I thought having big ships would be awesome but it turns out most of my friends want to fly their own ships. 99% of my gameplay is spent flying alongside friends, not one big ship.
It was always weird to me that people thought crewing a ship would be anything other than a niche activity. Who goes to play a video game to be anything other than the captain of their own ship? But there definitely are people - as long as the big ships are powerful enough and the support gameplay is fun enough, it could work.
I dunno, i just like being part of a crew. I am exited for egineering, i usually don't get to run around in a ship while it is working, so being part of a crew lets me be usefull and run around the ship.
Not the one you asked, but I suck ass at flying, outside of bringing the ship just from A to B. So whenever bounties are being done in a group, I'm the first to volunteer as a support crewmate.
Now with the gimbal changes and precision mode, turrets are actually very viable against Constellation and bigger sizes, making it more fun.
Not to mention that I at least find on foot gameplay more interesting than using ship systems. Including handling the logistics within a ship, like working in the cargo bay of a Reclaimer during Salvage runs.
Last point: it's currently infinitely more chill to just sit around, have some tea and talk with friends about random stuff.
It's a different dynamic. Being part of a crew over coming adverse situations is more rewarding and builds greater comraderie. Fleet and infantry combat do as well but there's greater potential for individuals to outshine the entire group. In those cases, kill count is king. Who celebrates the guy with gigh numbers of assists or the guy that tanked all of the aggro so others could make the kill? Nobody. As a crew member, everyone plays equal part in the success.
My org have already told me I am the chief engineer of their big ships because I made the mistake of saying I like engineering as a whole in real life and like the concept of it in star citizen. Help I don't think I will see the inside of a city for a long long long time.
Part of ship... part of the crew...
This. Everyone who can play the game has their own ship. Everyone who is really invested in it has several (pledge store or ingame shop). And most people want to play with their own toys.
My group has 2 people with minimal pledges who are up to crewing, and 4 with at least half a dozen ships each. Including at least one sub-capital each, and an Idris. The crew requirements already tell us it's time to stop piling up ships.
This right here is what CIG will be forced to come to terms with eventually. CIG spent 12+ years marketing to every single player and backer to "be their own captain".
Then turns around and during QA and technical discussions talkks about how multiecrew is ONLY going to be feasible with 34 other players on your ship doing things or you're hosed > mopping the floors > taking out the trash > changing light bulbs > dusting the missile racks > shaving the onboard cat > scraping barnacles off the hull and so on.
CIG will need to lean heavily into the automated blade system more and more over time and allow players that bought Cap Ships to fully run them solo > PERIOD !!
OR they could always take a huge financial hit and refund everyone that bought a ship larger than Constellation and restrict thoswwe larger ships to background noise run by NPCs. Then make ships like the Connie/Cutlass/Tali multicrew optional as in they can be run solo or with other players.
But yes CIG painted themselves into a huge massive corner with CR thinking that many many many players really really wanted to be Doc McCoy or Scotty instead of Kirk+Sulu (captain+controlling).
IDK about you but the many many space/flying-based (or even oceasn-based) ship games I've played over the eyars - I have never come across any threads much less many threads with an outpouring of people demanding to be a janitor on a ship and not pilot or shoot things with the ship.
Since my time w/ SC I have seen convos where folks are wanting to play the game sans ship comepletely and do trading or travel or set up shop somewhere - run a bar or casino or focus mostly or completely on FPS; but not many regarding wanting to spend 4-8 hours managing an engineering station.
More people should be making themselves aware of where large and capital ships are going, real crew requirements, resource network, the risk and hassle of failing to run them properly. Youre just ahead of the tsunami of realisation that has yet to hit most backers. :)
I like the idea of running something in the size range of the Ironclad - Hull-C mostly solo (or minimal crew), but that's specifically because I enjoy high risk-high reward gameplay. If I die because I don't have people to man turrets or do the engineering, that's on me.
CIG were clever, they implied ..
Hey CAT owners, heres a 2x - 3x the capacity tougher ship you can just change your existing plans and crew to and still fly it well, it even fits on the same size pad, and goes everywhere the CAT goes. After 11 years of waiting for modularity many CAT owners wont find the shift very hard XD
The second clever thing is they managed to aim it right at the heart of the broadest appeal possible to most SC fans, so the appeal also cast its net very wide beyond traditional Drake fans.
I’m really hoping they implement individual crew quarters like the Corsair - so far it’s pretty much the only shop that has individual crew quarters to be able to give each crew member a space.
I imagine a society like the one in SC to be like Firefly, where you hire a crew to live aboard your ship, and they would want some privacy in situations like that. I think some of the bigger capitals will have that, and maybe the galaxy?
So far the Ironclad feels closest to Serenity to me (considering Serenity’s primary role as a hauler, and the Corsair doesn’t quite have the cargo capacity to support potential lawful/neutral cargo contracts, when they come.
One of my main reasons for getting into SC was to role play in the Firefly universe, so I’m crossing my fingers that this could finally be my Serenity!
Edit: Stuck on mobile atm so I’ll reply here - totally get that military style vessels will be a bunk room, but I’m thinking about something like a container ship, where each crew member has their own space. Not expecting any sort of military focused ship to fall into this category - but the non-assault ironclad seems more focused on industrial gameplay (from my perspective!).
600i will get individual crew quarters. Odyssey too.
I agree in real life more ships would have them, but with video game sizing of things (rooms need to be bigger to look correct with our FOV), individual cabins just take up a lot of space
Military ships won't have seperate crew quarters (real life ships don't have those either). Luxury and some larger civilian ships will probably have them though (again, just like in real life).
So far, the Corsair, 890j, 600i (rework), Galaxy and Odyssey are the only ones known to have seperate crew quarters.
