Newcomer / Intro New to SLF - is NPC needed?

[Zincfinger]

They take their wage no matter if you fly with them or if you forget them on some beach planet and let them sip margaritas all day long

Dammit they should be paying me for that

 

[Northpin]

Or can I just fly the fighter myself anyway, and if so what happens to my main ship when I do? Alternatively if I stay in the ship and launch the fighter without any NPC Crew, what happens?

You dont really need a SLF crew. It is way better and funnier with one, tho
You can equip your motherboard* mothership with turrets, set them on autofire and the ship will follow you while shooting all the baddies around you

Edit:
potato, poteito

 

[Zincfinger]

if my motherboard had turrets I bet it would force me to play on PC and not PS4

 

[foxwalker]

Love the crewman. If you start off and build them up, it takes a much smaller chunk. Honestly, you build up cash pretty fast in this game. You have to decide if it is worth it. It is like scooping when you know you have enough fuel to make it to your destination. The savings are pretty minimal. Get a crewman, it does make life easier.

 

[Hooplah]

If you are going for combat Elite NPCs flying SLFs take away 50 percent of all the experience points to get there. Explorer and Trader Elite is all about credits, Combat is not. After making combat Elite and billions of credits easy to do they are fun to have around and with the right ones plus a few wing friends can come in handy going to PvP Open mode.