Dev Looking for Feedback - Ancestors

[Windchild]

I'm the MegaMek/MekHQ dev whose primary focus is on personnel. I'm working on ancestry, looking to expand beyond just the members of your mercenary company so that you can have expanded ancestry. My end goal is to being able to create and view a full family tree within MekHQ, and to do so I need to designate a design for the information to have for ancestors, to avoid save file bloat. I've selected the following as the minimum inclusions for ancestors, although only the name, gender, and status will need to be specified, but would like wider opinions on them.

• Id: This is the person's unique id, required for internal tracking
• Name: Pre-nominal, Given Name, Surname, Post-Nominal, all of which may be multiple words in length.
• Gender
• Status
• Portrait
• Birthday
• Death Date
• Genealogy
• Biography

I'm not certain about whether to include or exclude the following:

• Origin Faction
• Origin Planet
• Maiden Name
• Callsign

Ranks will be left as part of the pre-nominal, as they do not require the level of complexity that our rank system includes.

[Iceweb]

I guess my answer depends on whether you are asking for information on things to store in the separate ancestry file, or displaying the information in HQ, or displaying the information in a separate tool that while accessible through HQ it can be run without it so you can take the file to a friend's computer and run it on this new tool to show them your merc's family tree, for their pen and paper game.  And of course the answer to that trinity is it depends. 

Anyways for information that I would think would be nice to be stored would be favorite ride.  Maybe you could alter it in HQ but the basic concept would be to just list the person's currently equipped ride (name and model should be enough info, EDIT I just remembered MegaMek can now put the unit icons in the round reports, having the unit's graphic showing up on the family tree screen would be neat.  However that might be too much bloat if you need all the graphics stored and then the camo patterns) or maybe use the original unit that is available when editing a personnel record.  For dead people maybe store the ride they were using at time of death, if not using original unit. 

This way we could see the family mech also being passed down through the family tree.  With the lore talking so much about family rides in the hands of a noble family for centuries it would be fun to see the fight over who got grandpa's Orion and who got stuck with grandma's Crab. 

For the four optional ones I would like to have that information stored so I could see it, but I don't think it is as vital at a glance.  If it was available via a mouse over popup window I think that would be enough. 
Though I am uncertain on callsign.  I don't set up callsigns often, at least before name changes due to auto marriages.   Once Bob Smith has the callsign of Stallion I stop thinking of him as Bob.  He is now the Stallion in the internal dialogs.  If there is room to put the callsign on the main display I would prefer that. 

One thought/question is when storing portraits are you storing a file name or an actual image?  I do worry about size bloat if we are storing doubles, or even multiple copies of an image file for this.  I know I am worrying about nothing when most people have a terabyte of space and what not, but I cut my teeth on satellite stuff, and everything had to be trimmed down to the byte so you could fit as much on each payload as possible.  Old habits die hard.

[monbvol]

I think the only thing I'd add is some sort of hotlink to click on that brings up other relatives.  Beyond that I think everything looks solid enough for my needs.

[Windchild]

I guess my answer depends on whether you are asking for information on things to store in the separate ancestry file, or displaying the information in HQ, or displaying the information in a separate tool that while accessible through HQ it can be run without it so you can take the file to a friend's computer and run it on this new tool to show them your merc's family tree, for their pen and paper game.  And of course the answer to that trinity is it depends.

Campaign file, with the tree created and displayed in MHQ.

Anyways for information that I would think would be nice to be stored would be favorite ride.  Maybe you could alter it in HQ but the basic concept would be to just list the person's currently equipped ride (name and model should be enough info, EDIT I just remembered MegaMek can now put the unit icons in the round reports, having the unit's graphic showing up on the family tree screen would be neat.  However that might be too much bloat if you need all the graphics stored and then the camo patterns) or maybe use the original unit that is available when editing a personnel record.  For dead people maybe store the ride they were using at time of death, if not using original unit.

This way we could see the family mech also being passed down through the family tree. With the lore talking so much about family rides in the hands of a noble family for centuries it would be fun to see the fight over who got grandpa's Orion and who got stuck with grandma's Crab.

I'll consider this idea, but I do think it could get pretty bloated (just in terms of additional data, the graphics are stored separately). It can be done through the biography instead?

