Why mutlicrew should not give two extra pips.

[Sasquatch_Punter]

Agreed. It's meant as a substitute for compelling gameplay.

What they should have done was make total pips shareable between the helm and the gunner. Helm can loan as many pips as he wants to his gunner, gunner (due to having elevated tactical awareness) can throw pips to SYS when under fire, pips to WEPS when trying to land a broadside barrage, pips to ENG whenever the pilot needs them, etc...

Allowing the helm to allocate pip management like that would allow us to optimize different builts and different team makeups. Just making it a bonus pip per crew removes most of that potential for teamwork, which goes against the point of the update.

 

[Tel Prydain]

I do not believe that multicrew should magically give a ship two extra pips. for various reasons.

1. If you have two ships that have the exact same specs, same ship, same modules, same everything. they should always be mirror copies of each other and if pitted against each other it should be an even fight.

2. A ship does not car does not automatically preform extremely better if you put more people in it. Ships should not be able to output megawatts better performance just because one person boards the ship. This would mean that although the two ships that have 100% mirroring specifications. One ship now has an unfair advantage over a ship thats exactly the same as it just because another person showed up on it.

3. The benefit of multicrew should not come from magically appearing power availability (pips) just because people boarded the ship. it should come from strategy, and communication, and how well an individual knows the equipment on a ship and how to use said equipment. The workload should be divided amongst the crew members by communication. The extra pips is a clear buff however you look at it. and while its partly there as a handicap in multicrew it is an unfair advantage.

If you look at startrek the enterprise's workload and system management is divided among quite a few people, but the ship doesn't automatically preform better hardware wise just because it has additional crew members. It functions better strategically because you have more eyes on the situation. which is how multicrew should function. A ship should only be able to function better strategically, not hardware wise. you have one person piloting the ship, another person viewing turret control via a camera because the pilot isn't going to be able to efficiently swap between the extra camera and pilot view on their own. and another person to control fighters and utilities.

4. a ship is a ship regardless of the crew you have. So this should not prevent a ship from entering a wing. A person is not a ship, A ship is a ship, when you enter a wing, you aren't entering its crew you are entering the ship itself.

(edit)
5. this will likely encourage botting as people can go and make dummy accounts to get those extra pips.

1. The multi-crew ship does have something different. Crew.
Also, we've known that multicrew would be balanced so that "3 people in one ship = 3 ships" since multicrew was announced. The time to air disagreement to that was about a year ago.

2. A better comparison would be a plane or a ship... in which case... yes, crew are obviously either helpful or a requirement.

3. I don't disagree, but you need to explain how that would work in-game.

4. It's clearly a technology limitation, not a balance or design issue.

5. Yep, that's a legit issue

I agree that extra pips is an idiotic idea. It's just a lure to get people to use the feature. Since the other players are just holograms, then we must assume that the ship already had the two extra pips, but just made them accessible with other "people" onboard. What kind of ship designer would be that dense?

I can't tell if that's hyperbole or not... as obviously it's not literally more power, but represents the added efficiency of someone manually performing the role, rather than relying on automation.

Now I'd rather see a weapons role, a systems role and an engineer role - where each of those systems get a pip as a result of the related crewman performing their role via some in-game mechanic... But:
A : That's no less silly then the current situation
B : I'm not able to suggest any mechanic that would fit those roles that would also be fun long term.

 

[Bryan K]

It makes up for the massive disadvantage of having use turreted weapons.

Also it prevents the CMDRs at the helm from starving a station of power. Imagine you join a ship as the gunner, but the helm insists on running 4 pips to shields and 2 to engines, leaving you with no power to do your job. This way, you'll always have some power at your disposal.

There's no disadvantage if the turrets are the small hardpoints on the big three. Unless you're rocking torpedo launchers on all of them, their damage output is negligible anyway.

 

[Armia]

it's still an odd (dare I say, unfair?) gameplay advantage.

Yes, it's an advantage, but wouldn't you have more 'advantage' if, you know, that second crewman had brought their own ship instead?

 

[Bryan K]

I can't tell if that's hyperbole or not... as obviously it's not literally more power, but represents the added efficiency of someone manually performing the role, rather than relying on automation.

Except that it IS more power. Specifically the ability to add more power to your capacitors than otherwise allowed. Unless you're suggesting that extra crew should somehow be allowed to make electrons move faster?

