Heads up - Inactive Crew Members - still take a percentage of all your Earnings.

[valbarr]

Even if your in a ship that cant have crewmembers they will take the same percentage as if they were being used, sitting about on their backside in the crew lounge, for that reason, ive just Sacked My crew member, im not paying them, when they dont do anything...

Please frontier rethink this, I could live with giving them a retainer or something, but not a percentage of everything, i work so hard to make, not when they arnt even helping.

whats other peoples thoughts.

also please be aware, if you have 3 crew members that take 12 percent each, and your using none of them, thats 36 percent of everything you earn, down the drain.

 

[Soopyyy]

They really don't want me buying season 3, huh?....

 

[d8veh]

What do you expect. You've kept your crew away from home. Did you provide any entertainment for them? While you're dragging them around the universe, you have to pay them.

 

[Sapyx]

You signed a contract when you hired them promising to unconditionally pay them a percentage of your earnings, then you told them their job was to sit on the sofa and do nothing while you fly off to earn money in your one-man ship, and you then come here and complain that they're still taking the money you promised to pay them for doing exactly what you, their boss, ordered them to do?

Who's the unreasonable one here, then?

I do agree that other hiring options would be nice. Perhaps some NPCs would ask for a percentage of everything, while others might accept a base salary with performance bonuses for a job well done. I suspect FD decided to skip the "base salary" crew payment option, on account of what happens when a player goes offline for a week, or a month. Imagine a player putting the game down for a year, only to come back to it and find that salaries paid out to their hired crew have emptied their entire bank balance while they were offline, then their crew jumped ship and skipped town when the money ran out.

If FD had considered adding a "lose-credits-even-while-offline" element of the game, then in fairness they'd have to also add a "gain-credits-even-while-offline" element (eg. players owning a mining base or some other cash cow) to help counteract it. And having any mechanism whereby players could earn money even while offline is definitely something FD will never, ever implement.

 

[fennster]

Let's be honest, it was probably the easiest way to implement it. NPC gets X% of all credit input. /feature.

Onto next feature...

(They even take a percentage of the total sale of a commodity, not just profit, even if you make a loss on the items.)

 

[Gunnet]

Because of this along with them not having escape pods, I get the impression that Frontier wanted players to have a constantly changing roster of crew members being levelled up and waiting to replace those who died. Keeping them available would have been a cash sink, and training them up would have been a time sink.

 

[Palinson]

I'd love to see it changed to where inactive crew only get paid 1% of my income when they are sitting in a station. Or maybe a tenth of what they get when active. As it is now I fired my crew member and sold my hangar bay since it was only in one of my many ships.

 

[Chaz]

I only have one crew member, can't really see the point in having more than that. You can only launch one fighter at a time and they only die if the mothership goes pop.

Does anyone know if their rates increase as they level up. You only pay a Harmless crew member 2%, will that go up as his rank increases or will it remain at 2%?

Just wondering if it's better to just hire and fire higher ranked pilots as and when I need them rather than try and train up a low ranked one.

 

[White Shark]

I've loyally kept the same crew member and ranked her up from Novice to Master. She's so far earnt over 10 million credits from me. I wish Frontier would implement something to safeguard them in case I lose my ship and them along with it. I think it's a stupid idea you can lose them. Otherwise, what's the point in ranking them up at all? You might as well just hire a new crew member each time and then fire them when you don't need them.

Please give the loyal CMDRs an incentive with regards to Crew Members!

 

[Kubicide]

Great logic huh. Might as well make all ships 'decay' and lose integrity when they're not being used - wait, I shouldn't give them more anti-fun ideas (like if they don't have enough: hello mission payout nerf - sorry, bug - I'm looking at you...)[/I]...

 

[Don Alvarez]

I only have one crew member, can't really see the point in having more than that. You can only launch one fighter at a time and they only die if the mothership goes pop.

Does anyone know if their rates increase as they level up. You only pay a Harmless crew member 2%, will that go up as his rank increases or will it remain at 2%?

Just wondering if it's better to just hire and fire higher ranked pilots as and when I need them rather than try and train up a low ranked one.

It seems to go up 1% per level, giving you costs saving at the higher levels if you start Harmless and build a pilot up, rather than starting at Expert.

 

[Ozram]

What do you expect. You've kept your crew away from home. Did you provide any entertainment for them? While you're dragging them around the universe, you have to pay them.

Sure. It's the penalty for not having an escape pod when active? They really got to make it a bit more functional. Basically it's like,
"Here you go. Massively immersive element you can have, but we'd like to punish you mercilessly for its use".

 

[Don Alvarez]

You signed a contract when you hired them promising to unconditionally pay them a percentage of your earnings...

Actually it says "Profit", which I don't have a truck with but its been bothering traders apparently as the NPC pilot takes their percentage of every transaction, neglecting to factor in that you've had to spend money to make money. In theory, where trade profits per ton are slim, you could actually be losing money because of the NPCs cut and not realize it.

 

[Ophion]

I think it's stupid. He is hired to pilot a fighter, not to be your business partner. If he is inactive and drinks beer in crew lounge, he should not get paid.

 

[Gunnet]

Actually it says "Profit", which I don't have a truck with but its been bothering traders apparently as the NPC pilot takes their percentage of every transaction, neglecting to factor in that you've had to spend money to make money. In theory, where trade profits per ton are slim, you could actually be losing money because of the NPCs cut and not realize it.

That's a good point. The game regularly distinguishes between profit and revenue. So it doesn't seem like it would be excessively difficult to tie crew members' wages to it.

 

[LNEWLFE]

Should be allowed to take them on ships with SRV, and can only then use the auto pilot feature, have the crewmate disembark and return to you while your driving, make them more useful. I need a module to land automaticly at space ports, yet why can a ship can fly with no pilot over a planet.
Then everyone can at least have a point to crews, including small ships and new players.

 

[Buliel]

What they should have done is this:

NPC crew takes a percentage of your bounty hunter gains right here and now, not when cashing them in.

This way, you avoid forcing people to buy an expert pilot, then sack them at the last second before cashing everything in. And this way, it'd work to have the NPC pilots not take money when inactive.

Or if you're worried of placing a pilot inactive when trading, simply have it so you cannot place an active NPC in the inactive slot until you've cleared your cargo racks.

 

[Mengy]

I have to wonder if crew members will be more useful in 2.3, with multicrew. Maybe Frontier will allow the crew to pilot the ship while you can hotseat over into another station or something, and the two of you can switch off at will.

 

[CMDR Goro]

Actually it says "Profit", which I don't have a truck with but its been bothering traders apparently as the NPC pilot takes their percentage of every transaction, neglecting to factor in that you've had to spend money to make money. In theory, where trade profits per ton are slim, you could actually be losing money because of the NPCs cut and not realize it.

I actually did that. Having expert on my staff flipped my trading into negative. The way it's implemented now they are useless for traders

 

[Ophion]

I think a poll is in order!