[Proposal] Date of Hire for NPCs

[vvvvvvvv]

Proposal:
Would be great if NPC crew stored information about date when the NPC was hired.

Use case:
On employee information screen that would allow player to quickly sift through newcomer NPCs, or maybe find the very first guy/gal hired and see how is that crewmember doing. For mod writers this would allow to implement salaries with more precision.

Implementation:
It is one extra number per crewmember. Currently game uses either unix timestamps or "seconds passed since startup" for log messages and timed events, same format could be used for NPC hiring date.

Resource cost:
I'd expect extra 4-8 bytes (likely 8) of RAM per crewmember.

I understand that utility of this field is limited, but this is something I think would be nice, although not strictly necessary, to have.

[Raptor34]

I'll rather not tbh. Like if they create a hook for modders then sure whatever, but I think such things should be decreased, not increased.

[BitByte]

I don't see use for that info in X4. There's so much crew around the galaxy and stations so it would increase memory consumption and especially savefile size.
If next game will include some sort of cost/salary system there it may have place. But even there skills should have more important factor than service age.

[Raptor34]

People might want some kind of seniority system perhaps. Not most of us I don't think.
Imo when they ever overhaul it, they should do the "fitted for but not with" system where they lay the groundwork for modders to use it but not actually activate it for the vanilla game.

[vvvvvvvv]

I don't see use for that info in X4. There's so much crew around the galaxy and stations so it would increase memory consumption

Memory consumption would be 8 bytes per person. Even if you have one million named people, 8 extra megabytes. A joke for a modern computer, and a single ship texture would cost more. Note that only named NPCs matter. Factory workers are just a number and do not really exist.

[BitByte]

Memory consumption would be 8 bytes per person. Even if you have one million named people, 8 extra megabytes. A joke for a modern computer, and a single ship texture would cost more. Note that only named NPCs matter. Factory workers are just a number and do not really exist.

Personally I don't care even if game would require 32+Gb of RAM as I have 64. But fact is I know I'm in minority on that. So many play with 8-16Gb and that's why there's more important places to consume resources than hiring date.