Hello Commanders!
Just clarify my statement about not wanting Commanders to only ever train one or two fighter crew.
It's absolutely not that we want to force players to continually cycle through new crew (which is why we'll hopefully get around to making a change here), it's because we want to retain jeopardy. If the only risk was some extra credits cost then we think the risk would be too easy to mitigate.
Part of the concept of attachment with crew is knowing that you have kept them alive during situations where you *might* have lost them.
hope this makes some sense.
To echo what has already been stated here...no, it makes no sense to me at all.
Let's take Fire Emblem as an example here.
The reason characters (who make up your army) in Fire Emblem are memorable and engaging is
not because Fire Emblem has perma-loss (which it intentionally allows to be mitigated via Aum Staff [revive a dead character] & heavy use of save/loading, both things that Elite clearly cannot have). It is because every character has a unique design, a unique background, unique dialogue, and most importantly
are there with you, fighting throughout the duration of the entire game. Characters that have steep recruiting requirements, or are only there for a chapter or two and then disappear forever, are not memorable whatsoever - and neither are any characters that you let die as soon as they appear.
This is why, when I play any Fire Emblem game, I abuse save/loading to the maximum to make sure every character is alive at the end - because it comes with a big payoff: At the end of every Fire Emblem game, every character will have something to say, to you, to each other, and the ending cutscenes will include a little thing on every character explaining what happens to them afterwards. It's intensely satisfying to see this army you've accumulated over time, these characters you know and have overcome so many struggles with, reach the end and be given a worthy conclusion.
Fire Emblem is considered good because of that (and the tactics). It is
not because Fire Emblem has permadeath in it (which again, I must stress, it *intentionally* allows save/load scumming & the Aum staff, so it's a mechanic that is - ought to be, in our case - unique to the format of games with save/loading), though
some players do enjoy the
entirely optional Hard Modes where saving is limited or even disabled.
If you want us to be more attached to our NPC crew, then improve upon how NPC crew works. Allow us to *see* them on our bridges. Give NPC crew more things they can do for us on our ships. Make it so they can participate in mining operations with us. This is an area that is ripe for using your creativity, is it not?
If you want to introduce more risk in the game, then you really ought to start with balance issues. From what I've seen many players these days are ready to welcome a complete removal of Engineers (here's one example thread, there are more out there
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showt...ck-if-Fdev-completely-did-away-with-engineers), let alone an overhaul/redo of them with a de-emphasis on "definite upgrade" and more "interesting & worthwhile tweaks". And even without Engineers, hitpoint inflation - an issue that *surely* you've seen brought up time and time again - is a big culprit when it comes to removing risk. And, of course, there's the constant tug-of-war with credit income vs running costs.
Perma-loss is not, and never will be, an appropriate answer in any game that lacks a save-state system with quicksaving, quickloading, and other similar features. It just does not work in the format here with Elite Dangerous.
p.s. I'll at least admit, as I've noticed before, there *is* a contigent of masochists begging for punishment who would *love* to see you add an entirely optional Iron-Man mode, somehow...personally I think it should remain that they can simply enforce their ideal rules upon themselves without hurting the rest of the community, but I digress.
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Too bad. There's certainly plans to do that. Although as everything it will be purlely optional.
As it should be, which was rather his point in the first place.
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Here's what I'd like to see this system become.
Basics
Crew should be treated (mechanically) in the same way as ships.
Hire as many as you like, assign X to your ship where X is the number of additional seats it has.
If you switch ships, transfer X crew over to the new ship where X is the number of additional seats it has.
Hm, I'd rather have X crew stick with ship X, and ship Y requires another Y crew, especially when the number of seats per ship can (lore-wise) vary widely. Perhaps have a settings option to allow both methods?
Any excess crew are on "shore leave" and remain at the station where you left them.
Transfer crew from station to station (as with ships).
Active crew are paid one rate, inactive crew are paid a much smaller retainer.
Okay, with you so far....
