Do NPC crew still die for good if your ship is destroyed?

[Riverside]

If by "special powers" you mean being consistent with all other forms of penalty and loss we're faced with, and established rules for player revival after defeat, then yes.

__



As I keep repeating, there is any number of ways to increase 'consequence' in this game without focusing on keeping this permadeath baloney.



And why did they not apply this logic to anything else in the game prior or since, huh?

It's not fun, that's why.



Yeah. That's a good thing.

What the heck is the point of having this content in the game and having ships specifically capable of using this thing if you're not trying to let everybody embrace using them??? Why on earth would you want to punish people for using them to the point of causing people not to use this feature? Isn't that being just a WEE bit too antagonistic towards your players?

There is no problem, whatsoever, with everybody using NPC crew if their ship has the capability.

Any balance concerns can and should be addressed by directly tweaking the appropriate variables where SLF or distributor stuff are concerned. Justifying them being OP by pointing at the extravagant risk/cost is proving precisely why this is such a big problem in multiple regards.

I'm afraid I'm not a fan of this piecemeal approach to a response, I'll do my best to respond to each point in one lump.

By 'Special Powers' I mean more like a player, yes. In this case there are three elements - their pay in credits, their XP for combat rank, and their ability to survive ship destruction. A 'normal' NPC (in their own ship) presumably earns cash through BGS transactions just as we do, we see them gain bounties & carrying cargo. They have a combat rank so they presumably earned that before they met us, and I'm pretty sure canonically they don't survive ship destruction, although I don't really see why they couldn't, it's just what we've been told happens.

This last point (why do NPCs not have Remlocs when we find escape capsules all over the place and disgruntled passengers can eject) is obviously the sticky one. The choice of whether they survive or not is one made by the game designers (or lore writers), not us but it should be consistent. If they don't survive does that mean all those occupied escape pods I rescue contain players? Clearly not

So the lack of consistency is definitely an issue that should be addressed, and if the escape pod answer is that some do survive, then arguably there is no lore reason why the NPC crew couldn't.



But there's the lore, and then there's gameplay (I hate the word but I don't know a better one). Telepresence beyond the instance (multi-crew) is awful lore, but clearly handwavium for better gameplay, because only being able to join another ship in your instance would be at the expense of instant fun.

Your argument essentially seems to boil down to 'we have this bit of poorly explained lore for the sake of fun, why not apply that to NPC crew too to make that more fun?' That's a perfectly reasonable stance to take. But so is it's counterargument, preserve the dilemma. You should have to make difficult choices, just as you do with ship choice, loadout etc. You want a high jump range? You gotta leave stuff behind & skimp on defenses. You want a really tanky combat ship? It won't travel well.

A lot of the reason why I like this game is because of stuff like there being no one best ship & loadout. It's compromises all the way. Or it should be in my view. The way NPC crew is currently handled preserves the dilemma.



How about a different take on this. Would you be prepared to have their effectiveness reduced (eg make an Elite NPC crew member be only as effective as they currently are at Expert) in exchange for having them survive ship destruction? What would you be prepared to give up in exchange for saving their life?

 

[V'larr]

I'm afraid I'm not a fan of this piecemeal approach to a response, I'll do my best to respond to each point in one lump.

By 'Special Powers' I mean more like a player, yes. In this case there are three elements - their pay in credits, their XP for combat rank, and their ability to survive ship destruction. A 'normal' NPC (in their own ship) presumably earns cash through BGS transactions just as we do, we see them gain bounties & carrying cargo. They have a combat rank so they presumably earned that before they met us, and I'm pretty sure canonically they don't survive ship destruction, although I don't really see why they couldn't, it's just what we've been told happens.

This last point (why do NPCs not have Remlocs when we find escape capsules all over the place and disgruntled passengers can eject) is obviously the sticky one. The choice of whether they survive or not is one made by the game designers (or lore writers), not us but it should be consistent. If they don't survive does that mean all those occupied escape pods I rescue contain players? Clearly not

So the lack of consistency is definitely an issue that should be addressed, and if the escape pod answer is that some do survive, then arguably there is no lore reason why the NPC crew couldn't.

But there's the lore, and then there's gameplay (I hate the word but I don't know a better one). Telepresence beyond the instance (multi-crew) is awful lore, but clearly handwavium for better gameplay, because only being able to join another ship in your instance would be at the expense of instant fun.

