Why not, I am a big fan of having more cash sinks in the game. I just don't want my bigger ships to look quite so empty......even if all they do is launch chaff/heatsinks/limpets for me.....or fire my secondary weapons.
Ok, Lets stop the nonsense Fdev - NPC Crew - No Brainer!
- Thread starter Nutter
- Start date
Why not, I am a big fan of having more cash sinks in the game. I just don't want my bigger ships to look quite so empty......even if all they do is launch chaff/heatsinks/limpets for me.....or fire my secondary weapons.
Well, since you've mentioned it, some Imperial crew chicks are hot, so I wouldn't mind having one just for decoration of that dreary militaristic Python cockpit
Btw ship integrity also "does nothing". Do you mind regularly paying for repairing it?
Dbrn47 is correct, at 0% integrity your effective hull is at 70%, so whilst is it a regular maintenance cost, it has an effect more than "nothing", nor do you need to pay it, if you are happy avoid the cost, due to not expecting to need those space hull HP
NecoMachina
N
Just seeing them would be a small, but cool addition. They've already got the face generated. I don't know why they can put that face on a body, the same way they do for player characters, and put them in a seat on the bridge. Maybe even have occasional voiced lines:Betty was slammed heavily in X:R for being pointless fluff. What do you propose the NPC member actually does, and what kind of interaction are you talking about? Or do you mean you just want to see them like with MC? If the latter, I agree (heck, its one of the most requested things since MC)! If the former, lets get more specific and turn this into a useful suggestion.
"We have a wanted commander on our six."
"I'm detecting a cargo scan from a pirate vessel."
"Careful commander, that cargo in our hold is illegal in this system."
"Seems we found an Earth-like."
"Engine integrity down to 50%!"
Little things like that. I agree it's fluff, but like voiced traffic controllers at stations, it adds life and immersion. Not sure about the cost-benefit ratio of this. Voice actors may be expensive. It would be nice, but I don't think we need to spend a large amount of time and money on fluff like this.
For more useful features, let NPC crew take over the gunner role. They could give a small accuracy boost to turreted weapons. They could counter the effects of chaff on turrets - they don't have to be perfect shots, just a little boost from unmanned turrets. They could kill warrant scan wanted ships in has-res for you without you having to aim your nose at the ship - kind of like how other players can.
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No, you have to balance it, so you get the pip removed unless you have the crew hired.
how about this:
Crew unlock skills at rank ups;
gets to
Expert; Learns docking at stations, like the docking computer
Master; Learns docking at planet stations and landing on planet ( like ship calling when in buggy, but can land the thing and find a spot for you, higher ranks deal with different gravity better )
Dangerous; crew member can fly to target and drop out of cruise at the right point, as a simple AI so easy to interdict
Deadly; crew can auto fly INCLUDING frameshift drive to location target in a simple path, and standard fuel scoop
Elite; crew can auto fly as above, but can also safely navigate and charge at neutron star boosts
that would give me incentive to use and train an AI crew, currently i see no point
Crew unlock skills at rank ups;
gets to
Expert; Learns docking at stations, like the docking computer
Master; Learns docking at planet stations and landing on planet ( like ship calling when in buggy, but can land the thing and find a spot for you, higher ranks deal with different gravity better )
Dangerous; crew member can fly to target and drop out of cruise at the right point, as a simple AI so easy to interdict
Deadly; crew can auto fly INCLUDING frameshift drive to location target in a simple path, and standard fuel scoop
Elite; crew can auto fly as above, but can also safely navigate and charge at neutron star boosts
that would give me incentive to use and train an AI crew, currently i see no point
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I'm alright with it either way. It's more realistic to have crew for bigger ships, even if they're placebos. But if that gets implemented, I'd like some control over what they look like. I hate to insult any artist's work, but some of the available crew npcs would make a train take a dirt road.
We have engineers to improve weapons and modules, at the cost of grind and mats. Why not bring minor improvements to your ship by hiring specialist NPC operators to sit in those seats to give various small increases in some attributes, at the cost of a wage. Currently you can invite a real human on board your ship (ie multicrew) with the benefit of a distributor PIP at the (potential) cost of releasing control of some of your ship items (weapons etc)
For example, I could hire a specialist who has skills in keeping my shields up for longer - or recharging quicker etc. Put a specialist NPC in your Asp X to provide faster surface detail scanning in support for explorers. Imagine dropping into a system and your NPC announces to you how many asteroids and planets etc there are in the system and things worthy of note. The point being that you only get these benefits if you hire that particular NPC with that particular skill and pay them. There are endless possibilities.
