News Changes Coming to Multi-crew

[X-Terminator]

No it's not good enough sorry!

If your Crew take out a Fighter without asking Helm - you KICK THEM!
If they set binds for SCB & HeatSink & Chaff against your say so - you KICK THEM!

Non of these immediately are an instant danger until they do actually Deploy against your wishes and cause Heat Damage to the Hull.
Now if they still can Fire Weapons when they wish - I can become instantly WANTED and even KILLED!
If they continue firing whilst I'm trying my best to Supercruise but can not because Hardpoints won't retract then I can instantly be KILLED!
If I do not keep switching OFF the Turrets in Modules Panel when arriving at a Station and then Crew happen to shoot within the No Fire Zone I am instantly KILLED!

I would very much like a master TOGGLE for GUNNER TURRETS + TOGGLE Auto-Modes Fire Forward/Fire At Will/At Target all accessible within Fire Groups.

 

[CMDR Dreamstate]

Hi everyone,

Thank you so much for all your feedback across the forums and on social media. We always appreciate your continued passion and support.

We wanted to let you know about some changes that will be coming to Multi-crew.

Two of the changes will be coming as part of a server-side update coming in the next few working days and one other change will arrive as part of the 2.3.1 update.

It’s important to note that the 2.3.1 update isn’t the same as the 2.3.01 update. The 2.3.01 update mentioned here highlights a number of bug fixes that the team have identified and will be making its way in the coming weeks. The 2.3.1 update will include a significant multi-crew update to improve the helms crew mate management and will be coming a series of weeks after 2.3.01. We’ll have more details on the exact dates as development continues.

We’ve got three changes that we’re looking to implement for Multi-Crew.

1 - Pay-out increase (server-side update in the next few working days)

We are tweaking the pay-out reward scheme for Multi-crew. We will be significantly increasing the pay-out for almost all ranks of crew members. It’s easiest to show this in table form that you can see below. The first table shows what the current pay-out scheme is, and the second shows what we’re going to change it to.

View attachment 118831

2 – Rebuy cost reduction (server-side update in the next few working days)

In addition to the changes above, we’re also improving the rebuy reduction for players hosting Multi-crew sessions in their ships. Currently Helm’s rebuy cost is reduced by 25% per crew member on board. We are increasing this pay-out reduction to 30% meaning a fully crewed ship will have its rebuy cost reduced by over half.

3 – Helm safety measures (2.3.1 update coming later)

We’ve been actively listening to feedback from the community and one thing we’ve seen is a number of requests for greater protection for hosts of Multi-crew sessions and improved safety measures. That’s why we’re going to be introducing two new function controls for the role of Helm. The first change will allow Helm to toggle limited access for the Gunner role. When toggled on the Gunner will only be able to use weapons, not utilities (such as shield cells), and only Helm will be able to deploy and retract the ship’s hardpoints. When toggled off the Gunner will have full access as they do now.

The other change will allow Helm to toggle the availability of the Fighter Con role – this will stop people launching fighters until Helm turns the toggle off.

We’d like to take this moment to thank you for your continued support and patience. The development team are working hard to bring the imminent server side update, the 2.3.01 bug fixes and the 2.3.1 point update to Commanders.

Does the lock-out for the Gunner also include Limpet Prospectors and Controllers?

 

[Bunkerkind Anni]

How about making it possible to launch 2 SLFs with players? The arbitrary restriction to one active player SLF is quite disappointing.

And how about making the Keelback multi-crew capable?

erm, according to the official tutorial video:
[video=youtube_share;NOOEamtA08c]https://youtu.be/NOOEamtA08c?t=5m58s[/video]
you can. (at 5min and 58s)
and the last time i was crew in an anaconda, the option to deploy was not greyed out for me while another player was alread out in an SLF, so i believe that.

about the keelback - ok, in that video he also says "the fighter role is available on any ship, that can hold a fighter"... i had to lol there

 

[Quineloe]

The maximum you could earn as a SLF pilot on someone's crew is 50% of each bounty and that was if you were Elite. Low ranks are a smaller share.

So a harmless CMDR on an Elite CMDR's ship would only earn 5% of each bounty. I tried this with a new player friend of mine and for my 1 million take on a short stint in a RES he got 50k credits. Now, folks didn't find this particular scenario that crazy, he's a harmless commander after all. However, the scale up was very slow, as is seen in Figure 1. Finally, the maximum cap was thought to be too low @ 50%.

