Allow Multiple SLF Deployments

[Aasir Omondi]

Crew slots are determined by ship, but we can only activate a single crew member. However, we can pruchase a Fighter Hangar capable of launching more than one ship, yet, we cannot actually launch more than one SLF, whether one is NPC and another is PC, or any other combination. WHAT?

I propose alternate suggestions, both of which will make use of a 2-fighter hangar (aside from rapid deployment).

Solution 1: Allow ships (even if restricted to certain class ships) to employ and activate multiple crewmen. And allow us to launch multiple fighters at once. Larger ships with fighter bays should be able to fart out 2 figters at once.

Solution 2: Allow 2-fighter deployment but require one of those fighters to be piloted by the player. This will prevent swarms and could offer some actual usefulness to owning a second bay and SLF.

I want the solutiont o be simple and obvious without asking too much. It just doesn't make sense to me to offer a 2-bay hangar when only a single SLF can be deployed ever. Honestly, the quick deployment once a fighter is destroye by switching to a secondary bay seems more akin to a workaround than intention.

Thoughts?

 

[Ethaidan]

I'm sure I've had both fighters used by different players at the same time with MC.

 

[Azmuth Divarchchron]

technically you can have 3 fighters deployed at once, two players and 1 npc.
Frontier has plans for the additional NPC crew eventually but we have no clue when

 

[bicarbon8]

technically you can have 3 fighters deployed at once, two players and 1 npc.
Frontier has plans for the additional NPC crew eventually but we have no clue when

what trick are you using to achieve this? I can only add one Fighter hanger to a given ship and the size 6 only has two fighter bays.

 

[Sylow]

technically you can have 3 fighters deployed at once, two players and 1 npc.
Frontier has plans for the additional NPC crew eventually but we have no clue when

Uh, no. All SLF hangars have a maximum of two lines of ships. Class 5 hangars can only deploy 1 fighter, class 6 and 7 can deploy two fighters. (Class 7 just has more of them spare. Instead of 8 fighters per bay, i think it has 16. )

If you have two players piloting SLFs, the NPC just sadly sits there and does nothing.

But yes, using MultiCrew features with other players is the use case for hangars of size 6 or higher. It's actually fun to have two friends fly your fighters. And yes, of course SLFs are not full sized ships which might also have SLF hangers. But they are capable ships with surprisingly good firepower. If your friends only log in once a while for an hour or two, spending half an hour to meet up is not cutting it. With MultiCrew you just have them hop on your ship, you go for some HazRes or something and have fun for a while.
I really appreciate this aspect of MC.

 

[Azmuth Divarchchron]

huh, i thought the max was 3, my mistake.

 

[Kior]

The option to deploy 2 npc fighters should be able on large ship, dunno why Frontier didn't allow that. And dunno why we have 3 NPC crew to hire if we can use only one of them?

 

[DARGAN]

yes, it seems to me to have read it, it is a question of many. 3 commanders with two chasseurs and deploy them gives 9 ships.. 6 commanders who deploy them give 18 ships..

it's simply exponential, 10 commanders ? 30 ships in the area.

 

[RamirezKurita]

The option to deploy 2 npc fighters should be able on large ship, dunno why Frontier didn't allow that. And dunno why we have 3 NPC crew to hire if we can use only one of them?

Officially, the reason is because of the net code limiting the number of ships in an instance. They didn't want 20-odd players jumping into an instance then each launching an entire wing of fighters. Doubling the number of ships in an instance on demand is harsh, but trying to work in low enough latency and bandwidth optimisation to support a sudden tripling or quadrupling of ships in an instance is almost impossible.

On topic, I do quite agree that large ships (rather than specifically large landing pad ships, it should just require the class 7 hangar) should be able to support 2 fighters at once. At the moment, there's very little reason to upgrade from a class 6 to a class 7 hangar, as the class 6 has more than enough fighters for prolonged operations and the only advantage the class 7 has is extra spares; giving the class 7 a second telepresence suite would solve this issue.

 

[Kior]

Officially, the reason is because of the net code limiting the number of ships in an instance. They didn't want 20-odd players jumping into an instance then each launching an entire wing of fighters. Doubling the number of ships in an instance on demand is harsh, but trying to work in low enough latency and bandwidth optimisation to support a sudden tripling or quadrupling of ships in an instance is almost impossible.