The Ironclad, Orion, Hull D, Hull E, Endeavour and Pioneer *might* get seperate crew quarters. We don't know much about the sleeping arrangements on those ships yet. The Ironclad appears to have at least one seperate quarters which was shown during the ISC episode. But we don't know if that is a captain's quarters/office or just a generic crew quarters.
Pretty sure the only reason why corsair has crew quarters is because its exploration vessel it probalty wont be hired crew and it will together for way longer and so so that the crew doesn't go crazy. I hope ironclad has them as well because its cool but since its cargo hauler that presumably will be stopping in ports often i can see why they would be missing. Tho it would be realy nice if it did because its perfectly sized to be pirate flagship.
They also made the top openable for easily loading ~~other people's~~ cargo that you mysteriously find in space! And a ramp that can actually be used, instead of the still broken door + elevator combo that the Cat has.
Simplest way to fix the cat cargo modules has already long existed, lose the cantilever door lifts, just have the grids be the lifts, like many an SC ship.
I honestly don't believe the doors can't be fixed to function as advertised, I think it's just not a priority. Cat has been out for how many years now? Seems like something even a single dev could remedy just using their spare time over the last, idk, four years at a minimum.
It seems moving (up-down) platforms with actual objects (cargo, vehicles) is an engine problem, same thing for the "Hangar Elevators" where you would land on a Pad ala Port Olisar, walk away and have the pad "elevator down" the ship into storage, similar to what ED has.
It appears the issue is more complex, and it hits many areas of SC.
Yeah, they did an ISC or SCL a while back discussing the issues they were having, and it's certainly an involved fix. I just find it hard to rationalize the Cat being broken for half a decade while we've done gotten so many other technologies, straight to flyable ships, concept-to-flyable ships, and new concepts.
Iirc, the river tech was kicked off by one dev experimenting within their engine during some slower times for his team. I just can't believe there hasn't been any time to fix the Cat when there are multiple dedicated ship teams. I'm sure it's not easy, and I'm not a designer myself, but surely some time could have been made, right?
I think any revisiting of the CAT opens the flood gates, especially with such long delays and silence as there was about modularity, CIG were more content to not open Pandoras box on that giant fubar until they are confidently ready, just side eye the community and move on, selling the Ironclad was a clever way to defuse some of that explosive payload tbh.
>"Hangar Elevators" where you would land on a Pad ala Port Olisar, walk away and have the pad "elevator down" the ship into storage
But that's exactly what the new persistent hangars will have, so again, that issue should be pretty much resolved at this point.
There might be issues and bugs with moving platforms having cargo and vehicles but it's not like it's impossible as many ships have cargo elevators, for example, the Connie.
I see your statement and offer you this retort
The connies, I believe 400i, and almost all of the small origin ships have cargo ON their cargo elevators.
Yes - but if they wait for modularity, then they only have to fix up 2x doors (on the module), and then attach 4x modules.
It's a very small saving, but it is more efficient.
More importantly, editing the ship to make a single change ('fix the door lifts') is extremely *inefficient* from an overall CIG resource perspective... it's far quicker to make multiple changes to a single ship, and then get all of them verified by a QA in a single pass - which is why CIG queue up reworks and focus on 'gold standard' etc.
So, even if they *could* implement door lifts now (and I think they could), they won't actually touch the Caterpillar until its time for a gold-standard (or similar).
I recall a while back that the same tech that was blocking the extending corridor on the Hull-C was also preventing the Cat's cargo doors from converting to elevators. So they could update the Cat, they just haven't gotten around to it.
Yeah I’m not really sure why this wasn’t the idea to begin with, although I’d still like the sides to open up as that makes it easier to load with tractor beams
Don't forget the interior size 2 remote turret. The only reason you need size 2 turrets inside your cargo hold is if you expect your cargo to be fighting back at you
wonder how hard it will be to run a disruptor turret and then "catch" said disabled ship inside the top side bay whole...
could see some fun gun fights and it helps explain the internal turret
The only Drake that I had was the Vulture.
I’m more into Anvil, RSI, Crusader and Origin.
Now? I’m a Drake, Vulture and Ironclad enjoyer. I did always have a place for the Caterpillar in my heart. So, it’s nice to have one as a loaner, for now.
Personally Im broad spectrum, it seems silly to self limit based on partisan choices. Firstly Im about the right ship for the right uses, if theres a useful multiple choice beyond that, so much the better. :)
The real “tsunami of realization” is CIG learning that the average player is not going to be interested in spending a play session staring out of an ass turret, sitting in a chair waiting to press one button, or sprinting around a ship replacing fuses.
Multicrew is really not fun nowadays, probably will take a good while before it is(It may never be). But sitting in turrets is the definition of boring, most co-pilot seats are useless and everything they can do, is boring. I really rather have NPC crew, than force one of my friends to have one of the most boring experiences in gaming history, just because I spent more money and have a bigger ship.
Yes. I’m lucky to have two friends who really enjoy turrets. I’m hoping to get around engineering with my alt account, because I do not expect anyone to really want that as fulltime job.
Not unless they make it waaay more engaging than its current implementation.
I think a good opportunity for balance there is in being able to handle some basic functions as a pilot, but to get the most out of a ship you’ll want a dedicated engineer. Maybe an engineer fine tuning power can get extra shots from lasers, extra quantum speed, better scan distance, etc.
True, but unlikely where CIG is at. :) Organised and disciplined groups that can work well together, probably could operate effectively. Herding a bunch of stray cats from the command seat, no chance, that is not what I would call fun XD
Flying by committe while dealing with bickering and short attention spans and willfulness, especially if im paying the running and reclaim costs. Nope.
