Bridge Crew Feature for E.D.

CMDR Takuforts

CMDR Takuforts
Fellow CMDRS and Devs (if your reading)

I have a gameplay feature id like to put forward, wether or not it's been mentioned in the past i don't know.

// Bridge-Cockpit crew //

So my idea would be that at stations, you can hire NPC CMDRS to fly with you on your ship, the amount of NPCs you can hire would depend on how many free seats or stations you have in your ships.

These NPCS would come with a set of skills or perks, depending on their role or experience level.

So for example: lets take a cobra III, which has that extra empty seat.

You could go into crew lounge at a station, and hire an NPC whis role is a Co-pilot.

This Co-pilot class would come with certain perks based on his rank: so if he was a raw recruit he might have certain perks like: Auto docking, Supercruise assist (these perks would free up module space) buffs to ship handling etc.

In an anaconda or beluga liner maybe you could hire up to 6 NPC classes such as:

Co-pilots: handling buffs
Systems: power management buffs
Engineers: Sheild/FSD buffs/hull buffs
Combat Specialist: weapon/ammo buffs
Xeno-Specialist: buffs against thargoids
Market analyst: trading buffs
Scientist: exploration perks/scanning perks
NPCs could also be mixed class, combining many traits over all perks, but with less of an effect than a specialist.

Some of these buffs could supplement certain modules as well:

So lets say you have an Engineer on board, his buff slots could look like this

AFMU time +10%
FSD Charge time +5%
Fuel Efficiency +7%

So if you have an AFMU installed on your ship, the engineer would improve its efficiency.

Pirate? Well hire some crew from pirate stations, get buffs related to that objective!

Hatch breaking time +30% less time
Inderdiction speed +20%
And so on.

Of course hiring alot of crew could also be very expensive, a full anaconda crew might take up to 50-70% of any money you make so there would be a nice dynamic thereto balance it all out, or maybe more crew wpuld equal more rebuy cost?

And if you crash and die, they're gone for good.

Of course, in open play this would probably make the power gap between ships larger, but ganking and tanking happens anyway regardless off buffs.

And yea the disadvantage of the starter ships having no crew could be an issue, but then maybe we could balance engineering to be more forgiving to small ships to compensate?

So what do you think?

Thanks for reading!
 
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Jaggid Edje

Jaggid Edje
I don't think we really need even more things that buff ships, particularly with the implication that larger ships would get more of said crew than small ones. The large ships already outclass smaller ones by way too much due to engineering.

If this game was PvE only, I'd probably think this was a great idea. But it is not.
 

Arioch

Arioch
If I could find the links, I’d show Frontier’s ideas on the subject of NPC crew from 2014. I don’t know if the Design Discussion Forum archive survived the transition to the new forums :/
 

Jaggid Edje

Jaggid Edje
Arioch said:
If I could find the links, I’d show Frontier’s ideas on the subject of NPC crew from 2014. I don’t know if the Design Discussion Forum archive survived the transition to the new forums :/
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Could you summarize what you recall? With a disclaimer that you could be misremembering details, of course.
Some of us were not around back then and would probably be interested!
 

Arioch

Arioch
There are ideas that crop up in the suggestion forums that were suggested and well discussed 5 years ago in the DDF :)
As for the crew entry, the idea would be to hire crew into one of four positions, Bridge crew, Security and others (I think) which would give you relevant perks. You could hire at different skill levels (like the current pilots) and also buy robot crew instead.

I’ll have a further nose around, I’ll be sad if the entire archive has gone, it’s good for a read about what could’ve been.
 

CMDR Takuforts

CMDR Takuforts
Arioch said:
There are ideas that crop up in the suggestion forums that were suggested and well discussed 5 years ago in the DDF :)
As for the crew entry, the idea would be to hire crew into one of four positions, Bridge crew, Security and others (I think) which would give you relevant perks. You could hire at different skill levels (like the current pilots) and also buy robot crew instead.

I’ll have a further nose around, I’ll be sad if the entire archive has gone, it’s good for a read about what could’ve been.
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It would make sense to include a feature like this, big ships feel so empty and lifeless, if you dont any online buddies or play solo, NPCs would add that realism.
 

Jaggid Edje

Jaggid Edje
Arioch said:
There are ideas that crop up in the suggestion forums that were suggested and well discussed 5 years ago in the DDF :)
As for the crew entry, the idea would be to hire crew into one of four positions, Bridge crew, Security and others (I think) which would give you relevant perks. You could hire at different skill levels (like the current pilots) and also buy robot crew instead.

I’ll have a further nose around, I’ll be sad if the entire archive has gone, it’s good for a read about what could’ve been.
Click to expand...
Was there any talk at the time that larger ships would allow more crew? That's the only part I really don't like about OP...if every ship had the same exact crew potential I'd be all for it.
 

CMDR Takuforts

CMDR Takuforts
Jaggid Edje said:
Was there any talk at the time that larger ships would allow more crew? That's the only part I really don't like about OP...if every ship had the same exact crew potential I'd be all for it.
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You are right, yes maybe making it fair across the board for all ships would be better, my thinking was to encourage progression to the larger ships from the smaller ones.
 

CMDR Takuforts

CMDR Takuforts
ekbot said:
Heck, I don't even care about buffs or additional perks. Why can't my current hire just sit in the empty seat near me? Instead, she's just a pic on some other screen, doing who-knows-what elsewhere in my ship.
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Yeah like just chilling in the cargo bay? In the toilet? Do ships have toilets? Can that be a module?
 

Arioch

Arioch
I cannot find the DDA, all previous links pop up as an error. Maybe only original members of that forum still have access (I didn’t pledge to that level in the Kickstarter), or someone at FDev donned the Infinity Gauntlet and gave it a jolly good finger-clicking at.

I still hope that we might get them one day, even if it’s just a cosmetic thing of having them visible. Big ships should have a crew! I want a Chewbacca analogue sat next to me in my Cobra!
 

CMDR Takuforts

CMDR Takuforts
Arioch said:
I cannot find the DDA, all previous links pop up as an error. Maybe only original members of that forum still have access (I didn’t pledge to that level in the Kickstarter), or someone at FDev donned the Infinity Gauntlet and gave it a jolly good finger-clicking at.

I still hope that we might get them one day, even if it’s just a cosmetic thing of having them visible. Big ships should have a crew! I want a Chewbacca analogue sat next to me in my Cobra!
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Thats a good point, even visually it would be nice to have!

Well thanks for looking anyway!
 

Sapyx

Sapyx
I believe FD went on record saying that NPC crew, like hiring NPC wingmen, would be implemented once they figured out the balance issue. They didn't want to make it so that everyone would get them simply as "part of progression" towards the min-max meta.

As I recall, they were still on the record saying this right before, to everyone's surprise, they implemented a version of NPC crew with the introduction of fighter pilots in the Guardians update (2.2). Fighter pilot crew hiring is "balanced" by only being allowed on certain ships, and requiring a huge chunk of available space on your ship to install a fighter bay.
 
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