News 2.3 Dev Update

The pilots for hire, bulletin board NPCs etc. are all procedurally generated. Actually, in terms of "attractiveness" it's not worse than the general human population in the real world - unless you happen to live on the set of "Home and Away".

The Commander Creator on the other hand is controlled by the player, so the avatar that results will be as ugly or as beautiful as the person who is manually creating their commander avatar desires. Note that for instance the demo they did making a Commander Creator version of Ed Lewis, the commander creator version is actually better looking than the real life Ed Lewis :)

One of the original commander creator avatars looked a bit like me . Should be getting some royalties or something ...
 
Ok, let's think about it. I mean really think. And not go for hype trane. I have 3 computers. And 3 accounts on every one of them. So i just put my accounts on every place in a ship. And.. basicaly im playing alone but game think i am in MULTICREW. I just use my 2 accounts as abuse. So i can have more pips (just move them with my few accounts to whatever i want = more efficient = Pay 2 Win?

Was that even consider in gamedesign plan? Are you aware of it? This can be easyly become an abuse system.. You get it?

I suggested I could just have friends sitting on my ship (who are idle) earning free credits (from my RES farming), and yours is an even more selfish version of that :)


I guess at the moment you could do a similar thing with leaving a ship docked and another ship in the Wing trading. Everytime a sale went through the "idle ship" would get a small bonus. But that's chicken feed compared to multiples of bounties!?
 
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Seem to be just combat based atm. Really needs to be able to let your crew take the helm if needed.

Questions: What if you multi crew to do non combat activities ie trading or exploration but have the extra firepower for protection, who pays for the cargo and how would the profit get split?
The multiplayer gunner is on a turreted cannon/multi gun (ie uses ammo ) who pays for the restock?
As a crew you find cargo/ materials or data, how is this shared?
Exploration your ship collects load of system data, do this get shared, do you take that share of the data share back with you when you leave the ship?
As a multi crew will you share first finds naming
Your gunner gets bored and attacks a clean ship police etc and gets you a wanted status, a fight ensues and the ship is lost who pays the insurance is it split, what happens if the owner or one of the crew members doesn't have enough credits to pay?

Idea: Turreted mining laser that has a secondary mode that works as a spectrometer ( allowing the crew member to scan asteroids around you as you do the main part of mining )
Directional discovery scanner arrays ( crew members can scan moons and planets to the sides of your direction of travel but at a greater range, but with a smaller scanning arc so needing more hands on adjustment as you move )
Comms station (crew can get live updates from stations in the current system 'trade prices/ missions list etc)

The much needed Navigation station ( so we can plot better routes in hyperspace , but more so we can finally see where the planets and moon are in their orbits and plot better routes between them when surveying a system (( and not the current zig zag back and forth us explorers have to do atm )).
 
Hopefully one day some time will be taken to improve commodities trading, exploration, mining, the srv scanner. etc . I do hope these things happen in the not too distant future, the player base in ED is older than most games (or it certainly seems that way) we'll be dead by the time some flesh gets added to the arthritic bones.
I think you don't see some idea..

There can be up to two additional crewmembers, depending on the vessel, who can perform roles to enhance the ability of the ship
 
Well this all sounds "Nice" but it's not at all what I had hoped... essentially if this is all Multi-crew will allow it's a bit dull.

Outside of Intense Combat the positions have nothing to do... a gunner "might" be able to scan random ships as they travel, but the Flight Conn? according to the main post, they don't even have the option to control the NPC fighter on a ship, that still remains with the Helmsman. Maybe if Flight Conn had control over all SLF and were able to say deploy 2 NPC SLF's and then direct them using a targeting system from one enemy to the next or to direct them to make select attacks against a ships weapons or engines this seat might have something to do. Right now it just feels like you can deploy another fighter from a single vessel in which case I might as well bring my own separate carrier to the fight, at least then it has an NPC of its own with some extra guns.

Aside from playing with "an extra pip" what do any of these positions give a vessel not in combat?
 
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NPC multicrew still being worked on robot1.png
 
OK so again a big debate on immersion vs gameplay. I have read through a bunch of the comments and although I do tend to lean towards immersion being an old hardcore gamer, I do appreciate some more casual oriented game design decisions. I voted for non instant ship transfer and I like the way it is implemented now.

In general, I think there are options for FD to accommodate for both flavors, here is one:

1. If you want your CMDR to play multi crew, gain money, crime, rank etc. within the persistent game world, you need to board at the same station. However, for gameplay:

2. In the main menu, you have an option to jump in as crew to whatever ship is looking for members in whatever part of the galaxy. So you can have instant fun with anyone, anywhere. But you do not play your CMDR. You play a temporary avatar. You can choose to either create one with the new character generator or use a randomly generated one. In game credits are not won this way, nor is crime, since this is a temporary character. The idea here would be to facilitate instant crew play, but bot break the dynamics that makes the core came feel plausible (still).

So if you want to just enjoy crewing up whenever, wherever for the game play aspect of it, you can. But if you want to reap the payment bonuses associated with it and have them apply to your CMDR, you have to set that up in game, by finding someone to crew up with and traveling to their location.

Regarding the depth of crewing up I hadn't given the mechanic much thought before reading this post and the crew roles they included sound cool and fun, but I guess I did expect some non purely combat roles as well. So this feels like a first step to satiate the most immediate and primal desire to fight together. I would hope to see more things in the future such as advances engineering capabilities for engineer crew members, for tweaking systems to get more power or better performance. Also repairs on the go. That could be coupled with or separated from say a navigation role, with enhances sensor controls an navigation functions increasing jump range, fuel consumption, more specific search options in the galaxy map. Faster FSD charge up and cool down. Increased fighter and SRV range, increased ammo capacity, or all sorts of things an extra crew member could manage.

