Multi-crew needs more love thread

[CMDR_Raikkonen]

Hello Hello!

So the new four-seater ships will be an awesome addition to the game, and streamlining the crew / wing / team thing is a must. Surely this must either pave the way for NPC crew in future, or some more love given to the multi-crew features?

Given the way things stand, and some of the challenges the game has, what multi-crew features would make it worth while to crew up? Here are some to start:


- A new individual weapons / turret control rather than the awkward 3rd person view (which pulls many people out of the game, the exact opposite of feeling part of a crew)

- A science desk / nav role - which allows crew mates to scan (while the ship moves) and to lock on to (and share with the helm) various targets, plotted routes etc etc.

- An engineer role that allows a crew member to repair modules in the ship with an AFMU whilst in combat (essentially healing the ship, prioritizing modules etc)



Best,

Raik

 

[DemiserofD]

Agreed. Multicrew has great potential, but it's sadly limited right now, to the point that most of it doesn't work.

1. They need to remove any multicrew ability to use limpets/heat sinks/SCBs/etc. MAYBE leave the ability to use ECM, but even that's suspect. Every time I've done multicrew, other players using these things has only been harmful, not helpful.
2. Crew should control ONE turret, and overcharge that turret by about 3x(so it's roughly as powerful as a fighter). Every time I've ever had players controlling turrets, it's only been harmful. Ignoring chaff is both too niche and actively bad; who LIKES chaff suddenly becoming useless? Nobody.
3. Crew need better utility jobs. What does a real-life copilot do? All the stuff the pilot doesn't have time to do, like adjust the fuel/trim/flaps/etc. Crew should be able to select a station and boost it. For example, they could pick Shields, and pick one of eight directions, and all damage from that direction is reduced by 33%. OR, they could pick engines, and pick between reduced boost cooldown, higher max boost speed, or a mix of the two. And after doing this, they should be able to leave it active WHILE they control a turret or fly a fighter.

And obviously, they need to fix the fighter deployment crash.

 

[CMDR_Raikkonen]

The ship launched fighter being prevented from landing, or stopping the mothership from landing also doesn't translate well with Odyssey. This old game mechanic is a relic from Horizons that quite frankly should be removed from the game.

Even in Horizons, I would have liked to set my mothership down and leave a fighter pilot up there covering me. (It's a glass cannon anyway - so if it got destroyed I would have to take off with the mothership again to launch another one)

 

[here_it_comes]

FD told us, years ago, that if everyone just uses it despite it being unfinished and lame, that they'll do something about it.

 

[CMDR_Raikkonen]

FD told us, years ago, that if everyone just uses it despite it being unfinished and lame, that they'll do something about it.

They need to honour that now that Odyssey has landed and changed the dynamic of the game in favour of more co-operative gameplay.

They acknowledged "boring" Apex flights, it will be the same for "idle" crew mates.

 

[Drelthar]

Totally granular control of what a gunner can use.

Full, and limited is not good enough, allow us to set which things can be used by a gunner using the fire group UI.

Allow 3 dimensional re-distribution of total shield power using an intricate and fun UI which would have a 3D display of the ship, and any dangers that are in range, that allows you to push power around the sphere of the shield in real time in response to threats (and not in one direction, multiple directions at the same time)

Make mining "fighters" that can mine, and prospect and bring ore back to the mothership.

Allow limpets to be remote controlled via telepresence.

Add the ability to hack enemy systems (with a fully fleshed out and designed mechanic for doing this) to interfere with their systems.

Full ability to use the FSS while the ship is moving (yes it would need some mad design but could be done)
Full ability to fire DSS probes, perhaps even controlling them using telepresence - from massive range.

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Super hardcore version would also involve.... removing the ability to even pilot large ships without a crew, making some hardpoints only take turrets and when turrets are in those hardpoints, they don't get any damage reductions compared to fixed weapons - when used by a gunner - and significantly lowering the (relative to other ships) speed and maneuverability of ships as they get larger.

