Weird, Sick, Possibly Demented Suggestion

You’ve almost described the VIP mission mechanic in Pardus.

Except, instead of just being a rank hit if you lose/fail to return the VIP (which, in that game, is only loosely connected to standings), they have you do things with the VIP: you either gain X amount of XP with the VIP on board (which usually meant kill a bunch of NPCs within a certain time limit, which you could easily mess up because the game is semi-turn-based), or take the VIP from point A to point B for a reasonably nice payout.

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Amarr uses a lot of minmatar slaves for its ships baed on lore. Sanshas incursion fleet NPCs are all captured slaves turned zombie. Then of course lore wise 20 isk would feed, house and take care of a family of 4 for life. So if we had to “pay” for ships crews even a BS would cost us less than the ammo we shoot in a mission each time we go out.

So if they go out and come back even once each person would be set up for the rest of their lives most likely. That sort of riches would greatly encourage participation for a lot of people.

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What I miss from other games is that your ship crew or officers can level up to provide some additional advantages, if you lose crew, you lose these advantages. Here everything revolves around your brain only and implants in it, or drugs. Its like CCP never planned to add crews, even for fighters. :disappointed:

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I can just imagine what sort of balance nightmare such a thing would be. Ironically they have the means to implement this with higher levels of implants. Just have implants 11-20 be ship crew positions to add to the stats. But balancing existing ships, modules and implants with these new additions would be something not fun imo.

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I would love and hate to see that in my aggregated character stats :smiley:

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More love than hate?

I like that idea, but could be a balance nightmare. They’d have to rebalance missions and especially incursions to account for the bonuses a max level crew would give. IIRC they briefly had something similar for industry where you could hire specialists to increase various probabilities, but it didn’t last long…at least I think it was this game lol.

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Yes, main argument was that people dont use these crews as much as designers wanted…

While it was conflict driver and people were in effect fighting in game over something caused by this design.

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Back when we had to pay to upgrafe our clones, there was always a complaint that this actually discouraged PvP. Pilots with lots of skill points risked far more isk just to upgrade the clone than to buy a replacement ship.

I’m worried crew would be the same. People would not risk them for fear of loss leading to less conflict.

The other problem is scaling this properly. My frig may have 0-2 others on board. Do they provide the same boost as the small city population working on a titan? Can I sell my crew and if so… How are they transferable? After all a prize crew could be a valuable asset. Yet the 2 man prize crew on my frig aren’t going to make any difference to the 50k+ crew on a super carrier.

I think it’s the actual mechanics of how to make crews work that are far more problematic and hindering any release of this concept.

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I’d say make crew similar to a ship fitting slot in package deals like “Crew, Battleship” or “Crew, Destroyer” that would have the same chance of being dropped or destroyed as any other module. If you wanted to go crazy, you could have multiple crew slots for larger ships like “Crew, Battleship Gunnery” and “Crew, Battleship Repair” or even have separate crew types for different T1 and T2 hulls of the same size classes. Crews would gain XP and have levels from, say, 0-5 with like a 2% bonus in whatever per level. Crews could be removed and bought and sold either through market or contracts. Maybe manufacture crews through PI, or just buy them from NPCs as an ISK sink.

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Ironically you could use crews to replace the attribute implants. Everyone gets the standard crew, say equivalent to a +3 implant set, and better crews would give better stats but only if you are in that ship. You could close the gap more by making it a +4 all around bonus just to be in a ship and having one “gold” or “veteran” crew member on board would give you +5s.

This could entirely do away with attribute implants at the same time then.

The idea of extremely charismatic but otherwise useless crew appeals to me immensely

But attributes are tied to learning not crew. Plus you punish people for being in a pod

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Being in a pod doesnt contribute to spaceships blowing up. So why would you want to “stay” in your pod? Death cloning home to reship is a thing you know. Nevermind you now have a choice if you want the attributes or not.

Yet for curiousities sake what benefit is there in your opinion to actually being in a pod?

Because I can escape with my pod and still have my implants which improve my attributes.

Additionally as a trader, I may use jump clones to switch regions to update orders and only use a ship for collection meaning I am rarely in one. Heck, I could trade only in amarr and not a trade hubs and not even need a ship but would be penalized under your suggestion.

Plus why should I have to switch to my best ship everytime I return to port just to get the best bonuses. That seems excessive and annoying.

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This old Chronicle short story is about a crewman and it gives some idea on what they do on a ship, crew escape pods, etc.
All These Lives Are Fit to Ruin

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So you escape in your pod. You would only lose out on a few minutes or hours by your own choice correct?

So as a trader you arent really actually playing Eve then? Seeing as Eve is about flying spaceships, heck even spinning your ship in a station is part of the game.

Best ship? You imply that this might be excessive and too much time to attain. You realize that can be balanced right?

You would want it easy enough to get but also not so terribly easy. It shouldnt be a burdensome thing. The main reason is to get rid of attribute implants at the same time while creating a different outlet. The time and effort it takes to attain the upper echelons would be the balance issue for CCP. It would allow for some player driven choice or interaction with consequences that arent overly punitive as you have so suggested.

Most pods from what I studied were empty. The avg price for a pod was 110mil when I did it, the at the time current price for a +4 implant set. While most were empty, likely in the 60% + range.

This would create a minimum of at least +3 or +4 sets for everyone with +4 and +5s being fairly easy to obtain and not burdensome for players. Something you could attain on multiple ships by you know… undocking and playing the game instead of spending time in a pod running for your life or sitting in station rotating in that shiny Genolution Gold Pod all day crunching numbers.

I like the idea of guys Manning your ships. I been wanting to rerun some of the old training missions and lock the people in my vault next to the frozen corpses if they don’t put enough space turtle was on my ship… MAKE IT SHINE!!!
FaithfulFaintBonobo-max-1mb

Fly Shiny

Isn’t that the whole Idea of a thread thou :] to bring peoples mind’s together on an idea and expand on it, just saying ^_^.

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