Multi-crew is so broken it's unusable!

[Cypher2139]

After re-engineering my Corvette into a more PVP friendly setup this morning I thought I'd go and see what was happening around Kaushpoos in Open.

Got interdicted by a fellow Corvette pilot who I could see was in a wing of 4 (or crew of 4, you can't tell which because the game is bugged and can't tell the damn difference).

So as soon as I dropped I thought I'd level the playing field by immediately opening myself up to a multi-crew session #EXTRAPIPSFTW (FATAL MISTAKE).

This crew clown then jumps straight in a fighter and makes every cop in the area hostile to me by opening fire on them, and then when the fighter died he takes control of the turrets and does the same, so I kicked him immediately.

Meanwhile this guy in the Corvette is (as Trump would say) unleashing fire and fury upon me, with the Feds now joining the party!

Now the outcome of the fight is neither here nor there, it was actually quite intense (and fun) and we finished it with both of us on minimal shield and went our separate ways. But we got talking afterwards...not raging about the fact he interdicted me out of nowhere, or moaning about the fact I still had 'report crimes' turned on, but about multi-crew...

About how useless the multi-crew feature is in it's current state. FD have done their usual thing of taking what could be a really useful feature, and killing it with poor implementation.

How do they honestly think it's a good idea to invite someone into my 40m rebuy ship, and put it at the mercy of some plank who may have only just started the game!?

We need 2 key changes to make multi-crew usable:

1. Locked roles, not 'limited'... LOCKED. As in, blocked completely from entering certain roles (or all of them).
2. For the roles I do permit them to take we need GRANULAR PERMISSIONS. Including but not limited to, not allowing the targeting (or at least firing upon) of friendly targets unless I specifically unlock that feature with pilots I trust.

Now I can see why FD would not want to lock down certain aspects of this feature as they worry people won't want to use it if they can't use all the roles, but the reality is while issues like this exists nobody is going to be opening up their ship to these fools in the first place. So either way, in it's current form multi-crew is not going to get used.

/rant

EDIT: Or the outcome I have wanted since the first announcement of multi-crew...NPC CREW MEMBERS!!!!

 

[Squid Gumbo]

I can agree, in a moment where you need a gunner and maybe you don't have anybody available from a Wing or Crew to join, a limited functionality would be best. In a game like Elite, where a stray laser shot can literally make an entire battle go sideways, you don't want a pilot that can't tell a mining laser from a plasma accelerator wielding heavy turrets on a Corvette.

 

[Maro-Val]

Multipew is indeed so broken that has become unusable, but i think your reasons are the least of the problems. Just dont leave randoms enter your quadrilion rebuy cost device.

 

[Cypher2139]

I can agree, in a moment where you need a gunner and maybe you don't have anybody available from a Wing or Crew to join, a limited functionality would be best. In a game like Elite, where a stray laser shot can literally make an entire battle go sideways, you don't want a pilot that can't tell a mining laser from a plasma accelerator wielding heavy turrets on a Corvette.

Exactly! In my situation above, all I wanted was an extra pip and a second fighter to deploy. THAT'S IT!

Not for this muppet to start WWIII with the feds while I'm trying to have a PVP battle, which I'm 'inexperienced' in at best!

Multipew is indeed so broken that has become unusable, but i think your reasons are the least of the problems. Just dont leave randoms enter your quadrilion rebuy cost device.

I know the immediate solution to my problem is not to let random pilots in my ship at all, but when you have limited time (like when a guy in a Corvette is raining hell on me), I didn't really have time to go through a full interview process with the new crew first. lol

 

[Punished Mobius]

It's almost as if you...took the words straight out of my mouth

 

[Maro-Val]

Exactly! In my situation above, all I wanted was an extra pip and a second fighter to deploy. THAT'S IT!

Not for this muppet to start WWIII with the feds while I'm trying to have a PVP battle, which I'm 'inexperienced' in at best!



I know the immediate solution to my problem is not to let random pilots in my ship at all, but when you have limited time (like when a guy in a Corvette is raining hell on me), I didn't really have time to go through a full interview process with the new crew first. lol

When you have limited time then use it to see if you can turn the battle in your favor. If not, then just get out of there alive. You cant win every battle and thats perfectly fine. Hiring randoms when the battle has allready started, well..

 

[ROSS-128]

Opening your ship to random crew from the internet is just asking for trolls. Using the matchmaker is, frankly, a trap. The only practical, useful way to use multi-crew is with people you know and trust personally.

Of course, if you know them that well you can probably just ask them to bring their ship...

I think they might have introduced multi-crew too soon, such that the game doesn't offer the infrastructure to support it. Right now it only has one use case: boostrapping a friend out of their sidewinder. The only other reasonable application would be having someone to independently target missiles while you dogfight, if missiles were good enough to justify it.

For multi-crew to have practical uses beyond that, we'd need several different things.

