Buyback NPC Crew

[Gavin786]

The main(and only) disadvantage of NPC crew resurrection is power creep. Stronger NPC crews will be fielded more regularly.

The current situation is that NPC crew are not being fielded due to loss.

So really it is the balance of 2 evils. Which is worse, power creep, or crewmen people trained up never being used?

The problem that crewman that have been trained up are never fielded can be seen by FDev in their stats. And then they ask why. And then they realise its permaloss. So a feature they intended to be used is never being used. So they want to fix that and so they are.

I have an elite(or deadly 92%) crewman trained from harmless. So I am naturally in favour of crewman resurrection. I dont field my crewman in PvP as I know for sure they are going to get lost sooner or later and would rather keep them for a rainy day. Which looks like soon. And allowing them resurrection puts NPC crewmen in balance with the rest of the game. Pay a fee after a ship loss and all you lose is creds. Which is how the game should be. Permaloss should not be a thing(unless one is dumb enough to fly without insurance - and even then, would it not be better to keep a buyback as an option that can be redeemed later once the creds are acquired? Why make people suffer permaloss?).

Being able to "bench" crew or put them into storage with maybe a 24 hour lead time before they could be used again in which they only get a fraction of takings would be great also, as it then gives reason to train up 3 Elite NPCs. Maybe a day will come when we can use 2 NPCs simultaneously?

Anyway I am very glad that this is happening and I will finally be able to field my great NPC crewman lovingly trained up for the first time in the role they were meant to do. So ++ for Frontier for doing this, they have my vote of confidence on it.

And I already lost crewmen who I trained up from harmless and it really, seriously sucks. Would be great if there was magically an option to return them to life !

CMDR Gavin786

 

[CMDR X]

o7

Reading through this thread and contemplating all the views, here's my take. As much as I am happy with this new development,
I do feel that a cheap re-buy is not the answer to our crews survival. Like others have said, they should make this into a separate
adventure for you to go save your crew. It shouldn't be time limited but it also shouldn't be too easy. There should be some form of
espionage involved such as cryptic clues on your info screen, meeting with shady characters in back alleys, payoffs, that sort of thing.

Once it's all complete, you would get the coordinates to your floating crew pod. If you were destroyed in enemy territory, you should
expect to face attacks from other ships all vying for your valuable crew member. The outcome depends on you since you have to
decide, at the re-buy screen, what you want to do. Attempt the rescue yourself or hire someone to do it for you. The former has
the risk of loosing your crew, should you be destroyed again, the latter is guaranteed but expensive.

A successful rescue would also let your crew "reward" you for saving their life with some of those credits they've been sitting on.

This is another opportunity for Fdev to add some intrigue into the game and should not miss out on it. Again..

X.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

o7

Reading through this thread and contemplating all the views, here's my take. As much as I am happy with this new development,
I do feel that a cheap re-buy is not the answer to our crews survival. Like others have said, they should make this into a separate
adventure for you to go save your crew. It shouldn't be time limited but it also shouldn't be too easy. There should be some form of
espionage involved such as cryptic clues on your info screen, meeting with shady characters in back alleys, payoffs, that sort of thing.

Once it's all complete, you would get the coordinates to your floating crew pod. If you were destroyed in enemy territory, you should
expect to face attacks from other ships all vying for your valuable crew member. The outcome depends on you since you have to
decide, at the re-buy screen, what you want to do. Attempt the rescue yourself or hire someone to do it for you. The former has
the risk of loosing your crew, the latter is guaranteed but expensive.

A successful rescue would also allow your crew to "reward" you for saving their life with some of those credits they've been sitting on.

This is another opportunity for Fdev to add some intrigue into the game and should not miss out on it. Again..

X.

I agree. That is outside of the scope for the Jan update however. Better imo to NOT implement a feature yet and put some work in it than to paint themselves into a corner with a simplistic 1 click feature which they can't backtrack on later HOWEVER if FD want to make crew savable right now but don't have the resources to put to it right now.... A compromise which would shut me up would be implementing what is in beta but with a very big warning that this implementation may very well be subject to change in the future and may one day be more to it.

Money wise I agree with those who say charging 10s of millions doesn't make sense. .... However the exact fee could increase depending on how far away from the respwn point you are(but even then imo it does not make sense to go too wild.
IF FD want us to spend more money then better reconsider ship running costs etc (docking and what not) as that scales more sensibly with more expensive ships and is more plausible.

My issue isn't with the cost but with the fact they are now invincible and another potential gameplay loop is lost. FD are going from 1 extreme of ultimate punishment to the other of zero consequence

 

[Trellek]

Right. It makes no sense in game why a more experienced SLF pilot would cost more to save than a novice. Also, to earlier comment that the pilot should then be paid based on the cost of a similar level new pilot... why? Clearly the lower cost symbolised the link of trust between the pc and the slf pilot... would that be broken if the slf pilot dies and we pay to get them back up?

Finally, I have asked this question already but I am surprised that no-one seems to bite so....

Who pays for the PC to be picked up? It’s not part of the rebuy screen.

isn’t it disturbing that someone is probably paying, potentially millions for each pc, and we don’t even know who it is? We only pay the insurance cost of the ship, or did I misunderstand?

As to the broader question, I prefer for the slf pilot to be “rezzable “. I don’t think that using their death as a “consequence” really makes much sense, since you can just as easily fly without one.

 

[Sunyavadin]

"Easy" or not, if I can miraculously survive ship destruction so should my crew.

Pretty much the logic Frontier are working on here, yes.
If some people want a more complex system for it, maybe they could have an additional option to fly out and pick them up yourself for free, if you don't want to pay for their recovery the way it's been implemented here.

 

[Deleted member 38366]

Finally, I have asked this question already but I am surprised that no-one seems to bite so....

Who pays for the PC to be picked up? It’s not part of the rebuy screen.

I might be wrong, but I believe this has been answered way down the line, years ago.
CMDRs all pay taxes (i.e. during Trade) which invisibly cuts into their profits. Those taxes go to the Pilots Federation, which in turn issues and finances the Rebuy Insurance.

At least that's how I remember it.