What I want from 2.3 : Automation

Infidel Deity

Infidel Deity
Wilhelm Fröschl said:
As a solo player, no, they don't.
I don't understand why people want NPC crew and bonuses for something that is explicitely designed to be used when pilots give up their own ship to fly in somebody else's.

What would you give up with NPC crew?
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So your argument is: "you don't understand".
Very well. :)
 

Martian Successor

Martian Successor
Well I play in Open and am a member of an active group - in case I need to qualify my opinion *shrug* - and I know that multicrew without NPC crew will be a massive waste of potential and hold little to no interest for me. Why would I want to sit and watch someone else fly a ship when I'd much rather wing up with them and fly my own ship alongside theirs?

Without NPC crew to give us that Han Solo and Chewie vibe multicrew is a waste of the potential of this feature not to mention a complete waste of all that dev time on designing, making and coding all those two seater plus ships. And without legs/walking around a multiplayer multicrew is truly pointless; would feel like a tacted on, unnaturally gimpy feature that only really belongs in a game that is still in early alpha. Last time I checked ED was a full priced, fully released game that has no business releasing such a minimalist barest of bones feature. Certainly not as a headline feature.
 

Martian Successor

Martian Successor
Windscreen Smudge said:
Since I know 4 people I'll be playing multi-crew with depending on availability, who does that leave for you?

Considering the average age of the player base in this game it's kind of shocking to read all of the "But I don't have any friends!" posts....
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It's not about having 'friends'. I have access to a pool of over 30 people from at least 3 different timezones. Why would we want to crew on one ship where only one of us can fly the ship when instead we could just wing up and each of us would be flying our own ship? We won't be able to walk around each other's ships. We won't be able to dock two ships together in order to come aboard - it'll be handwavium of the finest fading to black screen transitions that money can buy.

After the initial novelty of looking at some new menu screens (Mmm, exciting!), new commander faces (ok, cool enough) and possibly a lame turret gunner simulator in a game where everything in combat zooms by faster than you'd be able to track (Ooooh, lame turret mode!) wears off what's left? If thats all it will be that's a maximum 3 hours worth of new content at best. Then everyone will go back to winging up in ships and forget multicrew ever existed until maybe when we get legs.

Compared to a constant source of content that just a single NPC co-pilot could bring I find that without NPC crew this multicrew feature will be a huge waste of potential and dead in the water after the novelty wears off.
 
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X-Terminator

Banned
X-Terminator
+1 Make it suit every player.

CMDR Log 28/01/3033:
1. Wings - I never see players much. Most that I do are always in dock. Lately reports are of BAD INSTANCING
2. Powerplay - Never bothered as I do not want forced play time for rewards
3. Planet Based Missions - Only do the ones that are possible without a kicking e.g. The 17 Draconis hamster wheel
4. Alien Crashed Ships & UA - really can not be bothered to look for what I can see on YouTube and doesn't do much
5. Engineers - I really love this part of updates and if I can eventually get away from what I do all the time I'll get some Imperial Ships but does take years to rank up. In the mean time I must try and attain my billion credits by pew pewing RES because after losing 1 Ship when testing OPEN again it's a major set back for progress. I really do not understand why OPEN is what it is and deters players in masses.
6. SLF - No point in these when crewe can die and no point in hiring any except an EXPERT which is rubbish until 25% trained!

I think what 2.3 brings must be something we all do use. We that all paid for Season Passes paid for content. Here's hoping it appeals to EVERYONE!
 
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Lightspeed

Lightspeed
Alex Brentnall said:
Or you could just get a friend and be the 2nd pilot? You don't have to have NPC crew to enjoy the game the way you propose to..

Let me run this by you:
New player: How do I make money in game?
Other players: Get an NPC multi-crew, go exploring and put a bit of tape over the button for the discovery scanner and set to economic flight mode. AI flies, it honks every jump and you leave the pc on overnight for a few weeks then you are a multi billionaire and can get the biggest ship in game.
New player: Isn't that kinda broken?
Other players: Well if you don't like it don't use it, but we all have and now don't care about re-buys or crime or anything else because credits are meaningless.
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Ahh, but I see a flaw in your line of reasoning .......

the tape would come unstuck before a week [hehe]
 

Commandeur_Brin

Commandeur_Brin
Alex Brentnall said:
Or you could just get a friend and be the 2nd pilot? You don't have to have NPC crew to enjoy the game the way you propose to..

