Don't pay inactive crew members

[Allchemyst]

If thats what you want them to do, warm seats, you're the employer.
FD fighter jock system is fine as is.
Cake and eat it.

The current NPC crew system is a minuscule shadow of what the devs had planned. There were supposed to be multiple roles (including pilots and gunners and even robotic crew for certain tasks), and we were given litterally one npc type with one role to fill.

There's no telling wether they'll iterate further on the original concept (my guess is they want to and have to contend with limited resources), but this being just a game, after all, there's strictly no reason to defend not expanding the feature.

 

[Teh Smoo]

If thats what you want them to do, warm seats, you're the employer.
FD fighter jock system is fine as is.
Cake and eat it.

It's fine when you have ONE guy, and use it for the fighter often, probably bounty hunting.

For mining, exploring, passenger missions, anything that doesn't involve frequent fighter combat, crew is a waste of money. I'd love to have someone in those empty co-pilot seats, but there's no point without a fighter bay.

Like... if you could take a crew while exploring, and they doubled the DSS range+speed and scanned anything in range without having to target it? THAT would be worth a cut of the data profit.

If a crew boosted limpet performance, or could help scan asteroids or something? ALSO worth taking them along.

If a crew could help keep passengers happy.

If a crew could browse GalNet looking for good missions to take (boost mission-generation bonuses or something).


But no, the seat remains empty.

 

[Allchemyst]

It's fine when you have ONE guy, and use it for the fighter often, probably bounty hunting.

For mining, exploring, passenger missions, anything that doesn't involve frequent fighter combat, crew is a waste of money. I'd love to have someone in those empty co-pilot seats, but there's no point without a fighter bay.

Like... if you could take a crew while exploring, and they doubled the DSS range+speed and scanned anything in range without having to target it? THAT would be worth a cut of the data profit.

If a crew boosted limpet performance, or could help scan asteroids or something? ALSO worth taking them along.

If a crew could help keep passengers happy.

If a crew could browse GalNet looking for good missions to take (boost mission-generation bonuses or something).


But no, the seat remains empty.

yeah, we can note a clear pattern here : FD has, so far, been expanding the combat side of ED, and pretty much nothing else gameplay-wise.

Given how popular combat usually is, and how getting at least "one thing great" in a game isin't the worst idea around, I can't blame them. I'd say, however, that combat is more than well-rounded now and it should be exploration's turn now.

I mean, imagine, just imagine how great exploration would be if its mechanics were as deep and complex as those of combat itself!

 

[GODofDUTY83]

The point I was making was that there are certain players who want that elite jock to sit idle and receive no percentage cut of credits whilst they do whatever it is they want to do. If we can all have an elite jock on standby whats the point of having the other ranks available.
The fighter jock is a fighter jock.
I have no problem with other crew types.