Multicrew needs love / fixing: FSS

CMDR_Raikkonen

CMDR_Raikkonen
I haven't used multi crew in the game proper since it first launched, mainly because it was just so clunky to do anything and largely redundant.

Could anybody tell me if crew can use FSS and can they use it while the helm is moving through supercruise? Or does the helm still have to stop completely and wait.

Or did anybody check to see if things like this got fixed in Odyssey?

Multi crew and ship sharing in Odyssey will be so much more attractive if crew members can use the FSS to scan WHILE the pilot is at the helm.

This fix would make multi crew far more enjoyable, worth doing and involve some kind of team effort to achieve more effortless navigation.
 
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CMDR_Raikkonen

CMDR_Raikkonen
Massively redundant.

Makes no sense for the helm / pilot to STOP so the crew mate can do their job.

May as well play on the same PC next to each other and pass the controls over to him.
 

CMDR_Raikkonen

CMDR_Raikkonen
Id' say this was major historic failure for ED. Designing a multi-crew aspect where you can't really multi-crew.

Give it some love FDev!

Odyssey will make us want to do this more often (if it actually worked and felt like like a team activity)
 

JTFireblaze

J
Let's not get started on any of the following:

  • Multicrew credit rewards are so low for crew members it's almost always more efficient to wing up instead. Teaming up should be encouraged, not penalised.
  • Ship functionality is locked out when you open up to crew (Outfitting for example)
  • The bugs and disconnects that have been in since launch
  • Crew and Wings being completely separate things (Odyssey is sort of fixing this at least. But then Physical and Holo-me Multicrew appear to be completely separate. We'll complain about that one on May 19th ;) )
  • Partying system is absolute bare minimum. No way to "LFG", just "pick random ship" or direct invite from friends list.

I'm sure there are more...
 

LKx

L
The only problem i have with FSS is having to be stationary.
Enabling it in multicrew while moving would be very nice indeed.

Hope that odyssey will improve multicrew, doesn't seem to have been improved much after 2.3 when i left
 

Riverside

Riverside
The ship has to be at zero throttle but crewmates can help discover bodies at the same time as the pilot, but tags are not shared.

Being winged up with another ship in the same system while mapping is more productive, but if they aren't nearby scanning with the FSS is something a crew member can do that's more than just chatting & taking in the sights :)
 

CMDR_Raikkonen

CMDR_Raikkonen
Riverside said:
The ship has to be at zero throttle but crewmates can help discover bodies at the same time as the pilot, but tags are not shared.

Being winged up with another ship in the same system while mapping is more productive, but if they aren't nearby scanning with the FSS is something a crew member can do that's more than just chatting & taking in the sights :)
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Again, all this makes multi-crew just utterly redundant.

If crew could FSS while the ship is moving it would create an alternative role as a comms / scientist in the multi-crew. Either for those who don't like combat, or the third seat in the larger ships.
 

CMDR Buy Arx

CMDR Buy Arx
JTFireblaze said:
Let's not get started on any of the following:

  • Multicrew credit rewards are so low for crew members it's almost always more efficient to wing up instead. Teaming up should be encouraged, not penalised.
  • Ship functionality is locked out when you open up to crew (Outfitting for example)
  • The bugs and disconnects that have been in since launch
  • Crew and Wings being completely separate things (Odyssey is sort of fixing this at least. But then Physical and Holo-me Multicrew appear to be completely separate. We'll complain about that one on May 19th ;) )
  • Partying system is absolute bare minimum. No way to "LFG", just "pick random ship" or direct invite from friends list.

I'm sure there are more...
Click to expand...

The bugs are the worst. I mean if it were bug-free it would still be annoying as hell, but with the bugs as well it's literally rage-inducing.

I like multicrew (in theory) because I'm super-casual and like to log in once every six months for some instant action. Jumping into a fighter on the other side of the galaxy to help some mid-rank commander clear out a resource site fits that bill perfectly.

I now have about 50 people on my "blocked" list because that is literally the only way to prevent you getting multicrewed with them if they have done something annoying like register on the "bounty hunting" channel in a ship with no guns and no fighters, or if they are just some other kind of dullard. Was a lobby system so difficult?

I would say three out of four attempts to get into a fighter result in some immediate error or other. The main issue seems to be that the groin area display which shows which of the crew are in which fighter is nearly always wrong, so you are trying to join a fighter that actually already has a PC crew member in it but your groin display says is unoccupied and unlaunched. Also if a PC crew member disconnects it seems to make that specific fighter slot permanently bugged. That's when the whole display isn't flickering and glitching and is completely non-navigable.

All of this has been reported hundreds of times over more than a couple of years but Frontier clearly don't give a monkey's. Just another dead feature tacked on that didn't pan out and now waves about uselessly like a withered vestigial arm on someone who got half-fused with a wallaby in a B-movie teleporter accident.
 
