While capsuleers render traditional command crews obsolete, larger ships still rely on personnel to maintain and operate subsystems that automation or drones can’t cover. In EVE’s lore, crew numbers are real, even if largely abstracted in gameplay.
What if they weren’t?
What if managing what crew you had on your ship helped improve the specialization of your ship even further beyond modules and rigs? Allowing specialized ships to specialize just that little bit harder, and for others to help fill gaps where they are lacking.
You could use Crew to help expand the metagame around fittings, and add those little efficiencies and improvements a lot of fitting experts like to find and work on. It also can add another thing players need to pay attention to over time with their ships, meaning a slightly greater reliance on industry and more goods, in this case npc people, that need to be moved around the cluster in bulk.
I propose Ship Crews as a feature in the following ways separated into two Distinct components. The first is Crews themselves for all ships larger than frigates, and the second and more Meta focused would be Specialists that would behave more like rigging modules.
Crews
Crews are required for all ships larger than a Frigate and are treated similarly to Ammo that allows the ship to use its Role Bonuses more effectively based on how much crew is aboard.
This would be broken into three tiers. The Lowest of the tiers being Uncrewed.
Uncrewed - Ships that have Zero or less than 25% of their crew requirement fulfilled. This should cause a 2-3% drop in Ship Role Bonuses as the ship cannot operate efficiently without full crew bonuses onboard. The exact number would be dependent on what exactly the maximum crew count for any ship is.
Example, a Thorax Cruiser might have a maximum crew quantity of 250. If they have less 63 crew the ship would be considered Uncrewed and have the maximum debuff. Notable not your Skill Based Roles as that comes from the Capsuleer, not the ship and crews.
You might say “the Thorax doesn’t have a Role Bonus!” And you would be correct. In which case the loss is based on what crew is expected to fill this slot. In this case Gallente Crew, who provide a 2-3% Hybrid Tracking Bonus. At Uncrewed this would instead by a 2-3% Hybrid Tracking malus to the ship.
Everything between Uncrewed to the next tier up, Crewed, would have an ever decreasing debuff until you reached the Crewed tier.
Crewed - This would be a ship as it currently is in game now. With the minimum amount of crew to operate at peak efficiency. You get full Role Bonuses, and no crew bonuses as there aren’t any extra bodies doing the work on board.
Using the Thorax again this could be around 125 crew. You are suffering no negation due to a crew loss, but also getting no additional benefit from their presence. And from here to the next tier you would see a slow and gradual improvement to the maximum possible crew bonuses at, Fully Crewed.
Fully Crewed - Your ship has a surplus of crew members, allowing it to perform even better at its task as the crew isn’t overworked at their jobs. In the case of the largest ships available this could be quite an expensive thing to try and maintain.
Once more our Thorax is our test subject, coming in at 250 crew. This gives the ship a 2-3% bonus to its Hybrid Tracking OR whatever bonus the specific crew on the ship gives.
This is where some meta trickery could come in with filling your ship with crew. The Bonuses only come from the crew that is the most populace onboard.
So for example if I fit my Thorax with 250 crew but 188 of them are Caldari and 62 are gallente? I won’t get the Gallente crew bonus to hybrid tracking. I would instead get the Caldari Crew bonus to targeting speed. But due to the Caldari only being 75% of the crew onboard, I only get a 1.5-2% bonus to targeting speed. Not the full expected bonus of 2-3%.
This will urge players to always make sure they have a full crew of the crews they want for the ship to get the best bonuses they can get. If more nuance was wanted maybe you could split the crew bonus between the first highest crew population and second highest, but at that point I feel already very soft bonuses will become entirely inconsequential, but it could make for some very Niche fits.
Crew Management
Crew management would now become a fairly important, but not all encompassing focus, of ship pilots. You always want your ship to be fully crewed where possible, and not uncrewed if at all possible. And crew can be endangered or even killed in combat.
