Assuming everyone who does the beta reports favourably on the mechanic.
Buyback NPC Crew
- Thread starter Xavi Mendoza
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It will be one of the things I'll be testing in the beta, if only to figure out how much crew retrieval will cost in various situations.
It will be rather hard for FDev to make crew retrieval too expensive due to how many credits one can sink into a good NPC crew member, so I suspect that most of the negative feedback will come from people who want to keep NPC permadeath in the game and have a "holier than thou" attitude about it. If FDev decides to listen to them that's their decision, but I don't think that too many people will be very happy about such a decision....
I love you FD, I love you so much. I'm going to bring all SLF supported ships to CGs and introduce Miranda to Griefers. Well, not all of ships, I hate Crusader 
Perhaps, I can finally replace my FAS with a Krait. At least, there is a coffee machine and chocolate biscuits in the Krait and you know, flying with a crew in space is a complicated profession.
Maybe someday Miranda can sit next to me instead of biowaste cargo boxes. Anyway, this is another day's topic. Today is the day of dancing and screaming
Perhaps, I can finally replace my FAS with a Krait. At least, there is a coffee machine and chocolate biscuits in the Krait and you know, flying with a crew in space is a complicated profession.
Maybe someday Miranda can sit next to me instead of biowaste cargo boxes. Anyway, this is another day's topic. Today is the day of dancing and screaming
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Should be 5% of the hire/buy price same as any other module otherwise it gets complicated.
That's ludicrously low.
Maybe 5% of their lifetime earnings, but five percent of their initial contract?
That's always going to be something of a false equivalence given that we're players and the SLF pilots aren't. Just one of those "it's a game" things where PCs have to be treated differently.
I'm more impressed that an FD announcement about NPC crew buyback was made while an NPC buyback thread was in full swing. There's some Derren Brown levels of synchronicity going on there. I had to go check the announcement because for a few minutes I was convinced some posters had misread this thread as a response rather than a wishlist.
It's a pity FD have gone for the rebuy route rather than anything more involved, but it's better than nothing and at least it's opened the door. Now that they've removed the red line around SLF pilot loss, the chance now exists that they might do something more complex once the base code improvements/stabilisations are in place. It's a slim chance, but at least it's not zero any more.
5% of a crew member's lifetime earnings?
For many players that can easily be in the billions....
Oh yeah, like a rescue mission given out at your rebuy base, and so you have to go fetch the escape pod of your crew member by yourself. That would be awesome.
Anyway I'm going to train a crew member now I have a chance of keeping him
5% of lifetime earnings would be a bargain, imo. If I lose a crew member, I'd end up spending a similar amount of credits trying to train a new one back up, so to be able to get my crew member back (presumably at the same combat rank) by spending only 5% of the credits and NONE of the extra time would be amazing.
The most an elite crew member can earn is 16%, meaning that in order for a 5% of a crew's lifetime earnings to exceed 1 billion credits, a player would need to earn a grand total of 125 billion credits while the crew member was at elite rank. If a player has earned 125 billion credits, they can probably afford to pay 1 billion to get their crew back.
I suspect that the rescue fee might end up being a flat fee (probably in the region of several million credits) for the sake of internal consistency. After all, why would I need to pay more to rescue a crew because they are at Expert rank instead of Competent? If it is a flat rate, it would end up being even better for long-term crew members since you would effectively be paying <5% of their lifetime earnings to rescue them. On top of the self-consistency of a flat rate, it would allow for a number of choices when roleplaying and hiring crew:
- A player might see NPC crew members as being 'expendable', and will abandon them when their ship is lost
- A player might see new crew members as being 'expendable', and won't consider rescuing them until they have proven themselves
- A player might become 'friends' with their new crew member, and will immediately rescue them when their ship is lost
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I think 5% of lifetime earnings is reasonable. Not many SLF pilots have billions, and those who do, well, better look after them then! Once they earn so much money, best not to rescue them, start a new one. There still needs to be a penalty for losing them, especially in pvp, otherwise we'll just see everyone going around with an elite pilot, which will be bad for the game. Elite pilots are currently rare due to the training effort and high risk nature of the game. To do something to upset that would be silly.
In the current state of the game though, with SLFs causing insane lag, anything that encourages using them more is bad.
In the current state of the game though, with SLFs causing insane lag, anything that encourages using them more is bad.
Yep, this. I also see it as the most likely outcome. With a percentage of their hiring fee close behind.
On console I do wonder if crew rebuys will count towards the achievements for total amount of money spent hiring crew members or not, depending on how exactly the game handles it mechanically behind the scenes?
