SUGGESTION: No pay for Inactive crewmembers as a QOL change.

[Fortune_Silver]

So, I recently got off the trade grind and started getting back into combat. To this end, I hired a pilot for my shiny new fighter bay. A short time and many dead NPC's later, hey, I'd maxed out my fighters rank. At this point, I parked him up to go train a new recruit. Then I noticed my income going down sharply. I then remembered that pilots get paid a % cut regardless if they are actually on-board -_-

Now, from a realism perspective, I totally understand this. Pilots gotta eat too while they sit around the station waiting for my call. But Elite is a GAME first and foremost. I would like to suggest, purely as a QOL improvement, especially for newer pilots to whom the not insubstantial % profit share can be a much larger problem for, not to mention that newer pilots are more likely to loose ships and thus would have a greater potential need for a roster of spare decently trained pilots.

As an additional footnote, why do they get shares of my mission earnings and trade shares? I had a pilot for a while while trading, ended up cutting him loose because he was taking 10% of the considerable earnings from my long range hauling for basically doing sweet FA.

 

[X-Terminator]

+1 Changing Ships to non-Fighter Hanger Bays makes them Inactive and yet they still take 13% from me now. I hate the idea of re-training but would settle with that and go for a no fee if placed Inactive please.

 

[Valethar]

3 pilots ranked at Elite are going to eat a huge chunk of your cash flow. I was hoping the Multicrew patch would at least let us fill the empty seats on the flight deck with NPC crew, but no such luck.

Yet.

 

[X-Terminator]

Also, we can have 3 NPC Crew and 2 Fighters but only ever have 1 Active. I seriously do not get this! Crap to balancing - they are hired to do a job!

 

[Fortune_Silver]

Hell, even if we just payed them a one-off retainer fee whenever we put them into dock that would be fine with me, covers 'mah realism' well enough. "Hey kiddo, gonna do some stuff in my cobra for a while, here's some spending money to cover the whole not-starving-to-death thing".

I want to get into long range exploration eventually, but I don't like the thought over earning like 50million+ in exploration data only to have my pilot who just spent a month chillin' at dock take 5 mill of that for doing LITERALLY nothing the whole damned time.

 

[Starwolfe]

I would prefer an extra pip for the pay cut for ships that cna crew NPCs.

 

[Comrade Napoleon]

Well, they are still employed, even if you dont use their services, it is not really their fault is it? That you loose them if you are blown up, is most sad, as finding one that is unobjectionable to look at, is very hard to find, like say Polonium.
Loosing one of my jocks would devastate me far more than my 27 mill. rebuy, I might even rage quit for a time or develop some kind of game PSTD and become even more weird. The % they earn are all in order considered the services they deliver, they are a huge boost to the performance of my ship.
Indeed, my behaviour is less reckless, when I have my crew with me, so the Ladies have a positive influence
Actually I think this might have been a point in the design decision from FD, loosing a crew member has greater consequences, than your ship rebuy?

The costs associated with having crew, I therefore find justifiable, balancing and in harmony with common sense.

Cheers Cmdr's

 

[Fortune_Silver]

Your sort of missing the point here. I never mentioned having any problem earning a % of money from my earnings, save from exploration. Even hauling could be justified as guard duty. My issue is that training up more than 1 pilot at the moment is counter-intuitive as they will be a drain on your income while not actually doing anything, and if I train a harmless pilot up to elite, then want to put my fighters away to off to beagle point or something, The pilot will still earn potentially MASSIVE amounts of money while not even being on the damned ship. Also my point was that this is not only makes training up a roster of pilots a bad idea and makes keeping any pilot employed long-term a very unattractive deal, but the rapidly stacking % earning cut is a much more painful hit to newer pilots that die a lot or just need the money. Its like the system at the moment is doing everything it can to get you to just Hire an expert pilot, use him for one outing then ditch him.

 

[Fortune_Silver]

Actually I think this might have been a point in the design decision from FD, loosing a crew member has greater consequences, than your ship rebuy?

The costs associated with having crew, I therefore find justifiable, balancing and in harmony with common sense.

