New scanning mechanics displayed in th livestream...

Alex Brentnall

Alex Brentnall
Bunkerkind Anni said:
they have just released a new ship, that would be perfect for multicrew for thargoid hunting
but nothing works right.

we have "multi crew enabled" bright yellow icons on those c2/c3 multicannon turrets - for what?
because they decided (for balancing reasons????) that gunner turrets auto-snap to targets,
that for balancing reasons, the gunner is not allowed to target subsystems directly, and as such,
can't really "aim" for the hearts of the thargoids, because the weapons auto-snap to the CENTER of the Alien ship ...
for balancing reasons, with weapons that do by default less damage per shot, with the same unreplenishable ammo limit.

using the xeno scanner is always transfered to the gunner, so all the scanning issues mentioned before apply here as well, just with even less range to work with.
Flak is like the only perfect implemented multicrew enabled weapon. fixed when solo, turret for the gunner when in multicrew, ZERO difference except the price between fixed and turret version.

for balancing reasons, the gunner can't to anything what a 6km long range FIXED railgun does to snipe unaware commanders powerplant when they try to land at an engineers base. (snapping to a selected subsystem)

it was more a "design reason" to dumb down gunner controls so much, that it can be presented by a Community manager, using an X-Box controller.
I highlight that, because i haven't seen FDEV talking about multicrew since a Community manager accidentally destroyed the ship of a voluntary players big ship live on stream....
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No they haven't. That ship is not released and we don't know if it works or not because it's not released.
They said the Cheiftain doesn't support multicrew? News to me, this here looks like a 2nd seat behind the first similar to the Vulture set-up: https://i.gyazo.com/cc3941b19291c3374b24e55b5fa26fd6.png

Wait, you are saying multicrew is dead but when they add something to make it easier to pick out multicrew weapons you complain? Damned either way it seems.

Gunner snap to target. Right yeah... Try doing it without targeting whilst your pilot pulls some turns. Impossible to keep track, the exact problem that some of the older games had. A Star Wars one springs to mind where literally every other sentance that came out of my mouth was "fly straight ****** I can't hit this guy if you turn all the time". It's the same reason we have 3rd person and not turret view.
Subsystem kinda falls out of that as being hella-overpowered if it's snap to target and pointless if it isn't since without snap to target you won't even get a hit. Yes unfortunate for aliens the way they've been built although at least theres the AX fighter that came in fairly early in the whole story.

You mean attack or defence on that 6km railgun snipe? I'm trying to work out what you actually mean here but If you mean defence then you should read my previous post. I want improvements to multicrew like directional shields. If you mean returning fire then you are angry at engineering not at multicrew.


Got a source for that design decision?
I'm more inclined to believe they bit off more than they could chew in 2016/2017. They expanded to a new building, added a second game and were preparing a third game, they made tons of optimisations and changes at ground level that we don't see in the game but things that needed to happen. On top of all that they recruited very strongly for all 3 games they now have, with that comes tons of training. In short I think they ran out of time and made fighters solid with the intent to come back to other roles at a later undetermined date.
What does Ed doing something on stream have to do with Frontier building the game. That'd be an insane way to make a game:
"so boss we are nearly ready to roll out the multicrew improvements."
"No, throw those in the trash. Ed died again on stream so we don't want those hours of hard work anymore!"
Yeah, thats not a reason.
 

Ralph Vargr

Ralph Vargr
GG7 said:
It was DOA due primarily to the lack of an NPC crew option. Something a HUGE percentage of the player base was screaming for during this feature's development. Frontier ignored that majority opinion, so the majority promptly ignored the Multi-Crew FDEV delivered.

We all predicted it months before it was released. So when it promptly FLOPPED, there was a collective "WE TOLD YOU SO!" heard across the forums. ;)

It wasn't a hard prediction to make if you were around during all that.
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NPC's don't pay for commander slots. :(
 

Arindor

Arindor
Novo Mundus said:
Yep, this is basiaclly the problem.

They couldn't afford to lock out the big ships (or didn't have the balls) until muilticrew arrived. So they had to make just... an additive essentially cosmetic version of it. The big ships should require crew.
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Big ships should, indeed, require crew, in the same way Elite II did. :)
 

Shadowed

Shadowed
If the big ships get a massive buff, then they should be multi crew only. Right now, they barely scrape by in PvP.
 

Shadowdancer

Shadowdancer
Yeah, you're right, it's not targeted at multi-crew. Frontier, please scrap the feature and focus on something else.

