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Thread: NPC crew for Master Multiperson ship
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KaiaSowaPit
Mon Dec 27, 2004 3:56 am
#14
LRRCP wrote:There is no need, as Players should fill those roles.Says who?
The whole reason fora mulitplayer ship is to take other players as crew into space.Again, says who?
Asking for removal of this requirement moves these ships from MP role into a automated ship which would be more NPC then player.How would making the ship(s) more viable for solo pilots, prevent or discourage those who want to fly with a full player crew from having fun?
And I in now way see how having a NPC gun on a MP ship would give it a more star wars feel.How would you know (and why would you care) if I was flying an MP ship with an NPC gunner? You wouldn't know unless you were aboard my ship, and then guess what? Wow, I'd have a crew and wouldn't need that NPC!
You want more of a Star Wars "feel?" Don't fly anything greater than an Intercepter, and don't use shields or hyperdrives.
You are given multiple ships for a reason and I have found at master level my Oppressor is in fact more capable then my decimator as I have the same weapons and equipment on both ships.Only exception is the armor.What reason? So we can pick the most "capable ship" and not fly or buy the other(s)?
VolvoSsixtyTsix
Mon Dec 27, 2004 5:57 am
#15
Players should fill those roles ? Than why not remove all storm troopers and factional NPCs from the game ? From your argument players should fill this positions. Remove STs from being factional pets remove rebel NPCs. Now players should dress as ST and Rebel Marines. Why, because they should fill this roles. We got factional NPC as pets on the ground same should apply to space.
Fidgiter
Mon Dec 27, 2004 8:25 am
#16
I don't have any problems finding folks eager to take the guns on my Nova and in the unlikely event I can't find them I just take out my X-Wing. I can think of alot of things to improve the MPS experience and NPC gunners isn't on the list.
- Fix the Plasma Fire / Alarm bug
- Mark VI Shield and Armor to compensate for the Multiplayer requirement
- Maneuver compensation for turrets so PLAYERS have better accuracy
- Give more at position abilities for the Operations person and/or give the Pilot the existing abilities
If you have trouble finding a crew for the MPS then you should just go out on a Solo ship. These ships are unique in their role and rather than dilluting their purpose their role should be enhanced.
Notch13
Mon Dec 27, 2004 9:12 am
#17
KaiaSowaPit wrote:
LRRCP wrote:There is no need, as Players should fill those roles.Says who?
The whole reason for a mulitplayer ship is to take other players as crew into space.Again, says who?
Asking for removal of this requirement moves these ships from MP role into a automated ship which would be more NPC then player.How would making the ship(s) more viable for solo pilots, prevent or discourage those who want to fly with a full player crew from having fun?
And I in now way see how having a NPC gun on a MP ship would give it a more star wars feel.How would you know (and why would you care) if I was flying an MP ship with an NPC gunner? You wouldn't know unless you were aboard my ship, and then guess what? Wow, I'd have a crew and wouldn't need that NPC!
You want more of a Star Wars "feel?" Don't fly anything greater than an Intercepter, and don't use shields or hyperdrives.
You are given multiple ships for a reason and I have found at master level my Oppressor is in fact more capable then my decimator as I have the same weapons and equipment on both ships.Only exception is the armor.What reason? So we can pick the most "capable ship" and not fly or buy the other(s)?
I'd have to say SOE says so. So keep posting your petitions, maybe you can work on making missions easier so grouping isn't needed that is another popular dead horse.
The reason it ruins things for people who want to group up to fly a MULTIPLAYER ship is that I doubt I could find players that could beat 70% accuracy while flying anything other than a straight line. It's the reason ground grouping was ruined, no advantage and in fact on the ground a disadvantage to grouping(i.e. splitting xp). Why are people so insistent on removing anything to do with grouping?
As to faction pets on the ground I say fine make the npcs equivalent to ground pets. Everyone knows how useful they are so to make them scale the same I'd say make them 5%, 10% and 15% accuracy and you're right on track with ground pet usefulness. And of course you can only have one out at once.
Movie analogies are useless because then we'd have unshielded TIES and various other things that need fixing or are you going to pick and choose what movie logic is acceptable since it fits your idea?
OddjobXL
Mon Dec 27, 2004 9:39 am
#18
I'm one of those people constantly harping on the lack of continuity with the films in the game. But even I can see where you have to balance some things with that. If you could have one person flying the most powerful class of ships in the game without a crew what would we see in space? Nothing but YTs, Decimators and Novas. No fighters. No need for fighters. No role for fighters. And, as previously mentioned, AI gunners are inhumanely accurate making player gunners obsolete.
