Allow Multiple SLF Deployments

[Darkman Returns]

Drop the one NPC-driven SLF limit already. It no longer makes sense.

I really enjoy having NPC crew on many of my ships, but I have to admit the current limit does make sense from a balancing point of view.

A GELID F fighter for example deals 45 DPS; that's more damage than 2 Large Gimballed Beam Lasers (and nearly as good as 2 Fixed ones). On a Krait Mk II for example it's like having 2 medium and 5 large hardpoints... but better if you have an Elite NPC crew member as they can stick to their target like glue and provide a distraction to other NPCs who will nearly always target the SLF first.

Now imagine having 2 Elite NPCs, dealing an additional 90 DPS, equal or better than having 4 extra large hardpoints on your ship. Does that sound balanced to you? Powerful certainly, but balanced?

An argument could be made perhaps for allowing a Class 7 Hangar to support 2 NPC crewed SLFs, as they're only available on Large ships which can't bring all their weapons to bear on a target, or maneuver particularly well, but maybe that would have to come with additional limitations to prevent them becoming too powerful.

All in all balance is a difficult thing to get right and I don't envy FDev the challenge. To be honest I'd much sooner have the NPC crew member actually sit in the cockpit (unless we have 2 human crew in the seats). I think that would add more life to the empty pit and create that little bit more immersion.

 

[Exeider]

Honestly this is a symptom of a larger issue, they really need to overhaul the npc crew / multi crew system

 

[Tividar]

I'll throw a plus one at this too.

 

[Charlie Hustle]

I really enjoy having NPC crew on many of my ships, but I have to admit the current limit does make sense from a balancing point of view.

A GELID F fighter for example deals 45 DPS; that's more damage than 2 Large Gimballed Beam Lasers (and nearly as good as 2 Fixed ones). On a Krait Mk II for example it's like having 2 medium and 5 large hardpoints... but better if you have an Elite NPC crew member as they can stick to their target like glue and provide a distraction to other NPCs who will nearly always target the SLF first.

Now imagine having 2 Elite NPCs, dealing an additional 90 DPS, equal or better than having 4 extra large hardpoints on your ship. Does that sound balanced to you? Powerful certainly, but balanced?

An argument could be made perhaps for allowing a Class 7 Hangar to support 2 NPC crewed SLFs, as they're only available on Large ships which can't bring all their weapons to bear on a target, or maneuver particularly well, but maybe that would have to come with additional limitations to prevent them becoming too powerful.

All in all balance is a difficult thing to get right and I don't envy FDev the challenge. To be honest I'd much sooner have the NPC crew member actually sit in the cockpit (unless we have 2 human crew in the seats). I think that would add more life to the empty pit and create that little bit more immersion.

If i pull up in my anaconda, and sacrificed my optional module (mind you a huge module too) to equip it with this feature, i expect to take full advantage of it. Especially when i am also paying for two crew members as well. Also you did point out they have a pretty high dps, but they have a very short life span as well. If an enemy concentrates on them they will be wiped out within a minute. Which i experienced last night against a elite vulture, wiped him up within a minute. WHich had me fighting an elite FDL and that vulture, i ended up hightailing it. And the relaunch time leaves you on an island. Yes i ran, didnt want to spend 35mil rebuy for my anny.

Or they can give us an extra hardpoint, hell even a pip or 2. But for what we pay for, and the crew, yes we deserve that.

 

[Tifu]

I'd also like to point out that the Keelback can provide as much SLF support as the Conda - which doesn't make sense considering how much more powerful and expensive the latter is.

Ditto for the Beluga, just one SLF fighter to protect a very expensive luxury space liner full of VIPs?

And the T9 which is the most ungainly and vulnerable of freighters has just one fighter to safeguard hundreds of tons of valuable cargo?

 

[Old Duck]

As someone who has made good coin splashing one SLF after another in the latest CGs, I support this message. Feed me, Seymour!

 

[Jason Clearbrook]

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.

Same, same, except my daughter really doesn't play much at all anymore. <<sigh>>

;'{P~~~

 

[ObsidianKing]

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?

In the year 2023, this is still a viable suggestion and should be considered.

 

[Aasir Omondi]

In the year 2023, this is still a viable suggestion and should be considered.

Funny thing. After a few years of hiatus, I just returned to the game last week, and I'm brushing the dust off by dropping my 'Conda into some Combat Zones. I'm looking at 2 damned SLFs in my hangar thinking . . . why can't I assign my other crewmember? Why the hell is there only a single crew slot for assignment?

