Frontier, Please Don't Kill Our Crew! Part Deux

Can crew members get bounties on their head? Because if I was Fdev, I'd put bounties on Kaybe's crew just for caring about his crew "dying" (or quitting) when Fdev has done everything to make players not care about crew as if they were a permanent acquisition. They make them expensive, they make them incompetent, they make them very easily replaceable and they make them infinitely available.


And even if they weren't ever intended to be temporary and replaceable (they are), if you are incompetent enough to get them killed, why should you be allowed to keep them? That makes less sense than the current mechanic. By far.

Precious. Simply precious.

You can't even spell and you're trying to make analogous assumptions.

Renege. Learn.
 
And even if they weren't ever intended to be temporary and replaceable (they are), if you are incompetent enough to get them killed, why should you be allowed to keep them? That makes less sense than the current mechanic. By far.

I am sorry, but by this logic it also mean that if you are incompetent enough to get yourself killed, why should you be allowed to keep your ship and materials gathered... ;)
 
I am sorry, but by this logic it also mean that if you are incompetent enough to get yourself killed, why are you allowed to keep your ship and materials gathered? ;)
Better yet, dying violates EULA and the game uninstalls and you can't play anymore without buying another copy! REALISM CUZ REASONS!

Or maybe every time you die in game, a monkey with a revolver is mailed to your house and runs around shooting holes in all your electronics.
 
I don't know what happened to Multi-quote, so I will type one by one.

"NPC Crew Permadeath"

Yes, this entire mechanic needs to be addressed. Agree on that, but disagree in the removal of permadeaeth.

"NPC Crew costs"

Yes, they should have a monthly salary which should be a fraction of what it is now (just upkeep). Then they should get a commission (per hour rate) when they are called to serve on the ship (and we should be able to see them in the cockpit). Then they should also have factors like experience with certain guns or damage taken which would affect their performance and thus their costs. This should also include wounds and downtime from healing. If your ship has a medbay then they heal faster, etc. THere are so many ways to add content and depth with Multicrew - other single player games do it all the time, like XCOM.

"Rescue the crew after death"

This should definitely be in and this would definitely create an attachment to the crew (thus the game). If you don't rescue the crewmember within a time limit, then permadeath occurs. I think this is the most important part in the implementation of Multicrew.

"Consequences of death, Mechanics of Loss"

This should also be part of Elite. Here you have an option whether to submit to permadeath of a crew member or work towards ensuring that doesn't happen. If your ship is destroyed 50 kylies away then yes you have to make that journey to rescue the crew. It adds more gameplay and builds the player's narrative. Of course, you also have the choice to let that crew die and live with that and explore the impact of that decision to your own character. Even better, if you could design your own mission to appear at a bulletin board for someone to accept and retrieve your crew for a price. There are many ways to go about this.

"Ships losing all engineering upgrades upon destruction"

Unrelated to topic but : Yes! Absolutely. This brings the Barrier of Entry to PVP down tremendously for most (new and old) players.

"Multicrew lounge has pilots of all skill ranges, the only difference is their looks"

Yep, have to be fixed. That's why it's better if they have modifiers +piloting +gunnery +engineering +scanning +endurance etc, then every crew member is different at their core - not just different in the superficial parameters.
 
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Bit overly aggresive... I support the OP and found your comment amusing. No clue who darth ender is btw.

Ok. I didn't consider my response to be amusing... perhaps I need to step back and rethink it. ;)

Sorry, friendly fire considered. I'll visit my nearest Interstellar Factors and say my Mea Culpa and be awashed of my sins.
 
Ok. I didn't consider my response to be amusing... perhaps I need to step back and rethink it. ;)

Sorry, friendly fire considered. I'll visit my nearest Interstellar Factors and say my Mea Culpa and be awashed of my sins.
I've gotten old enough to find comments falling into 3 categories: Idiotic and nonsensical, meh and meh, or amusing. Even progressive and sensible comments fall under amusing.

Mostly because there are so few of them...

By the way, what do they wash you with there? Last time I was 'absolved' they used space salt. Not pleasant, but it did enhance my natural flavor.
 
I've gotten old enough to find comments falling into 3 categories: Idiotic and nonsensical, meh and meh, or amusing. Even progressive and sensible comments fall under amusing.

Mostly because there are so few of them...

By the way, what do they wash you with there? Last time I was 'absolved' they used space salt. Not pleasant, but it did enhance my natural flavor.

Eh, considering "IF" is the Mafia's current implementation of Heaven for criminal offences in Elite Dangerous... I'd imagine it's not too difficult to imagine.

C&P in ED is a complete joke. Let's rack up billions of credits in bounties and go to the confession booth to absolve ourselves.

Yeah... it needs a good looking over- possibly by independent audit, considering Sandro and Crew don't see the problem here.
 
NPC crew is currently pretty poor. I think FDEV failed to notice that everyone would eventually be rocking dangerous Elite crew until the last minute, and then built in permadeath for them to counter this. It certainly feels like a placeholder. What can I tell you? - Tamagotchi are a real thing and people get attached to fictional characters.

Personally. I'd make it a game mechanic. Your crew have a satifaction level (just like a passenger) If you do things they approve of they gain it (for example, a fed pilot will like fed missions, but dislike imperial ones) if you do things they don't like, they lose it. They have wage expectations (which increase with rank) and the more you pay them the more satisfied they may be. However when they're killed they have the option of walking, or asking for more money or a bonus - whenever you dock they may ask for more, or walk - if really disappointed they may simply eject.. Part of the skill is putting together a team appropriate for what you do, and working out how to keep them. Could be a whole new dimension to the game. And not so hard to do. I'm not sure if you want to make all this visible to the commander, or just let them work it out from the NPC's attitude.
 