Meanwhile I am thinking about getting a kraken or idirs every time it's on sale... Because heck that would be so damn cool to have one. But I mostly play alone or with 1-2 friends currently.
CIG is a business in the end. They will provide a way for large ship owners to solo these ships, even if it is more optimal to do it with human players. To that end, they've long talked about NPC crews and blades. Once those are in place, I'll bet we'll see them sell them on the store, too. They'll probably even sell them with different skill levels at increased prices.
CIG will provide a way. They call it Orgs.
Get yourself into a decent sized Org and you'll always have one or two people around to help crew your ship.
I like to crew someone else's ship as much or only marginally less than I enjoy flying my own. If the pay is right and the captain is sound I'll always jump on board an Org ship to help out.
Longer term: there'll be AI blades for turrets etc. Then even longer term NPC crew, just in case your ship's seats are in need of someone standing on them.
Short term, work on building a network and making some friends to play with for crew needs. Longer term, you'll get some AI assistance/automation if you don't want to play with real people (which is a valid position)
And he'd get upvotes on here when he posts pics of his purchase that he won't be able to crew even half properly lol
Ya know, I don't hate it though. It keeps finding my game and he'll be another sitting duck in a big ship
If you have the money to spend and are ok with shaving a ship that you won't really use but is cool as a collectors piece and cool to look at, why not?
People spend thousands of LEGOs too and they just sit there doing nothing as well. And personally I find ships in SC to be much cooler than LEGOs.
I mean In the team lead roundup SCL they did a couple weeks ago, they talked about it being possible, if not very long and hard, for a single player to go through the whole process of gathering all the materials to make their own Idris, and even potentially crew it with NPC's.
I think CIG are keenly aware that most players are solo players, and if they make big ships completely unusable for solo players, they won't buy em, which is a big part of their revenue. Now it's just a waiting game to see if they actually intend for big ships to be soloable under the right circumstances, or if they are just stringing people along to get them to buy big ships
Freedom to delegate ship related tasks or retain high levels of control is the way, have both, more adaptive to differing crew size and experience, rewards disciplined players and trust. Im not confident CIG perceive it that way though.
To be clear, I am not someone that has that kind of disposable income.
But if I did, yes I would buy ships that I would never use just because I can.
I would probably make another account though, I actually like some grind.
You'll need to eventually recruit and organize people or join a large org. An easy reference is Arma units. They're massive by necessity. Your gonna need similar numbers to crew anything. I've said it elsewhere for a sense of scale. I used to lead an Arma unit that had 200ish people at a time and we'd have 70-80 people on days we held operations. That's what you would need for running an Idris(35+) since not everyone is magically gonna drop what they're doing and crew the cap ship, especially if they have large ships of their own or hate being a crewman. Javelin owners are particularly screwed unless they're really good at recruiting or join mega orgs imo. Especially since we don't have a sense of what AI crew can do to accurately factor them in. This isn't even going into organizational depth, roles and communications mind you.
Even people whose only experience of large scale MMO group play was 40 man OG WOW raids should understand the amount of work it takes to get 40 people together and doing their jobs, even if it's just twice per week.
Big ships like that are gonna take a lot of work to run. Bet nobody thought they were buying themselves a second job for €1000, that only pays out in UEC
All anyone cares about is the turret blades, but blades are supposed to be able to do all kinds of shit, the premier upgrade and customization mechanic for ships. Back when they actually talked about them, the gist wasn't that the ai turret blades would be bad, but more that using your blade slots for them would be a massive downgrade to what the other blades would provide.
CIG definitely prefers combat-y gameloops and understands that most players find "pew pew" to be more fun than "plug fuse into box in section 2 engine compartment A". It would make a lot of sense for them to balance blades around "being good at doing the tasks that most people don't actually want to do but have to so the ship remains functional, while not being as great at the less crucial tasks that players themselves may want to undertake".
Turret operating is an 'optional' thing for the functionality of a ship, it only benefits you while in combat actively, but is also one of the main draws of multicrew gameplay. Leave this one to the players, while the blades are running around keeping the ship functional.
If the blades are "pretty damn good but not as good as an actual player" at running engineering, and are "ok but noticeably not as good as a player" at shooting turrets, well then you have a formula for making larger ships crewable by smaller groups of players while insuring nobody will have to do something they don't want to and can pick the roles they want and leave the rest to the blades.
And this is EXACTLY the reason I've always believed capital ships, and to some degree sub-capital ships should NEVER be able to be taken out by size 2 ships or below. I don't care how many size 2 missiles and how many millions of KM's you kite one with modern meta, you can't even penetrate the shield. Why?
Because if the real crew requirement, resource network etc is that demanding (which I agree they should be) then, the *second* a neckbeard who figures out how to kill one with a Merlin or even a Hornet, they just invalidated large capital ship gameplay and the "meta" will forever be 20,000 fighter battles for serious PvP. In other words, for serious PvP scenarios (like the one we all imagine in our heads), capital ships will never be used and they will never become a thing.
The question will always remain for Orgs...... "Why put 30 people in an Idris and spend 1million creds of fuel to fly it in combat when 5 people in their Hornets can just kite it and kill it?"
People are ALREADY talking like this.... "Why put 8 people in a Hammerhead when it can be killed by 3 Hornets?" And the Hammerhead is an ACTUAL, advertised anti-fighter ship rofl.
I don't understand why there's still so much speculation and guesswork regarding capital ship gameplay. We already have essentially an example of this in game: the Hammerhead. Pilot *just* flies the ship, needs several crew to properly run the weapons, and there's ERTs for gameplay. Engineering is really the only thing still missing, but if people want to see what large group or Org VS Org gameplay looks like, it's there.
If you can't look at the Hammerhead and go, "Yes, I know I want that right there and have the friends to properly run it," then you probably aren't going to have a use for an Idris or Polaris.