I had forgotten all about this nonsense.

 

[Schmack]

I stopped hiring crewmember years ago when i saw that I had paid out 350 million to them for basically doing nothing. The SLF is a mosquito imo and causes more problems than it resolves, this is NPC only of course, for MC YMMV. Last time I went that route, even the elite crew members were clueless in many instances. I didn't like the idea of hiring and firing a crew just to save money, but they do not earn the amount they charge. Other than pilot the SLF they act as a ship autopilot (which oddly seems to exist either way when you recall a ship).

 

[aRJay]

I stopped hiring crewmember years ago when i saw that I had paid out 350 million to them for basically doing nothing. The SLF is a mosquito imo and causes more problems than it resolves, this is NPC only of course, for MC YMMV. Last time I went that route, even the elite crew members were clueless in many instances. I didn't like the idea of hiring and firing a crew just to save money, but they do not earn the amount they charge. Other than pilot the SLF they act as a ship autopilot (which oddly seems to exist either way when you recall a ship).

Mine gets too much money which is my fault because I didn’t start with the lowest level available.
However now they are Elite I can drop into a Haz RES and send them off to deal with one target while I go after another with little concern that they will fail unless it develops into two baddies against them. They don’t always get the kill but usually more than hold their own.
This wasn’t always the case but now I have switched to an Imperial Fighter with fixed beam laser the improvement is remarkable, and it isn’t due to ranking up they were Elite long before I changed.

But I never let them play with my ships.

 

[Riverside]

Funny thing. After a few years of hiatus, I just returned to the game last week, and I'm brushing the dust off by dropping my 'Conda into some Combat Zones. I'm looking at 2 damned SLFs in my hangar thinking . . . why can't I assign my other crewmember? Why the hell is there only a single crew slot for assignment?

I had forgotten all about this nonsense.

I have two SLFs on my CZ Corvette so when one gets popped I can immediately redeploy the pilot in the other fighter.

I think the SLF NPC pilots have been balanced at a pretty good level, they are of some help & some threat without being either useless or too OP over an opponent without one. That balance would be disrupted if two could be deployed simultaneously so it probably wouldn't be a straightforward change.

But I never let them play with my ships.

Same here, I have no interest in flying the SLFs & wouldn't trust any NPC pilot with my ships.
I have considered trying to build a combat ship specifically to be flown by the NPC crew but it's a low priority project for me.

 

[Northpin]

Same here, I have no interest in flying the SLFs & wouldn't trust any NPC pilot with my ships.

Oh, but it's so nice to watch a SLF crew flying your ship.
Just make sure you dont fit weapons with very limited ammo - they used to have no regard to ammo conservation
For example, they used to throw anything at their target, including all sorts of mining tools (luckily the kitchen sink and coffee maker seem to be properly anchored in our ships, else i would expect to see them being thrown at the target as well)

I used to train my crew this way, at least for the initial few levels, by letting them pilot my ships running mostly a full lasers setup.

 

[ObsidianKing]

Funny thing. After a few years of hiatus, I just returned to the game last week, and I'm brushing the dust off by dropping my 'Conda into some Combat Zones. I'm looking at 2 damned SLFs in my hangar thinking . . . why can't I assign my other crewmember? Why the hell is there only a single crew slot for assignment?

I had forgotten all about this nonsense.

I’m a returning player as well after 5 years and nothing has really improved.

 

[Aasir Omondi]

I didn't expect to fire this conversation up again, but why not?

I stopped hiring crewmember years ago when i saw that I had paid out 350 million to them for basically doing nothing. The SLF is a mosquito imo and causes more problems than it resolves . . .

Mine gets too much money which is my fault because I didn’t start with the lowest level available.
However now they are Elite I can drop into a Haz RES and send them off to deal with one target while I go after another with little concern that they will fail unless it develops into two baddies against them. They don’t always get the kill but usually more than hold their own.

@Schmack, here's your answer. You hire the crew when they suck and then let them train up. They get better and better as they level up without costing you so much. I mean, they'll always cost something, but an Elite crewmember trained is substantially cheaper to maintain than an Elite hired. I've hired Elite crew before, and they certainly don't suck.

Hmmm . . . now I'm thinking about the concept of engineering SLFs.

I have two SLFs on my CZ Corvette so when one gets popped I can immediately redeploy the pilot in the other fighter.

