officers with classes

[sebastian]

I hear. Alot of people say they ditxh the first officer first chance they get. how about making the game so that the different starting classes start with their own officers? explorer with the scout, pirate with the spy... yadda yadda

or perhaps a randomly selected officer.

just a thought

[slayernz]

Nah ... there's a certain satisfaction in being able to invite ole Turdlip to a meeting in the nearest airlock. If you got someone else at the start, it just wouldn't be the same.

In all ... okay, in some seriousness, you get the same first mate because he was your father's first mate and he's come along to help wipe your butt while you learn how to become more than a nobody in this galaxy. He's not there at your choosing and is actually kinda useful to the newbie player, if only to point and laugh at behind his back.

[oldalchemist]

For some reason, I never end up ditching Old Turdlip. Lately, I've just been adding a mechanic and political officer and sticking with that trio for the long haul.

Is the smuggler/scout officer actually any good for anything but exploration?

[that1guy]

I always thought he was useful for keeping morale up. Does he not do anything useful? And what does political officer do?

[absimiliard]

OldAlchy: You forgot, Cory added the "keep one contract's goods/people safe from searching bounty-hunters and military officers" to the Smuggler. Perhaps not a world shaking power, but very smugglery.

-abs

[Cory Trese]

Very smugglery indeed. I like that idea =)

First Mate needs to have more advice / tutorial styles to him. Needs work.

He does reduce fuel use, morale loss and mutinies. Bonus you really don't need if you are skilled at the game, but hopefully enough to make early game easier.

[absimiliard]

First Mate is useful to have even if you play on harder difficulties and pay lots of attention to things. Can't count the number of times I've been flying on morale on Insane. I strongly suspect I would lose a lot of my captains sooner if I just tossed him out the airlock at game start.

These days I keep him until I fill the other two slots. Only then do I dismiss him, and even then it's usually a case of "Ah, I finally found a $FOO officer, guess I'll toss Ole a big retirement party here in the Spice Hall and then head over to the Palace to recruit my new officer."

That said: He annoys the daylights out of me. Very few of my captains chose their three officer suite such that a First Mate is one of them. (The "Charlie's Angels" setup of Mechanic/Political/Spy is one of my favorite combinations, but I'm pretty big on Mechanic/Military/Alien-hunter too.)

-abs

{edit} Crud, did I mis-state Cory? I could've sworn you'd posted that the smuggler officer had been changed to do that. Was it just a "I'm thinking about it" instead? {/edit}

[that1guy]

I have the scout and he usually is pretty useful for exploring but one time it said 51 members of the crew killed by sophisticated trap by dead aliens (something like that). I then got a notice saying explorer officer saved crew... I had 4 crew remaining and couldn't help but think, "really who did he save". It was a lvl 4 hazard planet. (sigh)

[oldalchemist]

The spy is good for increasing the success of the Next Rumor button, right? Other than that?

[absimiliard]

Other than that?

She's hot?

(Okay, not seriously, I like the bonus to surveillance results as well, but mostly "She's hot")

-abs

{edit} I think she makes "Buy Rumor" free as well {/edit}

[Cory Trese]

If you lost 51 dudes on a level 4, there was a rumor. it may have appeared during repeat exploration attempts.

if you lost 51 and the scout saved someone ... it was the Captain. =)

--

I think the upcoming manual has a full list of the officer bonuses. I will investigate!

[slayernz]

I've definitely lost large percentages of crew (ie, above 90%) in a single explore, even though the planet was only a mere 4 hazard level. No rumor. Just some nasty trap.

Of course, I only had an explore skill of 3, but I'd expect that 74 out of 80 crew is still excessive for a level 4 planet.

[Cory Trese]

I guess the Captain must be like "Hey you gents, go explore over that cliff over there. Yeah, the one near the lava, exactly. No, you won't need your safety hats."

[that1guy]

In truth it was my fault. I underestimated the planet and my men paid the ultimate price. I remember it all to clearly. "there it is, the beast." "where? Behind the rabbit?" "it Is the rabbit" "pshhh... I thought you were serious." "I'm warning you, it's got huge fangs like... And it can jump really far... Look at its muscles." "Johnson go get it." "one rabbit stew coming right up............... Ahhhhhh" "that rabbit's dynamite" "i warned you, did you listen? Noooo." ............. If only we had listened oh the massacre... And don't even get me started on teddy bear valley.

In all seriousness though I think it's weird that you can get massacred on benign planets especially since I had an explorer officer and my explorer lvl was 15 or 16. Shouldn't the worst thing on those planets be gnats or bee stings. It's happened to me a few times (usually on repeat exploration missions). Does repeating explorations make it more likely to suffer casualties?

[slayernz]

I've been to teddy bear valley. It was a slaughter! There was stuffing everywhere and yet they kept coming. I'd prefer sending my crew into an alien trap any time over the horror of watching my crew getting smothered by wave after wave of soft squeaky bears.