Next level of ship upgrades: Crew?

[JTFireblaze]

Base game we earned credits and A-rated our ships

Horizons we got engineering materials and engineered the crap out of our ships

Could we in the future see ourselves hiring crew members to make certain ship functionality more efficient/powerful?

We've already hired fighter pilots and crew for our fleet carriers. If we could hire crew for other roles - Systems (Scanners, targetting range buffs), Engineer (shields, small automated repairing), Gunnery Chief (weapons, turrets, that sorta thing)

It could also be a way of trying to balance the incredibly broken credit economy - each crew member needs paying. You could pay a premium when replacing them after dying in combat like you do with your fighter pilot now.

And maybe they could offer crew missions to try and increase their loyalty/efficiency/whatever. When they reach certain thresholds you would have to take on certain missions to allow them to progress further.

 

[RamirezKurita]

We already have crew mechanics in the game, but they are currently limited to operating our SLF bay and even then they can only operate those at half of their potential.

Overall though, I agree that they are a heavily underutilised mechanic in the game. They have so much potential and yet they are constrained into a tiny niche. Even the much-maligned multicrew mechanic is better fleshed out than the main crew mechanic that players use.

I'd disagree with making them into simple stat-sticks though, we already have module customisation, tech brokers and engineering to tweak the numbers. Instead, I'd say that they should merge the main crew mechanic with the multicrew mechanic and instead be about adding additional features and automation to our ships.

 

[Trollymctrollerson]

I like. I want to hire 3 crew and buy each of them a viper and fly into battle with my AI wingmen. Of course some one will complain about having 3 corvettes as wingman being OP.

 

[Lugh]

I just found out I have payed 833mill to a crewmen I didn't even know I had. not to mention grinding to get engineered ships before you can play is already a horrible unbalanced and paddy mechanic. I would rather not have another load of crap tossed in on top.

They need to focus more on adding things to do and less on adding grind for the sake of grind. My shields recharging .0003% faster doesn't add any gameplay.

 

[JTFireblaze]

We already have crew mechanics in the game, but they are currently limited to operating our SLF bay and even then they can only operate those at half of their potential.

Overall though, I agree that they are a heavily underutilised mechanic in the game. They have so much potential and yet they are constrained into a tiny niche. Even the much-maligned multicrew mechanic is better fleshed out than the main crew mechanic that players use.

I'd disagree with making them into simple stat-sticks though, we already have module customisation, tech brokers and engineering to tweak the numbers. Instead, I'd say that they should merge the main crew mechanic with the multicrew mechanic and instead be about adding additional features and automation to our ships.

Yeah, the SLF pilot is a good start. But there is so much more that can be done to make your ship feel alive with crew members. I'd argue that a fully trained SLF pilot is definitely more than "half the potential" - at least compared to my flying skills!

NPC Crew as stat-sticks though. Definitely agree that's a bad idea. There probably would be an element of that, as having the extra crew members means you'd be able to run the ship more efficiently. But on top of that maybe there would be perks of having crew.

• An engineer means that you would have an extra pip, maybe as they improve in rank you can get 2 or 3 more?
• A gunnery chief gives you fine tuned turret control - faster targetting and turning.
• Systems - to aid with scanning, and fine control of shields (directional shields for extra damage reduction)
• Maybe you could even hire a ship pilot - then you could have fun in the gunner role while your pilot flies around
• Or a wing crewmate, they are limited to small or medium ships but they can fly around with you.
• Even non combat roles, a science officer who can help with exobiology, planet scans.
• Foot soldiers for Odyssey, having NPC escorts when you're taking out pirates. (One manning an entire squad of "commandos" doesn't seem realistic, having NPC backup makes sense to me)

Essentially combining NPC crew into Multicrew (and wings) would be ideal. You could hire NPC crew to fill the gaps that your player crew couldn't fill. In current game you can have you on the helm, a player gunner, player fighter and NPC fighter (which is incredibly fun), extending this with other roles would be awesome

 

[JTFireblaze]

I just found out I have payed 833mill to a crewmen I didn't even know I had. not to mention grinding to get engineered ships before you can play is already a horrible unbalanced and paddy mechanic. I would rather not have another load of crap tossed in on top.

They need to focus more on adding things to do and less on adding grind for the sake of grind. My shields recharging .0003% faster doesn't add any gameplay.

It would be less about adding "another load of crap tossed in" and more about building up a crew in your ship. Yes, there would be some passive number boosts. But it's more about adding extra functionality to your ship through a fully manned crew. See my above post.