Your argument essentially seems to boil down to 'we have this bit of poorly explained lore for the sake of fun, why not apply that to NPC crew too to make that more fun?' That's a perfectly reasonable stance to take. But so is it's counterargument, preserve the dilemma. You should have to make difficult choices, just as you do with ship choice, loadout etc. You want a high jump range? You gotta leave stuff behind & skimp on defenses. You want a really tanky combat ship? It won't travel well.

A lot of the reason why I like this game is because of stuff like there being no one best ship & loadout. It's compromises all the way. Or it should be in my view. The way NPC crew is currently handled preserves the dilemma.

How about a different take on this. Would you be prepared to have their effectiveness reduced (eg make an Elite NPC crew member be only as effective as they currently are at Expert) in exchange for having them survive ship destruction? What would you be prepared to give up in exchange for saving their life?

I'm certainly not using telepresence as rationale for this, y'know....

Remlok is clearly a little bit of gamey handwavium, because it'd be overly annoying if we weren't allowed to resume the game immediately after a defeat, but it still stands that it's horridly inconsistent to exclude NPC crew from something that appears to apply to all other characters in the game.

I've been repeating this ad nauseum now, but "consequence" and "dilemna" can be introduced by any number of ways without punishing players needlessly for the sake of inappropriately placed exclusivity.

Making load-out tradeoff decisions is very different from risk of permanent loss. None of those decisions you're making with your ship loadout involve a risk of permanent loss of long-term investment.

And again, if there's balance issues you're concerned about, then address those issues directly, and please quit pointing to permadeath as 'raison d'etre'. Both permadeath and balance issues are things that are not to be desired, and both things ought to be fixed.

 

[Riverside]

And again, if there's balance issues you're concerned about

The game is already working in a way I'm happy with (in this specific respect), my only concern is that it changes in a way that adversely affects how I play. Seems to me an Elite NPC crew member represents a significant asset, it should therefore have a significant cost (which imo it currently does). If it were less useful, the downsides could be reduced to suit. If there were a different cost, that would probably be fine too. I'm not against saving their lives, I'm against unbalancing something I see as already suitably balanced.

If you have any suggestions I've not already commented on I'd be happy to take a look if you share a link or two.

 

[Sylveria]

I'm certainly not using telepresence as rationale for this, y'know....

Remlok is clearly a little bit of gamey handwavium, because it'd be overly annoying if we weren't allowed to resume the game immediately after a defeat, but it still stands that it's horridly inconsistent to exclude NPC crew from something that appears to apply to all other characters in the game.

I've been repeating this ad nauseum now, but "consequence" and "dilemna" can be introduced by any number of ways without punishing players needlessly for the sake of inappropriately placed exclusivity.

Making load-out tradeoff decisions is very different from risk of permanent loss. None of those decisions you're making with your ship loadout involve a risk of permanent loss of long-term investment.

And again, if there's balance issues you're concerned about, then address those issues directly, and please quit pointing to permadeath as 'raison d'etre'. Both permadeath and balance issues are things that are not to be desired, and both things ought to be fixed.

Telepresence is simply and abhorrent abomination that needs be removed from the game, period.

It once served a temporary "purpose". There's better ways Frontier can implement such interaction with objects.

 

[Devari]

Because that's what they are. Hired crew. Going around in circles, doesn't change that.

It changes what you think that term means. Being a "hired crew" doesn't mean you are somehow unimportant from a story or immersion perspective.

I'm suggesting that rather than assume a mechanic should do something it clearly doesn't, or that one's own opinion is somehow global, perhaps asking for that might be more productive, instead.

We are clearly not getting less grind, or less profit reduction or more SLF dps from FD. We might, if anyone at FD had to level their own SLF pilot and then lost 12-24 hours of grind, possibly see a way to rescue our pilots however. Since FD doesn't play their own game that is unfortunately not likely to happen.

Your words, m8. Not mine. I quite value my employee, actually, and I will probably be a bit disappointed in myself if I get them killed. Whether that's because I put them in harms way to save my own skin, or because I played in open, knowing full well that's a license to be potentially shot at, then that's still on me.

What do you "value" exactly? They are extremely expensive "employees" for what they actually do. If it has something to do with immersion, that sort of proves my point. If it doesn't, then tell me what makes them so "valuable"?

The forums love to obviate responsibility and just claim it's everyone else's fault. Nope. I hired the guy. I elected to bring them on board. I elected to do what I did, that one day might get them killed. I like that the game makes me think about that. I also like that there are consequences. As it was designed, as it was described and just as Frontier delivered.

