I've been trying to embrace this new feature. Equipped my boat for a small gunner role, and opened a seat. After hours of gameplay I think 2 commanders have joined my ship only to exit again shortly after without any kind of comms.
And if I look to see if others have a MultiCrew opening on their ship? Not a single one.
Has MultiCrew already gone the way of the Dodo, much like CQC and PowerPlay?
I think that the current iteration of Multi-Crew was dead on arrival for a LOT of people. It definitely was for me, because it lacked nearly all the features I'd expect from such a feature:
- NPC crew to fill out your crew roster when people you'd trust are:
- unavailable to help crew your ship
- unwilling to help crew your ship
- nonexistent, which is why you play solo in the first place
- A wide variety of crew positions that people, including the owner, can control and swap between, including but NOT limited to:
- Helm
- Weapons
- Shields
- Engineering
- Damage Control
- Scanners
- Navigation
- Communications
- Crewed stations increasing the effectiveness of the modules that the station controls, both for NPCs and players.
- The ability to hand off control of the ship to other players after you log off, allowing a ship to be operated serially, rather than in parallel.
- Crew stations that are useful outside of combat.
- Rewards being shared between Commanders.
- Being physically present on board a ship.
- Boarding the ship at a station
- Dropping off players at a station, allowing players to hitchhike across the galaxy.
- Ejecting unwanted crew from on board a ship YOU own, with them being "retrieved" and returned to their ship, or choosing the starter sidewinder.
- An onboard communications system, so players can leave messages to each other if they're not logged in at the same time.
- For the largest ships, crewed utility vehicles, like the SRV or Supercruise equipped light scout, that can depart the mothership in order to perform functions.
When I think of multi-crew, I envision a team of players sharing one ship, primarily on a deep exploration journey. If only one player is logged in at the time they control the helm, and swap between other stations, primarily scanners and navigation, as necessary to do the job.
As others log in for the day, they might take up scanner operations so that they can maintain the scan as they fly by a world, rather than having to stop and point directly at it. Another might take up navigation, creating waypoints for the helm to follow, so they can efficiently scan a system, and then jumping into their scout to scan the planets at the other side of the star.
What we got for multi-crew was a huge disappointment to me. You can't cede control of helm to another, or even abandon it to operate your ship's turrets when alone, like you can with a ship launched fighter or SRV. There are no non-combat activities to perform, outside of operating a turreted mining laser. There's no serial operation of a ship at all.
Most egregiously, IMO, not only can't we travel aboard other people's ships, but we're given, "it works through Telepresence," as an explanation for WHY. Not only does this explanation ignore all previously established world building, it also ignores all the economic and military applications such technology would bring,
and the core game mechanics that
rely on large amounts of data travelling fastest aboard ships for their existence.
edit: added a critical NOT to the preamble of crew positions