I definitely do not want grind for the sake of grind. I do not believe my post would simply bring grind to the table.

The crew could have different personalities, they have some back stories and add some flavour to the ship. Maybe if you hire "wanted" crew you could be attacked by bounty hunters more often. Perhaps crew require you to do special missions in order to rank up. There are plenty of not-grindy gameplay opportunities. Coupled with extra voices around your ship, maybe they could comment on happenings: "Shields at 50% CMDR", "Weapons capacitor depleted". Non combat stuff: "Sir, a habitable planet is in the system, should I prep the probes?", "Heavy metal rich asteroid belt dead ahead" - just a bunch of extra fluff for immersion.

 

[CMDR Rabbit]

... not to mention grinding to get engineered ships before you can play...

(emphasis mine)

While i agree that deeper game play , and more options would be great. Unless "play" means PVP to you (which is perfectly valid, not a criticism) , you can play perfectly well without grinding for engineering

 

[Ytterium]

Yeah, the SLF pilot is a good start. But there is so much more that can be done to make your ship feel alive with crew members. I'd argue that a fully trained SLF pilot is definitely more than "half the potential" - at least compared to my flying skills!

Not really. Unless you're really bad, an Elite NPC is kind of a joke, especially in a ship as bad as an SLF.

NPC Crew as stat-sticks though. Definitely agree that's a bad idea. There probably would be an element of that, as having the extra crew members means you'd be able to run the ship more efficiently. But on top of that maybe there would be perks of having crew.

Meh, doesnt seem like much usefulness really BESIDES statsticking. What else would they do?

• An engineer means that you would have an extra pip, maybe as they improve in rank you can get 2 or 3 more?

That's stupidly broken. I shouldn't have to explain why.

• A gunnery chief gives you fine tuned turret control - faster targetting and turning.

Turrets are useless and faster turning won't fix them without making them stupidly broken.

• Systems - to aid with scanning, and fine control of shields (directional shields for extra damage reduction)

Ships are already way too tanky as is. Also "Aid with scanning" seems useless since actively scanning just means "point nose at thing"

• Maybe you could even hire a ship pilot - then you could have fun in the gunner role while your pilot flies around

Literally SLF pilots can do this.

• Or a wing crewmate, they are limited to small or medium ships but they can fly around with you.

And kill instancing even further? Seems really dumb, and NPCs do almost no damage anyway.

• Even non combat roles, a science officer who can help with exobiology, planet scans.

How would they help? Spinning a wheel?

• Foot soldiers for Odyssey, having NPC escorts when you're taking out pirates. (One manning an entire squad of "commandos" doesn't seem realistic, having NPC backup makes sense to me)

But you have teammates...? Also you could just like swarm them with 8 extra guys which isnt very cool or fun. Not to mention how useless NPCs are.

Essentially combining NPC crew into Multicrew (and wings) would be ideal. You could hire NPC crew to fill the gaps that your player crew couldn't fill. In current game you can have you on the helm, a player gunner, player fighter and NPC fighter (which is incredibly fun), extending this with other roles would be awesome

Thats an insane amount of dev time investment for something that would be better served by having friends to wing with.

 

[Ytterium]

The crew could have different personalities, they have some back stories and add some flavour to the ship. Maybe if you hire "wanted" crew you could be attacked by bounty hunters more often. Perhaps crew require you to do special missions in order to rank up. There are plenty of not-grindy gameplay opportunities. Coupled with extra voices around your ship, maybe they could comment on happenings: "Shields at 50% CMDR", "Weapons capacitor depleted". Non combat stuff: "Sir, a habitable planet is in the system, should I prep the probes?", "Heavy metal rich asteroid belt dead ahead" - just a bunch of extra fluff for immersion.

This would get annoying. How many times do you listen to your COVAS say "temperature critical" or "Under attack"?

 

[JTFireblaze]

That's stupidly broken. I shouldn't have to explain why.

Is having 2 extra pips in a multicrew session really that stupidly broken? This would basically be the same as that. 3 extra pips is probably too far, but 2 seems a nice enough balance for investing in a crew member to me.

Turrets are useless and faster turning won't fix them without making them stupidly broken.

Can a turret really go from "useless" to "stupidly broken" just by turning a bit faster, really? They already do practically half damage. At most this would bring them up to gimballed tier. Fixed weapons would still be king.

Ships are already way too tanky as is. Also "Aid with scanning" seems useless since actively scanning just means "point nose at thing"

Yeah, maybe it would require some balancing. Maybe the directional shields weaken the shield area that isn't focused, so an attack from both sides could counter it.