1: Ships that are actually designed to function with turrets, and are designed to require a bit too much multi-tasking for a single person to fly well. In other words, ships that aren't fighters (setting aside the amusing fact that a "fighter" in ED can be up to 167m long).

2: Group sizes larger than 4, which allow a mix of multi-ship and multi-crew (or even multiple multi-crew ships). A good idea would be to rip off the Air Force for this: the current "wing" is a Flight, a Flight of Flights is a Squadron, a Squadron of Squadrons is a Group, a Group of Groups is a Wing, a Wing of Wings is a Unit, a Unit of Units is a Command. Truncate as necessary, ie we probably won't have any need for a group as large as a Command.

3: A mechanism for joint ownership of a ship. Call it clans, guilds, corps, whatever, it solves the "what if your friend with the ship is offline" question by answering with "you can continue to fly the ship with the automated systems". You break it you buy it of course, but I hope I don't have to explain why you should NEVER trust random strangers with this in the first place.

4: A scale of ships that can carry smaller, independent ships. In other words, a ship with small landing pads. Even medium if it's big enough. This can allow a group of friends to stick together by using a mothership as a mobile rally point.

5: The ability to walk around inside the ship, which can open up additional roles by allowing you to interact with ship systems that normally wouldn't be accessible to the pilot.

6: The ability to dispatch multiple ground units and fighters from a single ship simultaneously, so that fairly large groups can use them in ground assault/carrier roles.

Now, I know people are going to say "Groups? Turret boats? Ship shipping ships? ED isn't that kind of game!"

And that's fine, but if you go with that then you have to recognize the limits that puts on multi-crew. If we're only flying F-16s in space, even if they're 167m long F-16s, then the most "multi-crew" the game will ever have the structure to handle is a two-seater and the most utility it will ever have is either independently targeting missiles or bootstrapping someone out of a sidewinder using the reward share. And that's just the way it is.

 

[Punished Mobius]

Multi crew is meant to be touch and go. It is meant for people to "drop in" on the action straight into the chaos. So people who are saying to vet your crew before hand have missed the point of it all entirely. The point is to have randoms that's the whole purpose is to get people together quickly people you would otherwise never run into. Situations you would never run into. And that is what's great about MC. But then Fdev give us very little restrictions to work with. Heck these fools thought it was a good idea to let gunner deploy hard points and have access to SCBs. And we all know the bio waste storm that caused. But let's remember that at a certain point they ACTUALLY thought that that was a GOOD idea to have it that way. So the current inability for helm to restrict gunner access really just seems to be a remnant of those bad ideas Fdev were foolish enough to think were good. And that's something they they need to work on. Someone at Fdev needs to have the courage to stand up and tell the people around them that an idea is stupid. Clearly that did not happen during the design of the gunner position. But if it had the game would have been better for it. It's not too late for Fdev to fix their mistakes simply give us the option to lock roles entirely. Do what you should have done at launch like I have said on the first-day of MC beta.

 

[lokvette]

If it's not there already it won't be long before MC joins the scrap heap next to the other implemented but failed parts of ED, shame as it could have been so much more. But then this is just another thread in the long line of threads about the failings of MC.

I did enjoy the OP as it was a fun read.

 

[Vingtetun]

conversely 3 of us used it for 5 hours last night and hand a whale of a time in a haz res....

 

[lokvette]

conversely 3 of us used it for 5 hours last night and hand a whale of a time in a haz res....

I think that's the thing and I know Im assuming here but I take it all 3 of you know each other or at least on friends lists, or did you just get lucky with 3 randoms and it was all good.

If you know people and trust them then I can see it working as intended, but when you add the random factor and I believe that the whole point of MC was to get us playing with others it sort of falls short due to its short comings.

But then I guess I should really try it before making such broad sweeping sentiments about MC, but it was nothing i had any interest in, nor have any in as it wasn't NPC, as in hiring and firing a crew like in the old games.

 

[ROSS-128]

Multi-crew can be a small bit of fun as long as you acknowledge and build around its very, very narrow use-case.

A lot of the disappointment comes from Frontier trying to sell it as much more than it was, and people believing them.

But in its current state, it's definitely extremely niche.

 

[Vingtetun]

I think that's the thing and I know Im assuming here but I take it all 3 of you know each other or at least on friends lists, or did you just get lucky with 3 randoms and it was all good.

If you know people and trust them then I can see it working as intended, but when you add the random factor and I believe that the whole point of MC was to get us playing with others it sort of falls short due to its short comings.

But then I guess I should really try it before making such broad sweeping sentiments about MC, but it was nothing i had any interest in, nor have any in as it wasn't NPC, as in hiring and firing a crew like in the old games.

yes - trusted friends and regular wingmates of mine....
wouldn't dream of adding random people...

 

[Cageman]

I think that's the thing and I know Im assuming here but I take it all 3 of you know each other or at least on friends lists, or did you just get lucky with 3 randoms and it was all good.

