While it certainly is very interesting and intriguing in a single player environment, in an MMO, you’ll have a genuine nightmare on your hands. You think golden ammo is bad?
Imagine requiring multiple hundred crewmembers that you will lose upon the death of your ship, just to take off. Imagine each of these requiring to go through a month long skill-plan to unlock the full functionality of your ship. Imagine certain functions to be only unlockable (temporary) by a special Plex injection. Imagine having to redo this for every, EVERY single ship you have.
You have no idea what you are inviting to this game when your cosing up to this idea, it will be nothing short of the total end of autonomy for all factions that are not part of the biggest nullsec corps, if not the end of the game itself. I’d rather not.
Thanks for all the replies. Sounds like a few of you have givem this a great deal of thought. Just trying to think of possible expansion ideas etc. obviously I’d be concerned about over complicating, micromanaging, etc. as well. It sometimes feels a little odd to me that I’m controlling a 300m space ship, and there is literally no one else ‘technically’ on board.
There used to be crew complement numbers for Pod Piloted ships back on the old official EvE wiki-ish thing.
Not sure if they have been replicated elsewhere.
Crews could be implemented in EvE, but there are a few drawbacks to consider.
First how would they be implemented - Just another mod to be replaced like a prop or a shield bit would be the simplest implementation - but then what would a crew do that any other mod wouldn’t?
The more lore specific way would be to have individual ships have crews that get better over time offering some sort of bonus - but that would only last until the ship was deconstructed - by repackaging or destruction. That would actually increase risk adversity, as people might not want to lose their well crafted crews.
However the real reason crews aren’t in game? As Space Gods - crews don’t matter one whit. They are at best cargo.
However, having said this, I wouldn’t mind that crew complements were mentioned on the ship description. To me you could calculate how many crew members you have gotten killed over your space career - and that supports the dystopian fantasy that is EvE.
–Gadget occasionally remembers to water and feed her crews…
Fleet Member : ’ Woah ! Hold on. Crew member A is still eating his crunchy nut cornflakes. Crew member B is taking the mascot dog for a walk. Crew member C is at the dentist. Crew member D is sleeping…etc, etc ’
From what legend says one attack/ability used murdered 3/4ths of the crew
I personally like the concept of hiring officers and such sadly it goes against the lore established as capsuleers. It would make much more sense if you are an empire ship that uses 100% crew as they have a captain/bridge with officers.
Regarding this particular bit, while its useful to get a general idea, CCP has come out more recently to acknowledge that its generally innacurate to lore/long out of date/moderately out of line with the actual sizes of ships
Still a helpful snapshot for what its worth though
I believe it was torfifranz that was adamant about the ships having crews. You shouldn’t really need them at all in this setting, considering that rogue drones can operate without onboard crew. So even if ships did have crews at one point, it would be easy enough to suggest that ships have been improved over the course of the last 20 years.
I do still like the idea of officers in some capacity though, which i guess is why i paired it with the rts concept for a companion game / feature.
They still do have duty officers, away teams, and a mess of red shirts to kill off in that game. The duty officer placement makes your ship run more efficient in those areas. Doing all that micro management becomes a bear and you eventually end up ignoring it. Since you never set a foot on a planet in EVE, away teams to explore planets and stations would seem pointless. The whole crew thing wouldn’t be a very popular aspect in this game, without the ability to utilize them in a 3D environment.
I 've always assumed that one of the main reasons a capsuleer ship is superior to a standard vessel is that it requires less crew. Less space taken up by life support and crew quarters means more space for squeezing in that one extra 1400 artillery and larger shield generator. It would also be fair to assume that as a capsuleer’s skills increase, they need for human crew continues to decrease.
Another thing is who would willingly work for some capsuleers? Imagine you walk into your new employer’s hangar only to see a line of identical Catalysts stretching as far as the eye can see. The rational response would be to immediately think “Nope”, and get out as fast as you can.
I vaguely recall an article in E-On (the eve online magazine) which talked about it. I think it didn’t happen as it didn’t really add much to the game.
It only seems odd because you’re still thinking like a baseliner. Capsuleers are star-gods who have to die in order to be equipped with their first clone in order to fly their first ship. The crews are just as expendable as the amunition in your guns.
