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Command
Emails will be the primary user interface to the system.
Emails that the players receive from the system will provide a report of the most recent cycle of activity of the ship and crew. Reports will include three parts:
- Ship Status Summary - location, condition, fuel/supply reserves, crew compliment
- Cycle Report - a set of statements of the previous cycle's activity within each department as reported by the department head
- Orders Options - a set of potential orders that could be issued for the next cycle.
This section serves to quickly describe on overview of key systems on board the ship. These will be represented by numbers and bars indicating health. The detail of these items will be described in the Cycle Reports within each section. For example, the number of crewmen aboard will be noted in the summary, but that they're all infected with the Berylian Plague and will die next round won't be obvious without reading the report of the chief medical officer.
This summary would include a specific notice when there was a significant emergency reported by an officer in the cycle report.
Each department head (the officer hired to run each bay of the ship) provides a detailed written report in this section. The report encompasses that officer's responsibilities as ordered for the reported cycle. Each officer's cycle report will include a summary of the orders received, their attempted action, the results of that action, a morale check, and any emergent data that might be required.
The morale check for a report is text that describes the state of mind of the officer or his subordinates. It will allow the player to determine things like how his officers feel about his orders. This would come into play when a captain orders his officers to act with or against character, and could manifest as loyalty during a mutiny, or a willingness to self-sacrifice for the good of the ship. A captain may use this information to craft orders that lead to a more harmonious ship, or to issue orders that keep his crew in line with the iron fist of fear.
Emergent data would include random events that happen on or to the ship during the course of its voyage. If an emergency in the propulsion system occurs, the chief engineer would report it here.
At each cycle, captains may issue one order per recruited and ready officer, or issue an order to promote a crewman to an officer position. Officers that are incapacitated will not respond to orders. Sample orders (not all of the potential orders for a cycle) will appear in this section of the message.
Some examples of orders:
Plot a course to Nebulon-8.
Repair the main reactor.
Negotiate for peace with the Arborans.
Attack the Skepsis vessel with all available weapons.
Mine the planet for Tritium.
Promote Fritz to chief engineer.
In cases where multiple officers might respond to the same order, or when an order outside of their typical duties is meant to be carried out by an officer, it is possible to issue an order directly to a specific officer:
Fritz, replace the damaged FTL coil.
A response to the system is an issue of orders to the system. A single order consists of a single line. A response that has two lines therefore will contain two issued orders.
When the system receives an response, the response is parsed for valid commands. If there is a problem with the parsed commands, the system will issue an order response. Any response to that order response is treated as a replacement set of orders for that cycle.
If the system is able to parse all commands correctly, it will reply with an order response restating the parsed orders to confirm them. This will allow the player to make any corrections to the interpretations of those orders before they are processed.
If the number of commands parsed vastly exceeds the available officers to carry out those orders, the system will reply stating this and ask for clarity.
If the system is able to parse some commands but not others, an order response is issued listing the reinterpreted orders that were understood, along with the orders that were not understood.
There are a variety of tasks that a captain may want to perform that do not require an order to a crew member. These are largely informational reports that the captain may request, presumably answered by the ship computer or by reviewing a previously submitted report.
Describe ship.
Describe ship module science.
Describe crew.
Describe crew member Alice Jones.
Describe current course.
Describe current research.
The words information and info should be synonyms for the describe command.
Commands are executed immediately, and (generally) do not impair the execution of any crew member's orders.
At any time the captain may request a status report. Most of the time this will simply be the last report the captain received, but occasionally things may happen during cycles that don't always get rolled up to the next cycle's summary report.