Corporation "foreman" and/or "supervisor".

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Arlentz
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Corporation "foreman" and/or "supervisor".

Post by Arlentz »

I don't know if this is possible, or if anyone else would be interested, but I'd love to see this in the game. You could choose one or the other, or both for that matter. :-)

What are they?
Well, it would be a corporation captain who is already employed by the corporation. This corporation captain would be similar to the captain you can add to your player made ships, the captain who can use your ship to carry out missions while you're not online. In this case though, your corporation foreman/supervisor would use your existing corporation captains/ships to carry out corporation missions whether you're online or not. In other words, when a corporation captain completed an assigned mission and returned to base, the corporation foreman/supervisor could assign that captain and their ship to another mission, thus earning your corporation and its captains more XP/credits.

Why do I keep saying foreman/supervisor?
Well, depending on what you wanted to do, you could make a corporation foreman. This would be a captain who only had control over the other captains who worked out of that particular corporation location. So, if I had corporation captains working out of both Session, in the Sphere, and also out of Darklight, in Anvil, I'd need to have a foreman to control the Session captains, and another foreman for the Darklight corporation captains. A supervisor could control all corporation captains, no matter which location they worked out of. As the dev, you could choose to just have a foreman in each corporation location, or to just have a single supervisor. If you wanted, you could require that a foreman reach a specific skill level as a foreman, and then that foreman could become a supervisor, thus allowing for the use of both, but I personally think it would be easier just to go with either the foreman or the supervisor.

How do you get one of these large and in charge captains?
My recommendation would be through research. I'd say that a corporation would have to be at a specific level to unlock the research, say level 4 or 5. Once the research line was unlocked, you could then research your foreman or supervisor, and for each level you researched, they could control one additional captain. The research point requirement might require a bit of saving to allow your captain in charge to command each additional captain, maybe the way it is when you add an additional captain to your corporation?

It's just an idea. :-)

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Bebeb
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Re: Corporation "foreman" and/or "supervisor".

Post by Bebeb »

/me brings his wet blanket

Interesting suggestion Arlentz.
On the surface it looks too overpowering (to me), one of the reasons the payouts for the jobs are so good is due to the time (and fuel) taken to be at the location the Corp is in the first place, looks to me like a set and forget type of thing where you never go to the Corp office again unless its to do research or change the Corp loadout.
In all things CE there is balance.
Not a fan sorry.
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Arlentz
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Re: Corporation "foreman" and/or "supervisor".

Post by Arlentz »

Thanks for posting your thoughts Bebeb. I honestly appreciate it, and, in fact, agree (I think?) with what you're saying.

I was thinking of something more along the lines of the malls. (That's as close as I can get to an example.) With your malls, sure, you set and forget, until you run out of stock, and, when that happens, you can leave your mall as long as you want, but it's not doing anything for you. You have to re-stock it. Ok, so I re-stock, which is great, but I have to keep obtaining stock to put into it. For that, I can use the GBM, or I can manufacture my own stock. Manufacturing my own stock requires resources. You know what I'm saying. It's the balance that you were talking about in Core Exiles.

You're 100% right about my idea being able to eat through any fuel reserves a player might have. That would have to be my responsibility to watch. If my fuel gets low now, I have to stop running corp missions because I want that fuel for something else. So now, I guess there would need to be a way to "demote" your foreman temporarily. LOL Essentially, I'm thinking of something like a check box to say whether the foreman is "on duty" or not. If he's on duty, then things are a bit more automated, and I'd better have the necessary fuel. If he's off duty, then things return to how they are now. (Hmmm, now we're talking even more dev work.) :-(

Also, I'd been thinking that our corp crew are living beings too. In other words, they need rest. Right now they get their rest/off-duty time when we're not there to assign them a mission. I'd say that my "foreman" couldn't work 24/7. Maybe for 8 or 9 hours each day the foreman was sleeping. In other words, off-duty/not working. I could still assign crew missions then, but the foreman wouldn't do it. Again though, we're getting into more complications.