If you know people and trust them then I can see it working as intended, but when you add the random factor and I believe that the whole point of MC was to get us playing with others it sort of falls short due to its short comings.

But then I guess I should really try it before making such broad sweeping sentiments about MC, but it was nothing i had any interest in, nor have any in as it wasn't NPC, as in hiring and firing a crew like in the old games.

MC was designed to be used with friends, but also open to invite anyone.

The stupidity of the OP doesn't render MC a bad thing. With that said, however, MC is currently limited to the pew-pew people, which I think is a huge misstake.

 

[CMDR Ofan]

There should be a rate and rep system where you can put positive or negative markers on peeps who have joined, if they broke no laws and did good you can give 'em some +rep which would also modify their earnings to encourage crew to be half decent and not fly your fighters into the maw of the cops. Folks who turn up to set your ship on fire and get wanted status/break the session ground rules can get -rep conversely.

When hunting for crew you could then set filters to screen away the fools who had -rep and be more likely to get someone who was not wearing huge red boots and a spinning bowtie and honking their horn as a gunner, or something like that.

 

[Cervantes01]

I was going to say the same thing, MC = Friends you can trust, for random strangers I think that there should be a rule that you cant have someone on crew that is a lower combat status than the ships captain. Whilst it won't filter out dedicated griefers it would filter out the inexperienced. Also I'm amazed that unlike other aspects of the game there is no training missions for multicrew so that new players can get their keybindings right.

All in all 2.3 is the worst update in ED's history. Every patch makes the game worse not better.

 

[Cypher2139]

It's almost as if you...took the words straight out of my mouth

Funny you should say that CMDR... In the words of the late Paul Walker "Dude, I almost had you" [heart]

1: Ships that are actually designed to function with turrets, and are designed to require a bit too much multi-tasking for a single person to fly well. In other words, ships that aren't fighters (setting aside the amusing fact that a "fighter" in ED can be up to 167m long).

A ship that was operated like the Magazord on Power Rangers would be cool, one that needs two or more pilots to work properly.

4: A scale of ships that can carry smaller, independent ships. In other words, a ship with small landing pads. Even medium if it's big enough. This can allow a group of friends to stick together by using a mothership as a mobile rally point.

We should already have this, the Lore even says that the Anaconda and Corvette should be able to launch at least one (maybe 2) Sidewinder sized ships?

How cool would it be to be able to act as a guardian to a new player in a Sidewinder, launched from your Corvette! It would be like the ultimate "Welcome to Elite, this is what you can achieve if you stick around" type of introduction. Alternatively it would be awesome to have a 'proper' wingman with some combat experience launched from your ship.

I did enjoy the OP as it was a fun read.

Glad you enjoyed it, turned out to be a fun experience to share even if it didn't go as planned! (but then when does any battle 'go to plan'?)

 

[Teh Smoo]

The main problem is the complete lack of consequences.

You can hop in someone's fighter ship, and screw them over, and the absolute worst that happens to you is the session ends. No bounty, no monetary penalty, as you can just decline all the "rewards" whenever you like.

The helm needs a way to flag a fighter, so that they can't just rack up as much bounty as they can shoot, and then bail scot-free.

• Helm "good", MC "good": No problem. Maybe the fighter or helm dinks something, but the helm deals, and the fighter can pay off the fine or decline. Helm probably won't lock the fighter in they they screw up, and those screwups are generally minimal anyway.
• Helm "good", MC griefer: If the MC racks up bounties, the payout is delayed a while. If the helm opts in, they can lock the MC crew in to having to pay their bounties as legacy fines, as helm bounty will be less than MC griefing.
• Helm griefer, MC "good": The MC will rack up minimal fines, and if they rack up less than helm, the lock-in does not function for helm, so the MC can dodge fines.
• Helm griefer, MC griefer: Who cares?

Perhaps the helm can require MC to put some money into escrow to join? Then, if the MC racks up bounties, helm can keep the entire escrow, or pay ALL the fines for both helm/MC from the escrow, and only return partial? Less fun griefing, if you have to pay for it. More fun in helm, if the griefer pays all the fines.

 

[Spacecat]

Had this happen a couple times but most of my experiences have been ok. Crewing up with an untested rando in a pvp fight is probably sort of risky...

 

[Arindor]

I was going to say the same thing, MC = Friends you can trust, for random strangers I think that there should be a rule that you cant have someone on crew that is a lower combat status than the ships captain. Whilst it won't filter out dedicated griefers it would filter out the inexperienced. Also I'm amazed that unlike other aspects of the game there is no training missions for multicrew so that new players can get their keybindings right.

All in all 2.3 is the worst update in ED's history. Every patch makes the game worse not better.

Summed up perfectly. Opening up your ship to someone you don't know is suicidal, but FD thought it was an excellent idea. And that's FD, clueless as ever, making MC a pointless feature that's up there with Engineers. Oh well.