Multi crew is bad for your combat progression

Mötley Crüman

Mötley Crüman
Hi All,
So after a busy morning bounty hunting, I can now confirm that having other players onboard your ship for multicrew does decrease your Elite combat rating gains by 1/3.

I flew my FDL on my own round for the first part of the experiment. Having bagged 4 x Deadly NPCs (1.5 XPeach, 6 XP), 1 x Dangerous (1.25 XP) and 2 x Masters (1.0 XP each, 2 XP) I progressed by 1% Master rating.

A total of 9.25 XP to rank up one percent. I repeated this process and ranked up at roughly 8.5 XP. Fairly consistent whilst allowing for XP overlap and any errors recording enemies ranks.

Then I go back to dock and get my iCutter out and fly back to the CNB and enlist two multicrew. One sits and does nothing, the other divides their time between flying the SLFs and the gunner role. Between us we bag 5 x Elites (8.75 XP), 4 x Deadly's (6 XP), 5 x Dangerous (6.25 XP) for total XP gain of 21 XP. This gained me a 1% increase at Master rank. Divided amongst three crew the 21 XP gain was 7 XP each, roughly equalling what I was needing to gain on my own in the FDL to rank up.

I gained a further 1% after we destroyed another 4 x Elites, 7 x Deadly's, and a Master ( 18.5 XP divided by three equals 6.16 XP). I also destroyed one more Elite on my own after the crew had left the session and this pushed me up the the one percent (6.16 XP + 1.75 XP = 7.916 XP).

As you can see from the above, it appears the 'XP' for combat rank is divided among the multicrew members equally. Obviously this is not optimal for those wishing to make large gains on their Elite combat ranks.

I also believe this happens with NPC ship launched fighters but I don't know whether the division is a 50/50 split of XP instead.

I will say that I find multicrew tremendous fun but it is disappointing that rank gains are not gives fully to all participants.

Sorry for the long post, but I felt details would be important for the community.
All XP assumptions are from this table:

http://elite-dangerous.wikia.com/wiki/Combat#cite_note-1
 

d8veh

d8veh
When you have an NPC crew, you only get the credit for the kill if you land a shot yourself. In your reckonings, is that only ships that you shot or does it include ones that only the crew shot?
 

Mötley Crüman

Mötley Crüman
The one crew member killed no one just sat in the ship. The other probably got the majority of the 'kill shots' in the fighter or as gunner as I rarely managed to turn to the target fast enough to hit them with the huge hardpoint under my control.

I suppose one way of finding out for sure would be to equip nothing but turrets and see if I still ranked up around 21XP.

Do you know if Wings operate in the same fashion? I.e. Credit goes to the 'kill shot' for Elite progression?

- - - Updated - - -

Having reread what you typed I can confirm that they all took 'hits' from us.
 

Bunkerkind Anni

Bunkerkind Anni
is it confirmed that the size of your own ship does not impact your experience gain?
i mean, one shotting elite eagles with a clipper doesn't sound very skillfull
 

Mötley Crüman

Mötley Crüman
The size of your ship and the size of your opponent's makes no difference to Elite combat rank gains. Equal opponents are worth 1.0 XP with increases or decreases at 0.25 per rank above or below.

However bounties on large ships are significantly higher. These do not affect Elite combat rank progress though as it is all kill based.

So a wing of Elite Sidewinder is worth far more XP than a wing of Novice Anacondas 😬
 
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ratchet5000

R
Darn, is there a way to lock crew members from the gunner role currently then? No wonder I haven't gone past 63% dangerous after the update.
 

Mötley Crüman

Mötley Crüman
I don't think it's just the gunner role as we had three of us onboard and one of the multicrew didn't take up any 'position' onboard, neither gunner nor fighter controller. Yet the XP seemed to divide three ways.

It's a fun way to play but I can't afford to add 66% extra kills to get my Elite combat rank.
 

Gunnet

G
Seems like a strange limitation. Perhaps it's an unintended side effect of the payout scaling, although in that case you would think the helm would still get full rank gains.
 

Mötley Crüman

Mötley Crüman
Yeah, quite restrictive if you want to gain Elite rank socially rather than alone. I'm just out checking whether the NPC SLF have the same effect.
 

