I am working out the NPC job classes. Basically the starting point is I think, what can NPCs do for you. Each NPC job class (and even subclass) have slightly different options. I am working those out right now.
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The main way of influencing a persons favour/fear ratings is with politicians (who increase favour through persuasion) or fighters (who increase fear through bullying). Both of these tacts will be kind of expensive becuase I want to encourage people to try and "naturally" increase fear/favour, i.e., by dealing with the person directly and solving their problems, however this is a neccesary outlet and makes sense to me.
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Professional is a complex job class with a lot of subclasses: doctor, lawyer, nurse, engineer, critic, etc. These jobs I have decided will all influence things that are NOT npc-related, but nonetheless affect gameplay a lot. For instance, I want to have some kind of system where your friendliness to each race is modified by some kind of government thing. I.e., a government for a particular race may not like you very much, meaning that they may send fighters to chase you. But you can improve feelings by talking to a reporter who can maybe write some praiseful (or not so) articles about a particular government. Engineers upgrade yoru ship. Nurses/doctors handle disease. Accountants fix your tax rate so you profit more from trades.
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These leaves a few types of professionals without a job yet. In particular lawyers (ironic that they can't find work in the vex universe) critics, managers, and analysts.
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Maybe lawyers can help you with a criminal record you may have? critics I don't know, I had in mind art critic or whatnot but maybe this is a smart thing to cull out. Managers likewise. Analysts can help you tell which commodities you may want to invest in, by giving you reccomendations on what to buy or sell (this is easy because commodity pricing is controlled by a simple biorhythm, not a dynamic model).
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The other main job classes are scientists, some of which I have worked out (e.g., zoologists can give you a monster report, geologists can tell you what planets have what minerals, etc.) Haven't taken a look at worker class, but I have some idea right now of employing them. You could hire them to do different jobs for you; for instance companies may have need of a "transporter", and you can say apply for that job. The idea being, you can't actually do the job yourself, but have to find somebody else who is willing to do it for you, and you take the profit off the top. If you don't find somebody soon enough, you get a nasty email and lose standing with the company in question, or if the guy you find is incompetant, etc. But you can manage a network of employees perhaps, and hire/fire them. I think actually that would be a fun addition and not that hard. Easier actually that implementing services for each type of worker =) This can be managed through the CommLink system, i.e., you don't have to have special interface stuff, but you have CommLinks to your employees so you can check up on them. =)
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Homemakers, children, babies I have decided are more or less "useless", i.e., they don't provide a real job but instead are just a population base to work from. They will often have quests for you or provide information, etc., but they themselves can't really do anything for you.
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So basically we have:
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fighters -- increase fear, decreases favour
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politicians -- opposite of fighters
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professionals -- help you modify the game world in different ways
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scientists -- provide information on the gameworld, sim to above really
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worker -- employable by you in your hiring network
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Seems like a nice breakdown!
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Calvin
2004-09-15