As for the scanning, maybe they can scan targets beyond that angle from the nose every 30 seconds or something.

Literally SLF pilots can do this.

SLF pilots cannot pilot my ship while I'm in a gunner role. In fact, I'm unable to use the gunner role in my own ship at all. This was the angle I was taking with this. However yes, a dedicated "ship pilot" crew probably isn't needed as the fighter role could perform this

And kill instancing even further? Seems really dumb, and NPCs do almost no damage anyway.

If only the instancing issues could be fixed instead of ideas being dismissed due to instancing issues.

How would they help? Spinning a wheel?

To be honest I haven't thought this one through entirely, but there is definitely more opportunity to add something beyond them aiding in spinning a wheel.

More detail in planet scans? Finer tuning of the DSS mapping? I don't know. These are just high level ideas. Suggestion forum after all, not Detailed Design Document forum.

But you have teammates...? Also you could just like swarm them with 8 extra guys which isnt very cool or fun. Not to mention how useless NPCs are.

Yes, some people have teammates (assuming you mean actual human players). But this is a game that also caters to solo players. And smaller groups. Maybe there's some limit on (example) 4 people in a ground team at once, NPC or Human. As for how useless NPCs are... doesn't matter. Just because NPCs aren't as good as the top level of players in the game doesn't mean they aren't a valid threat to other NPCs.

Thats an insane amount of dev time investment for something that would be better served by having friends to wing with.

Again, Elite Dangerous also caters to solo players. Yes, it is better with friends, but if you had an extra space on your ship, filling it with an NPC is better than nothing.

This would get annoying. How many times do you listen to your COVAS say "temperature critical" or "Under attack"?

Set frequency of NPCs talking? Disable their voice lines outright? My SLF pilot says stuff and yes, some lines are repeated, but it doesn't get that annoying. With a crew of multiple people of varying voices maybe it won't be so bad.

 

[Lugh]

(emphasis mine)

While i agree that deeper game play , and more options would be great. Unless "play" means PVP to you (which is perfectly valid, not a criticism) , you can play perfectly well without grinding for engineering

There are thougsands of systems locked off to you if you don't have an engineered+guardian+Injection components so if you want to just explore w/o hitting walls better hit the grind. If you want to map planets w/o losing your mind better hit the grind. Want to capitalize on the most lucrative trade routes? better at least have an FSD, thrusters, and PD engineered.

You can demo the game before grinding aspects you have 0 interest in but combat is not the only area where you need engineering to not feel like your missing out on something in the area of the game you want to play. Needing to grind up another number isn't going to be any better even if that number has an RNG name an photo.

 

[CMDR Rabbit]

There are thougsands of systems locked off to you if you don't have an engineered+guardian+Injection components so if you want to just explore w/o hitting walls better hit the grind. If you want to map planets w/o losing your mind better hit the grind. Want to capitalize on the most lucrative trade routes? better at least have an FSD, thrusters, and PD engineered.

You can demo the game before grinding aspects you have 0 interest in but combat is not the only area where you need engineering to not feel like your missing out on something in the area of the game you want to play. Needing to grind up another number isn't going to be any better even if that number has an RNG name an photo.

Yeah, all of that is true, up to a point.

But none of that precludes you from playing without grinding too hard. Some things you maybe can't do right away, but getting your FSD and thrusters up to G3/G4 is almost trivial anyway, even without really pushing for it.

 

[Lugh]

Yeah, all of that is true, up to a point.

But none of that precludes you from playing without grinding too hard. Some things you maybe can't do right away, but getting your FSD and thrusters up to G3/G4 is almost trivial anyway, even without really pushing for it.

FSD is pretty easy Thrusters are a bit harder as you need to unlock the enginier a bit more actively then you need to do all the rest. its not just g3/4 either. for trading you need 5 or you are losing profit not just on the FSD and thrusters but the PD where you need to get an undersised to make sure you can boost a t9 at least 5 times before depleting to exit mass lock and align to a vector behind you. For exploration each .02 ly can mean hundreds if not thousands of systems you are cut off from so again t3/4 wont cut it.

This wouldn't be a problem if these things were implemented as a way that felt like progression but most of the time you need to unlock an engineer or get components in ways that have nothing to do with the gameplay you enjoy. being able to earn things that would soup up my fsd or reduce mass from other modules by gathering data on distant planets rather than having to sit at a food distro center or gather combat bonds. That sort of thing would have worked. Instead we got a game where the most efficient way to play is to grind for the first several weeks to months depending on time invested and then go out and play.