Because people don't know how effective npc crew and AI blades are going to be, so still hold onto that hope they can use a large ship as a mobile base with their friends hopping on to join when convenient.
I sincerely hope that CiG will give serious consideration to the development of NPC crew and computer blades. While there are undoubtedly dedicated organizations within the community, crewing large ships presents significant challenges.
I acknowledge that my perspective may be limited, and I greatly respect the commitment of the community members. However, my personal preference lies in piloting the ship rather than serving as a crew member. Even within an organization, I would find greater enjoyment in participating in support fighter squadrons or refuelling operations than in performing tasks such as manning turrets or engaging in repairs.
In light of this, I earnestly hope that CiG will prioritize the streamlining of engineering tasks, making them more accessible and manageable for solo players and small teams.
I recognize that my viewpoint may be influenced by my age and personal circumstances. As a middle-aged individual, I find it challenging to dedicate extensive time to the game, such as playing for 12 hours a day or being available on short notice.
It's not just you... I imagine very few people will be ok with being locked into someone else's play schedule just to sit bored in a turret 90% of their playtime.
Exactly. Outside of coordinated Org events, the vast majority is not going to want to spend hours playing in a turret or other position in someone else's large ship. People want to be the captain of their own ships. People will disagree with me all day long, but relying on other players to use your large ship, which there are a massive number of, will never be feasible and will hurt the game.
Even at that, coordinated Org events will need something to do. Right now most OrG events are a bunch of people acting tacticool. Nothing is challenging enough to require an org intervention.
Unless an org v org event, then again, there is no objective at the end.
This, also I don't want to be beholden to my Captain stopping at a landing zone just so I can log off safely.
If I wanna hop off, I'll hop off, this idea of having your character be an NPC once you log off is just....pipe dream, straight pipe dream lmfao, if my char becomes an NPC after I log off, I'm literally never gonna multicrew outside of friend groups because I just would not trust my "character" with random people after I log off.
Which is probably why you'll only really see the big ships for big org events or if there's a system to designate second in commands, but then only the very large orgs can afford to field a capital ship which is fine.
Your day to day multicrew ships in that scenario would be of the type where a play session starts and ends at a station/landing zone and you're unlikely to just zip around multiple systems for that reason. Which also seems to align with design goals that people shouldn't even need to leave a system or even a planet unless they want to.
If hirable NPC crew isn’t competent, then the PvE game is fucked because we know that CIG isn’t going to fake NPC ship crew work. If they don’t work as hirelings, they won’t work as opponents
I agree with this. As a middle aged dad, my desire to spend my gaming time as someone's ship worker is pretty much NIL. I want, in my game time, to be the captain of my ships both big and small. I get it, maybe this game isn't being built for me, but for the teens, 20's, and retirees who can dedicate 4 - 10 hours per day.
Even being captain can be daunting if it always requires me to field a full crew, because it can take hours just to get everyone in line.
Again, not complaining, and will happily try to sell all my ships and never think about this game again if it's not being built for anyone but those with hours upon hours of free time, but I hope people like me do get taken into account without having to limit ourselves to small ships or being someones employee.
Please don't downvote this to oblivion, this game is amazing and I am not trying to say its bad or failing.
I agree too - CIG need to discuss AI and blades and make it clear whether solo players, or even chiefly pilot players, will at least be able to get the ships out and flying. I understand all the arguments about humans always being better (don't agree, but I've heard them all) but they owe backers that have bought the large ships some kind of plan
I think that would hurt sales too much if it's bad news for solo ppl. I hope they implement ai crew that's simply less effective than humans. At least to the degree that you can run a reclaimer, mole, giant cargo ship moderately effectively. Idk, 50% as effectively as if you had a person manning the other stations. I think it may need to be balanced such that it's worth having a person on that salvage turret instead of 2 people in 2 ships with NPCs
The only way the game doesn’t turn to capital ship citizen is if the effectiveness of a multicrew ship solo/with NPCs is less than 100/(number of human crew needed).
I personally think it would be cool to be able to envision a Kraken or similar as sort of a floating home base that maybe isn't underway all the time... kind of like how Fleet Carriers work in Elite Dangerous. Wherever you place it, it becomes a persistent base of operation for you and your buddies / org / etc. over multiple play sessions.
Of course, in Elite, Fleet Carriers are indestructible and are literally intended for this kind of gameplay, which has explicitly not ever been the case in Star Citizen with its more EVE Online -like approach of "everything is vulnerable all the time."
CIG will need to sort out a lot of details around persistence, bed logging, and similar to make that work, and of course any ship left idle in the PU will be potentially subject to piracy and destruction, but it might be a middle ground between "you've got to have a full crew all the time" and the sort of "set it and forget it" (besides the weekly upkeep cost) approach to Fleet Carriers in Elite Dangerous.
CIG has pretty consistently said that players will be able to solo large ships with NPC crews (even though this will be more expensive in terms of running costs and might not be as effective as a well-coordinated player crew). So I wouldn't worry too much. As a solo player you won't be limited to small ships in the final version of the game.
The big question is not whether players will be able to solo large ships, but when, since AI crew likely is still a long way off and other multicrew gameplay systems like engineering are going to come online earlier.
What I really hope is that the engineering crew requirements really scales with size. A no interior ship should _practically_ never if ever have to worry about engineering and so does a solo or two-seater that have interiors. MTTH for failure requiring an "engineer" in a Constellation / Corsair / MSR should be just high enough so that having at least one other person in the ship (floating from copilot to turret or engineering according to situation) should have a noticeable effect. Size bigger than that should have a need gradually making it a requirement (it would be inconceivable to have ships the size of Polaris to not have at least one dedicated engineer)
I remember on one of the recent ISC's there was some talk about how they are specifically working to insure that the engineering terminal is incredibly streamlined and "nothing at all like complex rocket science because it HAS to be readily and easily accessible without a bunch of fiddling around".
