Request: a day in the life

System

I had a mission idea last night. I would enjoy playing a "day in the life" type mission of a Starfleet captain. You know, the typical things a captain would be doing, such as inspecting his ship, promotions, talking to crew, communicating with starfleet. This type of mission would mainly be on the ship of course, and probably not involve any combat. It would also be pretty dialogue heavy. That might sound a kind of boring, but I have a feeling that with the right writing it could make a compelling story that deals with the personal lives of the crew. So take this as a challenge or simply as a request, but I would like to see what some of our excellent authors can do with a mission like this

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That would definitely be interesting to play.

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well... from what I remember of the TV series one I can see some difficulties involved... the main one is that we need some monologue kind of communication... how do you narrate to yourself and why would you do it anyway... i suppose some Log entries would fit the bill for some of it..

The day in the life is someone watching what the captain does... not being the captain or probably more specific it was like Dr. Crusher doing her thing... but the point is that the viewer is a voyeur only and is just observing.. that becomes a problem with an interactive game.

You would need to tell the player what to do all the time and mostly it would be either "continue" or "go here" but again we can't be the voyeur and the do-er at the same time.

The other thing about this that strikes me is that often it is recalling events from the past while making said log entries... this seems difficult if not impossible for us, but perhaps I'm mistaken...

Another thing would be the need for lots of maps, but some creativity could account for this problem as well.

I'll have to give it some further thought and get back to you on it... that is just off the top of my head so don't take it too seriously...

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A "day in the life" of my RL Captain basically consists of getting to work about 30 minutes later than everyone else, trying to read email while giving permission for people to do maintenance, monitoring training (make sure you throw in your 2 cents of captain wisdom at the end), belittling junior officers at lunch, go suck up to the commodore for a while, play with some of the enlisted guys equipment until they have to shut it down and restart it to work right again, bleed ink all over everyone's rough drafts of outgoing messages, and then harass the XO to get A, B, and C done before he leaves as he himself is leaving about an hour before anyone else.
Oh and make sure his coffee cup stays full and there is always satisfactory "reading material" in the "library".

Just some ideas.

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I wish there was an established "costume" for the computer's log.

In my Scavenger Patrol mission, there is a part where the player is consulting the computer to find out data about some suspects. I settled as a "costume" for the interaction part with a Constitution Refit. It kinda was the closest I could find that might give a "generic ship"/"ship computer" feeling to it.

That might be a way for log entries, too.

Once we get dialog branches, I might consider doing more along those lines. One fun way of using the log might be to have the Captain "retell" the story or set up the current mission (instead of some contact), and then with his dialog options, give the player different options to close the entry, each option describing a different take on how the Captain might feel about this.

Starfleet has ordered me to help a Lt.Cmdr Jasmine Wegner from Starfleet Intelligence questioning the Orion prisoner we made.
I remember her from the Acadamy. She was very succesful at what she did, and if she had followed a traditional career path, she would have long been Captain by now.

• I remember her being very intelligent and efficient. She believed in the Federation's ideals and her desire to protect them was probably what made her such a good candidate for a career at Starfleet Intelligence. We could use more officers like her.
• I remember her very intelligent and cold-hearted. She believed at the protection of the Federation at all cost, not afraid to make sacrifices for "the greater good". Starfleet Intelligence seems to attract people like her. But too many of officers like her, and it will be all about sacrificing, and not much left of the greater good.

[/rambling]

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not a bad idea, however just remember one thing...what makes a game or show interesting is conflict. I don't mean fighting...I mean some sort of problem or dilemna the character has to solve.

So, even if you're creating a "sim" starfleet game, there has to be some sort of conflict, even minor, to keep people interested.

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You could also use it to establish the monotony of the daily routine and use it to set up an action-packed sequel.

It reminds me of the first thirty minutes of Half Life.

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We definitely need our own captain added to the list of characters we can select for dialogue boxes. For one thing, our space to type responses isnt long enough in normal dialogue boxes. But this would also allow captain's logs and inner monologue.

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wrote:

We definitely need our own captain added to the list of characters we can select for dialogue boxes. For one thing, our space to type responses isnt long enough in normal dialogue boxes. But this would also allow captain's logs and inner monologue.

For something like my idea, we would also need larger replies, though. The green parts of my dialog above would need to go into a reply a button, after all, and they certainly won't now.

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Conceptually I love the idea, though I think it really does need some sort of branching dialogue system to work properly. My sole reason for saying this is because, I don't feel that I am the best person to script your captain's day. I tend to play tactical captains and joined Trill ones at that. My characters 'day' would tend to be slanted towards a Trill-centric outlook and influence decisions and the like. Now granted you can have certain military aspects that are the same throughout the service that would be performed no matter what, an impromptu inspection of the enlisted quarters, checking in with department heads, meeting with visiting dignitaries and the like on board.

(Thread sidetrack note: At this point I have to stress that I HOPE with the upcoming crew update that we will be able to do is 1) We are able to assign department heads and 2)a 'placeholder' contact can be created so that we can place Fed_Chf_Eng or KDF_Chf_Eng (the names for the contacts aren't important) and the engine will 'skin' the contact with the appropriate image/uniform. I would love to see something like this, but I can only assume that it would require an obnoxious amount of work. Returning to our regularly scheduled response.)

Some of that can be created easily enough, though I would personally want more. Like my Captain doing research into a new archeological dig on Cestus IV or my science Captain would probably loose hours reading the presentation notes for the latest conference of stellar cartography by the Vulcan Science Academy. These are details that would flesh it out even more so for me.


On a side note though, one thought I had banging around my my head was that the Foundry would, however, be a great venue for players to be able to work on some of the back history of their crews. I know that a number of people created elaborate back stories and plot lines for their Captains and their crews. Would this not be an opportunity to have those events acted out?