 

[Ytterium]

FSD is pretty easy Thrusters are a bit harder as you need to unlock the enginier a bit more actively then you need to do all the rest. its not just g3/4 either. for trading you need 5 or you are losing profit not just on the FSD and thrusters but the PD where you need to get an undersised to make sure you can boost a t9 at least 5 times before depleting to exit mass lock and align to a vector behind you. For exploration each .02 ly can mean hundreds if not thousands of systems you are cut off from so again t3/4 wont cut it.

This wouldn't be a problem if these things were implemented as a way that felt like progression but most of the time you need to unlock an engineer or get components in ways that have nothing to do with the gameplay you enjoy. being able to earn things that would soup up my fsd or reduce mass from other modules by gathering data on distant planets rather than having to sit at a food distro center or gather combat bonds. That sort of thing would have worked. Instead we got a game where the most efficient way to play is to grind for the first several weeks to months depending on time invested and then go out and play.

Only if you're intentionally min-maxing. Point is none of it is NEEDED beyond your own personal goals. Similarly, as you were talking about for FSD/GFSD/Jumponium, whats even in those systems anyway? Nothing useful.

 

[Ytterium]

Is having 2 extra pips in a multicrew session really that stupidly broken? This would basically be the same as that. 3 extra pips is probably too far, but 2 seems a nice enough balance for investing in a crew member to me.

Yes. You take roughly .4x the damage with 4 pips in systems as opposed to 0

Can a turret really go from "useless" to "stupidly broken" just by turning a bit faster, really? They already do practically half damage. At most this would bring them up to gimballed tier. Fixed weapons would still be king.

The thing is either they are useless, or they are stupidly broken. Its a careful balancing act with turrets.

Yeah, maybe it would require some balancing. Maybe the directional shields weaken the shield area that isn't focused, so an attack from both sides could counter it.
As for the scanning, maybe they can scan targets beyond that angle from the nose every 30 seconds or something.

Shields dont need a bigger buff is the thing, hull is already dead. Scanning behind you further kills stealthy smallbois

SLF pilots cannot pilot my ship while I'm in a gunner role. In fact, I'm unable to use the gunner role in my own ship at all. This was the angle I was taking with this. However yes, a dedicated "ship pilot" crew probably isn't needed as the fighter role could perform this

You already get point and click sim from the main seat though...

If only the instancing issues could be fixed instead of ideas being dismissed due to instancing issues.

If only the game wasn't peer to peer. Its not changing, so ideas like that wont be implemented regardless.

To be honest I haven't thought this one through entirely, but there is definitely more opportunity to add something beyond them aiding in spinning a wheel.
More detail in planet scans? Finer tuning of the DSS mapping? I don't know. These are just high level ideas. Suggestion forum after all, not Detailed Design Document forum.

DSS is already easy enough with G5 lol

Yes, some people have teammates (assuming you mean actual human players). But this is a game that also caters to solo players. And smaller groups. Maybe there's some limit on (example) 4 people in a ground team at once, NPC or Human. As for how useless NPCs are... doesn't matter. Just because NPCs aren't as good as the top level of players in the game doesn't mean they aren't a valid threat to other NPCs.

Game doesnt really cater to solo outside of having solo mode which is a choice. You can find people. My friends list is well over 150 players long. Also ever been to a CZ? How many kills have non-spec ops npcs actually secured?

Set frequency of NPCs talking? Disable their voice lines outright? My SLF pilot says stuff and yes, some lines are repeated, but it doesn't get that annoying. With a crew of multiple people of varying voices maybe it won't be so bad.

"Weapons capacitor out" would get annoying for people that run cap draining guns and is apparent. Same as shields, if you have good situational awareness, getting distracted by lines gets annoying

 

[RamirezKurita]

snip

My reference to SLF pilots only using half the potential of a hangar bay was because they can only use one of the telepresence suites the hangar has, the other seems to be locked to "remote access only" for some reason. It's an artificial limitation that exists only to punish those without extensive friends lists.

There's plenty to do beside being stat-sticks. There's the obvious options of operating the extra vehicles like the SLFs and SRVs, plus the potential for extra boots on the ground for Odyssey stuff, but you just have to look at Multicrew gunnery and the extra stuff it offers the ship by having another operator on board. In combat, not only could a crew member give accuracy buffs compared to the automated turrets, but would also be capable of firing missiles/torpedoes off-bore, ignoring chaff and scanning targets. In supercruise, they could even begin scanning the star system the moment you enter, freeing up an explorer to travel between planets to launch probes while their crew does the FSS stuff, or even simply to pick up a bit of scan data while on a journey. And that's all without going into other potential expansion to the roles for SLFs and SRVs further down the line. Even without Odyssey, it's quite feasible that a larger ship could make good use of 8 additional crew members (2 SLF pilots, 4 SRV operators, 2 engineers/gunners).

