If your ship is destroyed, any NPC crew onboard is lost forever. The reason for this where two fold, a technical limitation on the rebuy screen, and then as a way to make NPC crew more "valuable", as otherwise players would only train 1-2 and then keep them as Elite for ever (or sack them for not being used, but costing lots of credits still)
So first, we want to keep our crew on ship destruction, that should be easy to change...
Then we have this with payment, I do get why FDev made it so they take a cut of EVERYTHING you do, but it is a bad implementation, they should only get a cut if they where part of that activity. Now this presents an issue with having one or more crew members idling for long periods of time on the station.
So why not add some personality to your crew. Like allegiance, mood, etc, and if they get unhappy they warn and if you do nothing they will leave, so being unpaid is one such metric to make them unhappy. So no more having crew idling for months in the station... they would leave. Just like those pesky passengers does if you ship take a tiny bit of hull damage, or get scanned...
So things that could affect crew
* Not being paid at all/enoguh, this includes doing missions that fails. Some crew require low amount of credits to be keep happy, some are more greedy.
* Doing things that they do not like, makes them unhappy, like they favour Federation, doing things against Federation them unhappy.
* Doing things they like, are passionate about, make then happy, like hatred towards Federation would make them happy killing Federation ships.
* Some crew members should like exploration and be happy to be on an expedition, and some will hate this...
So now we can keep our crew as long we make them in good mood, and if we neglect them, they will simply leave. So we can now keep up to 3 Elite crew members without loosing 30+% of all our income. but we have keep them happy, or else they will leave, so we have to give up some pay for them and also keep them happy, by doing things with them. And we only decide to pay them, without having them on active duty doing things they like, they will demand more pay, ie the mood of the crew member is affects pay.
Pay modifier based on mood, an example to illustrate why it would be good to pay attention to this.
Ecstatic -50% pay
Happy -25% pay
Good 0% pay
Boored +25 pay
Grumpy +50% pay
Unhappy +75% pay
Rebellious +100% pay, and risk of leaving
Being unpaid will only lower the mood,
I have no good metric to base on what is considered to be paid to little. I think this should be some sort of hidden stat, based on how much you have earned, so earning lots of cash and not sharing should make you crew member demand more pay. Also this stat should be reflect by some personality trait.
You can pay your crew to be more happy, but only up to Boored, as they have nothing todo. So just trying to the easy path of paying crew members of = you pay more to have them around.
And like the new progress bars we got for BGS, we could have a similiar way to show happpiness and how good we pay them.
So we have Elite crew member trained all the way up, they normally get a cut of 10% of what we make. if they are Ecstatic, they will only take 5%, if they are grumpy, they take 15% and if rebellious they take a 20% cut.
I pure credits
it should cost more to pay a crew member from rebellious to unhappy, than from unhappy to grumpy
If we terminate a contract, we should have an option to re-hire the crew member again, and this will incur a one time fee (millions) that is based on how long ingame time has passed since the contract ended. The cost should also go up if they where unhappy when we terminated the contract etc. Option not available on crew members that are rebellious (regardless if you terminated the contract or they left on their own)
So why do we need this? If you want to go on exploration, and your crew member do not like this activity, you can terminate their contract, do your exploration and then re-hire them, and the cost is to "persuade" them to leave their current NPC employer and come and work for you instead. And this can be quite costly if the exploration trip was long, but if you liked them, it could e worth the cost.
To avoid abuse of the system, all activities a crew member is part of, should mark their cut.
* Any mission accepted with a crew member onboard = get a cut when mission is completed.
* Any mission accepted before making crew member active onboard = get a cut when mission is completed. (so this can be used to pay crew, make them active, turn in mission = pay)
* Any bounties/war bonds collected when crew member onboard = get a cut of that bounty/war bond, regardless if crew member is onboard or not when turning in.
* Any exploration data gathered when a crew member is onboard = get a cut when handing in exploration data
The changes to crew members mood would be based on ingame time, and not real time. so if you take a break for a few months, you are not facing any issues with crewmembers being unhappy when you login again.
I also would like to be able to add NPC crew to any ship with more than one seat, and be able to see them sitting in the chair. There should be no reason to require a fighter hangar. If there are multiple seats, you should be able to fill any available seats with a crew member.
If we do multi crew and there are no more empty seats in the cockpit, they can go and "hide in the closet" (=location where they are now)
Immersion breaking, but for simplicity, switching seats, should be instant, so no walking around animation etc. (atleast not until space legs).
At minimum, we should be able to use holo me to design a uniform for your crew, at default, they should be using the same uniform you are using, but each crew member could have their own uniform. I see no problem with us changing the appearance of our crew, we can change our own....