During normal operation or even combat, the crew are not in any danger of casualty or death until you take a particularly high damage hit that removes more than half of your armor or shield hp in a single volley. Crew loss from this could be used to simulate systems overloading from an unexpected strain, but would otherwise be quite low.
When the crew really takes damage it is during structure damage. If your armor and shields have been stripped away, structure is now where you suffer as each hit will result in more and more casualties until you reach zero crew.
Notably however, if you are killed fast in structure there is actually more of a chance for the crew to survive the encounter as drops in the wreck, but there would still be a very high casualty rate from destruction. As high as 60-70% of crew would die in the destruction of your ship, and nearly 100% in the event of a very sudden ship destruction, IE less then 5 seconds from reaching structure to ship death.
This means if you are constantly getting into fights where your ship is outgunned and getting smacked around, but managing to survive, you may make it out with less then optimal crew counts.
The other way to damage crew specifically, would be through the Breacher Pods introduced with the Deathless ships. In addition to the damage over time these pods do, they also start killing crew at a set rate. Meaning your crew bonuses will also start to take hits until you have no crew.
This makes ships with less crew and more automation, while much more rewarding and easier to fit, a bit riskier as they are less “Crew Tanked” when ambushed and hit by breacher pods. And those that survive after the destruction of a ship can be picked up, and put to work by the victor.
Variants
Crew could come in a vast amount of variants from the Faction based and basic crews that only provide the very minimum. To much more advanced Tech II, Faction or even Pirate crews. Meaning the more expensive and rare the crew is, the more valuable it is to fit your ships with them.
That said these alternate variants should never provide too much larger a bonus, but simply more of them.
For example, Tech I Amarrian crews could a 2% bonus to capacitor recharge. But Tech II Amarian crews provide a 2% bonus to Capacior Recharge and a 2% bonus to armor repair speed. Supporting active tanking.
And there is no reason crews could be limited to one set of bonuses. You could have Amarrian Engineer crews that bonus Cap Recharge. Or you could have Amarrian Armor Techs who bonus your Armor Repair. Giving a vast variety and intricate new system to balance with your ships.
Faction and Pirate Faction equipment could provide two normal bonuses and 1 lesser bonus. So Imperial Navy Crew provide a 2.25% Cap Recharge Bonus, 2.25% Armor Repair Speed, and a 1% Energy Turret Tracking Speed.
Blood Raider Crews provide 2.25% Cap Neut and Drain amounts, 2.25 bonus to Stasis Web Range, and a 1% bonus to Energy Turret damage.
Variants could be made for all factions and many redundant ones made allowing a large market. And then Officer level crews could be extremely rare rewards allowing for possible 4 different bonuses unique to them.
Recruitment
Now the other question, how would one get crews? You can’t just make crews with Industry, but they can be recruited. Using Planetary Infrastructure you could recruit colonists into basic ship crews of specific empire types. Those said crews could then be converted through industry using a similar method to blueprints into higher tier versions. Factions could provide blueprints for Crew Training facilities that will take Crew plus certain faction items or equipment and make them into that faction type of crew after a set amount of time.
Not only do more advanced crews come from PI and new industry chains there, but very basic crews could be seeded into markets at dynamic rates based on traffic. Meaning there would always be basic Tech I variants available, but Tech II and above variants would always come from players.
Crews could be sold on the market like normal items, flavored as Capsuleers are simply buying the crew contracts or licensing them. This is a one time payment just like any item, you do not pay crew salaries directly you simply hire them and they get paid by the bodies hiring them out.
Specialists
Now for the second level of Ship Crews, Specialists. This one might be quite a bit more controversial. Specialists are elite officers, individuals who slot into dedicated crew modules and provide moderately powerful, non-stackable bonuses. Like rigs, they enhance roles, but their use is restricted by ship class and slot count. Each ship may only have one of each Specialist type, no duplicates.
These Specialists could have some of the most flavor out of all the new crew numbers. Providing up to 5% bonuses in some cases based on their type. And ships only have so many slots for Specialists. The slots going up based on ship Size.
