The death of the fighter pilot.

[Kizbot]

I'm not sure if there is already a dicussion on this topic but I really want to share a worry about the new npc crew members that will be piloting these ship launched fighters.

They die when your ship is destroyed.. but you don't. It begs me to ask why? If you can fit an escape pod into a SRV why not a fighter? Hell ejector seats were put into fighters in WW2, what happened there? If I die in my SRV, I teleport into my ship even though it is in orbit many miles away. I fail to understand the logic here. It's common knowledge that in all situations, the pilot is more valuable than the lump of metal. Lump of metal can be replaced but pilot cannot. Somehow this is long forgotten?

Also something I am unsure about is if they are out fighting and get destroyed, I then 'print' a new one, who pilots it? Either a)The same guy who did escape pod back to my ship or b) I need to have another pilot on board for every fighter I can print. A. makes little sense that they die on my ship destruction and B. means that its gonna get awful crowded in the ship!

From what I can gather in the braben vids, they rank up with experience. I can imagine it being pretty easy to get emotionally attached to them as they fight for you and win fight after fight. Getting a cheaper 'harmless' pilot and training them up to expert or deadly will be a very rewarding task as you get lots out of this deal. This could take weeks or months depending on play style. Then a suicide winder slams into you at a mailslot. Boom. Crew dead. Rebuy and loss of cargo. Somebody has lolz, you cry.
Or perhaps its a crazed npc that is interdicting you repeated while magically regenerating its hull. Or perhaps you just took a goofy shot and hit the cops while your hull was low. You get my point. This mechanism could create a whole new type of salty tear thread where players weep their lost crew and a whole new lolz game for those that want to drink those tears. I'm not expecting FD to have put any kind of mechanism to counter this becuase lets face it, when has that ever happened?

Previously the only thing that would be lost was credits and maybe cargo, very annoying already and most people will strive to avoid it. Staying in Solo, combat logging etc.. surely this will only get worse?

Edit: (not really relevant anymore): I may be wrong on this, but if our launched fighter is already out and fighting and suddenly the fight starts going south, it is now a player choice to hang around and wait for the fighter to dock before waking out of there, or just wake out and leave the poor son of a b*tch to die. Or just log, which im betting will be a popular choice.

I guess I just don't understand the decision here to kill off crew members. Haven't they just raised the stakes of losing combat just a little too far?



TLDR:
Ship launched fighter pilots die and I don't understand why. Isn't it just another reason to rage quit or Combat Log?

Edit: OK so it was my misunderstanding that the pilot is in the fighter when they are actually on board your ship using tele presence to pilot a drone. Still doesn't excuse there death on ship destruction and increased logging will still be an issue.

 

[ephil]

AI Crew (or the CMDR) pilot the ship launched fighters remotely so they survive if the fighter is destroyed. They'll die if your ship is destroyed.

 

[Truesilver]

So a guy who interdicts and fights yet loses, also loses his trained-up NPC buddies, whereas a guy who interdicts and fights, then logs, gets to keep them?

 

[Falcon_D]

Interesting.
I was kind of thinking along these same lines when I watched the vid.
If we can fly those fighters via telepresence from our ships then shouldn't the NPCs be able to do the same?
I hadn't gone as far as thinking about ship destruction killing the NPC crew. Although if I recall correctly from the video, that's what will happen if our ship gets destroyed.
For some reason what stuck in my mind from the video was: Yay, select NPC pilot with skills, Happy Happy Joy Joy, fighters from ships, exciting pew pew, reprint ship, exciting pew pew. NPCs do die.

Have fun, fly safe. o7

 

[Robert Maynard]

AI Crew (or the CMDR) pilot the ship launched fighters remotely so they survive if the fighter is destroyed. They'll die if your ship is destroyed.

Yet neither the CMDR nor any NPC passengers would - as they all have escape pods.

 

[Huros]

There should be a random "npc skill" based chance of them dying/surviving. Effort/risk/reward needs careful consideration with this. It has not sat well with me when i heard the NPCs die come what may. A simple chance, modified by fighter type and combat rank of the NPC, and maybe your CMDR's rank, would be a better more realistic way to deal with it.

 

[Iain L]

Is it actually lore that they "die" die? Or merely that they have a "null and void in the event of escape pod" clause in their contract? Given the instant rescue, I've always wondered about whether these "escape pods" are actually teleportation or cloning devices anyway.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Someone has to go down with the ship.

[video=youtube_share;ZCHMjeKI9Bc]https://youtu.be/ZCHMjeKI9Bc?t=124[/video]

 

[Ziljan]

The way I see is that fighter pilots don't really die, they just decide you're a bad captain/risk who almost got them killed, and they don't want to play with you anymore. Once their pod gets rescued, they change their name and move to a distant system.

