I was talking with some friends, and we all had an agreement that multi-crew is basically not worth it which seems to be the consensus in the community.
I had a long think, and while I am not super new, I am also not totally unversed in how Elite works so I had some thoughts that I would like peoples opinions on.
1: Allowing Multi-crew AND wing to work together. Say for instance, me and my buddy are in a multi-crew, it would be nice if a friend of ours could join with us as a wing-mate, or if he had a multi-crew ship having him and his multi crew partner be able to join us. It would still be limited to 4 players, so you could have 2 man crews and still wing up with another multi-crew vessel, or one 3 man crew could have an extra wing man. This would work exceptionally well for multi-crew people wanting to do wing-missions and give the ability for everyone to work together instead of relegating them to being separate. Which brings me to my second idea.
2: Having different types of ship-launched craft, other than fighters. I personally would love the ability to have something like a ship-launched mining vessel. Similar to the fighter bay, you would have several different variants that would be able to do the specific kinds of 'mining' that are available in game that your fatter (type 10) kind of ship 'can' do but has difficulty doing.
For instance: Having 3 variants, One with mining lasers, One with the Sub-surface missiles, and one with Seismics and an abrasion blaster for Core mining. You could even go the extra mile to further specialize them, and allow these mining vessels to have a specialized cargo-hold that can only hold asteroid fragments and cores, and each would have a pulse-wave analyzer (10k) on them for find the good asteroids. Maybe a special 'probe' cannon that would work like a prospector limpet that would use ammunition instead of having to have limpets in the cargo hold of the mining vessel.
I believe this would add an interesting idea for multi-crew as well, since you could have a 'mother ship' of sorts, that has the refinery and the main cargo capacity, as well as the armaments to defend itself rather than having to sacrifice hard-points for the sake of being able to mine. Rather than trying to navigate a dense asteroid field or ring, the 'mother ship' would float above or below the ring/asteroid field and the multi-crew with them would take out the mining craft, while the mother ship is keeping an eye out for hostiles.
The mining vessels meanwhile would be swooping out and using their smaller size to navigate the asteroid fields and find the good space rocks, filling their cargo-holds with the fragments, and then taking them back to the main vessel to be refined.
If you had multiple variants available, they would all be doing their specialized task and communicating with each-other about their specialized needs. Say if one found a core asteroid but wasn't the right variant for core mining they could come back and swap out or they could just ask the person in the core-miner to come to their position. Or if they had an asteroid with sub-surface, they could communicate that and have them come tap it instead.
Of course, this could also be used to 'supplement' a mining vessel on the big-scale. Even for solo play, if you set up your ship for mining a particular way, you could sacrifice some cargo space to put in a miner that was a different configuration. So say you set yourself up for core-mining, but also want to have the capability to do sub-surface drilling or laser mining, you would sacrifice one of your cargo slots for the mining vessel that could do that.
The AI-crew would not be able to use the mining vessels of course, but you would still be able to have the AI-crew control the 'mother ship' while you went out in the mining vessel instead. This would allow one to be able to choose if they want to control the big ship and rely on AI-fighters to defend them while they mine, or if they want to use the mining vessel, and let the big ship defend itself while they do the mining in the small vessel.
Just like the fighters, they would not be FSD capable, so they would have to be collected, or they would self-destruct after leaving a 30km radius of the mother-ship. I would also say, that perhaps upon destruction, be it by self-destruct or by players or pirates, that any asteroid fragments the vessel was carrying would drop in place allowing for a different kind of PVP piracy if one wanted to be under-handed. A collector limpet and a refinery on your pirating vessel, swoop in, kill a miner that was a bit too far from the mother ship, suck up the ores and fly out before the slow and fat mother-ship can bring you under fire.
I would like to hear any other feedback from more veteran players, on why this would/would not work.
I had a long think, and while I am not super new, I am also not totally unversed in how Elite works so I had some thoughts that I would like peoples opinions on.
1: Allowing Multi-crew AND wing to work together. Say for instance, me and my buddy are in a multi-crew, it would be nice if a friend of ours could join with us as a wing-mate, or if he had a multi-crew ship having him and his multi crew partner be able to join us. It would still be limited to 4 players, so you could have 2 man crews and still wing up with another multi-crew vessel, or one 3 man crew could have an extra wing man. This would work exceptionally well for multi-crew people wanting to do wing-missions and give the ability for everyone to work together instead of relegating them to being separate. Which brings me to my second idea.
2: Having different types of ship-launched craft, other than fighters. I personally would love the ability to have something like a ship-launched mining vessel. Similar to the fighter bay, you would have several different variants that would be able to do the specific kinds of 'mining' that are available in game that your fatter (type 10) kind of ship 'can' do but has difficulty doing.
For instance: Having 3 variants, One with mining lasers, One with the Sub-surface missiles, and one with Seismics and an abrasion blaster for Core mining. You could even go the extra mile to further specialize them, and allow these mining vessels to have a specialized cargo-hold that can only hold asteroid fragments and cores, and each would have a pulse-wave analyzer (10k) on them for find the good asteroids. Maybe a special 'probe' cannon that would work like a prospector limpet that would use ammunition instead of having to have limpets in the cargo hold of the mining vessel.
I believe this would add an interesting idea for multi-crew as well, since you could have a 'mother ship' of sorts, that has the refinery and the main cargo capacity, as well as the armaments to defend itself rather than having to sacrifice hard-points for the sake of being able to mine. Rather than trying to navigate a dense asteroid field or ring, the 'mother ship' would float above or below the ring/asteroid field and the multi-crew with them would take out the mining craft, while the mother ship is keeping an eye out for hostiles.
The mining vessels meanwhile would be swooping out and using their smaller size to navigate the asteroid fields and find the good space rocks, filling their cargo-holds with the fragments, and then taking them back to the main vessel to be refined.
If you had multiple variants available, they would all be doing their specialized task and communicating with each-other about their specialized needs. Say if one found a core asteroid but wasn't the right variant for core mining they could come back and swap out or they could just ask the person in the core-miner to come to their position. Or if they had an asteroid with sub-surface, they could communicate that and have them come tap it instead.
Of course, this could also be used to 'supplement' a mining vessel on the big-scale. Even for solo play, if you set up your ship for mining a particular way, you could sacrifice some cargo space to put in a miner that was a different configuration. So say you set yourself up for core-mining, but also want to have the capability to do sub-surface drilling or laser mining, you would sacrifice one of your cargo slots for the mining vessel that could do that.
The AI-crew would not be able to use the mining vessels of course, but you would still be able to have the AI-crew control the 'mother ship' while you went out in the mining vessel instead. This would allow one to be able to choose if they want to control the big ship and rely on AI-fighters to defend them while they mine, or if they want to use the mining vessel, and let the big ship defend itself while they do the mining in the small vessel.
Just like the fighters, they would not be FSD capable, so they would have to be collected, or they would self-destruct after leaving a 30km radius of the mother-ship. I would also say, that perhaps upon destruction, be it by self-destruct or by players or pirates, that any asteroid fragments the vessel was carrying would drop in place allowing for a different kind of PVP piracy if one wanted to be under-handed. A collector limpet and a refinery on your pirating vessel, swoop in, kill a miner that was a bit too far from the mother ship, suck up the ores and fly out before the slow and fat mother-ship can bring you under fire.
I would like to hear any other feedback from more veteran players, on why this would/would not work.
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