If crew stay on shore leave for too long there is a chance they will quit, this chance is based on their rank/ability (higher skilled crew are more likely to seek work elsewhere). They may warn you first, and this ought to give you the chance to transfer them and make them active.
Here I am absolutely *against* this. Many players may have sudden prolonged absences that cannot be helped, and they shouldn't be punished for doing so by having their long-established crew members disappear into the ether on them during their absence. Keep it a *player* choice, please!
Roles
Crew on a ship can be assigned roles; fighter, turret control (or whatever it's called currently), countermeasures, etc.
I would like this, particularly with counter-measures...I have never liked trying to use an ECM properly. Particularly when it's so much easier and more effective to pack on shield boosters instead (and not so much point defense, sadly.)
*Looks over at Sandro meaningfully*
Crew member(s) assigned to the fighter role (you can assign 1 crew per fighter bay), will be able to launch in a fighter. This is more or less exactly what we have today.
The crew member assigned to the turret control role gives a boost to turret performance based on their rank/advancement
The crew member assigned to the countermeasures role will control your ECM, point defence, etc (not chaff), and their performance will be based on their rank/advancement.
This roles concept can be expanded upon in future updates, adding new roles, and having the crew member rank/advancement add a bonus to whatever they are assigned. This will further differentiate ships which can have crew from those that cannot (ships will need some re-balancing to account for this) as well as differentiating ships with crew vs those with empty seats.
Different ranks in different roles? That sounds pretty neat, to me. To go back to my Fire Emblem comparison, it's like the weapon proficiency levels. Characters that could get S in 3 weapon ranks were the best!
Risk/Reward
The rewards are clear (above) so what about risk. Losing the crew member is nonsensical (everyone posting so far has given adequate reasoning here) but this is a game so if that was the only complaint we could perhaps live with it, however it's not. The real complaint, IMO, is that the time/CR/etc invested in a crew member are too easily lost and that the penalty is too harsh (perma death tends to be considered harsh, in a game).
So, instead of perma-death, how about if the crew member advancement suffers from ship destruction. In short, all active crew suffer XP loss on "death" (ship destruction). This is a common mechanic in many roleplaying games and it works quite well. A careful pilot's crew will advance slowly, if s/he takes risks they may advance faster, but if the risk proves too much they're destroyed and some advancement is lost.
Ewww, no way!
If we don't lose our Pilot Federation ranks when we die, then neither should our crew. If Sandro is trying to say Elite is supposed to be that punishing, then they need to make it so from the ground up, not just weirdly only apply it to SLF pilots.
For the record I've never played any RPG game where there's XP loss on death, either....
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What I don't understand is why the NPC's don't use telepresence to get to your ship anyway and it being completely risk free.
Oh, YOU!
Really, that word Telepresence needs to be retconned out of existence. Just erase the word and pretend it never happened, we'd all embrace that change, I promise, Sandro!
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I'm afraid I still can't wrap my head around the thinking, especially as it relates to other aspects of the game that are "safe" from death like ship rebuy, engineered modules, micro-materials, etc. But thank you for engaging in the conversation anyway.
For the record, here are my own favorite ideas (from most to least favored) for keeping some sense of cost/risk without entirely losing crew:
* At the rebuy screen, crew demands a salary raise to stay with you. (Up to some sane cap, obviously paying 90% of your income doesn't make much sense).
They already take an exorbitant salary as it is, so the only way I'd be happy with this is if the current rates were lowered significantly and instead their current rates become the new salary caps. Otherwise, my vote (such as it is or isn't) is going to be a "No" here.
* After losing a ship, crew is unavailable for a week or two such that you can't set them as "active". They're in some sort of "recovering" state.
That's far too lengthy an interruption to the action. I would make it a few hours to a day (as in, 12 hours) at most.
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PvP wise getting ganked will happen. This is not a normal situation and not easy to control
PvE I take my highly ranked crew. That's fine.
Again. Even if I lost my crew member tonight I'd be fine with it
Personally, I think you are a glutton for punishment. I would not be fine with it whatsoever were I in your shoes.