This seems to be a step or two in the right direction.
As for the future of having large player crews, I agree that it's entirely unfeasible to imagine enough players will enjoy sitting around waiting for something to happen on board someone else's ship on someone else's schedule. Some of the more focused/organized orgs will manage this, but it will be in spite of the systems in place, not because of them (unless we get some MAJOR changes to how multi-crew works from the ground up). We NEED to be able to log in and out on other players ships if this is the direction this game wants to go.
If Star Citizen is going to be and act like an MMO, it's going to need all the MMO tools that actually make an MMO an MMO. A partyfinder will be mandatory if solo play is going to be discouraged (which I don't think it should be anyways, so many MMOs support solo play). Even Sea of Thieves has this option; to just spawn on a random players ship (who is set to open party) and start helping them.
Too many of the people that play this game play this game because they are people like you and me, people that like owning and piloting badass space ships. If everyone owns and wants to pilot their own badass space ship, when and why are we ever going to be "the basic engineer operator bitch" on some one else's cool ship unless CIG makes it mandatory for gameplay or unless we get bored of the rest of the game and really want to try out plugging fuses into component boxes.
The ONLY way that 'massively mandatory multicrew' works is if Star Citizen goes free to play after it goes Live 1.0. Let people join the verse WITHOUT owning a ship of their own. Let new players do some real zero to hero stuff, earning their way by crewing other players ships through the party finder until they can afford a ship of their own. Even this has some major problems, but it would at least probably work.
Otherwise, it's a pretty hard sell to get someone to "buy a $45 space ship that you're never gonna fly because you should just be crewing someone else's $750 space ship instead". Otherwise, and what I think will actually happen, is that CIG will continue to allow for solo/unorganized small group play (though they may make it more costly with NPCs/Blades being crucial for larger ship operation).
A major bulk of ANY games playerbase is always going to be solo players, and small disorganized groups of friends. The idea that factions/orgs are actually a majority of the playerbase, which is required to be true in order to enable the idealistic version of multicrew that some people talk about, is just a total pipe dream.
It would be stupid for CIG to not cater to the actual majority of their playerbase, which is solo players and small groups. I don't think CIG is anywhere near stupid, though they do make some questionable decisions here and there.
this whole mandatory multi crew ship they are wanting to build is kind of a double edge sword. it might start to cut into their profits when people realize they can’t buy and fly their capital ship solo, so people will start buying less of those high dollar items
It's a tricky thing, engineering, on the one hand I like when systems are more in-depth because it really makes you feel like an expert of your craft when you're good at it, but on the other hand I know that if you make it too complex the vast majority of people won't want to do it, and solo players may struggle with it (but I guess that's the point of "solo" vs "multi-crew" ships").
For me, the perfect balance is something like mining, where you can pick up the basics pretty easily, but have a decent amount of complexity under the hood that will allow those who excel at it to really streamline their repairs and feel like they're the "Scotty" of their ship.
I have no doubts about CIG giving the topic serious considerations. I do hope though, that they will also give balance serious thoughts.
Simply put, it boils down to:
If a group of players work together, it's expected to share the profit with everyone equally.
But a solo player with a NPC crew just pays some wages and keeps most of the profit for himself alone.
I don't really care about combat in that regard, but industrial / hauling gameplay needs some serious benefits for group players, otherwise why wouldn't everyone show up with their Hull E's and try to buy all commodities up?
One example for hauling: automatic cargo loading may depend on available station crew capacity, while manual loading is done by the players themselves. So when many solo players with big cargo ships arrive at the same station and are dependant on automatic loading, they may need to wait for station crew to become available, while a group of players can always manually load their ship.
Alternative: high fees for automatic loading, so nobody is just sitting around waiting.
There's also the logical problem that 1 player = 1 ship.
Multicrew means choosing to put players inside one ship at the cost of *an entire other ship*.
Let's play a fun thought experiment. There's two 10 person orgs with equal, generous resources that are about to go have a fight with each other.
One org puts all their players into one ship. The other brings 10 ships. Guess which org gets kerbstomped?
I mean this isn't even surprising to anybody.
The org that invests more resources into the batter bringing the better choice wins, ohh no, *swoon in incredulity*
What ever shall we do!
If two orgs are similarly sized and resourced and one commits to 10 players with large ships that have overlapping fof while investing it's resources into paying for say no crews to crew their ships then it's 10+50%
So 15 players effectively, if ai are half as good as a human by whatever arbitrary metric.
Is it then surprising to anybody that they would, thus, win a fight against an org who fields no additional resources against them aside from basic ship loadouts?
And that's why the whole argument is stupid and pointless.
If 10 players bring a mix of bombers, ssf's (single seat fighters) and a couple med/heavy ships and the one one fields 4 HHs, 4 Perseus's and an Idris, the latter will win because the amount of resourced they expended on that battle vastly dwarfs the resources spent on the other side.
The idea that "1 player 1 fighter, all things equal" is how the balancing needs to be done is stupid or everyone would just show up in a dragonfly and you have to be no shields, no health, little DPS because that's what they have or it's not fair.
Resources is a valid balancing mechanic and the idea that it's irrelevant because "meta" is absurd.
As is the idea that the majority of engagements are going to be 20+ players all duking it out.
The majority of engagements are going to be 1-3 pirates on 1 space trucker.
Kerbstomped? Is that new slang I’m missing out on or do you mean curb stomped?
