NPC Merc wingmen/escorts

[dxm55]

I'm sure this has been floated sometime, somewhere before.

Any chance of FDev introducing NPC Merc Wingmen for hire?
Same way you pick up crew at any Starport.
You can hire up to 2 ships to wing up with you.

Have a second set of NPC wingmen comms with similar command instructions as fighters.

Just choose from a range of Wingmen and their ships. But don't rank them from Novice to whatever.
Make it random. You might have 3 novices and their small ships there, or you might have 4 seasoned vets with their heavies.

Maybe have 2 types... the ones that you hire for one hop, until the next docking. You pay them a flat fee.

Or the retainers, whom you hire like crews, until you dismiss them. Same fee structure as crews except more expensive.
Maybe thrice as expensive initially, and take a larger cut of your profits.

This shd benefit those flying haulers to Res sites.

Shouldn't take that much to code or change in the game right? It's just NPCs, like your own fighter crew.

 

[Cmdr. Numa]

You could handle the whole crew/NPC mercenary staff through the comms panel, no idea why FD didn't do that. As for NPC escorts, that has been asked for since almost the beginning of the game. It becomes twice irritating when you hang around station for wake scannings and occasionally see an NPC with escorts arriving. As they reach the no fire zone, the escorts break away and jump out.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

They talked about the possibility during the early days and haven't said they won't do it, so its probably still on the cards at some point.

 

[space voyager]

I'd love such an option. I wouldn't make it completely random though, perhaps dependant on the credits you're willing to cough up. It would make sense if the help was time limited, but if that was so make it GAME time, not REAL time. Having little time to play it would expire on me before I'd find a single golden nugget.

 

[Non Grata]

If FD did it presumably they'd ensure you would then get attacked by multiple ships so there would still be a challenge.

 

[Berpol]

What about their jump range? Would they automatically have yours or are you restricted by theirs? The second type could be a big hindrance with some unmodded combat ships following you.

 

[Cmdr. Numa]

Nav lock, and the slowest ship decides the jump range.

 

[RamirezKurita]

Rather than some kind of extra system for ad-hoc hiring of wingmen, I'd be happy enough if we could simply assign our existing crew to our spare ships.

Jump range would be limited to the slowest ship in the wing, possibly with some kind of wake-following bonus for slower shops that are equipped with FSD wake scanners.

Initial implementation of combat behaviour would be easily enough done by a combination of the existing npc behaviour and our current npc order system.

Trading would require a new system to be added - an initial proof of concept system could be that wingmates load up on applicable cargo based on destination's locked in, with higher trade rank NPCs picking better trade options.

Exploration would also require some additional work, as NPCs currently have no exploration behaviour. That all being said, I'm not really familiar enough with current exploration mechanics to suggest an intuitive yet easily implementable set of behaviours for explorer wingmen.

 

[Cmdr. Numa]

Heh, if I could assign 3 Elite crew to say my FdL, my Mamba and my Chieftain, that would make for a pretty OP wing, even if not flown by players. No I think hireable NPCs with ship and pilot quality as good as you can/are willing to pay for is the better and easier to balance solution.

 

[RamirezKurita]

Heh, if I could assign 3 Elite crew to say my FdL, my Mamba and my Chieftain, that would make for a pretty OP wing, even if not flown by players. No I think hireable NPCs with ship and pilot quality as good as you can/are willing to pay for is the better and easier to balance solution.

It might seem pretty overpowered, but it will almost always be weaker than an equivalent wing of human piloted ships, not to mention much harder to prepare unless you are just throwing your wingmates your hand-me-downs. Admittedly, credit earnings have gone completely crazy nowadays, but it still shouldn't diminish the fact that speccing out 4 Corvettes is more effort Tha speccing out 1.

There's also the quite important point that there's a few engineer mods that are thoroughly useless without a wing, having NPC wingmen that are smart enough to use them will help a lot in this regard, plus it would further encourage the addition of wing content due to it being far more accessible.

Keeping NPC wingmen useless (which they practically would be if they were limited to stock or near-stock ships) wouldn't open up any real gameplay options as a G5 engineered solo ship would basically be just as effective, which in turn would force future wing content to either be locked out of reach due to networking reasons or be balanced around a single decent ship with 3 supplementary chaff rather than a challenge for a proper wing.

There's also the ongoing issue of how cheaper ships have little purpose in the game because their low cost is of little consequence once a player becomes more established. Allowing a player to go wide rather than tall would increase their usefulness as a player would have an option whether to invest in a Vulture or to buy a few Eagles; or whether to go into a T9 or simply scrimp together a motley crue of T6s, T7s and Keelbacks.

 

[dxm55]

Heh, if I could assign 3 Elite crew to say my FdL, my Mamba and my Chieftain, that would make for a pretty OP wing, even if not flown by players. No I think hireable NPCs with ship and pilot quality as good as you can/are willing to pay for is the better and easier to balance solution.

Yes this. And it's easier to implement.