One thought/question is when storing portraits are you storing a file name or an actual image?  I do worry about size bloat if we are storing doubles, or even multiple copies of an image file for this.  I know I am worrying about nothing when most people have a terabyte of space and what not, but I cut my teeth on satellite stuff, and everything had to be trimmed down to the byte so you could fit as much on each payload as possible.  Old habits die hard.

We store them as file paths, only saving the non-default parts (category and filename are separate).

I think the only thing I'd add is some sort of hotlink to click on that brings up other relatives.  Beyond that I think everything looks solid enough for my needs.

Graphical design is still in the future, but there will be a way to view the relatives from the family tree

[Kerfuffin(925)]

Would this be for IS/freeborn only?

It would be cool to see gene parents for trueborns.

[Hammer]

I think planet and faction info should be in.

We should also track planet born and faction. Or even deep space baby.

[mjbroekman]

This is a complicated question although it seems simple on the surface.

Since you are expanding ancestry beyond the members of the player's unit, I would suggest adding a 'Role (Profession)' field and a boolean to mark them as being high ranking in their role (officer, upper management, senior scientist, etc) or not. This would give a bit of flavor the character's backstory...were they a military family going back generations or did they run away from the farm to join up, etc.

Origin planet would be interesting to track as you would be able to trace the character's family through time and space, but it would bring some challenges as well, to ensure that faction borders weren't crossed at the wrong time or that a clanner didn't sneak into the family tree somehow.

Faction would be less important as most would have the same faction as the planet they came from. There may be exceptions, but I don't know how deep down the rabbit hole you are thinking of going.

Maiden name might be useful for predetermining the surname of the previous generation, but otherwise not important to track. It would be easily determinable by looking at the family tree and seeing what the surnames of their parents are.

Assuming you are generating backwards from the character in the roster, after generating the role of the ancestor:
- origin planet / faction would be the same as the character if the previous generation was in a blue-collar profession. I doubt that many farmers or shopkeepers were able to leave the planet of their birth and, as such, they would probably raise their children on the same planet. But some may have joined the military or a mercenary unit. On the other hand, scientists, powerful business people, etc might travel to other systems to serve their faction or company and might end up resettling as a result.

[PuppyLikesLaserPointers]

I'm the MegaMek/MekHQ dev whose primary focus is on personnel. I'm working on ancestry, looking to expand beyond just the members of your mercenary company so that you can have expanded ancestry. My end goal is to being able to create and view a full family tree within MekHQ, and to do so I need to designate a design for the information to have for ancestors, to avoid save file bloat. I've selected the following as the minimum inclusions for ancestors, although only the name, gender, and status will need to be specified, but would like wider opinions on them.

• Id: This is the person's unique id, required for internal tracking
• Name: Pre-nominal, Given Name, Surname, Post-Nominal, all of which may be multiple words in length.
• Gender
• Status
• Portrait
• Birthday
• Death Date
• Genealogy
• Biography

I'm not certain about whether to include or exclude the following:

• Origin Faction
• Origin Planet
• Maiden Name
• Callsign

Ranks will be left as part of the pre-nominal, as they do not require the level of complexity that our rank system includes.

I think that all these four are should be included. It's the basic biography of a person so it don't needs to be omitted. It is also possible that make some retired characters to the ancestors. So it would be required.

Especially for Callsign. It is not so weird to imagine that someone uses the callsign of their grandparents, just as they are named after their ancestors. Yes, I am suggest to weights the callsign or name of the ancestors when randomly determine the callsign of a person. It can be affected by the names as well; it would be interesting to weights the callsign or name of the ancestors when a baby is born and randomly determine the name of them as well. Say, naming a son's name Kitsune('fox' for japanese), name after his grandfather's nickname(although it is unsure that the knight of republic's name was actually after his grandfather's nickname).

The award should be included as well. If your grandparents had the medal of honor, you don't really want to forget about it.

List and skills are can be recorded. If record it puts too much burden, then only check the 1st, 2nd and 3rd highest skills for both combat related skills and social/maintenance skills would be better. Children are tend to have some skills, and when they does slightly increase the chance with highest skills of their ancestors would be interesting.

Can they had original unit as well? If so then able to see the list of former owner of each unit seems interesting. If your Atlas was once piloted by your ancestors, then you should be want to know.