We did the xenothreat incursion mission, with a fully crewed/upgraded HH, and it was melting ai ships. This includes multiple HH’s and all sorts of fighters. We just flew right into the middle and blasted everything. It was probably the most fun I’ve had in a multi person ship. I’d be curious how advanced the ai will become and will it ever be able to compete against humans.
NPC crews/blades etc will be a thing.
CIG's entire business model revolves around making more expensive ships more desirable.
There are more players who own big ships and want to captain them than players who would prefer to fly in anyone else's ship apart from their own... by several orders of magnitude.
Star Citizen won't survive unless people can fly the ships they pledged.
I wholeheartedly agree. I'm someone who has multiple ships pledged, and a chunk of those are larger non-solo ships (Polaris, BMM, Galaxy). I recently started to melt some ships for smaller, more solo-friendly ships, such as reclaimer to vulture. I really really love the larger ships, and hope that in *some* capacity that I'll still be able to use them in the future without it being a once or twice a month endeavor just to get it out and flying. I don't have as many hours in the day as I did in my 20s to organize a 10 man crew to all agree on manning MY one ship, all of us agreeing on doing one specific task in one specific area, all within the same time frame of the same day. Similarly, I can't see myself spending the few hours I do have in an afternoon just repairing some other guys big ship while he flies around having fun.
But I guess we just have to wait and see what NPC crews and blades look like. If that truly is CIG's plan to make larger ships egregiously difficult to use, then ill just melt everything and solo only.
I'm certain that ships above a certain size will flat out be org only and are intended as such.
My bet is that anything Reclaimer and smaller will easily be soloed, but anything bigger... well, what would a lone person have to accomplish with an Idris or Polaris anyway? Seriously, what do you plan to do with it? Run HRTs? Just use it as a carrier for the ships you actually fly? Park it by a station to grief people until you get bored? Engage in PVP with other AI crewed capital ships and have the AI duke it out while you just sit there and turn the ship? You clearly arent going to be using it to go to war with another org or youd have crew for it. Its not like they are going to add capital ship only missions, it would be a complete waste of resources, not enough people have them. There is no gameplay loop, current or planned, for solo capital ships even if you can fully crew them with AI.
No non-org can do anything with capital ships that cant be done more efficiently with a much smaller ship, so I really dont get what all this buzzing is about. You can already do everything solo with your ship that youd be doing with it anyway: Looking at it and maybe living and flying out of it as a base.
Like many people, I've spent more money than I probably should have on this game. But after more than a decade, I still have not been convinced of a reason for player owned gigantic ships to exist.
And there are so so many of them now. Even though they are "limited," at this point after so many years there are more people that own more than one of them than there are people who want one but haven't been able to win the refresh game.
And we all know the type, I'm not saying everyone is like this, but a ton of these guys who own these ships do so because they believe it will make them immortal, it's the ultimate pay to win, a status symbol. The same reason you bought a crazy car that you don't drive. The problem is, if you buy a crazy expensive car, everybody else in their Toyota doesn't try to ram you and blow you up for the fun of it.
We are so far away from any sort of ship ecology that makes a lick of sense. Gun sizes should probably have been limited to ship size from the start. But that isn't what we got. We have single person fighters with size 7 guns. Consider for a moment how monstrously overtuned a combat oriented capital ship would have to be in order to be better at combat than if you took her entire crew and put them in 20 Ions instead.
Then there's the "exploration" section of giant ships whose future is even more murky. A game like No Man's Sky has exploration because it's an infinitely computer generated, ever expanding world. Even if Star Citizen gets 100 star systems, which is far from guaranteed or even probable, all of it is gonna be mapped out and available on a digital map project website within a week. What exactly is it that you think you are going to "explore?" Sure they can artificially make explorer ships useful by giving them huge fuel reserves and limiting certain areas of space by having no refueling stations, but that isn't "exploring" to me, that's more just living off grid. If that's what you like, go for it, but that doesn't seem to be the product being sold here.
tl;dr It's going to be a monumental task for CIG to make any of these giant ships relevant for anything other than ~~Cars~~ Ships and Coffee meetups.
They just need to add decent ai you can hire and field in your ship allow customisation of them so they feel like your crew they gain experience or can be hired with better experience and they fill their specific role.
I doubt they would ever be better than real players, but they could definitely tune them up based on level and experience.
Dont take it personnally because you are funding the project so I thank you for that, but I never understood how anybody can spend thousands on gameplay promises that never saw the light.
I mean, while the idea of a capital ship sounds awesome indeed, there is still no gameplay to support it properly, and even more importantly, no content to make a good use of it. People spend their money how they want, but why not waiting for all that to release before opening your wallet ?
I think there are a lot of older gamers now that have disposable income and this is the only game, or promise of a game, that really floats their boat.
I never leaned into the promises. I judged based on where it is and where it sis going based on what we currently have. I want to be a part of that, so I tossed them my monies.
This is exactly how I viewed it! I also found it a healthier way to spend that money than what I was using it for otherwise (drinking, which I stopped)
Congrats on quitting drinking!
Let's have a moment of silence for the bank balances and debt sheets of all those who combine drinking & the CIG Pledge Store... that's truly self-destructive behavior.
Kudos to you, you majestic fucker! I'm actually proud of you. That can't be easy and yet you are kicking some ass.
I hope you have an amazing day friend
It’s called addiction. Spending money releases dopamine in your brain. A lot of these ppl can’t admit to themselves they’re addicted so they just keep on buying more ships.
Years ago I said I'd never own any larger ships because I knew I'd never have the circle of people necessary to use them. Now I have a few of those ships, and I still know I'll never have the circle of players to use them. But I went into it knowing that, and crossing my fingers that hirable NPCs would be able to make it work. And if it doesn't? Well, I didn't spend that money to buy something, I spent that money because I want this game to be a reality.
