Hired crew should be compulsory for larger ships

[Deleted member 38366]

Welcome to the club.

This was hoped for by many the very Day NPC Crews were announced.
Sadly, Frontier didn't approve at that time (fearing too much depth of gameplay) and left us with the "Hire 3 - but only ever use 1 and only for the SLF handling" shallow solution.

Well, maybe we'll see something done about that in v3...

 

[Vardaugas]

Right now, crew is a lightly grazed afterthought at best. I'd like to see it as a full fledged feature. But it would also take models, animations and voice work for the crew to be there and alive, so it would need a good justification for committing those resources. And that means, I'm afraid, it's somewhere near spacelegs in the priority pile.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

Surely I can't be the only person that finds the concept of one cmdr piloting a big anaconda through space by themselves a tad silly? There should be NPC crew on the bridge. Or at least the option. One man piloting the ship all by himself and a hired crew member scurrying around in the fighter bay like a gremlin until they get called into action is daft. Feels a bit like lazy implementation to me. Just my 2p

agreed!. it was part of the DDF
and is part of the Elite lore....

the biggest single pilot ship in the elite universe is the Cobra III..... I always assumed launching without was simply a MVP thing to get the game out of the door ready to be fleshed out later.

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...na-come-out-dead-”-Ship-Crews-Elite-Dangerous

http://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Anaconda (Anaconda, crew 8 (plus captain)

 

[Jenner]

Crew was a minor thing in Frontier Elite 2 as I recall, but just having to pay their salary was enjoyable from an "IMMERSION" (best Yamiks voice) standpoint.

So yeah... I'd love to see crew requirements for the big ships too.

 

[who?]

Surely it'd be fairly simple to do a cosmetic stop-gap. Put NPC models in the other chair(s), randomly looking out the window, maybe tapping a button occasionally. If they could go the next step, and every time you deploy weapons one of the NPC crew starts hammering buttons furiously, or if you deploy a fighter the other NPC starts getting busy; but that would just be a nice touch.

(The above would work better again, with Voice Attack.)

 

[Conch]

Welcome to the club.

This was hoped for by many the very Day NPC Crews were announced.
Sadly, Frontier didn't approve at that time (fearing too much depth of gameplay) and left us with the "Hire 3 - but only ever use 1 and only for the SLF handling" shallow solution.

Well, maybe we'll see something done about that in v3...

And when you got 3 crew members.. say bye to your income if you use them or not.

even 3 trained from harmless to elite suck 30% of your income..

and dont get me started about their death penalty...

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

And when you got 3 crew members.. say bye to your income if you use them or not.

even 3 trained from harmless to elite suck 30% of your income..

and dont get me started about their death penalty...

that is a minor balancing issue on wages and not a reason to shelve the plans of their inclusion imo.

 

[PiLhEaD]

Absolutely not, no thanks.

Not unless we can assign tasks to them, such as any or all elements of: making a multi jump journey to our target destination, navigate in super-cruise to the destination, scoop cargo, drop onto a planet/out of super-cruise, and request docking and dock.

If all they can do is drink tea, take a percentage of my earnings and fly a SLF (whether I have one or not), then why should I be forced to have them on my ship just because it's large?

 

[mossfoot]

And when you got 3 crew members.. say bye to your income if you use them or not.

even 3 trained from harmless to elite suck 30% of your income..

And dont get me started about their death penalty...

because money is SO hard to get in this game....

seriously, we need money sinks anyway, especially once we've got bigger ships. They should cost more to run and maintain.

But they should also do something other than fill space. Keep it so you can fly solo if you insist but a crewed ship will be more efficient (ie, if you have a repair module, they can operate it while you fight)

 

[mossfoot]

Because a large ship shouldn't be possible to pilot alone. Basically at the moment, players grind away towards a massive warship and fly it around with no-one else in it. That doesn't seem silly to you?

A ship the size of a WWII aircraft carrier, no less.

 

[Jenner]

because money is SO hard to get in this game....

seriously, we need money sinks anyway, especially once we've got bigger ships. They should cost more to run and maintain.