The fun gameplay restriction is that [1] you have limited seats in your ship and [2] each specialist cannot improve everything at once, so you search and employ different specialists to support your current ship role!
For me, this is a complete no-brainer and while everything requires careful thought, takes time to implement and debug, I see this as immensely valuable to our experience in-game.
I would suggest that the NPC Specialist wages be quite high as the fact that some small ships only support one seat needs to be offset somehow. For example, if you're going to run an Anaconda, Corvette or Cutter with NPC specialists then you better be ready to support its running costs. If you don't want to pay the wages then don't employ the NPC specialists. Perhaps wages could be tied to how good each NPC is in their field of expertise and the size of the ship.
Part of what makes Elite Dangerous shine is the experience of your ship. Yes, I very much dislike the RNG Blueprint attributes in engineering (my understatement of the decade), however this shows that Frontier are interested in making unique ship experiences, so why not allow us to hire specialist NPCs to bring further minor customisation to our ships and experiences.
For example, I could hire a specialist who has skills in keeping my shields up for longer - or recharging quicker etc. Put a specialist NPC in your Asp X to provide faster surface detail scanning in support for explorers. Imagine dropping into a system and your NPC announces to you how many asteroids and planets etc there are in the system and things worthy of note. The point being that you only get these benefits if you hire that particular NPC with that particular skill and pay them. There are endless possibilities.
The fun gameplay restriction is that [1] you have limited seats in your ship and [2] each specialist cannot improve everything at once, so you search and employ different specialists to support your current ship role!
For me, this is a complete no-brainer and while everything requires careful thought, takes time to implement and debug, I see this as immensely valuable to our experience in-game.
I would suggest that the NPC Specialist wages be quite high as the fact that some small ships only support one seat needs to be offset somehow. For example, if you're going to run an Anaconda, Corvette or Cutter with NPC specialists then you better be ready to support its running costs. If you don't want to pay the wages then don't employ the NPC specialists. Perhaps wages could be tied to how good each NPC is in their field of expertise and the size of the ship.
Part of what makes Elite Dangerous shine is the experience of your ship. Yes, I very much dislike the RNG Blueprint attributes in engineering (my understatement of the decade), however this shows that Frontier are interested in making unique ship experiences, so why not allow us to hire specialist NPCs to bring further minor customisation to our ships and experiences.
No-one's going to want to pay a salary for essentially window dressing or a +20% bonus to your pips (we already hear enough kvetching about fighter pilot salaries, and their contribution is obvious), so how about this: FDev adds a copilot to your ship, with a companion API that apps like EDDI or Voice Attack can hook into. Now instead of having a conversation with a disembodied voice, you can tell your copilot to plot a course, and you can watch them do their thing, have them tell you wartime tales, describe some nebula etc etc etc. To prevent the API from being abused for botting, it could be limited to NPC puppetry (eg { set-mood(agitated); point-at(scanner-target()); say(voice-type = excited, "Is that a thargoid ship?") }) and everything else needs to be done be injecting DirectX events like VA does now. Basically, a companion API
I bet people won't mind sinking credits into that NPC...
I bet people won't mind sinking credits into that NPC...
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I would be kinda happy if FD explained how the NPC crew has a build in transporter beam with infinite range.
No-one's going to want to pay a salary for essentially window dressing or a +20% bonus to your pips (we already hear enough kvetching about fighter pilot salaries, and their contribution is obvious), so how about this: FDev adds a copilot to your ship, with a companion API that apps like EDDI or Voice Attack can hook into. Now instead of having a conversation with a disembodied voice, you can tell your copilot to plot a course, and you can watch them do their thing, have them tell you wartime tales, describe some nebula etc etc etc. To prevent the API from being abused for botting, it could be limited to NPC puppetry (eg { set-mood(agitated); point-at(scanner-target()); say(voice-type = excited, "Is that a thargoid ship?") }) and everything else needs to be done be injecting DirectX events like VA does now. Basically, a companion API
I bet people won't mind sinking credits into that NPC...
I see your point, but I would gladly hire a second NPC if they could both sit in the spare seats on my bridge doing nothing. If they also gave the extra multicrew pips, I'd buy them at GBP 40 a pop (plus ongoing salaries in credits) like you can already do if you're willing to faff about with running multiple instances of ED.
A simple queue would go a long way to improving Multicrew.
How do British devs forget a queue in the first place! I mean come on!
