[SPECULATION] NPCs And 2.3 Multi Crew

[Alien]

So, the following is speculation and a theory. It may be wrong, we don't know at this point in time.

We've just had the 2.2 update allowing us to hire NPC crew. Ever wonder why you can hire three NPC crew but can only set one to active? There's space to set the other two to active, but the game simply won't let you.

We know that the next update is 2.3 multi-crew. Many speculate that this will allow us players to co-pilot friend's ships, but I think it may be that it's simply allowing us to assign three NPCs to positions in our ship. This will set up allowing players to fill those roles at a future point, but that won't be in the 2.3 update.

So just a theory, we shall see what happens when 2.3 is released for Beta testing.

 

[rucky]

nah, Multi-Crew is with humans (they told many times in the past),
but I do hope it also will apply to AI crews like you mentioned for us mostly solo players (in the past denied by FD)

 

[VR Jay Le Chardon]

I always thought that there was the ability to hold on retention upto three npc staff pilots was to allow players to launch a wing of their own ships with the player commanding one and the npc's commanding the other three.

 

[DarthRavadge]

I kinda figured on this from the start. We will probably be able to have npc's or wing members in the same vessel or in launched fighters.

It will probably look like this

Mothership- You or NPC
Fighter 1 - You, Npc, or wing member
Fighter 2 - You, Npc, or wing member
Unknown function aboard mothership - NPC or wing member

 

[K-Rose]

I kinda figured on this from the start. We will probably be able to have npc's or wing members in the same vessel or in launched fighters.

It will probably look like this

Mothership- You or NPC
Fighter 1 - You, Npc, or wing member
Fighter 2 - You, Npc, or wing member
Unknown function aboard mothership - NPC or wing member

I very much doubt they're going to allow multiple fighters.

I think rather it'll be more turret spots to give better coverage... they've done the ground work with the SRV turrets.

Mothership
Fighter
Turreter (1)
Turreter (2) / Navigation / Engineering


FD have stated multiple times that there won't be NPC crew, but I'm suspicious of this now since the crew lounge arrived. I'm really hoping we can hire NPC crew and we can train them and there's radio chatter with them too.

 

[DaggerSnake]

I think that there will be crew roles. Navigation, sensors, weapons, engineering...whatever.
Each role will have its own interface to perform specific functions and tasks.

Think of this more like the Galaxy map. That is a whole new interface separate from the cockpit.

When you have a crew in that role, they don't do anything. But what it does is give you the ability to access that new interface and use all the mechanics that come with it (whatever those may be)

Players will also be able to hot swap into that role.

That's my complete unfounded and imagineered guess at 2.3

 

[Weps]

Yes, simultaneous ship fighters will not happen because you won't be able to dock them back (you dock the first fighter but you can't de-construct it to make room for the second). I guess you can just abandon it, but I suspect FDEV want "the process" - they didn't program the docking sequence for nothing. Also the more fighters you can launch, the greater the firepower at your disposal. The mothership and two fighters being able to focus fire on a single enemy would be somewhat unbalanced.

However I'm reserved when it comes to multiple active NPC crew. Maybe those will exist, depending on the roles FDEV designs for multicrew. For example one role setup I could imagine would be captain, pilot and fighter pilot. The fighter pilot goes in the SLF, the pilot flies the mothership, and the captain orders both ships around, issues SLF rebuild commands, assigns pilots around etc. This would be perfectly doable right now since the NPCs can fly both ships and there's no need for additional programming.