Except that you have no consequences for losing your custom-Engineered ship with unique mods. Why shouldn't that also be a "risk" to lose those mods? Why should it be an SLF pilot who should have an escape pod, but somehow doesn't when everyone and their dog in Elite seems to have one? Using SLF pilot as a disproportionate and severe "risk" is nonsense when the rest of the game doesn't do that.

If my dude could not die, then he would become that disposable hardpoint. Because of course he would. Because he'd be an endlessly exploitable resource with no consequences attached. I don't know how immersive that is, to be fair. I find it difficult to RP some sort of attachment to a hardpoint?

How is paying an SLF pilot 10% of your income, even when they're inactive, and 50% of your combat experience, even when they do a small fraction of the total damage to a target, "endlessly exploitable"? What about the 24 hours of "on the job training" grind my SLF pilots each needed to be useful? If anything we're getting exploited as an "employer" who has to spend ridiculous amounts time and money for the services of a moderately effective SLF pilot.

Personally I think Frontier did rather well to achieve what they did. I can respect a thing, even if I don't particularly agree with all of it's aspects. But then, I understand it's a crew mechanic, not a companion mechanic. I understand the point of it. To offer me potential; with associated risk. Not to be the Elite version of 'Dogmeat' or 'Aela the Huntress'.

Except they did this ONLY for the SLF pilots. No other parts of the game. That is inconsistent and nonsensical.

If I wanted a companion? I'd ask frontier for it. Not force the entire game to rotate around my person because I would rather it did. This is not a healthy way to engage with any game, let alone Elite. Again; I have no quarrel with wanting a more engaging crew experience? But there's a constructive way to achieve that. I'd recommend that.

Sorry, but FD designed a game that is only worthwhile playing for immersion. The grind is terrible, the core gameplay is boring and underdeveloped, really if there is no immersion the game is not worth playing. Yet you're suggesting that by wanting this immersion I'm somehow "playing the game wrong". Sorry but if you want to judge SLF pilots purely on gameplay mechanics they are terrible, so if you aren't using them for immersion you are intentionally using probably the worst gameplay feature in the entire game.

 

[V'larr]

The game is already working in a way I'm happy with (in this specific respect), my only concern is that it changes in a way that adversely affects how I play. Seems to me an Elite NPC crew member represents a significant asset, it should therefore have a significant cost (which imo it currently does). If it were less useful, the downsides could be reduced to suit. If there were a different cost, that would probably be fine too. I'm not against saving their lives, I'm against unbalancing something I see as already suitably balanced.

If you have any suggestions I've not already commented on I'd be happy to take a look if you share a link or two.

All that resolving the permadeath problem would do is take away the sensation of losing a limb if you happen to get yourself blown up with a crewmember aboard. It is not such a significant asset that it should be an exception to all the consistent rules applied to every other asset you can have in the game, or to the rules applied to your own CMDR.

If it means Fdev decides to hit a re-do button with SLF design as a result of committing to punishing us with permadeath, so much the better. There's a whole lotta improvements that could be done there (with balance just being one of those things).

Telepresence is simply and abhorrent abomination that needs be removed from the game, period.
It once served a temporary "purpose". There's better ways Frontier can implement such interaction with objects.

Yeah, it really is a strange thing.

I just can't see how anyone would have felt strongly enough about explaining away how multicrew works that it *had* to have this word made-up and injected into the game dialogue and lore. It was very misplaced attention to detail, things would've been perfectly fine had they never said anything about it, and things would be perfectly fine now if they just quietly removed that word entirely.

 

[space voyager]

Having lost a pilot at Gnosis twice lately I decided to revive a thread on the issue.

The pilot's death is my main problem with SLFs. In all other modules/weapons you invest time, engineer them and have such a weapon for good, bar no rebuy money. With SLFs you invest an incredible ammount of time to get it up to Elite (more than grade 5 enginnering for a module/weapon IMO) and on destruction you lose it all without any option to rebuy (pay for an escape pod). Right now the SLFs are less of a gain - no matter their level - than say shield cell of same size, they are more a company and PvE NPC target, in a PvP they won't help you much especially since their weapons are far too weak.

Basically, there are no good reasons for the pilots to die. So FD, please make them permanent.

