Vision for the future: Space Legs and Ship Roles

[Lestat]

I think frontier has to start small. Docking at a station and being able to walk around and slowly upgrading. Not like Star Citizen. When a company wants to do everything at the same time and ultimately fails because they are still in Alpha after 4 years. I think Frontier has the Advantage taking their time to do things right.

Everyone There tons of topic about this. Please look them up before posting.

 

[Skizomeuh]

Fancy a link to the most centralized, comprehensive and advanced one?

 

[VR CMDR Novindus]

Most of what you said is a "sad but true" reality unfortunately.

Also, on the idea if hiring NPCs: that's a very thin line. If done right, it puts some NPCs on your ship, which have no meaning and no influence. And that's unfortunately the best option in this community.

If NPCs will give an advantage, they will be seen as stat boosters and nothing else. And if they do give an advantage, than bet on it, FD will have them have stats and some crew-NPC-metagame will evolve. Including massive complaints on the forum and indeed yet another way of power creep. It's just how the game and community work.

If in contrast NPCs are too weak, you can savely bet several months pay that the community will burst out in tears and demand them to be improved. And your money would still be save if you would bet that FD will cave and do exactly that.

I see NPCs as characters you'd have to actually pay to keep on your crew, and probably have to work to unlock or upgrade in some way. So like anything in the game, if they boost your stats or give you an advantage, then it's one you've earned and paid for, so it can be considered like anything from engineered weapons to NPC SLFs.

I think it would be great to work a real AI and learning element in to each aspect of ship management where you have to put in the effort to train your crew, as well as tying things in with other systems in the game.

For example, the co-pilot could be given charge of pip management during combat, and trained to anticipate the pilot's requirements based on ship states and pilot corrections. They could select targets and kill warrant scan them. They could be tasked with running the discovery scanner in each new system. They could also be tasked with preparing an escape route by selecting a nearby system with a station, and either targeting that system and charging the FSD when the ship's hull/modules reach an amount of damage defined by the Captain, or else only by explicit order from the Captain like "Get us out of here!", but not without the Captain hearing something like "Captain, we need to split!"

The engineer could contribute to requirements for the actual Engineer modifications in the game, or by cooperative effort with the main engineers have a positive effect on RNG for better rolls, or even enhance the effects of the engineering by increasing the positive or reducing the negative aspects of the engineering blueprint.

It would give the game some much needed character if as Captain you see your repair crew come up on the console requesting more power to systems, or other such scenario dependant complaints and comments from other crew.

I'm sure there are a lot of good ideas out there for making use of a variety of NPC crew roles, and personally I prefer the ones that don't simply give +1 stat X or something along those lines. With AI learning, crew becomes more valuable and useful as time goes on.
You could even have elements like betrayal and sabotage depending on crew stats and relations. There are a lot of possible options to consider. The difficulty would be in balancing the best of them.

 

[Scubadog]

Well yes, exactly. If the gameplay element is not well fleshed out for each role, and if it doesn't provide the opportunity for continued activity within each role, few people are going to want to be anything other than the Captain, Pilot, Gunner (maybe), and sometimes the Soldiers/Fighters, depending on the mission. That's why I was thinking of NPC crew options, so that whichever role you couldn't find a willing participant in, you could select from a pool of NPC characters with varying personalities and skill sets/levels. Have you ever played or seen Psi-5 Trading Company? If not, I recommend a look to see what roles are possible for NPC and sometimes actual players.

Otherwise, I'm sure someone out there is imaginative enough to make these roles worth playing, and hopefully it's someone who works for Frontier.

Again, none of this makes sense or is even interesting. I play this game to fly and explore, not sit in a room playing imaginary cards with people. Not to scavenge a station or whatever. NONE of this is interesting.

 

[VR CMDR Novindus]

Again, none of this makes sense or is even interesting. I play this game to fly and explore, not sit in a room playing imaginary cards with people. Not to scavenge a station or whatever. NONE of this is interesting.

1. None of this makes sense or is interesting to you.
2. You play the game "to fly and explore and not sit in a room playing imaginary cards with people", which doesn't preclude others from wanting to do things other than fly and explore, such as scavenging a station, or even wanting to play imaginary cards, though that last one was never even suggested here.
3. The concept subsequently discussed pertaining to NPC crew would add some character to the game, as well as conferring certain advantages as detailed by some suggestions made, or otherwise subject to game designer discretion, but pertinently, would either augment or at least not be impediments to flying and exploring.

The original post was an invitation for people to offer suggestions of how they would like to see space legs implemented, what impacts it would have on the game, and what mechanics they think would work well.

Responding with "I don't want space legs", while not contributing within the topic framework, is still fair enough.
However, stating without qualification that none of it makes sense or is even interesting, and implying that those assertions apply objectively, holds no validity.
In a subjective sense it would be a little fairer, but still mostly would fall under the category of contribution that I'd consider as holding about the same worth as if it went unsaid.

I don't think your unqualified objections to space legs and your rejection of any and all suggestions makes sense, and I don't find it interesting.

 

[WesULVD]

Although space legs aren't high on my wish list, I can understand that it would give an extra dimension to the game. You could go to the bar after a long trip and have a chat. Or walk up to the job desk to pick up a trade job.

But for me it would make sense to walk around these horrible Guardian sites. There is no way anyone would stay in his/her SRV and get stuck every minute on a site like that. You'd get out, activate, grab or shoot whatever you need, run back to your SRV/ship and leave.

And as a matter of what to look at, hopefully we will have No Man's Sky planets one day where the forests are so dense no SRV can get through

 

[count_headshot]

CMDR count_headshot would be happy if he could stretch his legs after 300-jump-journey. As in go for a drink on a space station. But no. Sitting there even while docked, soldered to the seat...

Could be an alternative way to get missions too. The random ones are in the system. The juicy ones you find in the bar

 

[Sylow]

Could be an alternative way to get missions too. The random ones are in the system. The juicy ones you find in the bar

It doesn't even be distinct in terms of profit. I would go so far to say: the generic one you find in the system. The more individual ones (aka: with some story) you find at the bar.

I'd appreciate that and it could actually please both sides. Those who only want to fly and don't care for anything else can just stay on the present system. They get all they need there. And those who appreciate more lore, story and feeling can go to the bar. They might loose out a bit on cash per time, but that's a small price for story and atmosphere.