That NPC was worth paying twenty times that so far.
Hmmm....
Perhaps, as a dedicated PvP player, you should put some weight into convincing FDev that they should create specific PvP flags?
Here is another game feature that is being positively improved that you would prefer 'nerfed' as "every PvP'er would use....", once again ignoring the remainder of the player base as they are not in the minority who PvP seriously.
As with your previous suggestions, I see your side of the coin, but they are not considered for those who 'play the whole game'...
No, you misunderstand, I'm glad this is a thing, I'm just waxing lyrical about its wider effect. But let's get something straight right now though, cos this is like the third time you've said something along the lines of 'FD doesn't need to cater to pvpers though..."...
Just because a playerbase is a minority does not mean that the majority is more important. Hardcore pvpers are the ones that discover most of the bugs because its us that are pushing the limits, it's us that are using every last 0.1% and working to find the smallest of advantages. Without us, this game is just another bad mmo.
Hardcore players and pvpers are more important to the fabric of any MMO than ten times their number of casuals (for the health of the game, not hte bottom line of the studio). I know the carebears are gonna tell me I'm an arrogant SOB, and that's fine, I pity their ignorance in this matter. Imagine world of warcraft without gladiators, without hardcore raiders, or any other game that was just a flat race to a certain 'level', after which the game is over, or you are forced to join the 'niche' endgamers, who according to you, should be ignored (or at least, their requests weighted accodring to the number of players). This is a terrible mistake, it would be like valuing the contribution of Cristiano Ronaldo below that of a 18 year old debutant. The greatest players/drivers/pilots in the world are the ones that the manufacturers listen to, not the ones that go to a go kart track on saturdays.
P.S. I do more pve than pvp by the way, so the needs of the pve game are not lost on me, please don't think everything I say is weighted toward pvp and the pve game not considered.
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No, reasonable would be something entirely different.
If I misunderstood your comment - an apology - but it sounded otherwise in the way it was worded.
I won't gainsay your opinion of the importance of PvP in the game.
I'm not sure how many suggestions you have put forward in the past, but surely more than 3? Yet I have picked up on only 3 of them...
Happy times
I'm a PvPer, but I don't want PvP any more segregated from the rest of my experience than it already is. If anything it needs to be integrated better, not provided with mechanisms to separate it further.
I'm a PvPer when my CMDR is mining, exploring, trading, fighting NPCs, harvesting materials, or doing anything else. It's not a switch I want to be able to turn off. The fact that others can is midly annoying, but the fact that I am heavily incentivized to by various game mechanisms is infuriating.
Positively improved is highly subjective.
I play the whole game, even if I focus more on certain aspects (having my CMDR fly around staring at shadows and muttering obscenities about how the depth biases are all wrong as bystanders deliberately step out of his way) than others. Indeed, I'd argue that one cannot play the whole game while categorically excluding hostile interactions from other CMDRs. My CMDR also fields Elite ranked crew essentially exclusively (when flying ships that can launch fighters, which was common until they broke them in 3.4, but which I will not do until they fix them), even when fighting other CMDRs, because the risk is still relatively small and the advantages outweigh them.
Anyway, potential loss of crew influences my gameplay and my CMDRs behavior in ways I consider positive. Feeling like something is actually on the line is a damn rare feeling in the current state of the game. It makes him more cautious, which increases my sense of verisimilitude. I'm already guaranteed to have a Elite crew on hand, my CMDR cannot be shot down faster than I can train them up, unless he behaves in a recklessly incongruous manner. Making them essentially freebies would just remove one more organic motivation to play a character that acts as if he's something other than a cartoon.
So isn’t the issue here that the player character respawns, rather than the slf pilot that doesn’t?
And isn’t it the case that the player character respawns because of a mysterious benefactor who has determined that the pc is is so he how special?
I agree the lore seems shoehorned into a matter of convenience. But what if it isn’t? What if there really is a massive organisation intent on governing the universe, which uses all pcs as unwitting pawns?
SLF pilots don’t qualify (though they do get pilot federation ranks, as someone pointed out in another thread), so they are left to die.
And isn’t it the case that the player character respawns because of a mysterious benefactor who has determined that the pc is is so he how special?
I agree the lore seems shoehorned into a matter of convenience. But what if it isn’t? What if there really is a massive organisation intent on governing the universe, which uses all pcs as unwitting pawns?
SLF pilots don’t qualify (though they do get pilot federation ranks, as someone pointed out in another thread), so they are left to die.
What's more likely, FDev implementing a mandatory iron-man mode, leaving NPC crew as they are, or at least not making their loss too trivial?