Actors

"Actor" is the catch-all term for the NPCs that live, work, or simply visit aboard the station - including humans, aliens, and androids. While in-game descriptions may name and describe different alien races, the game itself only needs to differentiate between the 3 different types. Actors are all controlled by the game itself (i.e. they are NPCs).

All actors have a set of statistics that influence their behaviors in different ways:

• Happiness: Typical values are in the range [-10, 10], but can go higher or lower, where positive values are happy while negative values are unhappy. The game will display a bar covering the [-10, 10] range, with an arrow pointing off the appropriate end for values outside that range. Happiness defaults to 5 and can go up or down based on a variety of factors.
• Breath: Usually max, but decreases if inadequate life support is available; actors die when it reaches 0.
• Hydration: Usually max, but decreases if inadequate Water is available; actors die when it reaches 0. Decreases slower than Breath.
• Satiety: Usually max, but decreases if inadequate Food is available; actors die when it reaches 0. Decreases slower than Hydration.

Air, Water, and Food stats are on the range [0, 10]. All stats are tracked internally as floating point values, but displayed to the player on a bar rather than as a number.

Happiness decreases if any of Breath, Hydration, or Satiety are below a threshold unique to each; Breath decreases Happiness immediately, while Hydration takes a little longer to begin decreasing it and Satiety takes longer still. Happiness continues to decrease as each of these stats remain below their threshold, and the rate increases as the stats fall further below it. This decrease is cumulative if more than one stat is below its threshold.

Happiness resists change as it approaches ±10, but does not when it is near 0. This resistance can never eliminate a change, only reduce it.