crewmembers still not seated next to you in beta. lazy. oh yeah still perma death.

[Old Duck]

imagine if our crewmembers were seated and if someone joined multicrew and the seat was needed our crew member would stand up and head out of the bridge.

also, still no sign of any sort of escape pod, or insurance or anything, for crew, sigh, why does frontier always halfarse features. stuff that could be totally amazing and they leave it half finished. makes me sad.

I'm so tempted to buy another PS4 Slim on Black Friday so I can put my alt CMDR in the seat next to me, just to sit there and look pretty and keep me company.

This shows that the code to put people in these seats already exists in ED! It would be trivial to make it our NPC sitting there. Granted, they wouldn't do anything but look pretty (or ugly as is often the case with NPCs), but hey, I'll take it!

 

[CmdMarty]

I wouldnt say lazy but lack of foresight with engineers taking up so much dev time for some power creep to help sell a dlc.

 

[Old Duck]

I'm so tempted to buy another PS4 Slim on Black Friday so I can put my alt CMDR in the seat next to me, just to sit there and look pretty and keep me company.

This shows that the code to put people in these seats already exists in ED! It would be trivial to make it our NPC sitting there. Granted, they wouldn't do anything but look pretty (or ugly as is often the case with NPCs), but hey, I'll take it!

This reply is something that has been a serious request of mine for some time, so I thought of a very nice "compromise" if NPC crew is still a long ways off. My idea / suggestion is detailed here. Hint:

 

[Tarman]

Indeed. Wouldn't it have been a good idea to have had some sort of design discussion forum with a core set of fans of the series and even better yet a series of design decisions drawn up by the Devs once they have decided the direction they want things to go in, that way all newcomers to the game would know the kind of stuff the Devs wanted.
Not that that would ever be a thing

We also don't have a time machine to go and be beholden to the wishes and concepts of 5-6 years ago. DDF stands for Dead Dodo Fluff at this point.

 

[Stigbob]

Customers are frequently completely ridiculous in their demands for things like, for example, rare steak with no blood (totally got an order for this in a kitchen once).

This forum, besides being full of the loudest people of the smallest subsection of total players, would give the devs 45376 different answers on everything. We are not to be trusted with the tiller because we'll steer everywhere at the same time, and are not anywhere near some kind of rational database of game development information.

Tuna baked potato sent back to the kitchens on the basis the customer thought she was a vegan and objected to the mayo.

 

[Hank]

This reply is something that has been a serious request of mine for some time, so I thought of a very nice "compromise" if NPC crew is still a long ways off. My idea / suggestion is detailed here. Hint:

^^ This is what I'm talking about.

 

[Braandlin]

Indeed. Wouldn't it have been a good idea to have had some sort of design discussion forum with a core set of fans of the series and even better yet a series of design decisions drawn up by the Devs once they have decided the direction they want things to go in, that way all newcomers to the game would know the kind of stuff the Devs wanted.
Not that that would ever be a thing

No.

There is zero requirement for FDev to run a design by committee, and it very very rarely works out well.

 

[xzanfr]

No.

There is zero requirement for FDev to run a design by committee, and it very very rarely works out well.

woosh!, right over 'yer head

Theres no excuse for having empty seats in a big ship - make us have to hire crew like frontier, pay them and give them something to do.
A good start to this would be having the crew sit in the cockpit.

Discussed here 5 years ago. None of this was implemented & is still relevant today.

 

[insanephoton]

I'm so tempted to buy another PS4 Slim on Black Friday so I can put my alt CMDR in the seat next to me, just to sit there and look pretty and keep me company.

This shows that the code to put people in these seats already exists in ED! It would be trivial to make it our NPC sitting there. Granted, they wouldn't do anything but look pretty (or ugly as is often the case with NPCs), but hey, I'll take it!

My limited understanding and guess, is that npc pilots are generated with a different asset to the ones used for holo-me. Which also goes some way to explain why they don't look so good and the limited number of models used. Even just sticking to the holo-me pre-sets would greatly improve the overall appearance and range of diversity of the avatars.

 

[Rick Bravo]

Npc crew next to you would be a nice touch however, more important than that, is why the hell don't we have escape pods for our crew? 3304 can we can only put one escape pod in a ship, even though we are picking up multiple escape pods from single destroyed ships out in the black? Makes no sense at all and it is an incredibly simple fix. Fdev could even make interesting gameplay out of it by making us go back out and recover the escape pod.

 

[Old Duck]

My limited understanding and guess, is that npc pilots are generated with a different asset to the ones used for holo-me. Which also goes some way to explain why they don't look so good and the limited number of models used. Even just sticking to the holo-me pre-sets would greatly improve the overall appearance and range of diversity of the avatars.

I always thought that all the "portraits" in ED were generated behind-the-scenes using holome technology, since our CMDR's 2D mugshot looks very similar to various NPC mugshots, just with different poses and backgrounds. Somewhere a long time ago I read this was the case, but it was from another forum member, not anyone 'official' from Frontier. Now you have me curious...

 

[Martind Forlon]

I don't agree with the way used in OP for asking new feature related to NPC crew, but on onther side actual state of NPC crew (aka perma-death), and empty cabin seat, are something, what I really do not like in ED. I only hope FDev will decide to do some changes in this regard ... and there will really be a reason to keep NPC crew for my ships (especially if is taken in cosideration how much % of income is taking trained crew). I have single NPC buddy almost elite now; I know for sure that I will not like if I will lose him (her).