Part of the challenge and the fun of a multiplayer ship is getting a crew together and flying around with them. I'm a grown adult with a life and a career. I can only play some evenings and weekends. I don't belong to a PA though my character does live in a player-city. By roleplaying, over time, I've made both IC and OOC friends. And by helping them and them helping me we've become fairly tight. We made new friends as well when JtL came out and spacefaring roleplayers started running across each other...and interacting to cooperate on missions. From this I've made a crew. No PA. No huge amount of time invested in hanging out in starports and begging for help. Just socializing and a bit of roleplaying over time.
If you aren't here for a multiplayer experience there are solo games which will allow you to singlehandedly pilot or man the turrets in YT-class ships. X-Wing Alliance is the best example but you can handle gunnery stations in KOTOR (and I imagine KOTOR II) as wel.
I'd tend to agree there should be a starship repair module for astromech droids but the droids should be risking damage as much, if not moreso, than players trying to put out fires. Folks like medics currently have a role on a starship's crew. I don't see why it wouldn't make sense for droid engineers to have a similiar place onboard.
Other threads have suggested the need for onboard entertainment to pass the time for crewmen not actively engaged in crewing (folks on board to handle repairs or medical duties) and this is something I'd echo. Make us a good holochess game, devs. 
Trienco
Tue Dec 28, 2004 12:25 am
#19
OddjobXL wrote:If you aren't here for a multiplayer experience there are solo games which will allow you to singlehandedly pilot or man the turrets in YT-class ships.
yes, and how many of these games have a ground part, lots of professions to choose from and the OPTION of interacting with other players when you WANT to? if soe wants people to group so damn much then they should maybe start thinking about making grouping an ADVANTAGE instead of desperately trying to make the game as hard and annoying for solo players as possible. mandatory missions in a skill tree that cant be done solo are a joke. hard and tricky, sure, but if the goal is to make them impossible then somebody should start reading the books his co-workers are writing.
look at the corvette. you have people running around for half an eternity trying to find a group for it. and now imagine youre someone who hates to bother or pester players begging for favours.
sorry, but if you dont realize that there are a lot more reasons for people to play mmorpgs except the m part then please show me ever evolving and open ended single player games that offer even half the possibilities of an mmorpgs? other games dont have a problem making it fun for solo players and even more fun for groups, but soe seems to be completely helpless when it comes to making anything fun, so instead of making grouping "more fun" they would rather try to make solo'ing no fun at all.
whats up with solo groups? why did a completely retarded concept like "solo group" ever see the light of day? because solo players where too powerful for the solo missions and soe never considered it either a matter of balancing (too mighty characters) or missing content (no appropriate solo missions). i for one am willing to blame buffs and ridiculous armor, if you need to go solo grouping without composite and fully doped, drugged and drunk, let me know.
you can either make your players WANT to group or you can FORCE them to group. which one sounds like the way to keep your customers? and if they still prefer to solo despite all advantages of groups then why not just accept that? are they paying less than grouping players? have they less right to enjoy the game?
so lets transfer that to mp ships. instead of making them useless for solo players and inferior for groups (notice something?) they should be somewhat inferior for solo players and a big advantage for groups. as long as you're better off with 2 players in seperate fighters than 5 players in a mp ship something is broken. they could go an nerf mp ships for solo players to the point where you need 5 players to even pilot the thing and you would STILL not see more groups in mp ships, simply because they arent worth it.
fixing them would be a start, then think about ways to make them worth the numbers of players it takes. if you need 4 players to use it then it should be at least as "efficient" as 5 solo ships or you will see those very 4 players going up in an mp ship 2 or 3 times before saying "this sucks, ill rather fly my own ship than sitting at a dumb ops console" (well, right now they probably say "this sucks, ill rather fly my own ship than being killed by a buggy plasma leak all day").
but of course, to all those that just want an npc crew to fly their 5mill mass collection of all the best and heaviest components alone and want it to be better than their sp master ship: forget it. they should be able to fly it and have at least a rudimentary way to fight back, but not more. if thats a computer handling the guns with a lousy hit ratio coupled with really heavy shielding or something else doesnt matter so much. but then, its not like they couldnt just get to one of the turrets themselves. so if somebody could at least make the autopilot an autopilot instead of an "have to sit right next to it and hold its hand"-pilot?
Rhysen
Tue Dec 28, 2004 5:44 am
#20
Sorry but no.
A ship with 500k mass crewable by a single player would be the only ship eve flown once Master pilot is attained. All PvP fights would become Decimators vs Nova Couriers vs YT-1300s, with no variation. And massive complaints about the differences between the 3 ships until SOE poured enough vanilla into them to make them exactly alike.
SpaceCrazy
Tue Dec 28, 2004 9:38 am
#21
I'm gonna throw my two cents here as well. I disagree with having NPC crews for multiplayer ships. While it might be Star Wars-y to command NPC's, it doesn't really belong in a multiplayer game, and I am including ground faction troops with that as well, although they are close to useless right now.
