NPC employment agency

I am not sure if the following are roles or duties.

Skill sets would give parameters of competence and hire rates.

The list is sort of rolled out of wherever my mind wondered.

It could be improved and added to, some of the roles are just for fun.

It could be that NPCs are good at more than one job and are bad at a couple of others.

House keeper - Will look after a base when you are away on business.

station monitor watchman - will send a message/alert, or will keep a log of nearby activity

ships steward - Ensures that paying passengers are well

Bullet attractor - A moving target difficult to hit.

Distractor/talker/haggler - Conversationalist to distract or get better prices or picks up rumours.

Armour Carer - repair and welds armour

Delivery driver/pilot - can take things from A to B driving a vessel, loads and unloads. Will require sign offs.

Geologist - locates ore

Miner - digs ore

Systems technician - repairs functional blocks

Priest of clang - keeps morale up on board, will say words when you or crew die.

Stunt double - Will defy gravity and momentum.

Bard(minstrel) - plays tunes and narrates your current escapade.

Gardener - grows food, keep plants in good order.

Warehouse master - organises storage containers

Busy body - someone who always looks busy when you are looking

Sanity companion - someone to have around, will give you a thumbs up or down or shrugs when asked, likes to watch LCDs a lot or reading datapads.

Breaking and enterer - gets through doors or makes new ones.

Saboteur - Will disable or destroy systems, weapons, power, communications, thrust and gyros.

Scavenger - recovers parts from dis-guarded grids

Procurement expert - finds and 'takes' things

Undertaker - removes dead bodies to a place of rest( or recycling)

Woodsman - deals with trees

Tunnelling architect - give them a blue print, depth and a location and they will excavate rock to allow the unobstructed construction of the blue print.

Publicist/biographer - will record a history of events that occur around your engineer, placing some of them on social media.

Garage Attendant - Will park your vehicle, make sure it is fuelled and recharged, will bring your vehicle to you if requested.

Mercenary - Tasked with character destruction or taking prisoners.

Assassin - targetted killer will avoid unnecessary combat until primary target is reached.

Tour guide - Will show character around a grid noting important features

Janitor/Care taker - will keep decor blocks in service and tidies floating objects.

Turret gunner - operates turrets.

Window cleaner - removes dirt from windows.

Guard - will defend a location or vessel or another character.

Power engineer - Will allocate power where it is most useful, will report on fuel and charging requirements, usage.

ShieldS operator - will explosively fly/dive across CIC when hull is breached.

Coffee and clipboard wonderer - gives out coffees and expect signatures on clipboards.

Communications officer - Listens to broadcasts, sends messages.

Science officer - Will offer comment on unknown signals.

More serious suggestion roles welcomed.

Reflecting on my list, are these tasks or behaviours rather than roles and duties ?

I think that a role should be based on the NPCs specialities and used as a guide to the tasks that they would excel at. This implies stats or traits, is this a road that SE2 will go down ? My list could imply that tasks could be allocated to any NPC whether they were good at the task or not.

So should NPCs be able to take to any given task ?

How would such tasks be given ?

Would some tasks be autonomous or routine and other tasks be directives?

I like Priest of Clang among others :)

On a serious note, I think there are 2 major categories where hireable NPCs could be useful.

1. Boring tasks you don't want to repeat more than necessary (and use hired for money NPCs instead)

1.1 Mining

Literal "boring" stuff like collecting ores by hand or using simple mining ships. This one seems obvious, but it is somewhat at odds with other options like building automated mining rigs.

Still, it could be very useful, especially in space where navigation is easier and an NPC could collect ores within a large radius, follow priorities, and so on.

1.2 Recycling

You might focus on capturing grids, for example by pirating, and bring them back to your base, while NPCs use manual grinders or simple grinder ships to take those grids apart.

This is even more useful than mining IMO. Having to do it yourself over and over again undermines the whole pirating/scavenging playstyle. It makes it more boring and less attractive as a truly viable gameplay loop.

With NPCs, you can focus on the interesting parts and leave the boring work to them. You could also combine this with partial automation. For example, an automated grinding pit could disassemble most of the grid, while an NPC cleans up the remaining mess.

1.3 Repairing

Imagine coming back from a battle with a damaged ship. Having to repair everything manually every time can get pretty boring.

Block welders are also not ideal. There will always be areas they cannot reach, and you have to manually find those spots and repair them.

NPCs could fill that gap. They could even stay on board the ship and repair it while you are travelling, or possibly even during combat.

I would go even further and make it so heavily damaged blocks cannot be repaired automatically with welders. Only a real engineer or NPC could repair them. This would give you a real reason to have additional crew on board.

1.4 Boarding

Going inside an enemy ship and capturing it is a dangerous task. It is much more interesting than grinding, but even boarding can become a bit boring when you do it repeatedly during routine missions.

Sometimes you might simply decide that you don't want to risk your own life. Having NPCs that can handle boarding would give you another option.

1.5 Logistics

Automated item flow could have certain limits. One good example would be loading dedicated ammo magazines, as I described in detail here.

NPCs could handle some of these manual logistics tasks where full automation is intentionally limited.

2. Unique tasks you cannot really perform on your own

2.1 Defending your base or ship

This is the opposite of boarding. You simply cannot be everywhere or pay attention all the time.

Automated defense turrets can help to some extent, but skilled attackers could still break through. You could also be AFK and have your guards protect the base during that time.

Maybe you have a base in a dangerous place where pirates or an enemy faction might attempt a landing party. Having NPC guards would make a real difference.

2.2 Controlling multiple ships

An AI block, if we ever get one, would probably be fairly limited. NPC crew could offer much more intelligent piloting and handle more complex orders.

For example, you could have several ships operating together in a fleet or wing formation.

2.3 Improving certain stats

NPCs could also have an impact on things like power consumption, production speed, weapon fire rate or accuracy, fuel consumption, and so on.

To provide these bonuses, they would need to be "in the grid", either by sitting in a control seat or maybe simply being inside the grid's frame of reference.

Real game scenarios

Imagine controlling a big mothership with armed guards patrolling important rooms like reactors, fuel tanks, bridges and respawn points. You have a fighting squadron ready to deploy at any moment to deal with incoming threats.

At the same time, a team of mechanics and logistics personnel keeps the weapon magazines on your ship and fighters stocked with ammo and repairs damaged blocks when needed.

You could also have a miner or scavenger automatically keep resources above a certain level. When they detect resources nearby, they can deploy mining ships on their own, or use a grinder ship to take apart debris and clear the area.

Many of these "roles" could ofc be handled by the same NPCs. This would reduce the performance overhead and make the whole system more manageable. For example, a single NPC could handle mining, grinding, repairing and logistics. You simply assign them different tasks depending on what you need at the moment.

A guard could also repair things or help with logistics when there is nothing else to do. You could even set priorities so NPCs automatically switch roles when needed.

For example, guarding could be the highest priority. If there are no hostile engineers on board, the same NPC could handle repairs as the next priority, then switch to logistics once all functional blocks are in good condition.

Some roles, like assigning an NPC as a pilot, could still require an explicit order from you. This way you have both automatic crew management for routine tasks and direct control when you actually need it.