Let me run this by you:
New player: How do I make money in game?
Other players: Get an NPC multi-crew, go exploring and put a bit of tape over the button for the discovery scanner and set to economic flight mode. AI flies, it honks every jump and you leave the pc on overnight for a few weeks then you are a multi billionaire and can get the biggest ship in game.
New player: Isn't that kinda broken?
Other players: Well if you don't like it don't use it, but we all have and now don't care about re-buys or crime or anything else because credits are meaningless.
Click to expand...

NPCs would only have access to simple behaviors. Point A to Point B for the NPC pilote without you as a navigator for instance. No honking. I'm not confident enough in automation to leave my screen when auto docking is in progress. So no, I don't think it will be broken that way.

Besides, if a friend can join up at any time, doesn't it make sense that he or she would just Become one of your NPC crew ? Or are we talking about galactic wide telepresence as a lore explanation ?
 

jnnnnn

J
Alex Brentnall said:
Or you could just get a friend and be the 2nd pilot? You don't have to have NPC crew to enjoy the game the way you propose to..

Let me run this by you:
New player: How do I make money in game?
Other players: Get an NPC multi-crew, go exploring and put a bit of tape over the button for the discovery scanner and set to economic flight mode. AI flies, it honks every jump and you leave the pc on overnight for a few weeks then you are a multi billionaire and can get the biggest ship in game.
New player: Isn't that kinda broken?
Other players: Well if you don't like it don't use it, but we all have and now don't care about re-buys or crime or anything else because credits are meaningless.
Click to expand...

That sounds good to me. I find the game much more fun as a sandbox than it is grinding through the early stages. You have a lot more freedom:
- you can go and check out cool things much more easily,
- you can experiment with builds much more easily
- you can do most things much more efficiently so they are more fun (even if you don't care about the credits)
- you can take risks (because you can afford the rebuy easily)
- you can help out other players
- you can have more effect in CGs and on the background sim

Compare that to the early game where your ship is slow and awful to fly, you don't do much damage so you have to avoid a lot of fights, your short jump range makes travelling even more painful, you can't do a lot of stuff because your ship isn't good enough, and you're constantly worried about dying because that would set you back significantly.

So I would like credits to be even more meaningless.

Why do you want to inflict so much pain on new players? What did they ever do to you?
 

babelfisch

babelfisch
Windscreen Smudge said:
How do you think they're going to maintain parity between gameplay quality, functionality and experiences of using NPC crew and not using NPC crew?

Would you like to explain that without using a slide ruler, a stuffed turtle and a copy of the Prana Bindu Codex please?

Or should I summarize for you and say that you can't. It's either one or the other, because no matter what you do one is going to be a vastly superior experience to the other, thus invalidating the second option. Doesn't matter which one ends up being the second option.
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Sorry, but I can't really follow your argument. If I get you right you are afraid that solo players with NPC crew would have it easier than coop players with player crew?

What if without NPCs, coop players have it easier than solo players?
Why does it even matter?

For me NPC crew is mostly about not sitting next to an empty seat, not so much about the meta. The meta is the last argument that should be taken into consideration when designing game features and then balanced accordingly.

Also, it's pretty clear that we will get space legs at some point. I like the idea of walking around in my ship while my copilot flies it.

'But automatisation would mean I could just go AFK while the computer does all the "work"!'

Not if it's designed in a way that still requires your presence, for example calculating jump ranges and navigation.

'But this would mean that crew is mandatory for some ships'
Yes, why not? Didn't play the old games, but AFAIK it has always been like that.
 
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Goose4291

Banned
Goose4291
I see two issues with NPC crew on this scale.