[PuppyLikesLaserPointers]

An another thing is, can ancestors have the list of spouse during the lifetime? They are not expected to be playable for now, and during the life the person may divorce or separated with the spouse, so even if you didn't add the concept of polygamy/polyandry in MekHQ the person may had more than one spouse. It is important because having more than one spouse means the person may had child with more than one person.

[Daryk]

Coming in late, but I see "Origin Planet" and "Origin Faction" as somewhat duplicative, and lacking the VERY important "Current (or Final) Faction".

And a quick word about callsigns.  They are NOT selected by the individual, or even the individual's family.  They are selected by the pilot's first unit, and usually not for a good reason.

[Windchild]

Thanks everyone for their ideas, and please keep them coming. I'm collecting the information here, and know I'm going to need more than just the basic ancestor, and will instead require a few different ancestor types of increasing complexity.

For decisions: Origin Planet and Faction are in for the base one, Callsign and Maiden Name with both be moved so that they are further down the list.

Would this be for IS/freeborn only?

It would be cool to see gene parents for trueborns.

The design is for IS/freeborn. I need to spend more time learning about clan personnel (and really clans in general outside of CSR) before I can do a design for that (although I can likely use the same baseline for it).

This is a complicated question although it seems simple on the surface.

I'm asking about it for that exact reason. I've been going back and forth on this for months now, but am closing in on having the necessary underlying changes completed to start fully working on this.

Since you are expanding ancestry beyond the members of the player's unit, I would suggest adding a 'Role (Profession)' field and a boolean to mark them as being high ranking in their role (officer, upper management, senior scientist, etc) or not. This would give a bit of flavor the character's backstory...were they a military family going back generations or did they run away from the farm to join up, etc.

I'm planning on this for anyone with the Dependent role (part of an open PR), letting them have primary role display override so you can name them as desired. However, that means I'd need to include the primary role then...

Assuming you are generating backwards from the character in the roster, after generating the role of the ancestor:
- origin planet / faction would be the same as the character if the previous generation was in a blue-collar profession. I doubt that many farmers or shopkeepers were able to leave the planet of their birth and, as such, they would probably raise their children on the same planet. But some may have joined the military or a mercenary unit. On the other hand, scientists, powerful business people, etc might travel to other systems to serve their faction or company and might end up resettling as a result.

This will not include a generator, all manual. Further, I have no plans to create a generator to fill out a person's ancestry with this system.

I think that all these four are should be included. It's the basic biography of a person so it don't needs to be omitted. It is also possible that make some retired characters to the ancestors. So it would be required.

Especially for Callsign. It is not so weird to imagine that someone uses the callsign of their grandparents, just as they are named after their ancestors. Yes, I am suggest to weights the callsign or name of the ancestors when randomly determine the callsign of a person. It can be affected by the names as well; it would be interesting to weights the callsign or name of the ancestors when a baby is born and randomly determine the name of them as well. Say, naming a son's name Kitsune('fox' for japanese), name after his grandfather's nickname(although it is unsure that the knight of republic's name was actually after his grandfather's nickname).

The award should be included as well. If your grandparents had the medal of honor, you don't really want to forget about it.

List and skills are can be recorded. If record it puts too much burden, then only check the 1st, 2nd and 3rd highest skills for both combat related skills and social/maintenance skills would be better. Children are tend to have some skills, and when they does slightly increase the chance with highest skills of their ancestors would be interesting.

Can they had original unit as well? If so then able to see the list of former owner of each unit seems interesting. If your Atlas was once piloted by your ancestors, then you should be want to know.

This is the minimum for an ancestor. Skills, awards, and logs are all not happening, way too bloated. However, they will likely be included in one of the heavier forms of ancestor.

An another thing is, can ancestors have the list of spouse during the lifetime? They are not expected to be playable for now, and during the life the person may divorce or separated with the spouse, so even if you didn't add the concept of polygamy/polyandry in MekHQ the person may had more than one spouse. It is important because having more than one spouse means the person may had child with more than one person.

Genealogy will be a basic inclusion, as it is handled now. Former Spouses, Spouses, and family... all will be tracked. I have no plans to add polygamy/polyandry (and I can't believe I'm writing that...)