 

[[VR] Mad Mike]

FD could always bring back the notion of an escape pod which we could fit and take up an internal module. (similar capacity to a cargo rack)

we can choose to order our crew to escape when ever we want in a fight... we are in it to the bitter end of course and once they have escaped we lose any crew bonuses.

if we then go on to win the fight, we can rescue them ourselves.... if we lose then the crew would most likely come back to us, tho there may be a chance they lose faith in us depending on our previous rep with them - which would take a hit even if they did come back, and also a chance that they die en route.

of course if we dont give the order, then they die.

bonus points if there was a chance they could be scooped as slaves, which then leads to a time limited mission to rescue them, which is we succeed leads to big boost in rep with them.

 

[Huros]

hmm Imperial Slaves as pilots.....

 

[DukeIronHand]

There are two reasons I can think of for FD's position on this.

1) Death is pretty painless in this game once you have any kind of time invested in this game. This will keep you a little careful - and less likely to do dumb things - if you lose the combined experience of your NPC on destruction.

2) In a few short months, and assuming you don't die, space will (would be?) filled with Elite level NPC's flying these fighters all over. NPC death on destruction will keep the overall NPC skill level down.

Or so go my thoughts - otherwise they become like an autocannon (permanent fixture of your ship that gets better with time) that you just buy ammo (fighters) for.

 

[KuroNyra]

hmm Imperial Slaves as pilots.....

You are a terrible terrible person.
And I love your idea.

 

[Siranui]

So a guy who interdicts and fights yet loses, also loses his trained-up NPC buddies, whereas a guy who interdicts and fights, then logs, gets to keep them?

Valid point. I do support the NPC crew dying, rather than becoming a permanent resource that people simply grind their way up to, However the prevalence of cheating is an issue; and one that NPC death is only likely to accelerate in terms of numbers.

In short: FD could really do with sorting out combat logging if this is going to be the way that the pilot NPCs are going to be implemented. Otherwise cheats are going to further prosper.

 

[Achilles7]

So a guy who interdicts and fights yet loses, also loses his trained-up NPC buddies, whereas a guy who interdicts and fights, then logs, gets to keep them?

Yep, a tsunami of indignant rage..coming soon to a forum near you!

& poor Crimson Kaim..he's definitely going to have a nervous tic, like Clouseau's boss, after a few days!

..although I imagine he's like that already..with a touch of Tourette's - barking 'LOGGER' at his monitor every few minutes!

 

[Kaocraft]

Escape pods are a myth. Both you *and* the NPC crew member are killed when your ship is blown up. There are no escape pods for anyone. YOU respawn because it's a Videogame and you're a paying customer. NPCs die because they can't complain on forums.

 

[Demascus]

I brought this issue months ago...... the death of a npc crew member via ship destruction is only going to make the combat logging issue worse. I may be more understanding for perma npc death if there were not so many mechanics for players to troll in open with or bugs that result in ship destruction beyond their control.

 

[nats]

I was a bit meh when I heard of ship launched fighters. I really want escorts and escort missions.

But then they announced that they wont be real ships but drones. And that completely made me dislike the whole concept even more than I did before.

I hate the idea of having drones in the same way I hated the fact that there would be all these robotic skimmers around. I was really interested when I heard about the skimmers until I heard they would be robots. The game definitely lacks a human feel and all these drones and robots arent helping matters. Definitely another direction they are heading in that I dont like personally.

And yes definitely I feel it will lower the importance of fighter pilots and dogfighting. I mean when you know you arent actually fighting anyone real whats the point in fighting at all? Surely most people will completely forget about the ship launched roboptic fighters and concentrate on the base ship to destroy the pilot controllers? Its just a stupid idea. And it will create a really hollow feeling to the dogfighting.

I hate it the more I think about it.

 

[Huros]

Maybe a random chance that the pilot wants to re-sign on with you, based on how many wins in combat with you they have had, and then a renew contract at the nearest station, or in the rebuy screen.

But i also like the idea of an escape pod being dropped by the fighter and scooping it (if you survive) would reinstate them.

Essentially i just think "when the fighter is destroyed the pilot dies" is lazy thinking and development - there are clearly several options that would make it more rounded. (Sorry Sandy!)

 

[Bambi]

it's a game. Furthermore it's a persistent always on multiplayer game. In singleplayer games you can rewind time when you die. Here you can't. Losing everything would be frustrating (but a challenge some do seek, where's that hardcore mode brabbo?) so you have to be able to respawn. Respawning at the last station you docked at is similar to rewinding time/loading a save. But you gotta be punished for failure somehow. So you have to rebuy your ship, and you lose your cargo, passengers, pilots etc. All of this is purely for gameplay.

It used to be you'd lose your missions too. Why this was changed I don't understand. It seems pretty obvious to me that dying during a mission should be a fail.