These changes put the scale up at a more linear rate and increases the cap to 80%

EDIT/NINJA'd: Helm gets 100% as before.

Thanks for the explanation. I don't understand the logic behind it, though. Elite pilots don't earn more money per hour than harmless pilots, at least there are no mechanics that would do this. So basically crewing up with new players to show them the game gets punished the higher rank the teacher is?

I assume multicrew only works on bounties and bonds anyways, there's no extra reward for multicrewing a trader?

 

[This Forum Sucks]

3 – Helm safety measures (2.3.1 update coming later)

We’ve been actively listening to feedback from the community and one thing we’ve seen is a number of requests for greater protection for hosts of Multi-crew sessions and improved safety measures. That’s why we’re going to be introducing two new function controls for the role of Helm. The first change will allow Helm to toggle limited access for the Gunner role. When toggled on the Gunner will only be able to use weapons, not utilities (such as shield cells), and only Helm will be able to deploy and retract the ship’s hardpoints. When toggled off the Gunner will have full access as they do now.

All these changes are great and very welcome but is there any chance we could get a slightly more in-depth approach to the gunner/utilities situation at some point in the future? With my current set up, I'm using a single fire button while my gunner is juggling fire groups - ideally, I'd be able to place the shield cells & heat sinks under my control but leave the warrant scanner to the gunner (for the 360 degree firing cone). I'm picturing an extra column in the firegroups panel where the helm can cycle between an H and a G to specify who should have control of that weapon or utility but obviously that's a bit much to be expecting from a patch that's already under way.

 

[saab]

erm, according to the official tutorial video:
https://youtu.be/NOOEamtA08c?t=5m58s
you can. (at 5min and 58s)
and the last time i was crew in an anaconda, the option to deploy was not greyed out for me while another player was alread out in an SLF, so i believe that.

about the keelback - ok, in that video he also says "the fighter role is available on any ship, that can hold a fighter"... i had to lol there

This was true during Beta (when this video was made), but they since reduced it to one.

 

[Soopyyy]

Good to see you're changing it.
The safeguards should have been there, to begin with.

 

[Chrizaim]

A welcome change for everyone I think. Good job. Whooooooop!

Any possibility of making it that the helm can launch in a fighter during MC? (and npc takes the helm as normal)

Also, it would be good for helm or crew to be able to use srv's in MC. (for some exploring, or base incursion from ground and air etc)

 

[Bunkerkind Anni]

This was true during Beta (when this video was made), but they since reduced it to one.

because you said that, i got two of my friends online, asked them to hop into my t9 and have them both deploy my two SLFs
and it worked.

oh, and if you want to try yourself - make sure to claim "gunner" position BEFORE you hop into the second fighter, or you will see the same error we could see about 10 times during the anouncement livestream...

 

[Darth Ender]

Making money isn't a problem that needs a new solution.

Having fun while making money is the game's problem.


I honestly dont understand how we're this far along and the management at Fdev doesn't understand that. All the effort seems to be to chase after symptoms of a problem and no real time and effort has been dedicated to any solutions to the cause.

edit: in case it wasn't clear, the cause being all the unfinished/partially implemented aspects to all the core gameplay. The grind-wall seems to be the only barrier that anyone in Fdev is allowed to code and we're bored of it. It might work well for casual phone games but it wont last here. Skill, strategy, puzzles, skill. These are things you incorporate into the game to make task barriers to give a sense of scarcity and reward. That's why people want easier/faster ways to make credits. Because what they have now is sit and do nothing, watch loading screens, kill laughably easy NPC's and space truck items between an equally laughable excuse for an economy. And when some of those people are bored of that, they go hunt players who are too green to understand that they are sitting ducks in starter or CG systems or they troll multi-crew ships. But no, we'll continue to work on the symptoms and let the entire thing die of the cancer that is afflicting it.

 

[Lucifer Hate]

I agreed that payouts needed a small tweak in MC but this may be over doing it as crewmembers assume 0 risk when in someone elses ship in regards to rebuy and such. The increase to the rebuy reduction is also to much. The host ship already gets a big advantage with the pips which makes no sense whatsoever

 

[SqualZell]

Nice, even more artificial incentives for people to use Multicrew as the barebones mechanics of the base game don't really justify splitting what little gamplay there is between multiple players.
Guess it's easier to appease the masses with easy credits than develop features with more than one layer of complexity.

