As stated, a Hired Crew should be able to be selected as an Active crewmember, take up that crew slot for friends and grant that extra pip.
Instead of having a friend shooting turrets with accuracy or being a smarter fighter pilot, you at least get an extra pip for that % fee they take.
This would also be beneficial for players flying ships that don't normally have friends that want to fly with them. I'm looking at those Cobras, Vultures, Asp and Adders out there.
I don't want an extra pip, but I do think the game needs an npc crew system.
Crew should be mandatory for certain ships (just like in the previous elite games) and then an extra pip would be nonsense, because you would not be able to fly a Python or an Anaconda, or a Corvette etc. without crew anyway.
A proposal I posted elsewhere:
As far as having NPC crew is concerned I would be happy if they were just a basic requirement for certain ships to be able to fly.
I just want them on board. I don't want huge special advantages and I don't want control taken away from me as a cmdr anyway.
- Perhaps having an ENGINEER might enable a slow auto repair for internal modules, or perhaps the use of fuel might be reduced with 5% Percent. Or perhaps you get a 5% better jump range. Or shields might reboot just a little bit faster.
- Perhaps having a MEDIC might come in handy when first person action (FPA) is introduced and cmdrs can get wounded.
- Perhaps having a CO PILOT would be required to fly SLF yourself (just like it is now) and the copilot might also enable auto jumping when you have plotted a jump route, and auto approach to a station in a system, and also auto docking.
- Perhaps having an npc WEAPONS OFFICER would simply improve turret targeting speed by 5%, and/or let weapons run 3% cooler and give you a 5% faster Kill Warrant scanner.
- In the future we might hire a SCIENCE OFFICER and have a scientific module on board (cool for explorers). A science officer might improve your speed of system and planetary scans etc.
As I said nothing fancy or complicated, or overpowered.
I don't need my ship to become a powerhouse.
Most important thing is that I just would like to have npc crew.
Being a soloist at heart I will never play ED with others. I just do not want the social interaction.
PAYMENT
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Of course the current percentages crew get wouldn't work that well as they would eat into our profits far too much.
And we also need the ability to put our crew on hold when we want to fly smaller ships for a while. Because if you want to fly an Eagle for a few weeks and do a bit of fighter combat then you can't have 4 crew members eating into your profits for doing nothing at all.
Otherwise we would either get bankrupt very soon, or we would have to fire them all the time (which is already happening now with the hireable pilots).
CREW SURVIVAL
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Also: Give crew the same survival option as the humans.
Possible alternatives to killing them off:
Perhaps if your ship is blown up you can not use your crew member for 3 days, because he is on sick leave, or perhaps you need to pay medical costs, or perhaps there is a 10% chance he dies, but... do not kill him off by default. That makes no sense at all and is counter productive. People do get attached to crew. Use that to enhance the game. Work with that. Build mechanics around that.
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