workers so you can hire them out to other players for a profit.
Or, you could just skip all this, find some other player's city, and hire their crews.
EDIT: This would be a second waves release. Allowing the player to get to space quickly, giving him a comfy economic base to fall back on when his ship is destroyed, and adding another element to the game (a place to call home, cheap labor, something to defend if he wishes, etc.).
I think for the first release of the game, we should insert a trade station in orbit of each new server and populate it with NPCs to trade with and hire. That would solve the problem of stumbling on a futuristic city in the middle of a jungle. Or, come to think of it, colonies might work too.