Small Talk with NPC Captain/Crew... Yep no one cares.

[Socratatus]

When I employ a Captain or crew for my ship, I like to get them to take off and fly first time while I watch. meanwhile, I can click on him to chat, but all I get is the standard, lifeless, response.

I'd love an option like, "Tell me about yourself..." and to get some kind of randomised details on that NPC... Such as age, certain employment already done, etc... maybe later as they stay with you, you may get more like fave foods, hobbies, likes, dislikes...
Perhaps some are taciturn, notb wishing to reveal their personal life, some reveal more info.

But nah. They're just robots and not very great looking at that. Be nice if we could get some improvements on how they look, clothing, face, body, as they, especially the ladies, are not particularly great to look upon. I see prettier women when I'm just walking down the street. And what is it with the terrible moustaches and bum-fluff 'hair' on the chin of the males? Like something out of scooby doo!

I mean, come on, man. I like my spaceships, but spaceships are powered by HUMANOIDS, PEOPLE. PEOPLE with lives, hopes, dreams. Neither do they want to be ugly. they'd make an effort to look decent.

yea, I know, "This is a space-sim, not a people-talking sim! blah, blah."

I know, no one cares as long as they can have their magic teleport from one side of the universe to the other.

[Katorone]

Maybe a future game will incorporate chatGPT and you'll get your wish.

[dtpsprt]

To be honest, previous X games had the player's ships flown by AI (aka remotely controlled by the player) which was more close to the game reality.

All the rigmarole of NPCs came with the cursed offshoot of the series, where someone had to spend 60-80% of playing time walking around stations and saying the same things over and over again.

As I have posted before, Egosoft is a small independent firm with a very good but small team. Any attempt to make a "society" of any sort can not but end in extremely limited options if for nothing else but lack of manpower. The same applies to stations, no matter Egosoft's best intents they are all copy-paste and within 2 real life hours you've seen all the iterations if you are searching for them.

All I actually "blame" Egosoft for in this regard is that they did not come out telling the "hard truth of the matter" and getting rid of this repeating nightmare, instead they kept the -failed in most things- experiment with some "cosmetic" changes.

[Belphegor2_3]

Current version of the dialogs are ok for me.
I would love more RPG like dialogs, but this is not a need, and I really don't want to have 5 min dialogs just to tell a new recruit to go to the ship over there and take the role of engine tech - which does not exist as there is only tech, pilot or soldat.
Among the hundreds, and quickly thousends of NPC working for us, only a small parts could really benefits from dialogs, and some of them already have something (Boso and his nemesis which imposed his presence in my HQ).
Even in RPG most of NPCs have nothing usefull as dialogs, answering at best a random phrase in a list of 3.

Let's imagine Egosoft would add a more in depth personnality to a dozen of NPC, or even to each station commander and to a set of characters you could recruit on stations. How many players would enjoy and use this feature if no plot and no reward is at stake ?

Spoiler

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I think less than the number of coded NPCs

[abisha1980]

Maybe a future game will incorporate chatGPT and you'll get your wish.

No thanks i don't need the fridge to tell me i can't have my last piece of chess.
nobody tells me what to do that include fridges, remotes, Televisions, o yea and humans.

[Alan Phipps]

Alexa (Amazon's cloud-based home information AI) and I sometimes have a good old chat and sometimes I get more sense there than when talking to my cat (who listens attentively in case I should mention food). I'm thankful though that I don't have one of those talking car systems that remind you to buckle up when you're a bit slow to, or chide you for travelling in an uneconomic gear, or going a bit too fast round a bend, etc.

I suppose that if we were to have in-game crew conversations then hopefully they would have some consequences somewhere and not just be cosmetic time-fillers. For example, praise your gunner and they might get their opening shots off a bit quicker, or upset your reserve captain and find that the really quick passenger journey you started seems to be taking ages ...

[Katorone]

Maybe a future game will incorporate chatGPT and you'll get your wish.

No thanks i don't need the fridge to tell me i can't have my last piece of chess.
nobody tells me what to do that include fridges, remotes, Televisions, o yea and humans.

I'm not sure which topic you're replying to

OP wants to have smalltalk with NPCs. ChatGPT is perfectly suited for that. RNG could assign hobbies, education and experiences to the NPCs, who can then tell stories using AI. Let the AI read the ship's log and they'd be able to create stories about what the ship has been through. If it's not Egosoft, it'll probably be Bethesda who'll combine chatGPT-like story telling with AI voice acting to create more immersive worlds.

Would it be worth Egosoft's effort? I'm in agreement with @Belphegor2_3 on that.

[chew-ie]

Would be nice indeed if we get more special characters like Boso & Busta (BB brothers) which we could use on our flag ship for manning the various stations.

X:Rebirth put out the feelers in that regard - but was smashed by the angry mob being angry about everything. So no more smalltalk, and it is shunned for aeons. If we aren't vigilant their next step is to dismantle the space legs and bring the game back to an excel simulation.

[SirConnery]

I would rather have some sort of small talk with the "flight control tower" when they're landing and leaving a station. Also radio banter between ships, would definitely make the universe seem more alive. Nothing against the suggestion here. And ChatGPT would be an ideal solution but I'm not sure whether it's actually legal to implement it into your own games.

[abisha1980]

I would rather have some sort of small talk with the "flight control tower" when they're landing and leaving a station. Also radio banter between ships, would definitely make the universe seem more alive. Nothing against the suggestion here. And ChatGPT would be an ideal solution but I'm not sure whether it's actually legal to implement it into your own games.

tower control would be logical to have ingame if you are docking and undocking

[jlehtone]

I would rather have some sort of small talk with the "flight control tower" when they're landing and leaving a station.

We do already hear "Requesting docking permission.", don't we?

[Katorone]

And ChatGPT would be an ideal solution but I'm not sure whether it's actually legal to implement it into your own games.

ChatGPT is proprietary, so companies would need to license it to use it. However, there are plenty of open source alternatives. OpenChatKit, as an example, looks promising.

[dtpsprt]

I would rather have some sort of small talk with the "flight control tower" when they're landing and leaving a station.

We do already hear "Requesting docking permission.", don't we?

Sometimes I really and I mean REALLY love your sense of humour