The main question I would like to come back to is that yes, immersion builds the base of a great game, it attracts people who want to invest time and effort in playing the game and this implies a certain human quality within the game world. It makes people care about the game, it makes it feel more alive. It makes it more attractive to more casual gamers as well because it is more than just another MMO where people leave because game play is shallow, runs its course, all about the stats, and full for griefers. But this does not leave out the possibility to have areas or modes of the game that do give instant gratification. On a technical level, there is a solution for everything and ED has to decide if and how they want to accommodate for both styles.

Finally I would like to encourage all members on this forum to be constructive in their comments and not resort to ugly stuff. Let's be friends and make the game better (we have the game itself for blowing each other out of the sky).
 
By the eyes of the imagination i am seeing a new dimension of combat logging.
Just before the explosion a crewmates will just "eject" from the ship :D and ship owner will see rebuy screen. Or it will be mass eject :D
 
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This again!! I cant wait for multicrewing. But teleporting sounds really bad! Joining a ship on the other side of the galaxy is just stupid. It ruins the immersion and feel of distance and space. You should have to dock together or land a place to be able to multicrew. (This is the same as teleporing ships to another location voted on before) I thought the developers had learned.
 
I am looking forward to all these new features! Some really exciting possibilities for lots of fun here...
...also lots of possibilities for exploiting too! What is being done to make sure this is kept to a minimum?

I could forgo the troubles of working as a team and just have 2 extra accounts. With the commander creator I can have my own couple of virtual babes at my side. One on my wife's laptop and another on my own laptop and then I have 2 additional pips to my ships distributor and a reduced insurance rebuy! I can Gank away to my hearts content and at the end of it all just wipe the crimes away, if I forget about the tiny profits, after all money doesn't mean progress in this game.

Will they time out if they are inactive for periods of time?
If they jump out moments before death from a fight they caused will I see the whole rebuy instead of discounted?
If I choose to wipe the crimes and profits, does that also affect the combat rank?
What if a multicrew member has a mission, can it be completed while being the gunner? For eg. an assassination mission?

The Adder has two seats and is going to be a nice cheap entry into multicrew with several turreted guns, has this ship been balance checked for cost v effectiveness so it doesn't end up over powered?
The Cobra3 has always been a strong ship, could it now be over powered too?
Isn't it time the Keelback got an extra seat, so it can finally become useful as the entry level ship for multicrew with SLF?

Can I still use hired AI crew members to pilot my ship while I use a SLF and my multicrew member uses the other? If not, why not?
What happens to hired AI crew members that are physically on board when I accept multicrew members to telepresence onto my ship?

I hope some or all these questions are being thought about.
 
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Best way would be to meet in space. You enter your sidey (not the drone, they call "fighter"), you dock in your friends ship and you can start helping him. You really travel, so if he flies to Sag A, you can then disembark and do some deep diving in the black hole with your sidey. Obviously, this is not in line with insta-casual-console-arcade crowd. Hope Star Citizen will spot, where FDev failed and take advatage of it, marketing it properly as first proper notarcade-noncasual space faring game. ED is slowly moving to NMS territory.
 
Ok the multicrew sounds great but I'm worried that it might be trouble for use CMDRs as well with unwanted CMDRs joining in and just shooting other ships and making you wanted or worse.

Might I suggest to the FD team to put some kind of lock or put in only friends only option like Bungie has with Destiny game.

:D
 
Best way would be to meet in space. You enter your sidey (not the drone, they call "fighter"), you dock in your friends ship and you can start helping him. You really travel, so if he flies to Sag A, you can then disembark and do some deep diving in the black hole with your sidey. Obviously, this is not in line with insta-casual-console-arcade crowd. Hope Star Citizen will spot, where FDev failed and take advatage of it, marketing it properly as first proper notarcade-noncasual space faring game. ED is slowly moving to NMS territory.
Where are you all come from jeez.. This immersion cancer is really a big problem in game industry nowdays..

It is really what game needs. Instant is the only way to implement it correct. Later, after we will have a "legs" FD can change whatever they want.
 
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Ok the multicrew sounds great but I'm worried that it might be trouble for use CMDRs as well with unwanted CMDRs joining in and just shooting other ships and making you wanted or worse.

Might I suggest to the FD team to put some kind of lock or put in only friends only option like Bungie has with Destiny game.

:D

You use invite as well as the matchmaking.
 
You don't. Up to 4 players in a group.

That sounds as though a combat ship with multicrew is far less effective in combat than a wing of combat ships. Depending on player ability, it seems far better to have four ships in combat rather than four people in a ship. I wonder if you could have a combination of two ships (each containing two people), or three ships, one with two crew? That could be fun. :)
 
This all sounds great. I'm going to fit out an all turret Anaconda and let random Cmdr's join. Then sit back and watch the light show from the bridge.
 
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"Every crewmember also has access to a power distributor pip that they can assign dynamically. This is in addition to the standard pips that the helm controls. This extra power distribution allows the ship to operate more effectively, increasing its capabilities in combat."

I wish you were joking.
 
Now that the dust is settling on the interim update, I wanted to give you a more detailed heads up on what we’re currently working on next...

Thanks for the update!

It sounds like the new multi-crew feature has been very well thought out - I'm very much looking forward to trying it and definitely know two of my friends will enjoy flying fighters while I pilot the ship and a forth friend is my gunner (assuming this is possible?)

Look forward to hearing which ships this will support - I just bought an Anaconda but support for lesser ships would be cool too (for those newer to the game) especially if support could be added to the awesomeness which is the Python :-D
 
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