Thanks for the reply!
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?
The number of seats really isn't an issue. You move over the crew you can fit, which may be 0 if you swap to an eagle etc. I think we ought to be able to take our favourite/best crew member with us, from ship to ship, not have them trapped/locked in just one ship. It also makes far more sense, realism-wise.
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!
Hmm.. yeah, I think I agree. I've had such absenses and it would truly suck to simply "lose" a good crew member for this reason. I was trying to address the issue of retaining crew indefinitely vs how unrealistic that is, but gameplay ought to trump realism every time.
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*
Yeah, it would be awesome to have a crew member you've spent weeks training manning the ECM. The AI would have to mess up, sometimes, but by Elite rank be good enough that a good pilot is happy to have them doing the job.
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!
I wasn't actually thinking that they would have different ranks/skill/ability per-role, simply that an Elite ranked crew would add more to whatever role they are assigned than a lower ranked one. But, individual skill levels per-role would be kinda cool, then you could differentiate NPCs to hire based on those initial skill sets and focus/train particular roles on particular NPCs further differentiating them (making them even more individual, and less like random image + single rank).
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....
First off, I think you're imagining a much larger XP loss/penalty than I'm proposing, what I'm suggesting is not something anyone ought to describe as "punishing". But, I think Sandro is right in that there has to be some sort of penalty for ship destruction, for the crew. For us, we lose CR in rebuy. I think XP loss is the best option, if you've got a better one I'm all ears. Perhaps you'd prefer if we had to pay a "crew recovery" fee to Search & Rescue and wait X mins? (I'm still annoyed by the ship transfer delays, the community ruined a good thing there).
