Recreation rooms should certainly be a thing. I don't know what way it should be though. A nice little morale booster (or dropper if people don't like each other), a necessary part of life (ala Dwarf Fortress), or a useful area to hit the crazy button where you know there'll be hilarious consequences (Einsteinian Roulette RTD).
It could be all three. For some reason people get attached to their drinking establishments and eating areas, which makes it a great place for disasters to happen. They're kind of pre-invested in it (unlike FTL's oxygen and engine rooms, where it really didn't seem like too big of a problem when it got blasted a lot of the time. It probably should have been a bit more serious considering).
Whereas the pub..... People will defend that out of principle, even if it's not life threatening for it to be temporarily destroyed. Plus, there'll often be some crew in there for the bad things to happen to. Great for random problems/encounters/crew quirks to emerge from, with it being easily explainable that they're drunk in spaaaaccccceeee! Quests ahoy! Pity the navigator now hates everyone......
Could even be a "policies" or character creation thing. A tea-totaller captain wouldn't allow grog in the Rec room (or onboard at all) so there'd less disasters happening, but the morale/friendship bonuses would be far less as well.
Recreation rooms and eating areas make a game feel far more "alive", because people automatically comprehend and relate to them. It makes your characters feel more like little people, rather than just tools to be used. Not sure how well it'd fit into Space Haven, but it really is a simple way of taking people "off their station" for encounters, etc. There's no perfect defense when hunger (or sleep) is involved. Except maybe robots, but they cost a lot and aren't that good at stuff (especially combat, for skynet reasons), and this gives them a reason to exist in the first place. You can actually characterize many species (or humans from different planets or sectors) by their eating, social and sleeping requirements, which makes it feel like "that's the reason you hired them" or "that's who they are" instead of someone else with other bonuses to stuff.
You tend to think of Star Trek species due to their social habits more-so than if they're really good with engines or something (Klingons are just arseholes to be around, they're not necessarily that much better at fighting, they just like to do it a lot. Braver, not likely to give into pain or injury, but not really better at fighting on average than most other trained fighters, and more likely to start fights for no reason. They get better at fighting because they're like this, not the other way around. They may get a bit of a "cultural boost" to melee, but mostly they'll get good because you'll be front-lining them on soft stats, not hard fighting stats. Yeah, that's probably trek-racist
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Someone from "Hellworld IV" (or sector) might not sleep or eat much, but they might be pretty cranky all the time. They may "need" a good recreation room, regardless of how good the sleeping quarters are, just so they get some happiness in their lives (while pissing everyone else off while they're there). Not all slackers from "Jimminy IIb" are social butterflies, but considering how much time they spend in the rec room, you'd better pick one who is. They don't care if it's a nice room, they'll still be there. Pros and cons to both. Chummy crews work well together, but they tend to care a bit too much sometimes, always smiling until the blood is flying everywhere, then they panic, and it's not even their own blood......
Sure, you can "hard-stat" races/species/worlds for "what they're good at", but it's these little soft-stats that makes them feel entirely different from each other, and gives reasons for things. Hats for species, but complicated ones. Eat, drink, sleep, talk, and does other stuff too. You could divide eating and recreation if you want, but it's more hilarious if heaps of crew-needs all go kaboom at once. Some crew won't need great stuff, but it's hard to draw in new crew to a hovel.
Can be everything from a quest hub (call the crew together for a meeting, I want to do other stuff. No, that shit doesn't happen on the bridge. That's where the captain lives, not engine-flunky-2. The captain just wants to know if ef2 or anyone else has anything interesting they've heard to share with everyone, so has deigned to eat alongside them. And shouted the booze for everyone), to a random event/encounter/crew interaction point, to a basic ship stat, to another few crew-stats to take into consideration, to a fully realized realtime simulation at every moment.
Rec rooms are kind of world building, back-story, characterization, relatability, and game mechanics/encounters all wrapped up in one single room. They're really good from a game developer's standpoint for all these reasons, and they can be as abstracted or as simulated as you want them to be.
Anyway, just some thoughts......
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Topic: Space Haven - RimWorld inspired spaceship colony sim. (Read 91700 times)