- - - Updated - - -

Yes, it's an advantage, but wouldn't you have more 'advantage' if, you know, that second crewman had brought their own ship instead?

Can that other player and their ship arrive in an instant, and from anywhere in the galaxy?

 

[blurkness]

More pips = push the limit of the ship without using RNG, I guess it's a nice feature. Unfair for PVP? Maybe, but the RNG stuff can be "unfair" for people that doesn't have Horizons.

Bots with pips = more money for FD and I believe if people can use hacks without spent money (I guess), why pay for additional accounts?

Easy Credits for being a co-pilot.... Well... Missions stacks, relog and etc exist too

The game itself and the update it's all about have fun because... It's a game! Right?!

 

[Bryan K]

More pips = push the limit of the ship without using RNG, I guess it's a nice feature. Unfair for PVP? Maybe, but the RNG stuff can be "unfair" for people that doesn't have Horizons.

Bots with pips = more money for FD and I believe if people can use hacks without spent money (I guess), why pay for additional accounts?

Easy Credits for being a co-pilot.... Well... Missions stacks, relog and etc exist too

The game itself and the update it's all about have fun because... It's a game! Right?!

Has it been stated whether or not multi-crew will be a Horizons-only feature? I couldn't stop playing to sit through another hour of discussing, reiterating and livestream control snafus to get the answer (yes, it's entertaining and all, and appropriate kudos go out to all involved in the livestreams, but please FDev, summarize your new content succinctly for the rest of us ).

 

[RamirezKurita]

I can't tell if that's hyperbole or not... as obviously it's not literally more power, but represents the added efficiency of someone manually performing the role, rather than relying on automation.

Then give us the tools required to manually control these extra two pips, even if we can only do them at stations or if they require us to delve into the right-hand interfaces to change them.

The simple fact is that the turret gunner isn't an engineer who is monitoring the PD or fusion reactor, he's a gunner with a rudimentary interface for diverting system power. A rudimentary system completely identical to the one the helm has.

If a person (and a skilled one at that, considering how even our Elite-ranked NPC crew members have no idea how these bonus pips work) is required, then how come I'd be able to connect to a friend's ship, assign the bonus pips then proceed to make myself a cup of tea? Surely that should overload the PD or something like that as I am allegedly meant to be controlling the flow of power to allow the PD to operate at this extreme load?

If there was a full-on engineer or scientist (calling the tech dude a "scientist" would also give him more exploration stuff to do) position, then we might have an argument for additional pips, but not for a gunner who is likely just as distracted and non-technical as the pilot.

 

[blurkness]

Has it been stated whether or not multi-crew will be a Horizons-only feature? I couldn't bear to sit through another hour of rambling, reiterating and livestream control snafus to get the answer (Please FDev, summarize your new content succinctly for the rest of us ).

The example I said about is RNG (Engineers horizons-only).

 

[Bryan K]

The example I said about is RNG (Engineers horizons-only).

You also said that RNG is unfair for non-Horizons users. Now there will be two advantages they refuse to pay for.

 

[The Wallet Inspector]

I just presumed the extra pips are the "Scotty" effect.
Scotty "I'm givvin' it all I can, Cap'n!"
JTK "We need more power man!"
Scotty "I'll see what I can do, cap'n"

You do realize that was actually Scotty lying about the maximum power available, and the time things would take? He would say I cant give you any more, but he knew he could. That's how he gained his reputation as a miracle worker

 

[blurkness]

You also said that RNG is unfair for non-Horizons users. Now there will be two advantages they refuse to pay for.

Correct. Like almost every game with DLCs/Expansions and multiplayer mode. Elite Dangerous it's not a MMO p2w and we don't pay monthly subscription to play the game.

I understand your point about the pips being unbalanced and/or dump mechanic design, but that's the way they found to the player make difference being a crew member. Maybe with future patchs we can have more tweaks, including for solo player pushing the limit of the ship without a crew member (maybe with npc crew?).

At least they "finished the base" for this type of feature/advantage.

 

[Wylie28]

My forehead hurts from hitting it on my desk so much. The people in this forum...

OP, if the ships weren't better when you had more people in them NO ONE WOULD USE MULTI-CREW OVER WINGS.

Besides it makes logical sense. Go man a warship all by yourself and then tell me you do just as good against warships manned by a crew.

 

[Angry Fish Smell]

My forehead hurts from hitting it on my desk so much. The people in this forum...

OP, if the ships weren't better when you had more people in them NO ONE WOULD USE MULTI-CREW OVER WINGS.