 

[insanephoton]

I always thought that all the "portraits" in ED were generated behind-the-scenes using holome technology, since our CMDR's 2D mugshot looks very similar to various NPC mugshots, just with different poses and backgrounds. Somewhere a long time ago I read this was the case, but it was from another forum member, not anyone 'official' from Frontier. Now you have me curious...

I don't have any more knowledge than you, but slfs were introduced in 2.2 whereas Holo-me didn't arrive until 2.3. My assumption was that they used a placeholder system for the npc portraits as there seem far fewer base models than in holo-me. It's been a while since I last looked at Holo-me with any depth but there are somewhere between 40 or 50 base models each for male and female, whereas there seem to be far fewer for the npc pilot portraits. I think they may have switched the faction reps / mission givers over to holo-me but I'm not certain.

 

[VR StarLightPL]

I think they confirmed on the livestream that holo-me is an extension of "commander creator" - the tech used to generate all portraits (sometimes with hilarious results, like ladybeards).

That said, this whole discussion is a symptom of a bigger problem actually. It should never be possible to pilot big ships without a (NPC) crew. The situation currently is as dire as with the "god honk" so many people are not willing to let go now. Imagine the amount of toys thrown out of the pram when they said: "OK starting from chapter 4, you are required to maintain npc crew for flying bigger ships". The salt output would dwarf any geyser generated by stellar forge (not that it's hard, mind you ;-) ). But really, it shouldn't be that way from the beginning. It is not too late now, especially if they refined their previous ideas, but the outcry would be heard as far as in Proxima Centauri.

Yet, I would welcome that change tbh. Pure immersion reasons. Although as someone pointed out it makes much more sense with the shift to space legs. Plus it will never happen ;-)

 

[Old Duck]

That said, this whole discussion is a symptom of a bigger problem actually. It should never be possible to pilot big ships without a (NPC) crew.

I heartily agree with this, and I've had to come up with some "handwavium imagination" to deal with my large but empty ships. Meet my Orca's COVAS:

And here is my BattleConda's COVAS:

and my AMFU (android, left, more than one with bigger AMFUs):

or

I would still prefer a flesh-n-blood NPC Seamus Harper and Beka Valentine visible on the bridge with me, because while Captain Dylan Hunt could fly a massive ship by himself, he was quick to point out that his ship "needs a crew". But when "handwavium imagination" is all we have, we must make do...

 

[Noctover]

Remember on star trek, when one of the main crew data for example would walk to the helm, and a random crewmember would stand up and data would take his or her place, and the random crew would leave the bridge.

imagine if our crewmembers were seated and if someone joined multicrew and the seat was needed our crew member would stand up and head out of the bridge.

also, still no sign of any sort of escape pod, or insurance or anything, for crew, sigh, why does frontier always halfarse features. stuff that could be totally amazing and they leave it half finished. makes me sad.

I seem to remember in star trek when the enterprise got hammered crew members actually DIED though.

Quit trying to make it easier than it already is, has to be some loss in this game, you die crew die imho.

As for sitting next to you, yeah that would be kinda cool.

I am though confused why you would think you'd see this in the BETA since FD made no hint that it would be... Its like me joining the beta and saying "Sigh still cant land on an earth like, walk over to a lakeside and wash my face".

Basically, loads of new awesome features have come out and you've just made a post about how its all half because the ones you wanted are not in .

 

[Mo Ronik]

I figure if I really want a crew right now I'll just buy more bobbleheads. Be nice if I could position one in the seat next to me in my Adder but space isn't a nice place as proven by the number of insurance claims.

 

[valbarr]

I seem to remember in star trek when the enterprise got hammered crew members actually DIED though.

Quit trying to make it easier than it already is, has to be some loss in this game, you die crew die imho.

As for sitting next to you, yeah that would be kinda cool.

I am though confused why you would think you'd see this in the BETA since FD made no hint that it would be... Its like me joining the beta and saying "Sigh still cant land on an earth like, walk over to a lakeside and wash my face".

Basically, loads of new awesome features have come out and you've just made a post about how its all half because the ones you wanted are not in .

confused ? maybe because beyond is about them revisiting older systems and fleshing them out, and this is the last beta of beyond, so if they were going to flesh out npcs, they would have done it now. obviously their not going too.

 

[Tarman]

confused ? maybe because beyond is about them revisiting older systems and fleshing them out, and this is the last beta of beyond, so if they were going to flesh out npcs, they would have done it now. obviously their not going too.

Yep, they're just stopping here. No more of the game will be upgraded, ever.

 

[Bob McBobblehead]

Remember on star trek, when one of the main crew data for example would walk to the helm, and a random crewmember would stand up and data would take his or her place, and the random crew would leave the bridge.

imagine if our crewmembers were seated and if someone joined multicrew and the seat was needed our crew member would stand up and head out of the bridge.

also, still no sign of any sort of escape pod, or insurance or anything, for crew, sigh, why does frontier always halfarse features. stuff that could be totally amazing and they leave it half finished. makes me sad.

There could be a reason for no NPC sitting in the second chair. Frame rates would take a hit having to render an extra body in the cockpit.