The MP ship should be a tad more friendly for solo players to fly around and defend themselves, but a good group of players should be necessary for a fully effective ship. I'd like to see one of the turrets forward-locked for a pilot to use if there is no player manning it. And the possiblity of having an astromech droid to do some repairs when needed. But that's it. Just enough for minimal defensive combat for the solo player.
It's definitely going to be difficult for most people to get a group to crew their ships. Either people are busy doing their own thing, or they want to fly their own ship (either MP or fighter), or on a number of servers there just isn't anyone around.
The MP ship should be a tad more friendly for solo players to fly around and defend themselves, but a good group of players should be necessary for a fully effective ship. I'd like to see one of the turrets forward-locked for a pilot to use if there is no player manning it. And the possiblity of having an astromech droid to do some repairs when needed. But that's it. Just enough for minimal defensive combat for the solo player.
It's definitely going to be difficult for most people to get a group to crew their ships. Either people are busy doing their own thing, or they want to fly their own ship (either MP or fighter), or on a number of servers there just isn't anyone around.
BlkGryphon
Tue Dec 28, 2004 4:22 pm
#22
Personally I like the idea of Faction Pets in space....
BUT..... (Please hear me out before dismissing the idea)
I feel that which Faction pet/Crew Member you have available should be controlled by Rank and Faction.
this should be only available to "Master Pilots" AND dependent upon Rank in the Faction.
The different Faction Crew could be made available at different Rank levels
if my Rank list is incorrect in any way please understand that I used what I found in some post on RANKINGS, and the idea is that the HIGHEST Ranks only would have these Crew Members.
RANK Space Faction Pet/Crew
Private: 200
Lance Corporal: 400
Corporal: 800
Sergeant: 1200
Staff Sergeant: 1600
Staff Corporal: 2000
Warrant Officer II: 2500
Master Sergeant: 3000
Warrant Officer I: 3500
Second Lieutenant: 4000
Lieutenant: 5000
Captain: 5000---------------------------Repair Droid (Needs Repair Kits to fix things)
Major: 5500------------------------------Operations Officer (Co-Pilot)
Lieutenant Colonel: 5500-------------Gunner #1
Colonel: 6000----------------------------Gunner #2
Let me make a couple of comments/observations;
1.The Repair Droid would be able to handle MINOR Repairs (to keep you running until a Crew Member can resolve the Problem).
2.The Operations Officer/Co-Pilot would allow the Pilot to have his Pilot Commands and Droid Commands relayed, thus allowing the Pilot to issue the commands from the Pilot's Chair.
3.All either gunner actually does is hold the guns locked into the forward firing position and allow your Pilot's Trigger(s) to control the Firing (like on a Single Player Ship-not like a turret).
4.The Faction Crew Member can be killed when the ship is destroyed, thus needing to acquire a new Crew Member from the Faction Recruiter.
Please note that NONE of the Faction Crew Positions/Abilities are overpowered.
I would prefer to run with a full crew of Live Friends.... But there are times when my friends are unavailable. This would allow the ships to be ran by a skeleton crew, A live Crew would have many more options and abilities and thus would be the prefered way to fly.
I also want to state that while I like these Ideas, they should be addressed AFTER the other KNOWN BUG's related to Multiplayer Ships have been resolved.
If any of these Ideas would unballance the game then I would say that they should not be implemented, I just don't think that the ideas I have expressed would be unballancing in any way.
Thank you for your indulgence, and your patience.
Dym Mok..
I would prefer to run with a full crew of Live Friends.... But there are times when my friends are unavailable. This would allow the ships to be ran by a skeleton crew, A live Crew would have many more options and abilities and thus would be the prefered way to fly.
I also want to state that while I like these Ideas, they should be addressed AFTER the other KNOWN BUG's related to Multiplayer Ships have been resolved.
If any of these Ideas would unballance the game then I would say that they should not be implemented, I just don't think that the ideas I have expressed would be unballancing in any way.
Thank you for your indulgence, and your patience.
Dym Mok..
Ducimus
Tue Dec 28, 2004 7:17 pm
#23
How about this:
THe only "NPC crew" one would possibly need is the decimator, nova courier or YT-1300.
So, make a droid program. Automated gun turrets. Turrets only return fire on hostles that first initiate attack on your vessel. But since their defensive in nature, give them some decent accuracy.
Make the program cost lots of space, so your droid program options are limited while using it, and it could only reasonably fit in an L6 astromech/flt computer.
THe only "NPC crew" one would possibly need is the decimator, nova courier or YT-1300.
So, make a droid program. Automated gun turrets. Turrets only return fire on hostles that first initiate attack on your vessel. But since their defensive in nature, give them some decent accuracy.
Make the program cost lots of space, so your droid program options are limited while using it, and it could only reasonably fit in an L6 astromech/flt computer.
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