Indeed. This is the only reason I see to own a hangar that holds 2 SLFs: successive quick-launch. My original post mentioned that I thunk this a workaround rather than intention, but as time as passed, I think it was just a poor decision FDev stuck with. It doesn't mean they won't ever update it; it's just not at all a priority.

I’m a returning player as well after 5 years and nothing has really improved.

Surely you can't be serious. Five years means you left in the middle of the Beyond update, one of the greatest updates next to Horizons. Beyond was a stellar improvement to the game overall, and it launched the zenith of Eliteangerous. Peak ED, 2018 was. Man, I have such fond memories of 2018, and many of those memories include ED.

I mean, I get it—the major complaints many harbor about ED's gameplay haven't much been addressed. For the most part, the needle hasn't moved. But it's not going to. Sandboxes don't move needles, they just add new tools to play in the sand. It's still about moving sand in the box. You either accept that or you don't—it's either good enough for you or it's not. Many people won't play this game because they just don't accept that it's a sandbox to which FDev won't make sweeping changes, but they still love ED . . . they just won't play it anymore.

And that's perfectly fine.

A bummer. But fine.

 

[Schmack]

I didn't expect to fire this conversation up again, but why not?




@Schmack, here's your answer. You hire the crew when they suck and then let them train up. They get better and better as they level up without costing you so much. I mean, they'll always cost something, but an Elite crewmember trained is substantially cheaper to maintain than an Elite hired. I've hired Elite crew before, and they certainly don't suck.

Hmmm . . . now I'm thinking about the concept of engineering SLFs.

The way I play they are fodder. Plus I don't like to let them go. I want a crew member to stick around until retirement.

 

[Aasir Omondi]

The way I play they are fodder. Plus I don't like to let them go. I want a crew member to stick around until retirement.

I'm a little confused by this. Crew don't die, they get terminated by you. So, you can treat them as fodder and not lose them. And, if you'd prefer to keep them, then just don't fire them—train them up until retirement.

 

[Angelpichu]

I'm a little confused by this. Crew don't die, they get terminated by you. So, you can treat them as fodder and not lose them. And, if you'd prefer to keep them, then just don't fire them—train them up until retirement.

It used to be that crew on your ship were lost with no rebuy on ship destruction. This changed. In addition, you can now technically deploy two SLFs, one with your crew member, and the other with you, with your mothership following you around with their turrets firing if you left them out. You can't order your crew to do things or redeploy after their SLF is destroyed while you yourself are in another SLF, however.

 

[Schmack]

I'm a little confused by this. Crew don't die, they get terminated by you. So, you can treat them as fodder and not lose them. And, if you'd prefer to keep them, then just don't fire them—train them up until retirement.

If they weren't worthless that would be a worthwhile endeavor. It's like getting a pet that costs money all the time but does nothing for you. You might get attached to the pet but if you knew going in what the pet was going to bring, you'd probably not get one.

 

[Riverside]

If they weren't worthless that would be a worthwhile endeavor. It's like getting a pet that costs money all the time but does nothing for you. You might get attached to the pet but if you knew going in what the pet was going to bring, you'd probably not get one.

The money was more of a factor when they were introduced but it's not as much of a issue any more because earnings potential has inflated so much.

I normally have one on the go (training up) and once they get to Elite I start looking for another harmless one with a suitable backstory to train up. If I'm happy with their voice I'll let the Elite one go & carry on with the new one.

For the first time I'm currently in the position where the new one has the same voice as the Elite one but the Elite one has a cooler name so I'm thinking I'll keep the Elite one & let the new one go once it's up to Elite. I can easily afford to keep both until then but of course now that they cannot die there is no need.

I called them Tamagotchi when they were a new feature & still think of them as a kind of pet, but they are useful (even at harmless) as a distraction and once they go above around expert or so (ie once they can boost & use pips) they can reduce the incoming fire I receive from smaller attacking NPC ships & occasionally I can just leave them to deal with lower ranked NPCs while I find the next target.

I find they are a lot more useful in a haz RES when ordered to fire at will, in a CZ they just wander off on fire at will so I will bring them back (if I see they have bitten off more than they can chew) by ordering them to defend me. I rarely use 'attack target' except to start a fight and would prefer the 'attack target' option to have them attack whoever I have targeted rather than only the one I had targeted at the time I gave the order (ie I want them to act as an extra hardpoint for my ship). An additional order to the existing one would be ideal.