Frontier, Please Don't Kill Our Crew! Part Deux

[Bashy81]

There are so many ways you can go about dealing with it if you treat it as an intended mechanic, not a bug. Which also makes sense, because it is an intended mechanic and isnt bugged. Managing your resources doesnt mean you have to change how you play or how much, it just means tweaking how you use your NPC resources and dont automatically put your elite crew on your ship everytime without thinking. If it means youre never fully free from all jeapordy, sorry! But that really is a good thing.

Besides, the loss of major characters is a key part of any narrative, if you go in for that kindve thing. Or you can be frustrated and outraged and never get past it. Its demonstrably not broken, because you have the power to fix it, by just thinking about what youre doing for a sec before you do it. Imo, there are far more positives for gameplay longevity with NPC loss remaining as it currently is.

 

[insanephoton]

There are so many ways you can go about dealing with it if you treat it as an intended mechanic, not a bug. Which also makes sense, because it is an intended mechanic and isnt bugged. Managing your resources doesnt mean you have to change how you play or how much, it just means tweaking how you use your NPC resources and dont automatically put your elite crew on your ship everytime without thinking. If it means youre never fully free from all jeapordy, sorry! But that really is a good thing.

Besides, the loss of major characters is a key part of any narrative, if you go in for that kindve thing. Or you can be frustrated and outraged and never get past it. Its demonstrably not broken, because you have the power to fix it, by just thinking about what youre doing for a sec before you do it. Imo, there are far more positives for gameplay longevity with NPC loss remaining as it currently is.

If you're so confident of all the positives for gameplay, how about listing them, because an awful lot of us can't see any real positives apart from those with an 'iron man' playstyle mentality.

 

[Watcher]

There are so many ways you can go about dealing with it if you treat it as an intended mechanic, not a bug. Which also makes sense, because it is an intended mechanic and isnt bugged. Managing your resources doesnt mean you have to change how you play or how much, it just means tweaking how you use your NPC resources and dont automatically put your elite crew on your ship everytime without thinking. If it means youre never fully free from all jeapordy, sorry! But that really is a good thing.

Besides, the loss of major characters is a key part of any narrative, if you go in for that kindve thing. Or you can be frustrated and outraged and never get past it. Its demonstrably not broken, because you have the power to fix it, by just thinking about what youre doing for a sec before you do it. Imo, there are far more positives for gameplay longevity with NPC loss remaining as it currently is.

I fail to see how replacing crew loss with something like a recovery mission mechanic would make things worse - you have more narrative involvement and have to make a call about leaving a crew member behind or going out of your way to rescue them.
Tie that in with other things like possible later revenge for being left or some sort of rep system that would see crew being less willing to sign on and things could be much more interesting.
I guess we could do something with making this optional, perhaps have an NPC escape pod module or escape capable fighter bays that weight/cost more.
Generally fleshing out NPCs and gameplay around NPCs a bit more would be great.

 

[masCh]

If you're so confident of all the positives for gameplay, how about listing them, because an awful lot of us can't see any real positives apart from those with an 'iron man' playstyle mentality.

Making such decisions (eg to rescue at the cost of reputation, to decide that the annoying crewmate who always criticize you when you complete certain missions should be left to die) affects immersive gameplay. This is part of what many players remember about RPGs, in fact most if not all RPGs circle around these decision making concepts.

 

[masCh]

I love creative ideas like this!

Lose your ship fighting against a Thargoid ...and get a Naval Intelligence mission to find out where they've been taking those escape pods the Interceptors slurp up, and have to begin running rescue raids (hoping one of the POW's you rescue is your crew member)!

This is also a great idea! Like organizing a MMORPG raid where the l33t loot is : your fallen crew member! I love it. There's so many things Frontier could do with multicrew. And this is only about multicrew deaths, we haven't even talked about stuff like sending your crew to pilot your mining ship to mine some materials yet, or to do some trading (where this time, it is you who get a small percentage of the haul)

 

[Morbad]

I fail to see how replacing crew loss with something like a recovery mission mechanic would make things worse - you have more narrative involvement and have to make a call about leaving a crew member behind or going out of your way to rescue them.

Unless such a recovery mission carries significant risk of failure, it would result in the same issues with just letting crew survive...namely how everyone would rapidly only be fielding Elite crew in short order, and be generally unconcerned about losing them.

 

[Watcher]

Unless such a recovery mission carries significant risk of failure, it would result in the same issues with just letting crew survive...namely how everyone would rapidly only be fielding Elite crew in short order, and be generally unconcerned about losing them.

Does that really matter? If you are putting in effort to train them up and effort to recover them (and/or having to fit extra modules or pay more to keep them safe) surely that is fine? Especially for the private-group solo crowd who could perhaps use some decent backup.

Going back to fleshing out NPCs, perhaps do more stuff with NPC preferences, maybe they are more likely to quit as they rank up - you can keep paying them more, do more things they are interested in doing, engage in the background story missions... If they have a satisfaction rating perhaps this is harder to maintain the higher their rank and the more they've earned*. You have a choice about letting them go amicably versus them walking out, maybe we should have severance agreements? Hmm.. Anyway, flesh it out and do a bit more with it. This would all build a longer term relationship and be more interesting that what we have now - its not all about combat power here. You could add a combat rank loss mechanics if they have to eject or, heck, have no combat rank gain at all or do something like lock it to max a couple of levels above their starting rank, make it about the story.. We are meant to be blazing our own trail, it shouldn't all be about raw combat power surely?