Coming in late, but I see "Origin Planet" and "Origin Faction" as somewhat duplicative, and lacking the VERY important "Current (or Final) Faction".

Not late at all, and that's a good point... both Final Planet and Final Faction would be very useful to track the location. Origin for their birth, final for their death.

[Daryk]

Thanks, and as far as not believing what you had to write just above responding to me, welcome to the FUTURE... 

[PuppyLikesLaserPointers]

Thanks everyone for their ideas, and please keep them coming. I'm collecting the information here, and know I'm going to need more than just the basic ancestor, and will instead require a few different ancestor types of increasing complexity.

For decisions: Origin Planet and Faction are in for the base one, Callsign and Maiden Name with both be moved so that they are further down the list.

Is it means these two are not recorded for the ancestors class?

Genealogy will be a basic inclusion, as it is handled now. Former Spouses, Spouses, and family... all will be tracked. I have no plans to add polygamy/polyandry (and I can't believe I'm writing that...)

I didn't request for polygamy/polyandry on the post. What I want to say is, even if you didn't apply such type of weird marriage system, the person can have more than one spouse during their lifetime by either divorce or separated, and have the child with more than single spouse, so for ancestors the list of spouse during their lifetime may a factor. For your active personnel it is less important, perhaps, but for record the history and branch of descendant, mark all the spouse during the lifetime would be needed.

[Windchild]

Is it means these two are not recorded for the ancestors class?
I didn't request for polygamy/polyandry on the post. What I want to say is, even if you didn't apply such type of weird marriage system, the person can have more than one spouse during their lifetime by either divorce or separated, and have the child with more than single spouse, so for ancestors the list of spouse during their lifetime may a factor. For your active personnel it is less important, perhaps, but for record the history and branch of descendant, mark all the spouse during the lifetime would be needed.

Correct, and I'm say that is already tracked in the develop branch. I added it as part of my personnel changes, so version 0.47.5 IIRC. Just wanted to clarify to anyone reading that I have no plans to implement either

[MoleMan]

Ah maiden name would be grand! Nice work! Previous spouses and place of death would be cool too. The parents final role would also be neat, I like to track those things back, so that a kid becomes a mechwarrior like his mum etc.

As for all the grandparents info, the simple hotlink method works pretty well. I wouldn't invest too much time

[pfarland]

...Since you are expanding ancestry beyond the members of the player's unit, I would suggest adding a 'Role (Profession)' field and a boolean to mark them as being high ranking in their role (officer, upper management, senior scientist, etc) or not. This would give a bit of flavor the character's backstory...were they a military family going back generations or did they run away from the farm to join up, etc. ...

I have a project (which I keep restarting) that is combining a bit of the 2nd, AToW, and Destiny RPGs into a random generator. Frankly the info needed to incorporate it into MekHQ quickly spirals into too much for little benefit for the average player. You would really have to not only add in the spaces for the info, but the generator itself. Now that you've done that not only do you have to give the players a TON of options for it, but also figure out how to 'weigh' the tables. Think about it, you will have the occasional cop, scientist, tech that becomes a mechwarrior, but how often does that happen?

These are just a few of the reasons I keep redoing the whole thing.

[MoleMan]

I'm the MegaMek/MekHQ dev whose primary focus is on personnel. I'm working on ancestry, looking to expand beyond just the members of your mercenary company so that you can have expanded ancestry. My end goal is to being able to create and view a full family tree within MekHQ, and to do so I need to designate a design for the information to have for ancestors, to avoid save file bloat. I've selected the following as the minimum inclusions for ancestors, although only the name, gender, and status will need to be specified, but would like wider opinions on them.

• Id: This is the person's unique id, required for internal tracking
• Name: Pre-nominal, Given Name, Surname, Post-Nominal, all of which may be multiple words in length.
• Gender
• Status
• Portrait
• Birthday
• Death Date
• Genealogy
• Biography

I'm not certain about whether to include or exclude the following:

• Origin Faction
• Origin Planet
• Maiden Name
• Callsign

Ranks will be left as part of the pre-nominal, as they do not require the level of complexity that our rank system includes.

I don't know if this is beyond your scope/of interest, but I really do think it would be interesting if #9 background could be rng/autofilled, and by that I mean similar to the system in the BT turn based game that came out, i.e. Pirate, house, armed forces, fugitive, industrial pilot background.