But they should also do something other than fill space. Keep it so you can fly solo if you insist but a crewed ship will be more efficient (ie, if you have a repair module, they can operate it while you fight)

Exactly!

 

[Stellar Gambit]

While not my first choice - you could go with a start trek online implementation of crew - holographic crew.

though it would be better if they can sign on as face less, never seen crew operating various parts of the ship, maybe with some crew management options.. like promotions and stuff.. no bearing in the game really other than RP

Imagine if your standing in the empire was sufficient that you could have your ships run in part with slaves.

 

[Ian Doncaster]

Because a large ship shouldn't be possible to pilot alone. Basically at the moment, players grind away towards a massive warship and fly it around with no-one else in it. That doesn't seem silly to you?

Sure, but what do the crew actually do?

The large ships are basically all just big fighters anyway - they turn pretty fast, they basically all have forward-only guns (sure, you can fit turrets at a big cost in damage potential, but you'll still want to have the enemy mostly in front of you in that case or half your guns won't be able to target it), they can't do much in the way of activities that a Cobra III can't (or a T-6, if mining), they just do some of them slightly faster.

What extra functionality do those ships have that an NPC crew member could actually engage in - with the exception of SLFs which they already do.

Sure, they could just sit in a chair and take money, but they either take "refuel" levels of money so you basically never have to worry about it (as was the case in FE2/FFE), or they actively force big ship pilots into always at least somewhat optimising their income (which could really hurt using that sort of ship for exploration or other low-earning activities)

 

[mossfoot]

Sure, but what do the crew actually do?

An Engineer could effectively act as an auto repair module, doing repairs on the fly, even in combat (though at the slow rate of a module). That could effectively free up a slot on a ship normally equipped with a repair module, except of course you're paying more for it in the long run. Or maybe it negates the need to repair structural integrity every so often?

A Navigation Officer could perhaps increase fuel efficiency during jumps (not increase your range, mind you, but optimize things so you use less fuel to make the jump). Maybe having one adds options to the Galaxy or System maps?

A Gunnery Officer could add an extra pip to you SYS management (like it does with mulitcrew, though that bonus would have to be non-stackable). Or improves the targeting of turrets like how an SLF pilot improves (I doubt the defaults are Elite!)

That's just off the top of my head.

 

[Stellar Gambit]

Crew on a passenger ship is fairly self explanatory... hire them to serve guests and do tours, conduct weddings... blah blah..

 

[CMDR Corlas]

I don't think it's unreasonable to think that even the biggest player-ownable ships we have now are able to be piloted by a single person. There's no real reason why it wouldn't be possible.

However, I would be totally on board with needing to hire crew (or sign up other players) to run a multicrew ship, even if it was just a profit-balancing mechanism vs smaller ships. I'd love to see NPC crew filling up my multicrew ships, especially if there was some banter from them, like when you assign one to a fighter.

It could be cool to see wear and tear introduced (reintroduced?) to the game, where, over time, all modules take a bit of integrity damage as they're used. You could then have multiple ways to deal with this:

1. Repair at a station
2. Equip an AFMU
3. Hire a crew member, who according to their rank, can act an ammo-less AMFU that you don't need to micromanage (but you still pay from your profits)

 

[ebbrell]

Absolutely not, no thanks.

Not unless we can assign tasks to them, such as any or all elements of: making a multi jump journey to our target destination, navigate in super-cruise to the destination, scoop cargo, drop onto a planet/out of super-cruise, and request docking and dock.

If all they can do is drink tea, take a percentage of my earnings and fly a SLF (whether I have one or not), then why should I be forced to have them on my ship just because it's large?

agreed. And take percentage when off duty

 

[Renown]

I too don't like seeing empty seats next to me on the big ships, I was thinking we have holo-me and we can create more than 1 maybe the spares could become our npcs for decoration purposes only they don't have to do anything except make it look more realistic and alive.

 

[Vasious]

Id be happy for NPC crew to be seat warmers, if nothing else, to begin with.

They could even add non Multicrew seats for them, as for example, the Type 7 have two seatless Crew stations on the bridge

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Another one here that would be happy if i could just see my NPCs in the cockpit.