Will Multi-Crew let us act as a Taxi Service for other CMDRs?

I was in game last night with a friend, who was Outfitting a Hauler to use as a Taxi ship, as he was in the process of ferrying ships from one station to another.

He joked that once multi crew is implemented he could just grab a lift in my ship instead and save the trouble.


That got me thinking - will that be possible with multi-crew? I haven't seen that mentioned yet.


Could a friend join my crew, and then we both travel in my ship to a different station, where my friend disembarks and purchases their own new ship, or gets into their stored ship at the destination?


What if multi crew features allowed people to act as "Taxi Rats"?
 

Robert Maynard

Volunteer Moderator
I like the idea of players being able to be taken as passengers on other ships (Uber in space? ;)), however, multi-crew raises a few other issues from what I have read:

1) When a player crew for another player, what happens if the player whose ship is being crewed logs off but the crew member is still playing - freebie escape pod to the last docked station / embarkation station?
2) If a player chooses to stop crewing for a ship when docked, where do they go? Are they dropped, possibly shipless, at the current station? If the station / planetary base / etc. where they leave the ship has no shipyard, are they marooned?
3) What happens if a crew-member wants to leave the game when the owner of the ship does not?
 
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I like the idea of players being able to be taken as passengers on other ships (Uber in space? ;)), however, multi-crew raises a few other issues from what I have read:

1) When a player crew for another player, what happens if the player whose ship is being crewed logs off but the crew member is still playing - freebie escape pod to the last docked station / embarkation station?
2) If a player chooses to stop crewing for a ship when docked, where do they go? Are they dropped, possibly shipless, at the current station? If the station / planetary base / etc. where they leave the ship has no shipyard, are they marooned?
3) What happens if a crew-member wants to leave the game when the owner of the ship does not?

I guess they'll teleport you on the last (owned by you) ship you were on, and that will be it.
 
I was in game last night with a friend, who was Outfitting a Hauler to use as a Taxi ship, as he was in the process of ferrying ships from one station to another.

He joked that once multi crew is implemented he could just grab a lift in my ship instead and save the trouble.


That got me thinking - will that be possible with multi-crew? I haven't seen that mentioned yet.


Could a friend join my crew, and then we both travel in my ship to a different station, where my friend disembarks and purchases their own new ship, or gets into their stored ship at the destination?


What if multi crew features allowed people to act as "Taxi Rats"?

This idea is spot on. You should really post this in the suggestions thread.

I love ideas that adds to the variety of the game. This one comes with almost zero extra development cost. Even if you are only allowed to disembark in stations where you have a stored ship, it would be a great addition.
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1) When a player crew for another player, what happens if the player whose ship is being crewed logs off but the crew member is still playing - freebie escape pod to the last docked station / embarkation station?

I suppose multi-crew ship will be owned by entire crew, not by single CMDR who initially bought that ship. If one crew member logs off then another player can take his/her seat and continue the travel.
 
I'm not sure about what should happen to the "passenger" player in the event of the "taxi driver" player (the ship-owner) unexpectedly logging out.

I suppose FDev must have some sort of general solution in mind for that problem, as part of their overall plans for Multi-Crew stuff though..?

We wouldn't need bespoke "Taxi" content or assets either - I hope that Multi-Crew will allow players to take on the "Taxi Driver" role just by assigning "Permissions" to "guest" commanders who come aboard the ship:

Presumably Multi-Crew will offer a number of Bridge roles that "guest" Commanders can choose from (Engineering, Navigation, Weapons, etc) that make up a Multi-Crew Wing.

I think FDev should allow us the option to give a Bridge Commander a "No Role" designation, or "No Permissions" or something, to allow them to just sit in a seat on the Bridge and not have access to ship systems, or to just have Read Only access to ship UI.

The important thing is that Multi-Crew should be flexible enough that we can do stuff like this.

Allowing Multi-Crew Bridge Commanders to access the Shipyard (to buy new ships and access stored ships) directly from another player's ship whilst docked, seems like it would be easy enough a thing for FDev to implement. It would seemingly allow for simple taxi gameplay in the same way as fuel limpets happen to simply allow for refueling services to emerge from players.