Cheers Cmdr's

Thats sort of half my point. Losing a crew member you've trained up to elite all the way from harmless should be a big blow. Yet, as it is now, with them leeching cash from us even when not doing anything, I've found myself dismissing them MYSELF whenever I've been prepping for a long time trading or exploring. Maybe from a realism perspective it makes sense that they get a cut anyway, even if it was reduced from what they usually get (like a flat 1% irrespective of rank when cooling there heels at base), but elite is first and foremost a game. If they had utility in exploration, trading, mining, all the other careers, then maybe. But as it stands, keeping pilots long-term, and especially training up multiple pilots, is just a plain bad idea, which I feel it should not be.

 

[X-Terminator]

I hate the stutus quo but look at it like this - you get a Pay Rise once your Crew die!
Can I have their assets back then also? [haha]

 

[Magic Man]

They're always on board - somewhere, otherwise how would they always be available from the crew lounge no matter where you went. Until you dismiss them then you pay them.

 

[Bazziegamer]

A tonne of food cartridges is like 100 credits. He couldnt starve to death even if he tried. He doesnt need loan at all the recruitment fee pays his food for years.

 

[Fortune_Silver]

A tonne of food cartridges is like 100 credits. He couldnt starve to death even if he tried. He doesnt need loan at all the recruitment fee pays his food for years.

Completely unrelated side note, but I came to the revelation recently that we CAN'T be measuring cargo by the tonne. All cargo canisters are the same size regardless of the contents, and there is no way in hell that 1 tonne of gold has the same volume as 1 tonne of lets say fruit and vegetables. Thus, we must be transporting by standardised VOLUME of the canisters, as they are the constant. Thus the question is raised: What is the total internal volume of one cargo canister? -puts on videogame overanalysis hat-

 

[racer1]

I'm all for this.

The income drain when inactive is what stops me retaining any crew.

 

[Sandro Sammarco]

Hello Commanders!

We're not against the concept of reducing payouts for crew not currently onboard your vessel. An argument could be made that even though they are still on retainer, they don't get "danger money" payment when on shore leave.

We'll take this under consideration (no ETA, no guarantee) for a future update.

 

[ChiefRedCloud]

From the point of view of a new or fairly new player I want to thank OP and the rest of those responding as this helps me better understand things like this. The discussion of the pros & cons of this helps me make my decisions more clearly. Thank you ...

Chief

 

[Becky]

This is why I have 22 hired and 22 fired crew members; they just eat up money when I'm not using them; and since I very very rarely even have SLF Bay equipped on any ship, let alone the one I'm using currently they are just a waste of credits.

If they had a weekly salary (when inactive), like they had in First Encounters, it'd be fine; at least it'd be a fixed amount - nothing against that at all.
but a cut of the profits for doing nothing? for get it!

 

[Sergei Pavlov]

Hello Commanders!

We're not against the concept of reducing payouts for crew not currently onboard your vessel. An argument could be made that even though they are still on retainer, they don't get "danger money" payment when on shore leave.

We'll take this under consideration (no ETA, no guarantee) for a future update.

An argument could be made that Apple staff don't get a 15% share of Apple's profits, whether they are working or on vacation.

Do you want to be realistic? Make it so NPC pilots get a flat weekly salary depending on their combat rank.

 

[Moesis]

I'm all for reduced payout while inactive, but I'd much rather see them having more uses as say npc crewmen and/or npc wingmen, (i.e. we allow them to fly one of our other ships with us).

Either way, I don't think a weekly retainer is the way to go, because as we all know elite dangerous time is equivalent to real time, anyone able to play less frequently would be disadvantaged by such a system. Not to mention the issue of not playing for an extended period of time for whatever reasons (especially if they're unforeseen). At least with a % of profit earned you have to at least play the game to pay them.

 

[rootsrat]

Hello Commanders!

We're not against the concept of reducing payouts for crew not currently onboard your vessel. An argument could be made that even though they are still on retainer, they don't get "danger money" payment when on shore leave.

We'll take this under consideration (no ETA, no guarantee) for a future update.

Great to hear, that's a sensible approach. Thanks, Sandro.