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JTFireblaze

J
CMDR Buy Arx said:
Just another dead feature tacked on that didn't pan out and now waves about uselessly like a withered vestigial arm on someone who got half-fused with a wallaby in a B-movie teleporter accident.
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Now that's a picture :ROFLMAO:

It's true though. So many of these features have been developed mostly in isolation without being integrated into the larger game world. CQC, SLFs, SRVs, Multicrew, Wings. They should all be part of the same thing. At least Odyssey appears to start to fix this with physical multicrew being somewhat integrated - ability to be in a wing and crew at the same time sounds like it's possible? But we shall see.

The bugs are the worst part. At least if it was stable I could invite a newbie friend to my ship without fear of disconnecting and ruining their experience.
 

Riverside

Riverside
CMDR_Raikkonen said:
Again, all this makes multi-crew just utterly redundant.

If crew could FSS while the ship is moving it would create an alternative role as a comms / scientist in the multi-crew. Either for those who don't like combat, or the third seat in the larger ships.
Click to expand...
FSSing a system is quicker with more than one person working on it. It is a feature that works, with limitations. I agree it could be better.
 

sandkid

S
Apple Sauce said:
Multicrew is an abandoned feature.
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This.

Multicrew has a lot of potential, but it has to clear several basic 'feature' hurdles:

1) Why would I fly in your ship, instead of mine?

2) If a wing of commanders in one ship encounters a wing of commanders in three ships, is there a way for it to be a fair fight? (Emphasis on 'a way' - a multicrew ship would need to have outfitting options that render multicrew a combat advantage, or at least parity to independent ships)

3) For solo commanders (the playstyle, not the mode), is there any recourse for 'crew' (NPC) to take advantage of multi-crew features, or is multi-crew exclusively a 'multiplayer' feature?


#3 is particularly important, because I think it's why Fleet Carriers were ultimately made one-commander rather than squadron owned. FDev seems reluctant to go down the road of multiplayer advantages because you either have to A) supplement solo commanders with NPCs or B) feed them their humble pie and tell them 'make friends, it's an online game'. FDev continues to straddle the fence and, as a result, any multiplayer feature is left in limbo.

Multicrew being the most egregious example. Powerplay, though, as well as squadrons, carriers, down to single features like FSS and mining, are all in limbo, too. They can't be further developed without a committment to either build NPC crew (something FDev, I think, would have done by now if they could) or commit to multiplayer advantage. They do have a solo mode to offset this, but inevitably they'll be reluctant to leave behind this portion of the playerbase.

Especially seeing as FDev is trying mightily to not alienate anymore of its slowly dwindling player population. Copies sold and out in the wild hardly translates to regular logins, as they've discovered, and the revenue streams are making it clear that EDO must be a success not just to new players, but also bring back lapsed players. In the midst of all of that, multicrew hasn't been remotely discussed, let alone the other abandoned features. Hopefully, FDev is just keeping this stuff under wraps. Their most recent stream implied as much.

Yet, many streams before have made similar promises and come up short. I expect EDO to be the same.
I hope I eat crow, but am fairly confident I won't.
It's just how this game goes.
 

JTFireblaze

J
sandkid said:
This.

Multicrew has a lot of potential, but it has to clear several basic 'feature' hurdles:

1) Why would I fly in your ship, instead of mine?

2) If a wing of commanders in one ship encounters a wing of commanders in three ships, is there a way for it to be a fair fight? (Emphasis on 'a way' - a multicrew ship would need to have outfitting options that render multicrew a combat advantage, or at least parity to independent ships)

3) For solo commanders (the playstyle, not the mode), is there any recourse for 'crew' (NPC) to take advantage of multi-crew features, or is multi-crew exclusively a 'multiplayer' feature?


#3 is particularly important, because I think it's why Fleet Carriers were ultimately made one-commander rather than squadron owned. FDev seems reluctant to go down the road of multiplayer advantages because you either have to A) supplement solo commanders with NPCs or B) feed them their humble pie and tell them 'make friends, it's an online game'. FDev continues to straddle the fence and, as a result, any multiplayer feature is left in limbo.

Multicrew being the most egregious example. Powerplay, though, as well as squadrons, carriers, down to single features like FSS and mining, are all in limbo, too. They can't be further developed without a committment to either build NPC crew (something FDev, I think, would have done by now if they could) or commit to multiplayer advantage. They do have a solo mode to offset this, but inevitably they'll be reluctant to leave behind this portion of the playerbase.

Especially seeing as FDev is trying mightily to not alienate anymore of its slowly dwindling player population. Copies sold and out in the wild hardly translates to regular logins, as they've discovered, and the revenue streams are making it clear that EDO must be a success not just to new players, but also bring back lapsed players. In the midst of all of that, multicrew hasn't been remotely discussed, let alone the other abandoned features. Hopefully, FDev is just keeping this stuff under wraps. Their most recent stream implied as much.

Yet, many streams before have made similar promises and come up short. I expect EDO to be the same.
I hope I eat crow, but am fairly confident I won't.
It's just how this game goes.
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1. Why?
  • There's the whole "no rebuy" thing. Although with the value of the credit being so low I don't believe this is really an advantage anymore.
  • There's also the social aspect and ease of partying up. I'm in Colonia, friend in the bubble. It's either hours of travel or a quick multicrew session.