So this should hopefully make most of us more happy to have NPC crew members onboard and we have to work to keep them in good mood = they are costs least in credits, but more in work. And also make the gameplay around crew members to be a bit more involved and engaging.
So first, we want to keep our crew on ship destruction, that should be easy to change...
Then we have this with payment, I do get why FDev made it so they take a cut of EVERYTHING you do, but it is a bad implementation, they should only get a cut if they where part of that activity. Now this presents an issue with having one or more crew members idling for long periods of time on the station.
So why not add some personality to your crew. Like allegiance, mood, etc, and if they get unhappy they warn and if you do nothing they will leave, so being unpaid is one such metric to make them unhappy. So no more having crew idling for months in the station... they would leave. Just like those pesky passengers does if you ship take a tiny bit of hull damage, or get scanned...
So things that could affect crew
* Not being paid at all/enoguh, this includes doing missions that fails. Some crew require low amount of credits to be keep happy, some are more greedy.
* Doing things that they do not like, makes them unhappy, like they favour Federation, doing things against Federation them unhappy.
* Doing things they like, are passionate about, make then happy, like hatred towards Federation would make them happy killing Federation ships.
* Some crew members should like exploration and be happy to be on an expedition, and some will hate this...
So now we can keep our crew as long we make them in good mood, and if we neglect them, they will simply leave. So we can now keep up to 3 Elite crew members without loosing 30+% of all our income. but we have keep them happy, or else they will leave, so we have to give up some pay for them and also keep them happy, by doing things with them. And we only decide to pay them, without having them on active duty doing things they like, they will demand more pay, ie the mood of the crew member is affects pay.
Pay modifier based on mood, an example to illustrate why it would be good to pay attention to this.
Ecstatic -50% pay
Happy -25% pay
Good 0% pay
Boored +25 pay
Grumpy +50% pay
Unhappy +75% pay
Rebellious +100% pay, and risk of leaving
Being unpaid will only lower the mood,
I have no good metric to base on what is considered to be paid to little. I think this should be some sort of hidden stat, based on how much you have earned, so earning lots of cash and not sharing should make you crew member demand more pay. Also this stat should be reflect by some personality trait.
You can pay your crew to be more happy, but only up to Boored, as they have nothing todo. So just trying to the easy path of paying crew members of = you pay more to have them around.
And like the new progress bars we got for BGS, we could have a similiar way to show happpiness and how good we pay them.
So we have Elite crew member trained all the way up, they normally get a cut of 10% of what we make. if they are Ecstatic, they will only take 5%, if they are grumpy, they take 15% and if rebellious they take a 20% cut.
I pure credits
it should cost more to pay a crew member from rebellious to unhappy, than from unhappy to grumpy
If we terminate a contract, we should have an option to re-hire the crew member again, and this will incur a one time fee (millions) that is based on how long ingame time has passed since the contract ended. The cost should also go up if they where unhappy when we terminated the contract etc. Option not available on crew members that are rebellious (regardless if you terminated the contract or they left on their own)
So why do we need this? If you want to go on exploration, and your crew member do not like this activity, you can terminate their contract, do your exploration and then re-hire them, and the cost is to "persuade" them to leave their current NPC employer and come and work for you instead. And this can be quite costly if the exploration trip was long, but if you liked them, it could e worth the cost.
To avoid abuse of the system, all activities a crew member is part of, should mark their cut.
* Any mission accepted with a crew member onboard = get a cut when mission is completed.
* Any mission accepted before making crew member active onboard = get a cut when mission is completed. (so this can be used to pay crew, make them active, turn in mission = pay)
* Any bounties/war bonds collected when crew member onboard = get a cut of that bounty/war bond, regardless if crew member is onboard or not when turning in.
* Any exploration data gathered when a crew member is onboard = get a cut when handing in exploration data
The changes to crew members mood would be based on ingame time, and not real time. so if you take a break for a few months, you are not facing any issues with crewmembers being unhappy when you login again.
I also would like to be able to add NPC crew to any ship with more than one seat, and be able to see them sitting in the chair. There should be no reason to require a fighter hangar. If there are multiple seats, you should be able to fill any available seats with a crew member.
If we do multi crew and there are no more empty seats in the cockpit, they can go and "hide in the closet" (=location where they are now)
Immersion breaking, but for simplicity, switching seats, should be instant, so no walking around animation etc. (atleast not until space legs).
At minimum, we should be able to use holo me to design a uniform for your crew, at default, they should be using the same uniform you are using, but each crew member could have their own uniform. I see no problem with us changing the appearance of our crew, we can change our own....
So this should hopefully make most of us more happy to have NPC crew members onboard and we have to work to keep them in good mood = they are costs least in credits, but more in work. And also make the gameplay around crew members to be a bit more involved and engaging.
