2 Fighters, but not with AI crew?

Cmdr_Prussian

C
OK, so I have found some issues with Multicrew and AI Crew that really need adressing.

  • So I can launch two fighters from a Class 6 Fighter Bay, but only with 2 additional players or 1 player and 1 NPC.
  • I can steer a fighter with 1 crew AI, but NOT with multicrew. How?
  • Why can't I be cannoneer (or any other role for that matter) with player multicrew on my own ship?
  • Why does Crew AI NOT appear sitting in my cockpit? I mean, do I really have to ask?
  • Why can't I have 2 Crew AI in 3 seat ships and have 2 AI fighters active at once, if the same ship can do exactly that with a player onboard?
These things are extremely counterintuitive and frankly irrational. They should be adressed ASAP. If you are afraid that other players piloting ones ship may run into something and destroy the ship on purpose, have the player limit "roles" and "rights". But I guess most people play with and trust their friends.
 
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Sapyx

Sapyx
You can't have more than one AI-crewed fighter because it would (a) be too OP, and (b) because it would play havoc with Wings. Suppose a wing of four carriers are travelling across a system and get interdicted by another wing of four carriers. Everybody drops down into the same instance and it's Launch All Fighters for everybody. That's 4 players x 3 ships x 2 wings = 24 ships in the instance. That's getting near the max ship quota for instance stability.

Now have these two wings meet at a CZ, with another 20 or so NPCs. Epic space battle? Yep. Stable instancing? Nope. Fixable? Apparently not with the current game design. You can have that extra fighter with Multicrew, because you can't use both Wings and Multicrew at the same time.

NPC crew in the chairs: yeah, we've all been asking for this. FD seem to have this fixation that those chairs are for your friends, not for AIs. Many of us are still a bit miffed about "Multicrew", that it didn't involve fully integrated NPC crew (just lie the original Elite).
 

Masta Squidge

M
Sapyx said:
You can't have more than one AI-crewed fighter because it would (a) be too OP, and (b) because it would play havoc with Wings. Suppose a wing of four carriers are travelling across a system and get interdicted by another wing of four carriers. Everybody drops down into the same instance and it's Launch All Fighters for everybody. That's 4 players x 3 ships x 2 wings = 24 ships in the instance. That's getting near the max ship quota for instance stability.

Now have these two wings meet at a CZ, with another 20 or so NPCs. Epic space battle? Yep. Stable instancing? Nope. Fixable? Apparently not with the current game design. You can have that extra fighter with Multicrew, because you can't use both Wings and Multicrew at the same time.

NPC crew in the chairs: yeah, we've all been asking for this. FD seem to have this fixation that those chairs are for your friends, not for AIs. Many of us are still a bit miffed about "Multicrew", that it didn't involve fully integrated NPC crew (just lie the original Elite).
Click to expand...
As we have been saying for ages: They need to pick up the slack on that limitation. Well. Both of those limitations.

As for being too OP... last time I checked if both sides are equally OP then the net result of the equation is balance. Plus don't act like that wouldn't be substantially better pvp play.
 

Cmdr_Prussian

C
Sapyx said:
You can't have more than one AI-crewed fighter because it would (a) be too OP, and (b) because it would play havoc with Wings. Suppose a wing of four carriers are travelling across a system and get interdicted by another wing of four carriers. Everybody drops down into the same instance and it's Launch All Fighters for everybody. That's 4 players x 3 ships x 2 wings = 24 ships in the instance. That's getting near the max ship quota for instance stability.

Now have these two wings meet at a CZ, with another 20 or so NPCs. Epic space battle? Yep. Stable instancing? Nope. Fixable? Apparently not with the current game design. You can have that extra fighter with Multicrew, because you can't use both Wings and Multicrew at the same time.

NPC crew in the chairs: yeah, we've all been asking for this. FD seem to have this fixation that those chairs are for your friends, not for AIs. Many of us are still a bit miffed about "Multicrew", that it didn't involve fully integrated NPC crew (just lie the original Elite).
Click to expand...

Thank you for that explanation, it makes a lot of sense to me. Although I still feel that that 2 ships per player or 3 ships per player don't make that much difference, and the theoretical situation you are talking about has to come up in the first place. For most players, this would probably be a very unusual scenario.

Its just that the size and DPS of the carrier ships compared to the size and the DPS of the fighter feels like a very large gap. Meaning that the fighter becomes essentially meaningless fighting larger ships, and unnecessary fighting smaller ships. For the most part at least. My cutter for example can handle Pythons and Condas, but it takes me 20 Minutes to take out a viper. But even there, using the fighter against a semi decent AI viper takes forever to take it down. Scaling wise, there seems to be a gap in usefulness. So if the problem is of technical nature, you could buff the fighters even further to give them a proper purpose.
 

Dillon Fallon

Dillon Fallon
Why you can't have any role other than pilot in your own ship is actually quite simple.

Would you trust me to pilot your ship with your rebuy?

The answer is no, because I'm going to park it in a white dwarf jet cone and log out.
 
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