I think that would work for positions if I combine something like those several scores to determine a character type and then take dialog from there... maybe.

Trek Correction: Paris isn't the "rookie" in Voyager. It's Harry Kim.

I would want the scores completely hidden, but the profile ideally would expand as time goes on and a writer would jsut have to add what gets added.

What I'm thinking is something like you have each character has a traits, division, and ship position...

Then within the division there are archtypes based on possible character traits levels to establish the current personality.

Generally the non senior crew won't say anything so you just have to relate what a given position would say based on that personality and division.

However, if a regular crewman is there might use a given personality type to generate a random chance of something extra.

I don't have any idea how easy or hard this level of choice would be, especially when you start to map to the player choices mattering... There may be better options than the one the player choose for each chapter, but i want the general flow to be fairly unaltered as well. Not sure how easy that will be.

As far as hand writing things for those that actually wouldn't be that hard as it just requires a blurb for each mission that a character would get in their profile based on their position and activity... also might have the player write some of that to so that they remember ^.^

I don't mean to be rude, but it sounds to me like you don't really get the concept.

No offense taken, though I think it would be helpful if you would explain the concept better... just pointing at movies is not a concept, its an inspiration for sure, but how you want to transfer that "abstract feeling" to a game still hasn't been explained completly...

Well, reading all of the thread gives me a better idea what you want achieve...

It is easy to write about creating 1000 characters, but sitting down and actually creating 1000 unique characters is A LOT of work, and when you get over a dozen or maybe two dozen characters, the value of additional characters will start to fade as characters will start to look and feel more and more similar.

THAT is why I would go with a more "mechanic" approach to create an endless amount of characters, because else you will never finish writing stories and coming up and balancing the game values of your characters.

Yes and no, but simply put, If I want to make it like that I wouldn't even bother and I'd go down a different route.

Okay, you don't need to answer anything of course, but a more "to the point" answer would sometimes be helpful. Anyway, you do not want to talk about effort and a mechanical approach any longer, got it.

Story... how much per character? Just a 3 line blurp? Pages of background story? Interactive cutscenes (good luck with individual cutscenes for 1000 characters, let alone combinations of 1000 characters)?

Yes ^.^ Think more along the lines of Service Records for backgrounds. Some characters will have more to them, but the vast majority will have very little initially and the grow as the chapters progress... but idea is that...

That sounds more approachable. See, I wasn't sure from your initial posts that you weren't thinking about combination storys, maybe even cutscenes. Coming up with 33 or 1000 service record blurps is slightly madness, but as long a you love writing certainly doable.

Just make sure you do not go crazy on combined stories, or follow Polamas suggestions, which are pretty much how most games do combinations stories/cutscenes, with placeholders.

Game mechanics... how different are the characters? Do they even differ in things besides story? How do go about balancing so there is no obvious choice? When 1000 characters are involved (even 33 might be too much), have you thought about using tools to balance them (some kind of automatic testing might work, comparing your characters with predefined formulas or something like that)?

The player gets to choose the characters. As the story goes on the characters may die or wish to transfer or some other event and other characters will need to be promoted and stationed however the player likes...

Each character as far as skills and such could, in theory, be replaced by any other as all characters have access to all skills, but at different levels which can be altered through time and effort. A character stationed at the helm, even with 0 ability to fly the ship, will slowly learn over time. Some is harder and takes more time. Other skills are simple and takes no time. Some might have individual difficulties with learning things while other might be protegies...

So different stats for the characters, even if it only affects leveling progression.

Might be balancable, at least with 33 characters. Though if it makes enough of a difference to make people care about the different characters, without introducing skewed balancing because some characters progress faster where it counts.

If there is one helmsman that progresses much faster in the areas that count for a helmsman, why would I as a player choose a different character and put him at the helm?

Not saying you cannot make it work mechanically... just that it needs to be thought through. For example having multiple areas a character can influence at the same station, and carefully balance them so they all are valuable to the player.

?

Value of the whole thing... how important are characters in your game? Is your game about the social interaction on the characters or about space exploration (or spaceship warfare)? How much will the average player see of all those characters you created?

Yes ^.^

Depends on the player really and how much they want to walk around the ship and talk to everyone.

This is a hard one to pin down because the nature of what I'm thinking... If you've seen Star Trek... not JJ Trek v.v... then those questions are more or less answered and it's not any one of them.

?Okay... so I get from this response that the interaction with the characters is NOT a central part of the game, its something else really (From your citation of Star Trek I guess its space exploration with the odd sprinkling of combat).

I have seen my fair share of Trekkie movies, altough I am not that big a fan (always was more of a Star Wars person). Still don't think a Movie or Series answers important questions about how YOU want to transfer the "feeling" of a movie into a game.

When the camera is not on rails like in a movie, how do you encourage the player to care about the character interaction? If it is completly optional, why invest this much thought and energy into it?

I am not trying to shoot down your ideas... but I think these questions are important. If you invest time and energy into something in your game, you should make damn sure that time and energy is spent on the right thing to get the maximum of impact out of it.

Are you trying to recreate "movie scenes"? I get that the characters and their interactions are what plays a big part at least in the trekkie series, are you trying to accomplish that?

So different stats for the characters, even if it only affects leveling progression.

Might be balancable, at least with 33 characters. Though if it makes enough of a difference to make people care about the different characters, without introducing skewed balancing because some characters progress faster where it counts.

If there is one helmsman that progresses much faster in the areas that count for a helmsman, why would I as a player choose a different character and put him at the helm?

Not saying you cannot make it work mechanically... just that it needs to be thought through. For example having multiple areas a character can influence at the same station, and carefully balance them so they all are valuable to the player.

The "selecting crew" is actually going to be a bit rigged to teach the lesson that you need to pay attention to the character's stats.

Of the 27 selectable characters, (I'm using a slightly different division break down than trek which makes more sense imo) 15 are Arms, 6 are Engineering, 3 are Operations, 3 are Sciences.

There are 10 crew slots

Captain, Second Officer, and Medical are not chosen...they're the player character and game selected characters.

The other 7 are...

Con (Helm), an Operations Position

Comms, an Operations Position

Science Officer, an Sciences Position

Chief Engineer, an Engineering Position

Weapons, an Arms position

2 slots are open to customize you crew style a little.

As you're selecting your crew the other 2 Computer controled captains are selecting from the same pool so your choice gets smaller by 3 for every selection and there is an obvious problem. Between the 3 crews there are 6 Operations Positions to fill, but only 3 Operations officers. Further there are only 3 Science Officers for the 3 slots open so the player must decide how important it is to get those positions filled by the "correct" division

Taking a few characters for example though...

Tom Paris would be an Operations Officer... but he has Medical (Science) training.

Katherine Janeway would be an Operations Officer, rose through the ranks as a Science officer, but can obviously perform as an Engineer.

Jean Luc-Picard would be an Operations Officer, but was originally a Science Officer.

Chief O'brien would be an Engineering Officer, but performed as an Arms Officer.

I could continue but you get the point. The characters will have skills that reflect that they studied more things than just their main division's line of study/training.

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That type of stuff is too easy in my opinion, the challenge here I think will be in getting dynamic character options, while retaining the quality of a TV show's writing. Obviously every variation can be written theoretically but from a practical stand point you have to do it with some level of mechanic. It's just a matter of figuring out where that line is between the mechanic and actual writing.