PNPC & NPC Policy

Created by Captain Alexander Gunning on Fri Feb 24th, 2012 @ 9:18am

Starbase 332 actively encourages players to step out in the environment to allow them to explore their simming world with the greatest depth possible and as such, this guideline on PNPCs and NPCs should hopefully go some way to helping you when you're creating the extra colour in the game.

At present, the rule of the fleet is that each player may only have one active 'player' character on each sim and that is something which the Command Staff of Starbase 332 are very much in favour of. However, we believe that players should have the freedom to create a number of NPCs and PNPCs in order to make the game richer and more vibrant.

On a station the size of Starbase 332 (which has a crew of over 80,000 before one even considers civilians) it is important to make sure that there are reference points throughout the game for people to use. That is why the following P/NPC guideline will be in effect from the next mission:

• Players will be permitted 1 main character. This will be your highest ranking character and will be the one you work with most often.
• Players will be permitted 7 protected NPCs. These are characters that you hope to develop and advance beyond just someone whose name is occasionally mentioned. There will be a desire to expand these characters beyond the usual realms of an NPC.
• In addition, players will be permitted to create 7 additional NPC characters for their department. These are characters who appear in the stories and may occasionally have dialogue but are largely there as "window dressing".
• These PNPCs and NPCs will be interchangeable (just in case you don't like them) but this must be done with the approval of the Commanding Officer.

That's the fun part, now onto the nitty gritty.

• Players are requested to pay attention to ranking structures and look to bring in certain characters of differing ranks. No player will be permitted a character who outranks their main player character unless they have been requested by the CO to play a mission-specific NPC.
• The player's main character will be the priority but posts will count across a user's account as opposed to being based on the character. PNPCs will have no posting requirement attached to them. The player themselves will be expected to adhere to the activity and posting codes laid out by the rules of the game.
• Players are not required to take PNPCs but if they do, it is a suggestion that they look at other areas of the station manifest. While there is no law against it, it may become tiresome for the user to have 7 characters all in the same department.

Submission of NPCs.

• All players are quite within their rights to create their own NPCs in the game but must ensure that they send information on the NPC to the Commanding Officer so that they are able to link NPCs to their player and ensure that they are not misused. The CO also reserves the right to alter the rank of any NPC after discussion with the user.
• PNPCs will now have the suffix [P: {User Character}] automatically added after them and will be linked to the player who wishes to use them. NPCs will continue as they were, with no change and will be playable by every user.