Besides it makes logical sense. Go man a warship all by yourself and then tell me you do just as good against warships manned by a crew.

Pretty much this. OP, feel free to remove multicrew pips as soon as there's no limit on the number of people that can be in a wing. Until then, console yourself that the extra pip that "unbalanced" ship has could have just been another Corvette instead.

 

[Khelder]

OP, if the ships weren't better when you had more people in them NO ONE WOULD USE MULTI-CREW OVER WINGS.

I thought the idea was that it was fun?

Besides it makes logical sense. Go man a warship all by yourself and then tell me you do just as good against warships manned by a crew.

If that warship previously had computer-guided weaponry, you may actually be worse off with crew.

 

[Azmuth Divarchchron]

Pretty much this. OP, feel free to remove multicrew pips as soon as there's no limit on the number of people that can be in a wing. Until then, console yourself that the extra pip that "unbalanced" ship has could have just been another Corvette instead.

you obviously didn't fully read the OP. I'm saying that having multicrew SHOULD NOT bar a ship from entering a wing and SHOULD NOT get 2 extra pips. people would still enter multicrew for the credits and other benefits, but giving ships a 2 pip buff should not be one of them.

Regardless of whether a ship is multicrew or not it should ALWAYS be able to form a wing because thats how flight formations work. even jets that hold two pilots can form a wing, having an extra person doesn't prevent them from forming one.

 

[CMDR-AD]

I agree that extra PIPs do seem odd.

One way to offset the ability of CMDR to use empty accounts to gain an extra PIP: Allow the Gunner and SLF crew to only assign their additional PIP while they are not "Idle". This would mean that a second account to add the PIP would need to have activated the SLF and/or turrets to add the PIP, and then once activated those stations would become useless if they were "AFK" without a real CMDR to operate them. When any Gunner or SLF role is exited by their crew, the PIP for that station is disabled.

Then you've got to watch for a CMDR who would stick a single tiny turret on his smallest hardpoint. A minimal firepower loss, for the extra PIP. So as a balance to that case, perhaps the gunner PIP might only become available if the turrets make up at least 50% of the overall ship firepower. So in either case, an "AFK" account sitting there for a PIP would mean seriously wasted firepower.

Personally, I'd like to see some way to use those multi-crew CMDRs as engineers to help repair the ship using AFMU during combat. So instead of adding a PIP to the Power Distributor, each crew could add a "repair" PIP beside a single Module on the modules tab, and if the ship is equipped with an AFMU, then those modules would be repaired while still active and functional, though with some penalties. Maybe heat generation, or reduced performance (slower firing weapons, shield strength reduces while being repaired, etc).

One CMDR crew adding their PIP to a module would give 50% of max AFMU repair rate performance, two CMDRs PIPs on the same module would offer 100% repair rate.

Anyway, not sure why, but a repair engineer role seems more fun than a power boost aspect.

 

[Sasquatch_Punter]

My forehead hurts from hitting it on my desk so much. The people in this forum...

OP, if the ships weren't better when you had more people in them NO ONE WOULD USE MULTI-CREW OVER WINGS.

Besides it makes logical sense. Go man a warship all by yourself and then tell me you do just as good against warships manned by a crew.

So then give crewmates more things to work with rather than a straight buff to the distributor draw.

You're telling me it's smarter to design player crewmembers to confer passive bonuses than it is to give them more active team roles? Where's the shield management we heard about? Active repair?

Seems like the overall focus of multicrew is on the big ships; what attention has been paid to small/medium ships like the Cobra and the FAS? They don't have much room for turrets, so what else is there? Pointing a scanner and conferring a passive bonus. Kewl.

 

[Trueno33]

I approve this thread. No extra pips and no multipliying credits should make it to the game.
Too many bad ideas implemented at the same time

 

[Wylie28]

So then give crewmates more things to work with rather than a straight buff to the distributor draw.

You're telling me it's smarter to design player crewmembers to confer passive bonuses than it is to give them more active team roles? Where's the shield management we heard about? Active repair?

Seems like the overall focus of multicrew is on the big ships; what attention has been paid to small/medium ships like the Cobra and the FAS? They don't have much room for turrets, so what else is there? Pointing a scanner and conferring a passive bonus. Kewl.

Your two suggestions don't buff the ship. Neither shield management or active repair (neither things we heard about) compete with wings. Come back when you can take your own suggestion seriously.