After all this time they've done nothing. They will do nothing, and don't care.

FD if you're not going to fix permanent death of NPC crew then just remove them from the game.
 
After all this time they've done nothing. They will do nothing, and don't care. FD if you're not going to fix permanent death of NPC crew then just remove them from the game.

Whoa, whoa, WHOA-BOY! Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater, just because we're a bit frustrated here! [woah] After all, even though many posters in these forums are very marxist in their game-design evangelism (and by marxists, I'm describing that type of gamer who not only insists at all things be equal (ignoring everything that's not in in their favor), but everyone must get to the same point via the same path.

So, if you hate the implementation so much that you want them totally removed, all you have to do is remove your fighter hangar, bunky! Voila, you're happier! ;)

I mean they arnt even on the ship, they are telepresent, why would they die? Wouldn't they just go to the bar till you respawn?

Actually, the teleoperation is from your ship to the SLF. They DO travel with you (even when they're inactive). ...but apparently when inactive they don't sit in your other cockpit chair; they stand right behind you, moving so you can never see them (and snuggle in with you into your escape pod if you screw the pooch so badly you lose your ship)! (i believe that the "lore" suggests that when they're active, they're inside the fighter hangar module, which has no internal escape-pod/long-term life-support capability).

I still don't get why people keep asking for this. Are people not thinking it through? If npc crew become immortal then there is only so long before everyone's crew become elite.

That's not far from the current reality, anyway. Due to the prevalence of RP heretics who fire their crew before every mission payout (essentially treating the contracted SLF pilot as risking true death for a meager 150K CR), what you have now, with rare exceptions, are either contracted SLF pilots in the black that are either Competent or Elite.

Only the biggest ships can take a SLF without making compromises, and these all have limited agility and/or speed. And the big warships have enough firepower to ensure that the SLF''s contribution is limited.

I'd argue that with an Elite pilot, in PvE, they make a significant difference to your medium-hull firepower and that it's still significant to a large-hull ship, primarily because it provides further weapon optimization, speeding kills. ...and I'm not even counting the benefit to those pilots whose skills are such that they can kill NPCs much faster by optimizing their ship build toward the SLF pilot's strengths (and then just hop into the SLF and let their crew member fly the mothership!).
 
Signed yet again.

NPC permadeath remains completely out of proportion to pretty much every other loss mechanic in the game - people actually training pilots up do get emotionally invested, and no matter how much experienced players may say things like 'Just don't die' and 'nothing is a challenge really', sometimes ships get destroyed for stupid reasons beyond our control.

I'm not saying there should be no risk at all, just something less harsh than losing everything. Make us do a special rescue mission. Have them lose a combat level (or indeed die if they were Harmless at the time). Make them not selectable for a while. Charge us more money. All of those at once, even.

But permanent loss for any ship loss is completely unacceptable, and when engineered modules get restored perfectly, it feels particularly bitter.
 
This is a problem that unfairly penalises a subset of players who are trying to play "properly", but who are effectively being prevented from using their NPC copilots in dangerous situations.

I don't feel penalized and I regularly use my Elite NPC crew members in dangerous situations.

By and large, I feel that the rest of the game is a consequence free cakewalk, but I try to play my CMDR as someone who isn't always certain that the ejection seat will work, or that he'll always make it back even when it does.

Would you be OK with ships losing all engineering upgrades after a rebuy?

Yes.

NPC permadeath remains completely out of proportion to pretty much every other loss mechanic in the game

Completely agree, but the problem lies with every other loss mechanism.

I'd rather those be fixed than break the least broken aspect of consequence we have.
 
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Completely agree, but the problem lies with every other loss mechanism.

I'd rather those be fixed than break the least broken aspect of consequence we have.

In that case there's a question of where the 'bar' of death penalties should be set, and that relates I think to just how common ship destruction is expected to be for a 'typical' player. Both extremes are bad.

Regardless of that, though, I think we're more likely to get FD to tweak one feature than to do a general balance pass on all death penalties, and speaking as a player on the casual end of the spectrum, I'd prefer too lenient than too harsh.
 
the most horrible part of all this, frontier has this forum, tons and tons of people post about npcs, and frontier cant even be bothered to respond, even if they said, we like npcs this way, this is the way they will stay. but no, wont respond, so people who are interested in this, make endless unanswered posts, getting more and more frustrated about the situation. and frontier doesnt even care. evidence they dont care, they havent responded, so the whole thing goes on and on. its sick really.
 
NPC permadeath remains completely out of proportion to pretty much every other loss mechanic in the game

Which is a very welcome variety. Everything what makes this Game closer to his name "Elite" is good.

If it would up to you, Forum-volks, Frontier must build in a button to WIN. Without any need of skill, caution, knowledge anything... just "WIN".

I´m all for a Ironmode Server. Without different modes, just one server, 1 live and go for it. This is intense. The feeling under this circumstances would be out of this world.
 
If it would up to you, Forum-volks, Frontier must build in a button to WIN. Without any need of skill, caution, knowledge anything... just "WIN".
.

...Aaaand here we go again!

This is an issue that affects SOME players in SOME ships. So every FDL has a win button already installed? And every Vulture, Viper, Chieftain, etc etc?

Nope, therefore you have no argument.
 
I am just waiting when somebody will bring that Elite: Dangerous should be dangerous, because it's a part of the name (also, that there should be multiple rainbows added to Rainbow Six and that adding multiplayer features to No Man's Sky was a mistake as there can be somebody in the sky now... and so on). ;)

The point is that this feature may be completely optional - you wouldn't like to have you crew surviving and their life means nothing to you? Well... don't save them then.
 
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