NPC wingmen would be the logical extension of crew, and could be simply created by letting us assign our crew to our spare ships (yes, I know there's kinks like travelling to work out). There's a huge amount of potential here, starting with the much needed option for a newer player to go for a "wide" playstyle, wherein they focus on having numerous ships rather than personally flying larger ships, which would give a longer lease of life to the smaller ships (would still be pretty short unfortunately, due to the exceptionally broken economy in the game). Furthermore, NPC wingmen would increase the accessibility of previously multiplayer-restricted content, as things like shield-regen weapon mods would then become usable by solo players; and that's all without going into making technically "solo accessible" content such as wing missions actually viable gameplay options.

NPC ships out the the wild are generally heavily limited by the quality of their ships, a limitation that our NPC wingmen wouldn't share as we could equip them as we choose. There would be nothing stopping us from using outfitting our NPC wingmen with piercing lasers, shield regen beams, LR railguns and the like.

In fact, full NPC wingmen and merging NPC crew and multicrew would be a great thing for those who play in multiplayer, as it would encourage the creation of more wing content as far more players would be using them. Wing content wouldn't be the sole domain of those seeking to flex their friends lists any more, it would be part of normal gameplay that anyone could use. After all, which are better candidates for further expansion - the widely used but minimalist mechanics or the fleshed out but still niche mechanics?

The argument of "my friends won't play with me if they they can just use an NPC wing" doesn't really hold any weight either, because if they would rather play with NPCs than you then they probably aren't actually your friends, they are just using you for access to content. NPC wings would make multiplayer truly optional for those wishing to experience what the game has to offer, so everyone doing it would be actually wanting to play with other humans rather being forced to play with others just to access certain in-game mechanics.

 

[JTFireblaze]

I hadn't really considered an NPC crew wing in much detail, but yeah I like that idea. Having them use your "spare" ships would be pretty cool. Maybe lock them to small and medium ships or something. But on the other hand a player wing could be 4 murder corvettes, so I'd argue why not. As Ytterium put it in their post earlier, NPCs are useless, so there really shouldn't be any harm in allowing them to pilot these ships.

How far could you go with this though. Could you be sat in your Anaconda with 3 crew, while your best NPC pilot is at the helm of your Krait with a couple of extra NPCs in there too? Would the Krait be able to use SLF? Things could get pretty wild, maybe there need to be a couple of limitations... I'd probably think a limit of 4 crew including yourself would be manageable.

Ultimately yes, combining Wings/Multicrew/Teams into one unified system that could be occupied by human or NPC crew (in any combination) would be the end game. If I'm flying solo I bring my useless NPCs. If I have friends playing, I can invite them and fill the gaps with NPCs. Odyssey appears to bring us one step closer to that at least, since a "Team" (I think) allows you to be essentially in multicrew AND a wing

If I had to make a comparison to other games, I think back to Guild Wars (the original one). The Henchmen/Hero system in there was pretty much perfect. You could go solo if you wanted, you could recruit up to 7 Henchmen or Heroes, or you could invite real human players to the party.

 

[Warman0001]

You wouldn't think 5% or 7 % isn't much but next thing unno its 6x 7% like thats almost 45% 9f your profits not saying g anything against this crew suggestion but at those rates a view been hired on seems far unno

 

[Amanojaku]

I'd at least like to see my Crew sitting next to me in my ship, if there's a seat open.

I make my Crew multi-millionaires and they don't even have the decency to leave their cabin now and again to say hi? What are they doing in there? Playing the future version of ED, grinding mats? Freakin' troglodytes.

 

[JTFireblaze]

You wouldn't think 5% or 7 % isn't much but next thing unno its 6x 7% like thats almost 45% 9f your profits not saying g anything against this crew suggestion but at those rates a view been hired on seems far unno

It's a fair point. Crew payouts might need a rebalance in this suggestion. Even still, sharing half your profit amongst the entire crew doesn't seem so bad. Especially with how easy it is to make credits these days!

Perhaps there's an upper limit, maybe a crew member can only be paid up to 5% of your profits. Maybe a large ship can have 5 crew plus yourself, so a max of 25% of profit? I dunno.