Mötley Crüman

Mötley Crüman
In addition, I have been out with just my NPC SLF pilot and have found it is a 50/50 split between the two of you for combat XP, regardless of who gets the kill.

Without launching the fighter I ranked up 1% at Master by killing 2 x Elites, 2 x Deadly's, 1 x Dangerous, and 1 x Master.
Total XP 9.75

After launching my NPC fighter pilot we killed 2 x Elite, 5 x Deadly's, and 4 x Dangerous. Total XP gain 16, total Master percentage gain for me 1%.
Diving the sixteen by two we get 8 XP to go up 1%, this is in line with the earlier multicrew and FDL experiments above.

To summarise it seems that your Elite combat rank 'XP' gains are divided by two when using an NPC pilot (actually flying SLF not just aboard doing nothing).

If you carrying multicrew members these gains are divided amongst you and the crew, meaning you will only get 1/3 XP if carrying two other multicrew.
 

Nidhöggr

Nidhöggr
i guess nothing has changed on this?
usualy i run with 1 multi crew member and a active npc fighter. if this extremly hard xp cuts still true, i understand why my progression nearly stopped.

and again no official words on this? still the only way to find out is by try and error?
 
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Athan

Athan
Mötley Crüman said:
In addition, I have been out with just my NPC SLF pilot and have found it is a 50/50 split between the two of you for combat XP, regardless of who gets the kill.

Without launching the fighter I ranked up 1% at Master by killing 2 x Elites, 2 x Deadly's, 1 x Dangerous, and 1 x Master.
Total XP 9.75

After launching my NPC fighter pilot we killed 2 x Elite, 5 x Deadly's, and 4 x Dangerous. Total XP gain 16, total Master percentage gain for me 1%.
Diving the sixteen by two we get 8 XP to go up 1%, this is in line with the earlier multicrew and FDL experiments above.

To summarise it seems that your Elite combat rank 'XP' gains are divided by two when using an NPC pilot (actually flying SLF not just aboard doing nothing).

If you carrying multicrew members these gains are divided amongst you and the crew, meaning you will only get 1/3 XP if carrying two other multicrew.
Click to expand...
Depending on the rounding involved it's possible that 9.75 and 16 XP are both 1% increase in rank.

If we assume normal half-rounding, and that 16 XP was just under the 1.5% threshold (so would get rounded down to 1% rather than up to 2%), then 1% would be a little under 16 / 1.5 = 10.666(recurring). That's close enough for 9.75 to be rounded up to 1% as well.

To expand on the example, assume 1% would be 11XP, then 16XP is 16/ 11 = 1.45% and 9.75XP = 9.75 / 11 = 0.88%. Both will round to 1%.

Obviously this is also affected by exactly how far up from an integer percentage of rank progress you are, i.e. 0.6% actual progress can look like 1% if you were already on X.4% progress.

Edit: Not that the poster is necessarily wrong, it's just that the posted data doesn't concretely prove it.
 
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tomalus

T
What rank are your crewmembers? I think the lower rank more you get xp,thats how my npc pilot leeched most xp while he was leveling from expert to deadly my rank was frozen.
 

CMDR ANCALAGON

C
Your rank increased the same when you were with crew/npc as it did when you were by yourself, because with the additonal crew you took out more enimies.

You see it as crew taking your cut of XP, I see it as you not being rewarded for work that you did not do.

When I'm engaging multiple targets, now that my crew member is nearly elite, I always direct him to a specific target while I focus on another. When he takes out his assigned target, I assign him another. Just today, was earning merits for Li Yong Rui by comitting lots of murder is random Pranav Antal control systems, and in the last one it effectively turned into a CZ, as his faction ships kept showing up to run me out as did the local system authority. My SLF took out four targets, (Python, FDS, and two vipers) without me having ever fired a shot at those ships. While he was taking out those four, I took out two Anacondas, and a couple of Adders.

So, should I have gained combat experience for the four that I never even fired a shot at?

I suspect that if I had the numbers available, I would find that my net increase in rank and xp would have been about the same as if I didn't have the SLF and only took out the same four ships.
 

-VR- Max Factor

-VR- Max Factor
I have been playing since gamma. I don't even look at my ranks. They are not levels and don't give you any benefits apart from more cash from missions.

So I am not sure why people look at them as progression.
 
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