Stop paying crew members when they are not active

[ebbrell]

Can this be changed, at the moment each transaction earning money, the crewe member gets a slice.

This is fine if the crewe member is active or was active when it was done.

But when the crewe member is off duty do what ever it wants it still gets a slice.

Maybe introduce a weekly wage, and only pay me for things done when active.
While off duty, only recoeve weekly wage no payments from transactions.

This way I would be tempted to have multiple crewe members on stand by.

At the moment, I'm not, or want to paying them all for everything I do, while they are not active

 

[lenna]

No to weekly wage, but how about a lower percentage - 50% say of their rate while off-duty?

Personally, I have a full complement of pilots that I trained up to one level below my combat ranking and have not found their percentage cuts too unreasonable.

 

[Northpin]

Well, you hire them you pay them. If you hire them and you don't put them to work, then it's strictly on you

The alternative is to hire experts then fire them when you dont use them. Like mercenaries, albeit kinda dumber ones

 

[Alyssa]

I have 2 hired crew members, one of them take 16% from my money (she earned near 1.5 billion since she is my co-pilot), the other take 9% (near half billion). I'm sitting on about 3 billion bank roll, should I care how much they got...? If don't want to pay, don't hire, I think it's easy.

 

[ebbrell]

No it's not easy, you want them trained up to Elite. Therefore you need to keep them.

And its obvious i you pay only when hired. My point is we shouldnt pay while they are off duty

 

[lenna]

No it's not easy, you want them trained up to Elite. Therefore you need to keep them

You can hire pilots at higher levels and then release them from service after you are done with them - that much is fact.

It is also not unreasonable to want to keep pilots you have trained up but you must be willing to accept they are going to cost you more the longer you train them. Introducing weekly fees is less reasonable than paying them a cut of what you earn.

 

[Old Duck]

Unless they are on maternity leave...

 

[dxm55]

I want to pay the female crew members 20% less and give them a smaller cut of the.profits.

Because patriarchy in the 34th century....

 

[lenna]

Unless they are on maternity leave...

Depends on paternity tests

I want to pay the female crew members 20% less and give them a smaller cut of the.profits.

Because patriarchy in the 34th century....

Actually, you may have found female crew members should be paid 20% more... Matriarchy may be present in at least some places.

Seriously though, I do get where the OP is coming from but disagree it (or something similar) is a necessary measure nor justified. Personally, I would prefer to be able to assign NPC/SLF crew to multi-crew positions and perhaps for the usual SLF crew member to occupy a multi-crew post.

 

[dxm55]

This is why we need contract NPC mercs who do per trip, or per mission hire runs. You pay them a high but flat fee to follow you out until you next dock.

Combine this with the existing crew features so players can decide if they wanna invest in a crewmember, or just have a hired gun tag along for a run.

 

[lenna]

This is why we need contract NPC mercs who do per trip, or per mission hire runs. You pay them a high but flat fee to follow you out until you next dock.

Combine this with the existing crew features so players can decide if they wanna invest in a crewmember, or just have a hired gun tag along for a run.

I don't agree NPC mercs are necessary - but the idea does have merit regardless of mode choice.

 

[Ethaidan]

Actually, the current setup makes perfect sense. If you want a temporary mediocre mercenary, hire & release. If you want a/multiple elite pilots at your disposal, then you're going to need to pay a retainer fee or they'd be off to the highest bidder faster than you could say, please just hang around and don't expect to get paid until I need you again.

 

[Florenus]

I don't mind how it works now.
On one hand people are complaining that there's no money sink and you can earn too much by mining fex.
On the other there are people who want to count every credit twice.

And its obvious i you pay only when hired. My point is we shouldnt pay while they are off duty

And why should he be available to you when you need him then? He/she might be on some other job earning money.
There are ways (mentioned above) to avoid paying those NPC - if you want to keep one and train him you should be prepared to loose some money - keeping him on payroll - otherwise he might work for someone else.

 

[lenna]

There are ways (mentioned above) to avoid paying those NPC - if you want to keep one and train him you should be prepared to loose some money - keeping him on payroll - otherwise he might work for someone else.

Exactly - it is a bit like in business in the real world. You either hire a permanent employee and take on board the overheads of keeping them which can be to mutual advantage OR you higher someone experienced for a specific job then get rid of them at the end of it - they cost more (in the short term) but you do not have to accommodate the on-going overheads of keeping them.

Maybe we need a greater range of skilled SLF pilots to mitigate the OP's concern?

 

[Lestat]

[I think it fine the way it is. If you can make a large amount of money in one day it could pay for a year of an NPC. So stop complaining.

 

[lenna]

[I think it fine the way it is. If you can make a large amount of money in one day it could pay for a year of an NPC. So stop complaining.

I agree - but I can also see where the OP is coming from to at least a degree.

I have a full complement of SLF pilots thus I can not be 100% certain but currently the highest rank SLF pilot available seems to be EXPERT, if they went up to ELITE with recruitment costs and rates increased appropriately then their fundamental argument should be mitigated. Doing so should be VERY expensive and maintaining your own pool of Elite pilots should by rights be cheaper - at least from the perspective of the level of cut they receive.

 

[Schmack]

I hire only for specific missions then fire them afterward if I don't need them. If they were persistent entities that could respawn like we do, that would be different.

I could see them making a bonus though if they actually experience combat and live to tell about it. Otherwise their flat rate is acceptable. Granted, it's more of an end-game type outlook, since I don't care about combat bonds or bounties and any money I make while using one is more about the materials than the actual money, and they get no materials. For this reason I'll never take the high payout, only the low with mats.

 

[lenna]

I hire only for specific missions then fire them afterward if I don't need them. If they were persistent entities that could respawn like we do, that would be different.

I hire at harmless and train them up, I have 3 in my roster currently - one at master, the other two at expert. I think I have only lost one or two SLF pilots since they were introduced. I know I lost one when I died due to a mission bug and while support could counter most of my losses they could not resurrect my SLF pilot unfortunately - that hurt a bit since I had trained them up quite a few levels but stuff happens.

 

[Misty_Dark]

I think NPC pilot should only get paid when they are working, and then they should ALWAYS get a cut from anything you earns while they are active... stop the fire before handing in missions, etc.

Now this would create ALOT of other bad stuff, as it would not be relatively easy to have 3 elites NPC just hanging around. So let our NPC pilots have personality, meaning the like to do different activities, and even be more or less impatient between jobs.
So if you let your NPC sit at station for long periods of time, they get crumpy, and thus demands action, and also higher pay... and if you let them sit for to long, they will leave...


But bring them with you and they get paid, they get happy, and the happier they are, you can pay them less, as they are happy doing things they like.


To make this a bit more interresting, let NPC's have various tasks they like doing, so some should not like doing "pirate" stuff, and other hate doing "legal" stuff, etc. so this gives us reasons to have different NPC pilots for various tasks....


And now that we have added reason for NPC pilots to leave you, because they are unhappy, we can now get rid of the stupid reason why they "die" when your ship get destroyed. So now we could either show our NPC pilot that we care for them, by going back to pick them up, if we are to slow, they risk getting picked up "pirates" to be ransomed or just any regular salvage team, in both cases the mood of your NPC pilot is lowered.

So now you do not have to worry about loosing a NPC pilot just because you went after a risky last kill or something.




So a potentially better way to manage your NPC pilots with you have to take a more active role to actually keep them around...

 

[Rob At Work]

OP do you support the use of Zero Hour contracts?