This week was a week of milestones for this noob CMDR, I passed the 1000 bounties mark and today I lost my fourth NPC Crew member. This one hurt more than the others since I trained her up from Harmless to Master and I thought I finally had a streamlined system for pirate hunting (which is 95% of what I do in Elite ATM). I wanted to pass on some observations about NPC crew members that I think should be addressed:
- For some reason, crew don't like using chaff. I run pirate hunting ship builds with fighter hangars, and I only use the Taipan... Rogue G (I think) since it's the best and most survivable multirole fighter and the chaff gives it a bit more survivability. When I switch from fighter to mothership, however, or vice versa, I find that the NPC crew piloting the ship/fighter before me has DISABLED the chaff. As in cut off power to the system entirely, without using it at all. This is completely inane, even sucky enemy NPCs use chaff. My first three NPC crew members were all expert level or above, they all refused to use chaff, and they all died flying my mothership. Lessons learned the hard way.
- NPC crew will sometimes outright refuse to "Attack my target" or "Engage at will.". My current one, a freshly hired "Expert" level, just tells me, "Negative Captain," (yes, CAPTAIN) and just sticks with defending. Sadly defend mode sucks when I'm in the fighter, since NPCs seem to only engage with the mothership if the fighter takes damage.
- I suspect that FD has seriously nerfed NPC crew AI compared to that of other NPCs. FD, not all of us have IRL friends to fill these multicrew seats. Do better please.
- For some reason, crew don't like using chaff. I run pirate hunting ship builds with fighter hangars, and I only use the Taipan... Rogue G (I think) since it's the best and most survivable multirole fighter and the chaff gives it a bit more survivability. When I switch from fighter to mothership, however, or vice versa, I find that the NPC crew piloting the ship/fighter before me has DISABLED the chaff. As in cut off power to the system entirely, without using it at all. This is completely inane, even sucky enemy NPCs use chaff. My first three NPC crew members were all expert level or above, they all refused to use chaff, and they all died flying my mothership. Lessons learned the hard way.
- NPC crew will sometimes outright refuse to "Attack my target" or "Engage at will.". My current one, a freshly hired "Expert" level, just tells me, "Negative Captain," (yes, CAPTAIN) and just sticks with defending. Sadly defend mode sucks when I'm in the fighter, since NPCs seem to only engage with the mothership if the fighter takes damage.
- I suspect that FD has seriously nerfed NPC crew AI compared to that of other NPCs. FD, not all of us have IRL friends to fill these multicrew seats. Do better please.