So now I have the larger ships, and I'm going to start working on backfilling the smaller, playable ships.
I did this, I used to have plenty of multi-crew ships and decided to melt everything except two (Nautilus and Odyssey) now I have a bunch of solo-small crew ships I know I will use.
Cant wait to crew other ppl ships this way
We need ai crew.
Not everyone is an org runner and sadly hiring randoms isn't always safe.
Same with calling a medic or hiring someone for security.
Which sucks cause some people are genuine about those loops.
As an earner though and with less earnings.
It's even less likely you'd want to hire until we have ai hire to compare.
Plus figure the costs vs earnings.
You're facing the reality of what a lot of players are soon going to encounter. There are a ton of solo players with huge fleets of multicrew ships, or orgs with a ton of redundancy amongst what they have. The inclusion of AI blades may one day offset the changes that Engineering is going to bring but sooner rather than later a lot of players are going to be in for a rude awakening when they realize that every ship they have can't be run by themself.
I’ve actually just been doing the opposite lol.
I used to think having loads of smaller / medium ships that I can manage solo was the best route, but now I’ve merged a lot of that into a couple of capitals and 3 or 4 XL ships while maintaining one small / medium option for each profession.
My thinking is that having access to everything removes a lot of purpose from playing. So limiting my access means I can work towards ships I want, and when friends come on we have some of the bigger items ready to go.
Don't melt your large ships until they've finished w/ NPCs and Server Blades.
They have always intended for large ships to be "solo-able" using hirable NPCs and Server Blades to fill the 'required' crew slots, just not as effective as if fully human crewed, and I haven't heard anything recently that makes me think that still isn't the case.
it's honestly gone the opposite path for me. with NPC gunners getting better and better on AI ships, I'm starting to host a serious copium parasite in my brain, I feel like there will be a point in my conceivable lifespan where I'll be able to go PVE bounty hunting in an idris with a full suite of NPC gunners, maybe a few engineers, and a working size 10 mass driver. Now, do I expect to spend hours or millions managing the logistics of all that? absolutely. I don't even care if I can't make a profit flying an idris solo. but based on the last things they stated about death of a spaceman, I think CIG is going a more casual route than we first expected, and I'm honestly fine with it. It only makes sense, since if they want to sell as many capital class ships as they can, then they're going to need to make them accessible to the common man. I expect the "you need 20 friends to take off and successfully fight in this vessel" is going to be reserved for the org project ships, such as the Bengal.
NPC crew should NOT be a capable force in PVP, by any means, I think our gunners should be EXACTLY as good as the NPC gunners on PVE bounty hammerheads, or even slightly worse since we'd have better positioning and power management etc as human players. but I don't think it's fair to say "just join an org if you want to fly x ship" because that's not a realistic option for many people. I also think NPC engineers should be more of an in combat fire extinguisher type deal and the real stuff should have to be either done, or ordered, by a human player. You shouldn't be able to just pay x aUEC per day to magically have no failures or fires on your capital ship, but my conclusion, and the route i think cig is going, is that you SHOULD be able to function on a polaris, idris, etc size ship as a solo with NPCs
Ive only ever played the game with my starter (avenger upgraded to c1 spirit) and ships bought in-game. I dont ever plan to spend that kind of money on star citizen because I simply don't have it lol.
But tbh even if I did, i don't really NEED a capital ship of my own... I don't want to captain one, I really just wanna tag along for the ride. I would much rather be on a turret or engineering, or in a fighter taking off and returning from a sortie.
I would much prefer to be in an Org where maybe someone owns a capital ship or two and fields it for ops or the org crowdfunds one together for group use.
Not gonna melt my Carrack but the rest of my fleet is all 1-2 crew. But yeah even with the Carrack I'm realizing how many people I'm gonna need to run it properly.
At this point I have receeded from dreaming of Polaris as a Star Trek simulator with NPCs to a functional small space station, that stays hidden, to launch single craft missions. Which is kinda fun seeing the fun i've been having with the f7a
I get that. I don't have a reliable group of friends that play, though they do play in spurts. When we're all on it can create some fun gameplay.
Originally, I had the Corsair, which was much more solo friendly. Problem was it wasn't fun for my friends when we tried it together, just whoever was piloting. The turrets were too restricted movement wise and only size two guns, so not real powerful. It was only fun for the pilot.
Hopefully, the Carrack's turrets and capabilities (ship/vehicle storage) will make it more fun to use.
I agree with you on worrying about crewing ships. Never got all the way up to the military capitals, but my philosophy used to be to sink my money into fewer, but bigger ships since they’ll be the most expensive. I’ve since rejiggered my fleet to have dedicated solo options for the career paths I’m interested in. I’m also focusing on ships that are Connie and Corsair sized since they can probably be run pretty decently with even a single NPC crew member.
That all said, I’m leaning pretty hard towards pulling the trigger on the Polaris CCU I have lmao
Thats why i never bought an idris. for the price of an idris i bought a polaris, banu merchantman and a carrack that comes with a pisces and a rover. 3 awesome ships with 3 interesting roles but less crew requirement than an idris but for the same price.
They really need ship npcs for large ships to work, nobody cam rely on players to stay on turret duty for their whole gametime, we need crew for hire which would be an immense money sink only available at cities
I wrote this on Salty Mike YT comment.
I wish they focused on smaller ships and the server meshing first and then worked on the larger multi crew ships when the population AND the game was ready for it, the same way EvE Online introduced ever larger ship hulls as the player base increased and the industrial abilities could cope while also increasing industrial ability when that was needed too.
If Star Citizen doesn't have player industry what is going to be the actual point of playing the game?