Regarding crew salaries. I suspect the biggest hurdle in FD's mind was the salary model.
In FE2/FFE, one crewman cost between 5 and 20 credits per in-game-week. Given that it took a week in hyperspace to travel your maximum jump distance and then a few more days from the jump-in point to a typical inhabited planet back then, it amounted to (roughly) that much money every time you jumped from one system to another. Now, the credit has seen a 1000% inflation rate since then, so let's make it between 50 and 200 credits per jump. Maybe 500 to 2000 credits per hour? Which still isn't very much.
Now the problem with fixed salaries in ED is the 1:1 flow of time. If you hire a dozen crew in FE2 and go on a holiday from playing the game for a month, your bank balance is unchanged when you come back, since time is paused while you're not playing. If you hired a dozen NPC crew in ED at 2000 credits per hour and went on holidays for a month, you'd come back to the game and find yourself 17 million credits poorer. Not everyone can afford losing that kind of money. Fixed salaries are a no-go in an always-on game, which is why the NPC crew we currently have is run on a percentage-of-earnings model. I suspect any other crew we hire would have to be the same.
FE2 had a hidden "reputation" score, which was galaxy-wide. Having a high reputation made bulletin board missions spawn more and "job wanted" ads were in amongst the other bulletin board items, so a high reputation made it easier for you to find crew. Firing crewmembers reduced your reputation, so constantly swapping between big ships and little ships (you were only allowed to own one ship at a time back then) severely trashed your reputation.
Regarding crew jobs: I'm still hoping to hire a "science officer" to take with me while exploring. They might make scanning things quicker, and perhaps detect anomalies from further away. Maybe even be able to tease out from orbit the locations of permanent POIs like barnacles, crashed ships, abandoned bases and such, once they're experienced enough.
In FE2/FFE, one crewman cost between 5 and 20 credits per in-game-week. Given that it took a week in hyperspace to travel your maximum jump distance and then a few more days from the jump-in point to a typical inhabited planet back then, it amounted to (roughly) that much money every time you jumped from one system to another. Now, the credit has seen a 1000% inflation rate since then, so let's make it between 50 and 200 credits per jump. Maybe 500 to 2000 credits per hour? Which still isn't very much.
Now the problem with fixed salaries in ED is the 1:1 flow of time. If you hire a dozen crew in FE2 and go on a holiday from playing the game for a month, your bank balance is unchanged when you come back, since time is paused while you're not playing. If you hired a dozen NPC crew in ED at 2000 credits per hour and went on holidays for a month, you'd come back to the game and find yourself 17 million credits poorer. Not everyone can afford losing that kind of money. Fixed salaries are a no-go in an always-on game, which is why the NPC crew we currently have is run on a percentage-of-earnings model. I suspect any other crew we hire would have to be the same.
FE2 had a hidden "reputation" score, which was galaxy-wide. Having a high reputation made bulletin board missions spawn more and "job wanted" ads were in amongst the other bulletin board items, so a high reputation made it easier for you to find crew. Firing crewmembers reduced your reputation, so constantly swapping between big ships and little ships (you were only allowed to own one ship at a time back then) severely trashed your reputation.
Regarding crew jobs: I'm still hoping to hire a "science officer" to take with me while exploring. They might make scanning things quicker, and perhaps detect anomalies from further away. Maybe even be able to tease out from orbit the locations of permanent POIs like barnacles, crashed ships, abandoned bases and such, once they're experienced enough.
Love the suggestion.
A Chicken won’t live forever.
You can say what you want, but they’ll be Someone who says it’s not that easy.
But you are being penalised for not using a crew. Have you ever tried targeting a Chaff spitting FAS flying just behind you when you’re in a Cutter? That’s the penalty. If he’s a good pilot, the only recourse is to jump out.
With the crew, you can target your cannon turrets manually behind you and watch the Vulture’s canopy go pop.
I’m not familiar with any of the earlier games other than the original elite. Yes it could get out of hand if three staff end up taking 50% of your income. But considering they die with the ship and don’t get an escape pod, that’s fair game I reckon. LOL.
As for exploring, I would be happy if we could target a body while flying past it using a science crew member To keep the discovery scanner locked on the target while you are manoeuvering the ship.
Order>Science Officer>Target Body For Detailed Surface Scan>Unknown 15LS
Yes Sir!
You get back to navigating around the star to the next body/jump point while the scan is taking place.
That alone would be worth the cost of admission.
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Yeah, I also need my personal autoaim bo....I mean, other NPC crew members.
Basically this.