OKAY,
feedback
Multicrew should be more than just a combat only feature, and Frontier should have included roles and positions to do more than just shoot things with it.
A combat only multicrew is
extremely limited in usefulness and by design alienates a huge percentage of Elite’s players.
Frontier desperately needs to start considering players other than the combat crowd when designing new features for the game. This incessant combat only focus is hurting Elite overall, you need to balance development work better than that or the health of the franchise will suffer for it.
So, what other seats could be added to the multicrew feature which would broaden it’s appeal and give non-combat players ways to use it too?
Add an engineering station to multicrew.
Now, what possible duties could this new station have?
- Navigation – Use the galaxy map to monitor and adjust the route, even search the local map for points of interest while the pilot flies the ship
- Science – Allow the engineer seat to manually point discovery scanners 360°, giving the ship the ability to scan stellar objects in any direction. Also give the seat a way to boost scanning range via a minigame perhaps.
- Mining – Allow the engineer seat to work the refinery, manually give collection drones targets to retrieve (without the drone self destructing afterwards). The engineer can also fire prospecting drones 360° around the ship, allowing the pilot to fly through the asteroids while the engineer searches for good rocks to mine.
- Trading – In addition to the above navigation duties, an engineer seat on a trader would have access to a new info display which stores commodity prices for visitied stations, thereby allowing the engineer to actually search local systems for the best locations to sell carried cargo.
- Damage Control – The engineer seat could work the AFMU and make repairs on the fly by carefully working the module page while the pilot continues to fly the ship.
Some other improvements that multicrew could use to make it better overall:
- Add a new mining SLF which can mine & prospect asteroids. This way a ship with two commanders and a hangar on board could mine twice as fast and cooperatively! Note that only the mother ship is collecting ores.
- Allow SRV’s to be manned by multicrews. This would transform surface base assaults into an awesome cooperative multicrew experience.
- Increase the amount of crew from 3 to 4 total.
- Give the option to switch helm control. Many friends would use this, it's risky but at least allow said risk if it's wanted.
The multicrew feature has much potential to improve Elite’s multiplayer experience for everyone, not just the limited group of combat players. Potential that the current 2.3 implementation completely lacks.
Is there any chance that Frontier is aware of this, or even planning to flesh it out in the very near future? I’m not talking S4 or later, I’m talking like in 2.3 yet or maybe 2.4? Because as it is now for 2.3, your new multicrew feature is going to barely be used at all by a vast majority of your players.
There’s just nothing there for a huge amount of commanders.
