This^^ Many have asked for this including me ever since Holo-Me came out. Its been discussed many times. The tools are there, they just need to do it. I'm with the OP on this one. GL HF Commander
This^^ Many have asked for this including me ever since Holo-Me came out. Its been discussed many times. The tools are there, they just need to do it. I'm with the OP on this one. GL HF Commander
That's easy - remove each NPC with each MC active. I think everyone would appreciate or "forgive" that mechanic, especially since MC isn't used that often (if at all...).
And when your ship dies, s/he logs off and on again, using different name and avatar.
Your NPCs are always in your ship (any ship) with you.
We know this because if you jump into a sidey, fly to Colonia and then swap into an Annie you will have the choice of up to 3 NPCs available to you.
If your ship, which is carrying your NPCs, is destroyed then they won't be harmed and will be available for duty when you join a new ship.
If, OTOH, you set an NPC to active duty and then your ship gets destroyed, the NPC on active duty will perish while any NPCs not on active duty will survive.
So many questions!
It would seem that every ship, even the smallest Sidey or Eagle, has living quarters somewhere below decks for up to 3 people.
It would also seem that the living quarters are fashioned in such a way that allows the occupants to survive your ship's destruction.
It would also, also, seem that an on-duty NPC inhabits a different part of a ship, which means they die when your ship is destroyed while their shipmates survive.
Now, where's that "placeholder mechanics" thread?
NPC have learned from Harry Potter's invisibility trick. I too want to know how he does it.
I would also like to see my AI crew who gets a significant cut of my profits have their own seat(s) in cockpit. They don't physically sit inside the fighter except for a telepresence like MC.
I also want AI crew to survive mothership destruction and escape in another pod like me. I mean criminal VIP passengers can leave your ship mid space if you let yourself scanned.
I also want AI crew to survive mothership destruction and escape in another pod like me. I mean criminal VIP passengers can leave your ship mid space if you let yourself scanned.
This has something to do with their vision, something something immersion, its Braben's baby and he loves it and us, more important things to focus on, open letter thank you to the devs, no wonder they don't pay attention to these forums.
Why not? I don't even understand how WE survive ship destruction, aside from the fact that it's a game. Maybe there's just enough time to launch an escape pod or two in some of the bigger ships, but the smaller ones should be exploding far too quickly.
The way I see it, they've been incredibly generous by giving us 'telepresence' in which NPCs don't die when you lose the fighter they're in. You've got to do some serious mental gymnastics to justify why we don't just fly ALL our ships with telepresence, now that cat's out of the bag, but hey, at least our NPCs survive when the fragile little fighters get one-shot by an NPC with a perfectly aimed railgun, right?
I can't deny, though, that anything that brings more immersion to the game can't be a bad thing, so bring on visible NPCs! Just please, stop making the game easier. If anything, it needs to be more dangerous than it is. Sometimes, I feel like I'm playing a "Playschool's My First Spaceship" game. Rated PG? More like C for Children. I still have the first NPC I ever paid for because it's just too easy not to lose a ship in this game, even playing in open with the threat of ganking "everywhere", which is easy to avoid if you know what you're doing. She's Elite now, and has been for over a year. I lost her once because of a bug, but because it was a bug, FDEV gave her back after I filed a ticket. They were pretty slick about it too: "SAR found your crew member's pod, safe and sound". I liked that email. So sometimes, they do survive ship destruction....
But I really don't see why anyone should survive ship destruction. The ships in Elite are too small to warrant easy escape. Unless I'm mistaken and they use automated 'ejection' systems to get people out, and the seats themselves become escape pods, which wouldn't be unreasonable or against Elite's rules, and I think I remember reading somewhere that's how it happens. Should be a chance for ejection failure, though. Fighter planes have ejection seats as well, but you aren't pulling the cord if you took rounds straight through the cockpit from another plane, or worse, a missile. Sometimes, you just don't get the opportunity. And I've always found it amusing how easy it is to smash the cockpit canopies on some ships, but hitting the pilot on the other side of that now broken canopy? Not happening. You can drain your entire payload into that hole and the pilot just sits there with a -eating grin on his face.
I kind of wish that Frontier would just let us populate our Ships with NPCs ourselves. Just let us put some bodies in the seats. The create a character system is already in place. It's not like it's a big drain on resources either.
It's a small touch that would make our Ships feel less empty. It would even be a fun little addition for those of us who enjoy to roleplay while we putt around the Galaxy.
It's a small touch that would make our Ships feel less empty. It would even be a fun little addition for those of us who enjoy to roleplay while we putt around the Galaxy.
An anaconda somehow i can pretend around.. a beluga on the other hand feels wrong. Its large enough to have cinemas bars, cruise ship like.. what about the passengers? There's one person on it. Possibly 3 more in the hud ui. Not even close.
Seems more like. Most would get up, look all around your hired merc. Say, how kool.
Then never look again. They are not interactive npc's.
Then never look again. They are not interactive npc's.
I'd love to
- see the crew in the seat,
- have as many as there are free seats,
- have some ship-wide bonuses based on crew skills,
- have the crew survive destruction as they are the only game element that doesn't and severely impact the usability of an SLF.
There's no interaction between player holo mes inside cockpit either, so why not include AI crew?
Probably about time there is an option to see NPC in seats, keep the explorers sane why they do their exploration stuff. I think I would still keep the mechanic of Active NPC perish. Probably not the normal point of view on this as I play Iron man mode anyway.
I cannot think of a good mechanic to penalise some of the NPCs capabilities after ship loss - a half way house if you will. Hopefully someone clever can think of something, as this would gameplay wise be the best compromise. Although we do need some death in the game!
Simon
I cannot think of a good mechanic to penalise some of the NPCs capabilities after ship loss - a half way house if you will. Hopefully someone clever can think of something, as this would gameplay wise be the best compromise. Although we do need some death in the game!
Simon
You mean they should take a bath? They might get wrinkly!
Ahem... so, yes, this is something i'm personally wanting, and i want to assign crew members to ships even if they don't have a SLF bay. If they have a spare seat, plop, in they go. I need my waifus on my bridge
Old image, a couple of them have been replaced. Miranda is now deadly and looks a tad different.
As to why, apart from the obivious, its just not been a priority for FD yet (and maybe they simply don't have plans to do this any time soon), it may be the character portrait tech isn't actually using the same tech as the player generation. In that case, it might not be a simple case of generating an NPC from the same codebase that generates the player models. I would hope it is the same codebase, in which case it should be a relatively simple thing to implement.
I spent about half the time I played for chosing semi-acceptable looking co-pilots, so I second that motion.
Oh, and highheel boots, too.
So much micro-transaction potential
A very good point here. They might as well have better looking NPC (manually created instead of proc-gen) in the store, assuming they also allow crew members to survive or be rescueable.
There are a few things I would like to see changed and while permanent loss of SLF NPCs is one if them, I'm also not in favour of the current state of NPCs. If FDev wanted to add a trade off that NPCs ships would have TLB PAs, reverb torps etc. (or just otherwise be better without being bullet sponges) for my SLF pilot not dying I'd call that win/win. In isolation I agree a change here wouldn't be a good thing, however it still isn't logical to me how I survive a ship being destroyed when the SLF pilot doesn't.