If I were in charge I'd make all payouts equal. Everyone gets 100% Cr of the kill, just like in a wing. And maybe make it so engineering mats are shared. Maybe the helm gets 3 per drop and the crew get 1-2. Make it worth the while. I don't think these would be that difficult to add. But I'm not Fdev so it's not my place to say.

2. Balancing versus wings. Yeah this one might be slightly more difficult.
  • There are the 2 extra pips. People think that's overpowered but honestly... it's not that much really.
  • Having 2 respawnable fighters could be considered advantageous.

If I were in charge of design decisions I'd probably have given the gunner role some buffs. Maybe turreted weaponry damage can be increased to the gimballed equivalent when manually controlled. Hot topic.

3. Solo CMDRs
  • Allow NPC crew to deploy 2 fighters, at the very least.
  • I'd love to see a more fleshed out crew system where you can have NPC gunner and more, depending on what else could come to an actually cared about multicrew system.
  • Open up your ship to crew and try it out... It can be real fun!

If I were in charge - maybe a standard LFG or party finder system to be implemented.


Honestly, I'm losing faith that Multicrew will be properly addressed. I really wish it would, as well as many of the other (what feels like) abandoned systems. But if it did, it could be truly great, and could convince a fair few players to give it another go. The other space game might be out of alpha by then though, who knows...
 

CMDR_Raikkonen

CMDR_Raikkonen
Having another CMDR use the FSS and select targets for the pilot would be advantageous. It would also be teamwork, and fun, and create a comm / scientist role.

But at the minute its dead in the water because the ship has to be throttled to 0 to use it. May as well just be solo and scan my own FSS.

Or do I sit there idle as a pilot when my crew member has their "turn" to do something. No - it's stupid.

FDev needs to address this - WE LITERALLY WANT TO PLAY THE GAME.

We like Elite Dangerous, we want to share our ships, stories and gameplay with our friends. Why does FDev make it so difficult to do?
 

sandkid

S
JTFireblaze said:
snip

Honestly, I'm losing faith that Multicrew will be properly addressed. I really wish it would, as well as many of the other (what feels like) abandoned systems. But if it did, it could be truly great, and could convince a fair few players to give it another go. The other space game might be out of alpha by then though, who knows...
Click to expand...
That makes two of us, though maybe not...I lost faith a long time ago...lol

The feature has tremendous potential as many other multi-crew titles have shown. I made a suggestion (years ago) that proposed introducing NPC crew first to flesh out the feature set and better determine how it could translate to multiplayer tasks/gameplay loops/socialization. Most games that aim for this sort of feature usually do it with NPCs first then add players.

Elite has lots of potential for NPC crew (itself an abandoned on launch feature), but more importantly NPC crew would move the ball forward on further developing crew features for multi-crew, as well as multi-crew activities (as opposed to wing/multiple ship activities like difficult AX hunts).
 

JTFireblaze

J
sandkid said:
That makes two of us, though maybe not...I lost faith a long time ago...lol

The feature has tremendous potential as many other multi-crew titles have shown. I made a suggestion (years ago) that proposed introducing NPC crew first to flesh out the feature set and better determine how it could translate to multiplayer tasks/gameplay loops/socialization. Most games that aim for this sort of feature usually do it with NPCs first then add players.

Elite has lots of potential for NPC crew (itself an abandoned on launch feature), but more importantly NPC crew would move the ball forward on further developing crew features for multi-crew, as well as multi-crew activities (as opposed to wing/multiple ship activities like difficult AX hunts).
Click to expand...


Next level of ship upgrades: Crew?

Base game we earned credits and A-rated our ships Horizons we got engineering materials and engineered the crap out of our ships Could we in the future see ourselves hiring crew members to make certain ship functionality more efficient/powerful? We've already hired fighter pilots and crew for...
forums.frontier.co.uk forums.frontier.co.uk

I had an idea posted in suggestions around how NPC crew could work.

They could essentially become the next tier of ship upgrades, first being credits to A rate stuff, then engineering those modules. Now we hire crew to help manage systems more effectively and provide bonuses - like having those multicrew mates and the SLF pilot does already.

I guess there's just a lot of balancing to be done. Should the game work around the assumption that every ship has a full crew? We've already have conflict zone NPCs buffed with engineered ships in some cases. Imagine coming up against a fully crewed, engineered Corvette in a conflict zone :eek:

Ultimately, Multicrew, Wings and NPC crew (fighters, and whatever other roles there need to be) should be all part of the same feature - partying up. It sounds like Physical Multicrew in Odyssey is starting to unify some of it, being able to be in a wing and also having a (physical) multicrew. Add in NPC crew for the seats that aren't filled with players and we're on to something.


...and let my fighter pilot out of that small dark cupboard in the fighter bay, she can sit in a spare seat in the bridge. Please.
 
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