Seems like an easy enough thing for FDev to implement, and doesn't seem unbalancing from the face of things, but I'm not expert obviously :eek:
 
It's a nice idea, but it depends on how FD implement multi-crew. I've got a suspicion that they'll do it like CQC as it would be easier for them as it solves all the problems of what happens if someone logs off.
 
I wonder - how will a taxi service impact permit systems?

Say that I transport a friend to the founder system. My ship and I as a pilot HAVE access to the system but my passenger do not.

It would be reasonable that I could indeed transport people there and they could buy stuff and then leave or do stuff insystem.

But once they leave they will not be able to jump back by themselves.
 
I wonder - how will a taxi service impact permit systems?

Say that I transport a friend to the founder system. My ship and I as a pilot HAVE access to the system but my passenger do not.

It would be reasonable that I could indeed transport people there and they could buy stuff and then leave or do stuff insystem.

But once they leave they will not be able to jump back by themselves.
Well I could imagine it wouldn't be 'that' big of an issue even with getting people into permit systems, they can't really enter it again on their own, sure they might be able to go to a location and for example buy a ship and setup at founders world.

And you might argue that it 'could' be unfair to those that don't have friends to get them into such locations, but is it? I don't really think so.

But yes, in terms of taxi it would be quite cool, but yeah it does bring into question, how people will join/leave a ship? what if they go somewhere where they have no ship or similar of their own?
 
I like the idea of players being able to be taken as passengers on other ships (Uber in space? ;)), however, multi-crew raises a few other issues from what I have read:

1) When a player crew for another player, what happens if the player whose ship is being crewed logs off but the crew member is still playing - freebie escape pod to the last docked station / embarkation station?
2) If a player chooses to stop crewing for a ship when docked, where do they go? Are they dropped, possibly shipless, at the current station? If the station / planetary base / etc. where they leave the ship has no shipyard, are they marooned?
3) What happens if a crew-member wants to leave the game when the owner of the ship does not?

Escape pods are the answer. And the source of all the slaves in the galaxy.
 
I like the idea of players being able to be taken as passengers on other ships (Uber in space? ;)), however, multi-crew raises a few other issues from what I have read:

1) When a player crew for another player, what happens if the player whose ship is being crewed logs off but the crew member is still playing - freebie escape pod to the last docked station / embarkation station?
2) If a player chooses to stop crewing for a ship when docked, where do they go? Are they dropped, possibly shipless, at the current station? If the station / planetary base / etc. where they leave the ship has no shipyard, are they marooned?
3) What happens if a crew-member wants to leave the game when the owner of the ship does not?

I am fairly sure the answer to all these and other questions will be: when in doubt, have the player reappear where they parked their own ship.
 
While that sounds likely, it would be a bit disappointing, in my opinion.

Not as disappointing as being stranded at a station in the back-end of nowhere for three hours, trying to catch a ride, I imagine.

I'm happy to wait for a train for about thirty minutes IRL. I'd be happy to wait for a spaceship for about three minutes during my leisure time of gaming!
 
I bet it's in no way connected to your physical location. ED doesn't have the concept of "player character is at station", in fact ED doesn't have the concept of a "character without a vehicle".

If you can take player A from station X to station Y and once there he's got no ship, then what? Without a ship a player cannot interact with anything because the player IS a ship. Sure the system can give him a free sidewinder when he "leaves" the multi crew session ship but that wouldn't be abused right? ;)

Here's my guess on how multi crew will work:

Player A _invites_ player B to crew his ship. Player B gets disconnected from his P2P instance no matter where he is (might have a distance limit) and teleported (new P2P instance) to player A's ship. When player B leaves player A's ship, he will re-spawn in his old location.

Why will it be like this? It's the path of least resistance when it comes to implementing the feature, a path often taken by FD. I doubt they will modify the core game to support characters that are completely disconnected from vehicles, because that's easy to get completely wrong and can cause implementation issues if they ever want to add FPS gameplay.

Multi Crew will be just like wings, another form of a P2P instance.
 
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