On topic, I do quite agree that large ships (rather than specifically large landing pad ships, it should just require the class 7 hangar) should be able to support 2 fighters at once. At the moment, there's very little reason to upgrade from a class 6 to a class 7 hangar, as the class 6 has more than enough fighters for prolonged operations and the only advantage the class 7 has is extra spares; giving the class 7 a second telepresence suite would solve this issue.

As far as i know NPC ships does not count in that restriction. Even if NPC matter too in that logic 30 players can deploy a fighter NPC and one crew Fighter. Result will be same.

 

[Lestat]

In a wing that 4 Pilots with 2 SLF each equals 8 SLF.

 

[Kior]

Anyway, if not in a fighter maybe any other use free crew-NPC, like Auto-discovery scan, or any other boring things that we forget sometimes. Hope Frontier will realise NPC-crew more efficiently.

 

[RamirezKurita]

As far as i know NPC ships does not count in that restriction. Even if NPC matter too in that logic 30 players can deploy a fighter NPC and one crew Fighter. Result will be same.

It's not so much a hard limit, but more to do with the net code not being able to handle that many things at once. There is a limit on players in an instance (which I know can be circumvented to a certain degree through the use of wing beacons) but it starts to get really buggy and laggy if there's too much going on at once. This is the problem fighters present to the game - it would be too easy to have huge numbers of ships in a single instance and cause everyone rubberband all over the place if ships could launch multiple fighters.

Which is a shame, because I'd be more than happy to have access to multiple SLFs under the proviso that some of them self-destruct if the instance gets too crowded and they need to free up network bandwidth for the actual ships.

 

[Cmdr Alyn Shepard]

Can I get a bump on this as I myself have 2 fighters now and I wish I could have multiple NPC fighters deployed at the same time.

 

[Sylow]

Netcode is a convenient reason. It has the advantage that people accept it easily.

Wouldn't it be in place, i yet still think that one NPC is enough. Mind you, i usually fly my Krait MK II with NPC piloted SLFs on board. (C6 hangar, so two lines of fighters. ) But i see what a good NPC can do. Those SLFs pack a lot of firepower for their size. So yea, from my players point of view, being able to deploy both at once would be awesome. But when looking at what that would do to the game and how much my Krait MK II would then outshine alternatives without SLF, i really don't think it would be a good thing for the game itself.


Also, for as long as my friends still were playing the "one NPC max" rule had a practival advantage: it almost never happened that several of my friends were on at the same time. So they never had to compete for a slot with the NPC pilot. (All in all, as they played once every other month, my NPC is the better pilot... )

 

[Northpin]

Can I get a bump on this as I myself have 2 fighters now and I wish I could have multiple NPC fighters deployed at the same time.

Nope. Not really
I find SLFs quite powerful. Also, lag inducing little things.
Having 2 Elite crew piloting one fixed beams/pulses and one fixed mc would be a really deadly combo.

Having a wing of players each dropping 2 SLF each would be really nasty.

 

[Azmuth Divarchchron]

Nope. Not really
I find SLFs quite powerful. Also, lag inducing little things.
Having 2 Elite crew piloting one fixed beams/pulses and one fixed mc would be a really deadly combo.

Having a wing of players each dropping 2 SLF each would be really nasty.

Lag inducing?
Since when?

 

[Northpin]

Lag inducing?
Since when?

Added a cooldown when using hotkeys to give fighters orders, and prevented allowing players to repeat an order that has already been given to the fighter (multiple orders were creating network lag, resulting in an exploit during combat)

Apparently was fixed this patch, but there were reports that they're still inducing lag.
Maybe because they did not fix the lag inducing mechanisms, but they actually prevented commanders to spam orders using hotkeys and also preventing spam of an order that was already in effect.

 

[Azmuth Divarchchron]

Apparently was fixed this patch, but there were reports that they're still inducing lag.
Maybe because they did not fix the lag inducing mechanisms, but they actually prevented commanders to spam orders using hotkeys and also preventing spam of an order that was already in effect.

I never actually experienced the fighters causing lag but i remember the lagsploit fix in the patch notes now that you mention it

 

[DragonIV]

That's the only way I use multicrew today--one of my adult kids will hop in and fly one fighter, and my AI pilots the other. When I don't have him to run the second fighter, then it is simply a hot swap when my AI crew gets swatted.