 

[St0rmFury]

A step in the right direction, but merely allowing 4 players to crew together is not enough if the other 3 players are just going to be window dressing.

 

[CMDR_Raikkonen]

There needs to be more for crew mates to do if new missions will try and link on foot and in ship gameplay together.

It can’t just pause for crew mates until they get to their destination. They should have a hand in plotting the destination or selecting it for the helm or something. Scanning whilst on the move etc.

 

[Altarf]

First of all they should fix the connection/peer to peer issues if friends playing together. Otherwise Multicrew stuff doesn´t make sense... I´ve never played without issues since release in 2014. There is a lot of other stuff is not working in multicrew...

The last three weeks i was playing SC Alpha and had no single one connection lost if playing with my friends and it´s an ALPHA! Ok they have dedicated servers and that seems to be a big difference...

 

[Batterby76]

Would be nice to be able to wing up with multi crew too.

 

[Elliot Coleman]

The last three weeks i was playing SC Alpha and had no single one connection lost if playing with my friends and it´s an ALPHA! Ok they have dedicated servers and that seems to be a big difference...

This was only fixed in the last patch...at least for me. Prior to the latest patch, I got a 30k almost every 20 minutes.

 

[Altarf]

This was only fixed in the last patch...at least for me. Prior to the latest patch, I got a 30k almost every 20 minutes.

Yeah 30k still existing but is not a multicrew issue! Multicrew generally works a lot better in SC.

 

[ethelred]

Just a general +1 to all things here.

 

[CMDR_Raikkonen]

In Odyssey can multicrew see your cockpit decorations? They couldn't in Horizons

 

[Phoenix_Dfire]

I'm afraid these suggestions have all be said before. Not that they're bad suggestions, they're quite good. Its just that they've all been suggested after 2.3 and nothing was actioned.

Hopefully there might be some extra features when the new Multi-crew seat goes in.

 

[CMDR_Raikkonen]

I'm afraid these suggestions have all be said before. Not that they're bad suggestions, they're quite good. Its just that they've all been suggested after 2.3 and nothing was actioned.

Hopefully there might be some extra features when the new Multi-crew seat goes in.

It would be the perfect time to do it!

 

[zimms]

It would be the perfect time to do it!

Not sure about that. The way Frontier handled Elite over the last couple of years wasn't exactly optimal. Now we have a game with countless place holders still, that's completely unbalanced. It's simply not possible to work on all aspects of the game that urgently need it, because there's way to much to do and Frontier would probably need about 5 times the manpower.

The fact that the to-do list goes back 5+ years says it all really.

 

[Drelthar]

Hopefully there might be some extra features when the new Multi-crew seat goes in.

Lol. No... you've seen how Frontier work by now surely?

The extra seat IS the feature, if there was something else to it, they'd have said, probably loudly, with videos of CM's using the feature that definitely should have been in at launch, and only re-uses stuff they already made with some minor tweaks, but is HUGE and AMAZNG and NEW.

Sorry got carried away there.

 

[Phoenix_Dfire]

Lol. No... you've seen how Frontier work by now surely?

The extra seat IS the feature, if there was something else to it, they'd have said, probably loudly, with videos of CM's using the feature that definitely should have been in at launch, and only re-uses stuff they already made with some minor tweaks, but is HUGE and AMAZNG and NEW.

Sorry got carried away there.

Sorry, Didn't mean to get your hopes up!

 

[Pepperinelly]

Before we get a 4th seat, I'd much rather see the multicrew bugs fixed. Players getting dropped when launching fighters (the only viable thing to do in multicrew) or when exiting FSD make it an extremely frustrating feature. When I start a multicrew session, I friend request players upon joining so I will be able to reinvite them when it crashes on them...and it ALWAYS crashes at some point.

So yeah...I don't really use multicrew that much anymore. Love the idea, hate the implementation.