According to eve lore, crew actually do exist on regular ships so here’s a thought. I’ve always seen a ship piloted by a capsuleer in terms that the capsule temporarily melds with the ships cockpit and essentially assumes direct control over everything. But apparently by lore even capsuleer ships crew themselves. Why not add a small mechanic of choosing crew?
Crew might as well just be NPC purchased (similar to blueprints) they would also probably range in overall strength, as well as having LP based purchasable crewmen or even pirate crewmen. Some could even be dropped in wrecks.
Crew size would be determined by ship sized (say something like 5/10/15/20 etc depending on ship size), have its own “bay” (such as a drone or fuel bay) and provide minor, secondary bonuses to the ship such as reload speed for gunnery sergeants, engineering bonuses for ship scientists, or other positive choices. It would also allow a few roleplay elements and give more life to the “livestock” category.
Could also add a segue towards boarding mechanics but that’s for another time and another idea.
For general crew concepts though, would this be more of just another minmaxing hassle or would y’all think it would offer another fun thing to do with fitting and creating a ship?
This creates power creep, or nerfs everything if you don’t take the perfect crew. Either way is bad.
All that needs happening is a RNG generated “Crew Deaths” line on the kill mail to make the point that our ships have crew. We already have stats for average crew sizes, Take start time of damage and end time to generate a ‘how likely were crew to escape’ number within a range, and hey presto, we have a number for crew deaths.
Items that drop in wrecks are called mods.
Items that escape with the pod are called implants.
Items that are destroyed with the ship are called rigs.
What you’re asking for is basically adding an extra slot to one of the above.
With regards to boarding, most ships in eve last a matter of seconds under fire. How much of a boarding mechanic can you realistically have in such a short space of time to make a worthwhile addition to the game?
Boarding structures or capitals, maybe. But everything else is too small.
I would say a crew mechanic could be good if done right, but I am not sure if introducing such core mechanic so late into the game life-cycle would be a good idea