 

[lecorsobreton]

I'd be OK to buy escape pods and "sacrifice" cargo storage to save my pilot. That's why I don't keep hired pilots. At the moment, I just use/fire them based on the mission I'm running.

 

[space voyager]

I'd be OK to buy escape pods and "sacrifice" cargo storage to save my pilot. That's why I don't keep hired pilots. At the moment, I just use/fire them based on the mission I'm running.

But there is a big difference between the hired ones and a dangerous+ pilot.

 

[operant]

It is almost unfathomable. You, passengers and you operating the fighter escape extinction.
But you npc pilot does not.
On the plus side - more grind (sorry engaging/personal narrative/your time valuable gameplay) to train a new on back to elite. And who does not like to see them flying into to rocks when they start out.

 

[Marklar_]

All the death of SLF pilots does is encourage people to hire-and-fire, it really doesn't affect the death penalty in any meaningful way. SLF pilots are already balanced, I think, by the fact that they suck up money for nothing, which is another reason to hire-and-fire.

They basically added a pet class and then made it better to kill the pet when you're done with it rather than keep it. That's all, and I don't really see why it's such a great idea. There are better ways to make the death penalty sting.

 

[Bunkerkind Anni]

whats with that "hire and fire" mentality

the best you can hire, is expert if i remember that correctly
and between an expert and elite slf pilot, the performance is not comparable IMHO.

is it even worth deploying the slf when it will explode just a few seconds later?

 

[Lily from anim.o.v.e]

if not, all these assassination missions wouldn't make sense.

 

[Lightspeed]

There should be a poster wall at each station where we can post "Missing in Action ..... Have you seen this person?"

You never know, they might be crewing for someone else .... or sitting in somebody's lounge as an inactive crew member while raking a percentage of their credits.

 

[space voyager]

is it even worth deploying the slf when it will explode just a few seconds later?

Well, no, it is more of a ''I'm not alone'' feeling... As for worth, shield cell banks are worth more.

 

[DoppelGanger]

Having the crew die with the ship is one of the top reasons why it takes away all of the joy of having NPC crew.
The idea of having buddies on board is awesome. Dealing with their loss and time wasted is too punishing.

I don't think there is anything more punishing in the game as losing the crew members.

 

[Bunkerkind Anni]

I don't think there is anything more punishing in the game as losing the crew members.

yep, second after that is "realising how much an idle crewmember costs"

 

[Woneas Sonya]

I suggest we should at least have a chance save his/her escape pod, maybe in an hour?

Along with lowering one or two rank?

 

[Riverside]

I suggest we should at least have a chance save his/her escape pod, maybe in an hour?

Along with lowering one or two rank?

This is similar in concept to the idea that an explorer who loses their ship (and therefore their unsold exploration data) could make their way back to their destroyed ship to recover their stuff.

I quite like the idea because it provides motivation to 'get back on the horse that threw you'. There could be a time limit on it, but given that we have occupied escape pods in the game already (and large data caches for explorers) there doesn't need to be a short one.

I think it would make sense that the 'rescue' scenario only apply to that particular game account, it could become a glorified tourist beacon with the same spawning of occupied escape pod(s) or Large data cache for any player, but if the account that 'created' the beacon visited it they would get their NPC crewmate/exploration data back.

In principle the same idea could work for lost cargo (dead easy, it's the sane cargo for any visitor) or combat bonds/bounties (data bond like scanning crashed nav beacons on planets) but I think this would be exploitable. Ultimately cargo & bounties are mostly just cash (ignoring BGS influence) and cash is pretty easy to get (certainly in comparison to trained up NPC crew or exploration data) so maybe it would be too complex to work for those.


So if a player really wants their specific stuff back after hull loss, it could be done. I would prefer there to be a cost. With exploration data just getting back to the location is probably enough (it's value is likely to be dependant on how far away it is from the player), recovering an escape pod from the nearby CZ would not imo but your idea of knocking them back a notch might be.


The game has generally become much less about preserving dilemmas and long progression chains since this thread was started, it may be worth FDev revisiting the idea that NPC crew can survive death.

 

[rangedsp]

Update for anybody coming here in 2020, crew no longer dies if you have the money for rebuy.

January Update

The January Update is a standalone update for Elite Dangerous that was released on January 14, 2020.[1][2] After the September Update, it was the third of a series of updates released throughout 2019 and 2020 designed to provide quality of life improvements and a more welcoming beginning...

elite-dangerous.fandom.com