My own background generator (excel sheet) has this as a list of possible backgrounds:

Street rat (Toughness +1, Scrounge +1)
War orphan (Scrounge +1)
Pirate (piloting +1)
Pirate (gunnery +1)
Farmer (strategy -1)
Miner (tech/mech +1)
Back Water
Industrial (tech/mech +1)
Gang Member (+1 toughness)
Convict
Slave
Indentured Servant (gunnery -1)
Conscript (gunnery -1)
Conscript (piloting -1)
Non-Citizen
Fugitive (Major Power)
Fugitive (Periphery)
Fugitive (Minor Power)
Escaped Conscript (gunnery -1)
Escaped Slave (gunnery -1)
Escaped Indentured Servant
Organised crime (toughness +1)
Academy Trained (strategy +1, piloting +1)
Home Educated
House Educated
Graduate (tactics +1)
Religious Upbringing
Cultist
Escaped Cultist
Military Brat (gunnery +1)
Mercenary (negotiation +1)
Corporate (negotiation +1, administration +1)
Trader Family (negotiation +2)
Military
Military (Dishonorable Discharge)
Military (Washout) (piloting -1)
Military (Impossible Survivor) (Toughness +1)
Military (Sectioned) (gunnery +1)
Military (Injured, Random permanent injury)
Minor Solaris Fighter (1 free reroll of Unit)
Known Solaris Fighter (Custom Unit)
PhD
Middle class
Professor
Upper Class
Regular warrior parent
Famous warrior parent
Infamous warrior parent (gunnery +1, piloting +1)
Minor member of noble house (+1 to leadership)
Smuggler (+1 Scrounge)
Police Academy
Diplomatic Corps (negotiation +2)
Exploration Corps
Fire Service
Medical Service (medical +2)

Obviously I've played around with the % chance of each, and I'll be the first to admit that some are nonsensical, but it really adds flavour

[MoleMan]

I also have separate wealth, likeability and confidence categories

[Windchild]

I don't know if this is beyond your scope/of interest, but I really do think it would be interesting if #9 background could be rng/autofilled, and by that I mean similar to the system in the BT turn based game that came out, i.e. Pirate, house, armed forces, fugitive, industrial pilot background.

My own background generator (excel sheet) has this as a list of possible backgrounds:

Street rat (Toughness +1, Scrounge +1)
War orphan (Scrounge +1)
Pirate (piloting +1)
Pirate (gunnery +1)
Farmer (strategy -1)
Miner (tech/mech +1)
Back Water
Industrial (tech/mech +1)
Gang Member (+1 toughness)
Convict
Slave
Indentured Servant (gunnery -1)
Conscript (gunnery -1)
Conscript (piloting -1)
Non-Citizen
Fugitive (Major Power)
Fugitive (Periphery)
Fugitive (Minor Power)
Escaped Conscript (gunnery -1)
Escaped Slave (gunnery -1)
Escaped Indentured Servant
Organised crime (toughness +1)
Academy Trained (strategy +1, piloting +1)
Home Educated
House Educated
Graduate (tactics +1)
Religious Upbringing
Cultist
Escaped Cultist
Military Brat (gunnery +1)
Mercenary (negotiation +1)
Corporate (negotiation +1, administration +1)
Trader Family (negotiation +2)
Military
Military (Dishonorable Discharge)
Military (Washout) (piloting -1)
Military (Impossible Survivor) (Toughness +1)
Military (Sectioned) (gunnery +1)
Military (Injured, Random permanent injury)
Minor Solaris Fighter (1 free reroll of Unit)
Known Solaris Fighter (Custom Unit)
PhD
Middle class
Professor
Upper Class
Regular warrior parent
Famous warrior parent
Infamous warrior parent (gunnery +1, piloting +1)
Minor member of noble house (+1 to leadership)
Smuggler (+1 Scrounge)
Police Academy
Diplomatic Corps (negotiation +2)
Exploration Corps
Fire Service
Medical Service (medical +2)

Obviously I've played around with the % chance of each, and I'll be the first to admit that some are nonsensical, but it really adds flavour

Super out of scope, but definitely a field of interest. I've got some more things to do with personnel, but once I arrive at a certain point I'd like to start adding in more generators for them.