Oh well, it was just a thought. Thanks again for the reply Bebeb. Although I was able to think of ways to address your concerns, at least those you mentioned, though I'm sure there are others I haven't thought of, it's looking to me now like my thought requires more dev work than even I think it's worth, just for the convenience of having your corp be able to do some work for you while you're doing work for your family. (Yeah, I assign missions before I leave for work, but I can't get on again till I get home, so I can't assign new missions once those are completed.) I love teaching, but sometimes it's inconvenient. hehe :-) Thanks again for reading my suggestion and for pointing out stuff I hadn't addressed. I honestly do appreciate it. :-)

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Darakhoranon
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Re: Corporation "foreman" and/or "supervisor".

Post by Darakhoranon »

I have to agree with Bebeb here. This does sound a bit "not CE" to me. ;-)

Yes, it can be annoying if you have to go back to your corp every couple hours to set new missions, but that is CE - most of the things you can do require at least some effort on your part. And we already have a "fire and forget" credit generator: your settlement (if it is set up "correctly).

But maybe there is an alternative... How about setting one of your captains up as the "vice CEO", meaning he is still drawing pay but NOT earning any income for you/manufacturing things/etc. but opening up a tab where you can add a number of corp missions (depending on your research) to be completed by each corp pilot. So you could e.g. assign two "additional" haulage missions to one of your captains, two mining ones to another and one combat mission to the third (assuming you have access to those missions in the first place, of course).
That way, you would be able to set up a (short) "mission list", but it would still require some effort on your part, quite a bit of research (i.e. time) to become really useful, and block one of your corp pilot slots (with the "vice CEO").
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Arlentz
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Re: Corporation "foreman" and/or "supervisor".

Post by Arlentz »

For me personally, that's an excellent alternative. I still get what I need, which is a way to keep my captain's busy while I'm stuck at work and have no way to jump online and do it myself. (I don't have a planning period, and lunch is just a half an hour, during which I'm inhaling my food while preparing my room for the next student/class. LOL) I can and do get on every morning to assign jobs to my corp crew, so assigning upcoming jobs to my Vice-CEO which will be passed out to the crew as they complete there current assignment is perfect for me. I don't even mind having to research for and hire a crew member who I will pay, but who will not him/herself earn my corporation any money. As I see it, he would be earning me credits over the long haul because he'd be assigning those tasks I would have assigned, if I'd just been available to do so. I like your modification better because you have to find and then spend credits to hire a specific type of crew member, one who won't be performing tasks himself, but assigning tasks that you, the owner, have put together for him. As I said, this version of my idea fully accomplishes what I wanted to accomplish, and I like the choices that a captain has to make before hiring this Vice-CEO, and the research that needs to be done. I think this does better meet the way CE tries to do things, and, since I wasn't trying to find an easy way around, I have no problem with that. :-)

What do the rest of you think? Is this something worth looking into? If I'm the only captain who would really find any use out of it, then I'd say probably not. LOL Any thoughts or suggestions to make it better?

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Re: Corporation "foreman" and/or "supervisor".

Post by falconner »

I love Darakhoranons idea,and it would be great if such a thing could be implemented
maybe with 3 missions max queue limit? or 1 extra to begin with,more with research or experience/level.
pikolinianita
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Re: Corporation "foreman" and/or "supervisor".

Post by pikolinianita »

Good suggestion. There is also broader picture, IMHO.

Let's assume there are quite few players who are logged in many times a day, let's call them "Leaders". Most of players are logged in once - twice per day - Let's call them "Peloton", and some, quite plenty I guess, who can log in once-twice a week - "Casuals".

For stuff like settlement - there is no difference. SRP/money are generated steady, so all groups can advance in almost same pace. With Things like Barges, where you can interact every hour, or with Corporation, where missions arefew hours - "Leaders" have great advantage over "Peloton", and even greater over "Casuals". Which means:
1) you code some parts of the game for few players only, like medium corporate offices.
2) or "Leaders" reach threshold, but you wait with coding until more players reach it.
Maybe, There should be a way that allow "Peloton" and "Casuals" to keep distance to "leaders". Kind of abovementioned "Foreman", who would add XP to Corporation/barge (other interactions too?), to unlock things (and not neccesery to add resources/items).

So If "leaders" got to lvl 8 in one year, there should be "corporation upgrade" that push corpo to lvl 8 in 1,5 years (if left unattended), and "free to play" upgrade which would do it in 2 years. Paying leaders would hit lvl 8 in, say, 10 months.

No idea how to make it work exactly :(, but I hope you get my (rough) idea.
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