(i) Beyond the docking computer, Frontier have shied away from the concept of automated flight.
(ii) NPC Pilots are the last gap any good macro writer needs to setup a automated trader process.
 

smiths121

S
Well it is not coming in 2.3 - fair too late for them to add it now.

I do think it is going to be hard enough to balance multi-crew wing vbeing roughly equivalent to a wing of ships, before they worry about this balancing for NPCs. I think the ideas and balance need to bed in before FD face the challenge of NPC multi-crew (hmm, is that Anaconda quivalent to 1, 2 3 or 4 Anacondas, if only I knew the size of the wing!).

Simon
 

Siranui

S
Cosmo said:
In this poll 85.23% of the voters think NPC crew is essential.

What Commandeur_Brin describes would be possible if we had NPC crew.
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15% don't, though.

Not everything in this game has to cater for everyone. How many people regularly mine, for example? Should we ignore mining because the majority don't bother?

NPC crew will just be 'plus ones' everyone adds, then whines about unbearably when it costs 60% of income. It's just another way of making asymmetric conflicts even more asymmetric, as aggressors load upon crew and more passive types don't, and are spanked when the two meet.

Personally, I'm fine with crew being for people who want to play with friends and are happy to give something up for it.
 

babelfisch

babelfisch
Siranui said:
Not everything in this game has to cater for everyone. How many people regularly mine, for example? Should we ignore mining because the majority don't bother?
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So because 15% don't care for NPC crew it should not be included? I am fine with introducing multiplayer crew first, as long as they implement NPCs later.

NPC crew will just be 'plus ones' everyone adds, then whines about unbearably when it costs 60% of income. It's just another way of making asymmetric conflicts even more asymmetric, as aggressors load upon crew and more passive types don't, and are spanked when the two meet.

Personally, I'm fine with crew being for people who want to play with friends and are happy to give something up for it.
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It's the other way around. With NPC crew a trader could buff his ship when he is attacked by a wing of multi crew pirates. The same is true for NPC wings. It would make combat less asymmetric.
 

Lucius-Darcia

Lucius-Darcia
Wilhelm Fröschl said:
As a solo player, no, they don't.
I don't understand why people want NPC crew and bonuses for something that is explicitely designed to be used when pilots give up their own ship to fly in somebody else's.

What would you give up with NPC crew?
Click to expand...

Money....15% for each member of your income. x4 = 60% lesser income
 

dannysquid

dannysquid
It's very intriguing. I don't see how they're going to make it work in an interesting and balanced way with or without NPC crew.
 

Siranui

S
babelfisch said:
So because 15% don't care for NPC crew it should not be included? I am fine with introducing multiplayer crew first, as long as they implement NPCs later.
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I honestly don't care either way, but the idea that NPC crew are 'essential' is tosh to my ears. People just heard 'ship will be 400% better' and want in.

What's a solo player giving up for this? Nothing, save pretend money. Why bother with 'proper' multiplayer, when one could just have three friends, each with a Cutter and each with three NPC crew. It's just an escalation, which leads to more imbalance.


It's the other way around. With NPC crew a trader could buff his ship when he is attacked by a wing of multi crew pirates. The same is true for NPC wings. It would make combat less asymmetric.
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Erm... no. Explanation:

The trader is trying to make money. A trader trades a majority of the time and is only in combat the minority. A typical trader is going to want to maximise that by not giving away 60% of his cash on wages that he does not need to pay, given that most of the time he is not under attack.
In short: A 60% decrease in efficiency for the primary ship task - making dough.

The pirate/griefer/noble scion of PvP play is not in it for money. They are not going to earn money during PvP. 60% of zero profit is zero credits. So the crew is 'free'. Furthermore, the aggressor is actively looking for combat and spending a higher percentage of time in combat, thus garnering more benefit for the zero cost.
A 400% increase in efficiency in primary task at effectively zero cost.

This is of course in addition to numerical advantage making the improvements exponential, rather than linear. ie: a 4-man aggressor wing, each operating at 400% effectiveness. This shifts the asymmetry from being 4-1 to being 16-1!
 
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