Also, is there no-one at the helm who knows where this ship is going? How come barely one week after release we're already talking about changing the progression just because the community asked for more credits? Is there noone at Frontier whose job it is to decide what the pace of progression should be beforehand rather than rely on community feedback?

The community is the one paying the bills...
basically it was a system that was not worth it for the community, and if the community isn't playing, it isn't paying either.

I want to use multicrew but this is what i got from my friend who started playing a couple of days before multicrew released
"nah, i can make more on a Low RES in 15 minutes than what we did last night in 2 hours, I want to upgrade into a cobra sometime this month"

think about it for a new player they can get 50k with 2-3 harmless/mostly harmless kills in a low RES solo in a sidewinder.
or multicrew at 5% with a player and wait until he makes 1 million credits worth of bounties for him to get the same 50k. I would say maybe 10 master/dangerous/elite targets. (averaging 100k bounty)

a system needs to be somewhat worth it. and currently with the mechanics we have. the only reason to multicrew is credits. there is literally no other gameplay advantage or reason to multicrew other than money. take money away and you get... not worth my time.

 

[X-Terminator]

I was sooooooo excited to read this THREAD TITLE I almost got undressed! And then I read it [where is it]

 

[Fire70]

So the "pay to beta" is just a preview of the game and the real beta starts when the update goes "live"..

Well I never....

 

[rally]

I still think the splitting the payout at all above the first few ranks (just to keep people from exploiting it early game) is not the right choice.

But I'm not going to complain about a compromise.

So thank you for the payout change.

 

[BurnyBurns]

I agreed that payouts needed a small tweak in MC but this may be over doing it as crewmembers assume 0 risk when in someone elses ship in regards to rebuy and such. The increase to the rebuy reduction is also to much. The host ship already gets a big advantage with the pips which makes no sense whatsoever

Eh, the real risk is is a meta one and that's Frontier wasting their player's time. Risk of rebuy in your own ship? That's a fun risk, because you can avoid it by being good.

Getting less ingame credits for the same time and a comparable activity, assuming the ingame progression is a concern to begin with? You can be the best SLF pilot the game has seen after all, but no matter what you do, the reward is still compromised vs. spending the time PvE-ing in your own ship. That's a waste of your time. And it's fixed by ignoring multicrew, sadly.

Edit: The real reward BTW, is also a meta one and that's people using multicrew. Not looking up Frontier's table of 'how-hard-do-we-presume-to-penalize-your-ingame-time', estimating what time they gain spend PvE-ing by instant crewing vs. getting there themselves first for full payouts and realizing that in any scenario for any length of time, they ought to just get there themselves, because it is more fun playing your own ship due to actual risk for potentially full reward.

 

[Valorin]

I'm a bit sad all the complaining and demanding people managed to move you to this, but updates are always appreciated. Thanks.

 

[Arindor]

Basically (I am almost Deadly in Combat) I will KICK any Crew under Dangerous Rank. Sorry!

This idea promotes an Elitist attitude to play amongst lesser mortals.

You elitist you! Just say: "Noobs need not apply!"

However, if someone has enough credits to buy a ship, perhaps they could offer training services for beginners wanting to use MC seeing that insurance is being reduced per crew member on board.

 

[Lngjohnsilver1]

Still nonsense.

If a bounty for a ship is 1 million credits then it needs to be split in portions among the crew not added and added and added???!!!!

Single player in CZ kills Ship get 1 million credits
Three player crew kills exact same ship with exact same bounty and gets...2.6 million!!!! errr...wot! How is this a sensible game dynamic?

Massaging numbers to get people to play, and it just doesn't make any sense whatsoever!!

No point to MC - MC must have a USE and this is just not it.

 

[MarcusKross]

Still nonsense.

If a bounty for a ship is 1 million credits then it needs to be split in portions among the crew not added and added and added???!!!!

Single player in CZ kills Ship get 1 million credits
Three player crew kills exact same ship with exact same bounty and gets...2.6 million!!!! errr...wot! How is this a sensible game dynamic?

Massaging numbers to get people to play, and it just doesn't make any sense whatsoever!!

No point to MC - MC must have a USE and this is just not it.

You are playing Elite: Dangerous.. they threw away logic a long time ago.