Arindor said:
Big ships should, indeed, require crew, in the same way Elite II did. :)
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You mean the grief mechanic where you would fast-forward time sitting at a station until you lucked into enough crew to fly your new ship? That was totally great.
 

Arindor

Arindor
Shadowdancer said:
Yeah, you're right, it's not targeted at multi-crew. Frontier, please scrap the feature and focus on something else.


You mean the grief mechanic where you would fast-forward time sitting at a station until you lucked into enough crew to fly your new ship? That was totally great.
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FD could make it a little more convenient if you're not prepared to wait for decent NPC crew. :)
 
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Faybs

Faybs
Arthur Shappey said:
I think an opportunity was lost by FDev not to insist all multi-crew seats were filled in larger spacecraft, as per FFE.
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Oh wow. That would have never worked, the vast majority of ships in the game have two or more seats. Even the Cobra Mk.III. Even if one limited this to "big" ships like the big three, there would have been a huge amount of complaining on the forums from people who prefer to play solo.

Perhaps because that decision wasn't made, it was almost impossible for FDev to balance multi-crew play fairly against solo play?
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That mistake was made in Alpha or maybe ever earlier than that. Every single ship in the game is designed to be completely usable by a single pilot, so when FDev added multicrew it became apparent that on a ship designed to be completly usable by one player, everyone else is basically just along for the ride. The only way to fix this (which is what I suspect they're doing) is to add new ships and game mechanics that require multicrew to use - for example, instead of exploration being "point the ship at the planet for 30s" which a player can do while still flying their ship, make it something that requires your full attention, so that you need a science officer on your ship to be able to do it.
 

Kaocraft

Kaocraft
I don't understand why Gunners are not allowed to target subsystems. Is this an actual design choice, in which case I'd like to know the rationale? If it just comes down to "we didn't feel like programming it in" - are there any plans to add it? I mean, the gunner has SO LITTLE to do anyway, plus he/she is The Gunner; surely The Gunner should have at least as many options for Gunning as the pilot does all by themselves?
 

Alex Brentnall

Alex Brentnall
Ambroza said:
Pretty sure they're talking about the Type-10. The reason anti-xeno multi-crew combat doesn't work is that you need to be able to target subsystems to fight Thargoids.
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Yeah I get that, but the ship itself does work with multicrew which is what confused me. It's not an issue with that ship specifically that it doesn't work instead it's an issue with the mechanic of either multicrew or the mechanic of alien ships. It's not that Frontier didn't care or think about the T10 but instead it's the original 2 design decisions r.e. making aliens require sub-targeting to defeat and making multicrew not target subsystems. The ship itself works perfectly which is again where I lost the plot :p

It's like me saying the Viper IV is broken because multicrew doesn't work with it. No, the Viper IV is fine and works just like all other ships, it's the multicrew mechanic thats the issue.
Similarly the OP/Title mentioning scanning displayed when what the topic really is is about the original implementation of multicrew.


Anyhow, to sum up my thoughts before I leave this thread: Personally I definitely 100% want expansions to multicrew, SRVs, directional shields, repairs, sensor enhancing, maybe even enemy ship hacking to disable a hardpoint or weaken shielding or vent the cargo compartment or whatever. Finer collector limpet control for miners etc. Plenty of things that could be done with it if it gets the dev time. That being said my number 1 wish is a mining SLF that has a mining laser and also a prospector scanner (no limpets req). That'd be really cool imho to have the two fighters buzzing around finding good rocks to mine and the mothership coming over to scoop all the goodies.
As for Aliens the two clearly don't mix right now beyond the AX fighters. I'd argue perhaps it works if the gunner controls a few flaks to take on the thargon swarms but attacking the mothership directly is a no-go. Perhaps it could auto-target the next heart instead but I don't think MC should get sub-targeting for all ships, I feel that'd easily get unbalanced.
 
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Valorin

Valorin
Bunkerkind Anni said:
really,

this mechanic needs:
1. scanning a ship
2. targeting subsystems of that ship
3. using a scanner on a targeted subsystem
4. sending a limpet with said subsystem targeted

how many of those actions can a multicrew gunner do without beeing allowed to select subsystems ?

was MC dumped already?

aside from that new scanning thing,
multicrew was not mentioned a single time in the presentation of wing missions.
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Well, the whole mega ship scanning function wasn't mentioned at all so far. We'll see about multicrew. :)
 

Jex =TE=

Banned
J
CMDR Dreamstate said:
I'm hoping this year's paid expansion will fix some of the issues with multicrew - that, and the Q4 update.
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As MC was already bought and paid for, it better not be part of this years paid expansion - i.e. that dev time goes to that instead of other new features we could have instead.
 
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