* I've not done a huge amount with NPC crew but it is already comical how much they've earned, they could easily buy a decent ship and modules and strike out on their own.

 

[jacozilla]

Without getting into whose opinion has more merit, right/wrong, etc - haven't really monitored this issue and been away from game ~6 months. Has FD ever said anything re: why it currently is permadeath for crew but magic-pod for player? Or anything about keeping it same vs possibly changing?

e.g. have they weighed in on the issue like some debates in past?

Or has it been radio silence with no feedback re: either way?

 

[Watcher]

Without getting into whose opinion has more merit, right/wrong, etc - haven't really monitored this issue and been away from game ~6 months. Has FD ever said anything re: why it currently is permadeath for crew but magic-pod for player? Or anything about keeping it same vs possibly changing?

e.g. have they weighed in on the issue like some debates in past?

Or has it been radio silence with no feedback re: either way?

Radio silence I think...
I don't watch the livestreams though so may have missed something of note.
At least with limpet controllers we've had a hint of them giving revisions a thought, though that was way back...

 

[Shinji Ikari]

Unless such a recovery mission carries significant risk of failure, it would result in the same issues with just letting crew survive...namely how everyone would rapidly only be fielding Elite crew in short order, and be generally unconcerned about losing them.

Why should I be concerned about losing them in the first place?

 

[Morbad]

Why should I be concerned about losing them in the first place?

They require significant time and credit expenditure to rank up.

Since one cannot simply hire high-rank crew, loosing them is generally something to be avoided, which weighs into risk/reward assessments, resulting in their use not always being a given.

 

[Shinji Ikari]

They require significant time and credit expenditure to rank up.

Since one cannot simply hire high-rank crew, loosing them is generally something to be avoided, which weighs into risk/reward assessments, resulting in their use not always being a given.

IMO having to waste module space in a SLF bay is enough of a downside to use crew members.

 

[masCh]

IMO having to waste module space in a SLF bay is enough of a downside to use crew members.

This is the problem. We shouldn't have been able to fly ships with 3 pilot seats alone. We should have been made to need crew members to operate them.

 

[Morbad]

IMO having to waste module space in a SLF bay is enough of a downside to use crew members.

And in my opinion the module is worth while even without NPC crew, while higher rank NPC crew are quite potent enough to want to make sure CMDRs have to think twice before they commit to risking them.

If this dissuades some people from using them, good, because that's exactly what it's supposed to do.

This is the problem. We shouldn't have been able to fly ships with 3 pilot seats alone. We should have been made to need crew members to operate them.

Elite has been built around the scale of player controlled vessels that require a single pilot. We've also had vessels with three seats since the beginning.

 

[lefty1117]

All I care about is being able to turn my head and see my crew member manning a station. Why this still hasn't been implemented yet is hard to comprehend. It's what people were asking for prior to player multicrew (which if I recall the polls placed second behind NPC multicrew).

 

[Shinji Ikari]

And in my opinion the module is worth while even without NPC crew, while higher rank NPC crew are quite potent enough to want to make sure CMDRs have to think twice before they commit to risking them.

If this dissuades some people from using them, good, because that's exactly what it's supposed to do.

Which begs the question, why doesn't that extend to everything else done in the game? The only thing that comes close is exploration data but there's objectively no benefit from carrying that while fighting, NPC crew on the other hand...

 

[Unhappyhour]

This is the problem. We shouldn't have been able to fly ships with 3 pilot seats alone. We should have been made to need crew members to operate them.

3 seated ships don't really have any functions not available to 1 seaters. They are just larger. Maybe the requirement would make some sense if there would be some benefits, like AI controlled weapons, scanners or limpets, but I don't see any point in more requiring crew.

 

[psylim]

I just lost my Elite crewman in open PVP who I leveled up from novice (My Corvette vs reverbating casacde mines Cobra). I had invested over 100+ hours of combat and 250M of credits into her, and now she is permanently gone.

That is completely unacceptable FDev and need fixed last year.

 

[Nadreck]

I just lost my Elite crewman in open PVP who I leveled up from novice (My Corvette vs reverbating casacde mines Cobra). I had invested over 100+ hours of combat and 250M of credits into her, and now she is permanently gone.

That is completely unacceptable FDev and need fixed last year.

That must suck, you have my sympathy. And it's a risk that the Cobra pilot didn't face (no SLF).

I'm on my 8th or 9th copilot now, and she's the only one to survive past Harmless. I was Mostly Harmless when I recruited her, I'm now halfway through Novice (I haven't done much combat), and she has overtaken me and is now halfway through Expert. They gain experience too quickly, but currently they have to, or the loss would be even worse when they die.

I have a suggestion: let them live, let them level up twice as fast as us until they catch us up, then at the same rate as us, so that they reach Elite when we do. This also gives players an actual reward for reaching Combat Elite (other than access to Shinrarta, which isn't exclusive to combat). Meanwhile lower-ranked pilots won't have Elite copilots.

 

[Shaamaan]

I just lost my pilot (only an expert) in a neutron star mix-up...

I'm more angry about the pilot loss than my ship / credits... And I'm seriously considering just hiring / firing pilots for jobs and gaming the system now!