And while frigates could not fit Crew due to not needing so many if any at all, they could fit a single specialist. A copilot who assists the capsuleer in some specific way.
Frigates and destroyers would have a single specialist.
Cruisers would have two.
Battlecruisers three.
Battleships four.
And Capital ships all would have 5 slots for specialists, and likely some unique for those roles at that.
One important rule for fitting with specialists would be you cannot fit multiple of the same type of specialist, each one has to be unique to the ship. And for this fact no two specialists should have the same bonuses.
Example, a Tier 1 Minmatar Gunnery Expert could provide a Projectile Tracking Speed bonus of 5%, an Amarrian Gunnery Expert would provide an Energy Tracking Speed bonus of 5% and so on. And you could not add a Tier 1 Minmatar Gunnery Expert and a Tier 2 Minmatar Gunnery Expert to the same ship as they both are gunnery, and thus only one can be fit at the same time.
This limits the amount of bonus stacking through crew components that could power scale really badly but encourages experimentation through different types of specialists in different slots. One could even lock the slots, similar to Tech III ship Subsystems, to be for only specific types of Specialists, to help solve the no duplicates system.
Recruitment
Unlike normal crew, Specialists cannot be found aboard stations in common quantities and are entirely optional to ship operation, much like rigs. To make Specialists they must, similarly to crew, be produced through PI or Industrial means flavored to “training”. You require Crew to create Specialists. Expending the crew in the process as they “burn out” from the enhanced training methods used to create a specialist, leaving behind a singular specialist who succeeded in the training programs.
This could be represented with PI as its own industry line requiring input from a few other Tier 2 lines such as nanites and miniature electronics to represent the augmentation of these specific individuals to become specialists. Or this could be handled with space based industry using PI as the resources, creating further demand for PI items in the market.
Faction ranked specialists might be only available through LP store rewards and training industry. And Officer specialists could be recovered from salvage of high level sites. A new type of exploration site, Pirate Prisons or Recruitment Centers could be scanned down, the defenders fought, and sites then hacked to acquire either the ability to train faction Specialists or one or two faction specialists themselves found while looting. Making them a rare commodity, but valuable.
Specialists, like crew, can be sold on the open market between players, but at a much greater individual cost due to their specialized training and nature, and the resources required to make them. And as these would not be seeded into the market by NPC stations, specialists would be an entirely player only market.
And in the event of a ship’s destruction, Specialists can also drop like modules. But at a significantly more severe rate than the average module chance. Allowing them to be salvaged and their contract resold by the pirates.
Closing Statement
I feel adding crew in this way adds a significant and meaningful element to EVE Online. It makes them a part of what you need to consider when outfitting ships, it adds new industry lines and focuses for market players on what to buy and sell. New items to be bought and sold in bulk or even at the high quality high price ends of the spectrum. It also will create new metas and new ways to specialize or diversify ships for even broader roles. Potentially taking ships that under perform in their roles to meet expectations, and take those that specialize to new heights while, ideally, not becoming game breaking in the process.
Also I am under no illusions that this would be a controversial feature, some do not agree with the ships even requiring crew or giving a hard answer to exactly how many crew are on board every ship, but this gives the universe an additional real lived in and logistical feel. It makes loss feel like it has even more consequences in the form of in universe lives, not just the Capsuleer’s life.
For roleplayers like me, it adds quite a bit of flavor to our ships. Making them feel even that much more personal based on what crew we choose to recruit and use onboard. Making our digital spaceships imply a human element to how they work, while also locking down certain ever present questions in the community such as “How much crew does X ship have?”
I am, naturally I am posting this after all, open to opinions and discussion on the idea, I have no doubt there will be plenty of holes in the concept I haven’t thought of or ways this would be abused or otherwise untenable for a game as vast and varied as Eve. Making such a dramatic change to how ships work this late in the game is, honestly, a BIG ask and it would not be a feature that could be approached without serious consideration and developmental testing.
