Faction Reputation, NPC Crew Loyalty, Ethics and Meaningful Mission Consequences

I would love to see Space Engineers 2 go beyond NPCs as enemies or generic workers and introduce a connected system of faction reputation, individual crew convictions, loyalty, recruitment, and meaningful mission consequences.

This would make building and maintaining a crew and expanding a fleet rewarding over hundreds or even thousands of hours, especially in multiplayer. Progression should take real effort: a talented veteran should be worth protecting, while an inexperienced recruit can become a specialist through actual work.

1. Reputation with multiple factions, not one good/evil meter

Completing a mission could increase reputation with one group and decrease it with another. For example, protecting a merchant convoy might improve relations with traders and security forces while harming your standing with pirates. Different organizations — miners, merchants, security forces, engineers, pirates, mercenaries, and others — could have distinct priorities.

Being well known should have both advantages and risks. A respected captain might gain access to valuable contracts and specialized crew, but also attract stronger attacks from enemies who recognize that captain as a serious threat. A notorious captain might find criminal contacts and mercenaries more willing to work with them, while reputable organizations become reluctant to cooperate.

The idea is different opportunities and consequences, not a universally superior “good” path or “evil” path.

2. Reputation influences whom you can recruit

Crew candidates would have backgrounds, experience, professions, personal values and faction affiliations. A well-regarded captain might attract trained engineers, professional pilots and other highly qualified recruits. A captain with a criminal reputation might more easily recruit raiders, bounty hunters, smugglers or mercenaries, while some conventional veterans refuse to join.

Recruitment should also offer an economic choice: pay more for an experienced specialist, or hire an inexpensive beginner and train that person through actual work. Skills should remain with the individual when transferred to another ship or station. A captain's reputation might open doors, but it should never replace the value of training and experience.

3. Crew members have convictions, trust and the right to refuse

A crew should not obey every order unquestioningly. Individual NPCs could have ethical boundaries, loyalties, tolerances and preferences. A professional pilot may accept escort missions but refuse to take part in piracy. A mercenary might gladly join a raid but be less interested in humanitarian work.

Refusing a specific mission should not mean immediate resignation. The refusing crew member could remain at a home base, stay aboard another ship, or take an alternative assignment. The player could then select a different team for that mission.

If the captain repeatedly acts against a crew member's values, trust could gradually deteriorate. That NPC might ask for reassignment, refuse more operations, demand an explanation or eventually resign. Conversely, people who share the captain's values could become more loyal. Loyalty, professional skill, personal convictions and faction reputation should be separate concepts, rather than one simple morality score.

Losing a pilot who has spent many hours developing their skills would have a genuine cost. Keeping a veteran crew together should be a long-term achievement.

4. Secret operations and believable knowledge of events

This also creates room for interesting strategic choices and deception. Imagine accepting a legitimate delivery mission with a respectable crew, but deciding to conduct a separate raid along the route. The captain could leave crew members who oppose piracy at the base or on another ship, and bring a small mercenary team for the unauthorized operation.

The absent crew should not automatically know what happened or instantly lose trust through a magically omniscient reputation system. Information should spread through believable means: witnesses, ship identification, sensor records, distress calls, mission logs, rumors, captured crew, or mercenaries revealing the truth.

The raid could still affect the victim faction's reputation if the perpetrators were identified, while the uninformed crew's trust would remain unchanged until they learned about it. If the captain's deception is later discovered, that could damage trust further — both because of the raid and because of the dishonesty. Successful concealment should be possible but never risk-free.

This creates an important distinction between what the captain did, what each faction knows, and what each individual crew member believes.

5. Missions, crew selection and meaningful long-term progression

A mission could therefore involve more than choosing a ship and gathering resources. Players would have to consider the reputations they want to build, which crew members are willing to participate, whom they can afford to recruit, and the consequences for their future fleet.

As the captain gains experience and resources, they could expand a mothership, create accommodations and workstations, recruit specialists, operate several vessels and train more personnel. In multiplayer, different players could maintain relationships with different factions, share fleet duties and specialize without every captain becoming identical.

This would give the player reasons to build additional ships, stations, hangars, crew quarters and protected control rooms — not merely larger weapon platforms.

6. Optional extensions: crew living conditions and real ship interiors

Crew gameplay could eventually connect to oxygen and pressurized spaces, food supplies, sleeping quarters, living areas, safety, morale and access to damaged equipment for repairs. These should make ship design matter and offer meaningful engineering decisions, without becoming arbitrary chores or making automated construction/repair gameplay disappear.

An NPC's professional skills might also affect efficiency at assigned production, repair or logistical jobs, if appropriately balanced. A well-designed ship could be both an engineering achievement and a place where its crew actually lives and works.

7. Compatible with automation and the other crew suggestions

Please preserve manual control, remote control, programmable blocks, AI/automation blocks and player-built autonomous systems. Crewed ships and automated ships should be different, complementary approaches. NPCs should add possibilities instead of removing existing engineering freedom.

This reputation-and-loyalty idea complements my other suggestions about crew progression, remote pilots operating expendable drones safely from a mothership, NPC-operated weapon stations, civilian professions, and real ship boarding and capture. Physical enemy pilots, guarded cockpits and systems that can be hacked or taken over would make boarding a functional alternative to destroying a ship from a distance.

Related suggestions by pielog640:

- Recruitable NPC Crew with Individual Skills and Experience: https://support.keenswh.com/spaceengineers2/pc/topic/57380-recruitable-npc-crew-with-individual-skills-and-experience

- NPC Remote Pilots Operating Drones from a Mothership: https://support.keenswh.com/spaceengineers2/pc/topic/57382-npc-remote-pilots-operating-drones-from-a-mothership

- NPC-Operated Gun Stations and Skill-Based Weapon Performance: https://support.keenswh.com/spaceengineers2/pc/topic/57383-npc-operated-gun-stations-and-skill-based-weapon-performance

- Useful NPC Jobs on Ships and Bases: https://support.keenswh.com/spaceengineers2/pc/topic/57384-useful-npc-jobs-on-ships-and-bases-guards-mining-repair-and-logistics

- My comment about physical pilots, boarding and capture in the existing Human NPCs discussion: https://support.keenswh.com/spaceengineers2/pc/topic/45667-human-npcs#comment-119725

The goal is slow, meaningful progression in which the people serving aboard a ship are as valuable as the ship itself, and where every captain's decisions create a different story.