Characters

Space Haven revolves around keeping the crew alive and satisfied as they journey onward out into space. The characters are simulated to make them more than just simple robots walking around. Various elements, like gas, noise and temperature and relationships affect how the characters feel in the world of Space Haven.

Backstory

The backstory for each character is generated randomly by giving them a past occupation and a revealed trait after the apocalypse. This combination aims to give the player a peek into the characters real self.

Meaning of the "Traits revealed after the apocalypse"

How the real character of a person is revealed when a person faces dire situations or extremely challenging circumstances (World ending, the Apocalypse). How others see them behave completely different compared to how they were in a normal life, the underlying core of the person now shines through in challenging times.

Traits&Skills

Traits

The characters have traits, which give them either positive or negative effects. The traits can affect both the mental state and the individual statistics of characters. They might also make the character immune or more sensitive to various things.

Example: A character with a wimp or a peace-loving trait will be more prone to surrender in combat. Their surrender rate is higher.

Negative traits are balanced out by them having the possibility to give 1 or 2 skill potential points to some skill. This means these crew members have one or more extra skill potential points.

Skills

Skills affect how well a character is able to handle tasks related to a specific skill, mostly in terms of speed and accident rate. Skill levels are shown as a number, higher number is better.

The crew management menu shows the character skill levels related to a specific job category as dots in the UI box used to assign higher or lower priority level.

• Skill points - Skill points indicate which skill level the character is at the current time.
• Skill potential points - Skill potential points indicate the learning potential, how high of a skill level the character can achieve with time.

Skill Categories

Mining - Covers mining resources from asteroids with mining pods. Skill affects chance to have mining accidents, and possibly lose a resource in the process.

Construct - Covers building and repairing (Maintenance in the crew management menu) facilities as well as dismantling them. Also expanding the hull with mining pods. Covers also salvaging derelict ships.

Industry - Covers all assembler/refinery type of jobs related to resource production with industry facilities. Skill affects process speed.

Botany - Covers taking care of plants in grow beds and making them grow faster. Skill affects growth speed and the ability to plant a crop based on their needed skill level.

Medical - Covers medical tasks like operations related to the Medical bed, and tending to patients lying in medical beds. Skill affects patient recovery rate.

Research - Researching new tech at the research lab. Skill affects the chance of successful research iterations when researching.

Weapons - Skill related to handling hand guns. This skill combined with perception affects accuracy.

Navigation - For the task of using the navigation console when preparing for a hyperspace jump.

Gunner - Operating the weapons console in ship-to-ship combat. Weapons console system readiness state can be adjusted in the systems menu. Skill and work speed affects recharge times.

Shielding - Operating the shields console. Shields console system readiness state can be adjusted in the systems menu. Skill affects recharge times.

Operations - Operating the operations console. Operations cover both communication (Hailing) and scanning other faction spaceships. Operations console system readiness state can be adjusted in the systems menu.

Piloting - Manning and maneuvering fighter crafts. The skill affects the movement of the fighter, how agile the fighter is.

The crew priorities section in the crew management menu is where you get to prioritize which kind of tasks each crew member works on.

Leveling Up in Skills

Crew members will have a natural ability to become great in one or a few skills, but they will also have their limitations. Skill levels range from 0 to 10, and the crew members will improve their skill levels as they carry out tasks related to a skill. When starting, a crew member will have a certain skill level in a category but also a skill potential. The potential shows how skillful the character can become at a maximum. Augmentations can add a skill potential level for a character.

Attributes

A character has 4 attributes determining the base statistics of the character.

Attributes are:

• Bravery - How brave this character is. Affects surrender rate and overall mood.
• Zest - How energetic this character is. Affects the energy levels of the character.
• Intelligence - How intelligent this character is. Affects working speed positively.
• Perception - How perceptive this character is. Affects accuracy and accident rates, as well as working speed.

These attributes give base values for both the character attribute statistics but also to the mental state in form of mood, health and energy.

Needs&Moods

The character needs and their current mood is shown under the status tab. Each category can be viewed to see what kind of conditions are currently affecting that specific category.

The main mood indicator is OVERALL MOOD, but there are also subcategories which can affect overall mood and eventually lead to a mental breakdown. The subcategories are:

• Food - How well fed the character is.
• Energy - What the current energy level for the character is.
• Comfort - How comfortable the character is feeling at the moment.
• Safety - How safe the character feels at the moment.
• Social - Feeling in terms of social belonging, having friends and friendly acquaintances, or enemies and unpleasant discussions. Any type of combat will affect safety negatively, unless the character has a trait making them immune.
• Health - The current health of the character.

Once a subcategory falls down low enough it will generate a condition, which affects overall mood in a negative way. Therefore, if enough subcategories drop low enough at the same time the overall mood will drop very low and there is a risk for a mental break.

Conditions

The particular state that something or someone is in, or has some type of condition, like an illness. Condition is used very broadly. Examples of conditions are shat pants, received a flirt, having a flu, wearing a spacesuit. These conditions give either negative or positive mood effects for a character.

Conditions are the base for having the elements of the outside impact the character in various ways. Examples: If the temperature is too high it will create a condition affecting the character, or if an alien bites the character they will receive a condition, with certain negative effects.

Use the conditions tab to check what kind of conditions the character currently has.

Inventory

The inventory allows you to equip the crew member with various weapons and other items. This is done with a simple drag and drop mechanism. If the item will not stick to a UI box it means it is the wrong item type.

Equipping A Crew Member

1. Draft the crew member and take manual command.
2. Move the crew member close to a tile with a weapon. Weapons are usually stored in storages, but can be lying on the floor too.
3. When equipping from a storage:
   1. With the character DRAFTED and SELECTED, press the interact button (Default: Mouse 2) on a storage, this will bring up small icon buttons.
   2. Click on the "Pick up" icon button with the select button (Default: Mouse 1).
4. When equipping from a floor tile or other character:
   1. Draft and move the character close to the desired location, a floor tile with a weapon or other drafted character with a weapon.
   2. Once they are close to each other, keep your character selected and open up the inventory tab from the character information window.
   3. Weapons on the floor will be visible in the ground part of the inventory UI.
   4. Another character nearby will be visible as a name in the top part of the inventory UI.

It's easy to change items between crew members and also with a storage facility, by standing close to other crew members or a specific storage facility. The names of these entities will be displayed at the top and will open the inventory of the other entity alongside the current crew member inventory window.