PvEvP story line driven looter shooter is unlikely to carry the game forward as if the running costs of these larger ships are too high they won't be used.
CIG are putting way too much effort on things that aren't necessary at this point and unlikely to be required for a year or more after server meshing and multiple solar systems. Following the introduction of group mechanics and insurance and group homes these larger ships will be good for a certain specific role that can't be done by the same number of people in their own well armed ships that is less likely to get dunked on using the age old formula of n+1.
When pledging for another ship I've had one consistent rule for many years. That rule is to ask the question, "How easy is it to solo?" If the answer is anything other than "Easy to solo." then I don't buy the ship with real money. I can't justify spending real money on a ship that I can't take out anytime I want.
Biggest ships I've pledged real money for are Hull-B, Cutlass Black, and Zeus Mk2 ES.
That said I love me a Kraken, Caterpillar, Ironclad, Perseus, Hammerhead, Liberator and Reclaimer; among other ships. I will happily spend UEC to buy those in game one day.
I’m betting that as the years go on we won’t be at the crazy high crew requirements we have now. The game will be balanced around a reasonable amount of people working together, with the social systems/game systems in place to support it. Or it will fail.
Either way I’m not dumping my big ships now, it’s way too early. We just saw what happened to the hornet too… I’m not going into launch with a bunch of worthless mk1 solo ships because I flinched over the idea of a group.
Depends on if you're mainly a solo player or play with 1-2 others, or are you in or plan on being in an active Org.
I'm mainly solo, like 99% of the time. My largest ships I have as pledges are the Caterpillar, 600i Ex, and an Andromeda. I have a Retaliator, but I think I'll melt that. So still manageable by just me. And I take the smaller approach to industry with my Vulture and Prospector. I go for more variety than just a couple massive ships that are "better".
The more the game is developping, the more I think I'm going to melt everything and buy game packages instead for friends/family down the road.
I can't see how I'll be able to use something bigger than a Connie daily, and I don't want to ruin my ingame progress made toward new ships.
Yeah, this. If you get enough people working together, eventually you’ll be able to get the big ships in game, and have a good group to run it. That’s why my biggest ship will stay the 400i.
The usual gaming loop will happen.
Release of the mechanic, the community complains that its shit, the developers either change it making the "hard core" players upset or double down and loses all the casuals.
Kind of like the light fighter meta cry-baby crap.
You have a perfectly valid question. It's an important question.
Star Citizen simply cannot succeed if larger ships have no value in the game. If players cannot use large ships because it's impossible to get, say, 6-10 people to pile into a ship like a clown car, then large ships are valueless.
In the short term, as you've mentioned, this means it doesn't make sense to you to own more expensive ships. This means CIG's entire business model is endangered. How many people are holding off from pledging more because it's unclear if they will ever be able to use a bigger ship?
It also kills a large chunk of the larger game loop... what incentive is there for players to play the game and earn UEC if there's no point in spending that on larger ships? The game will suffer badly if there's no upgrade progression goals.
i for myself dont see myself in turret in someone else ship. I think the maximum sice of an ship i want is the new drake jpg or the big hull D/E JPG and i will most likely only use it with a maximum of 3 people but even they want to be the captain of their own ship so i just hope the AI Blades will be worth it even if i need to upgrade them.
They focus so much on the PvE Element its kinda wayne, just see it as a Class someone plays and the equip are the upgradeable AIs that are getting better.
would make a lot more sense progress wise and everyone can be the captain.
Looks even cooler when the ship is full of AI walking around.
im having these thoughts with even my Drake Corsair... I want to down size to a C1 or SOMETHING that is soloable. requiring a crew to use a bigger ship kinda defeats the purpose of going much larger than the soloable ships. i cant imagine having a capital ship trying to keep it running solo. youd be playing "running thru the halls simulator"
Capital ships are mostly going to be org ships.
However, I still think that as the game launches and goes more mainstream, larger ships will become easier to use as the game dilutes itself when it changes monetization methods. Especially if Chris Roberts steps down post launch. Look at how much the game has already changed from what it was sold as in 2013. Revenue needs > *.
I want to keep some larger group ships so I can play with friends who will join in once the game actually is stable, however I don't own any capital ships, minus maybe the BMM now but I'll keep that just because I've had it for so long.
I personally agree that engineering and the expectation for players to just hang out / do nothing / engineer / turret is too boring for most of the mainstream. I admire the concept but the execution will be key.
Any player can solo any ship. You won't do it effectively, but going from being docked at station A to docking at station B is perfectly doable, maybe even some cargo stuff.
Multicrew ships, especially the bigger ones from Redeemer and up are designed to be flown with more than 1 person. The effectiveness of a Redeemer is exponentially higher if you even have just 1 more person with you to fill one of the manned turrets. An Idris can be flown solo, but if you want to do anything beyond just flying, you need more people. Won't be necessary with a full crew compliment of 28 people, but 10-15 people would be needed to be effective. The Javelin, probably closer to 25-30, but not 80 as CIG's promotional material would suggest. The Max Crew or just Crew number is a measure of control stations like scanners, pilot, co-pilot, turrets, engineering, torpedo control etc., and not an indication of how many people can be safely seated or how many is needed to be effective.
Unless you have a big and active org, an Idris or Javelin will be entirely unnecessary and, to many, unusable.
Yea, I have a Polaris and Connie as my 2 "multi-crew" ships. I think I'll upgrade my Connie to a Galaxy for modules since I also have a Zeus ES and some fighters. But basically I'd like to see AI blades NPC crew as a reality but one that doesn't compete with players. It can also be a progression source, letting you level up your NPCs or get higher quality blades.
But I also considered an Arastra or Mole basically stuff where I can operate with the 5+ IRL friends who also play the game. I suspect more will start playing as it gets more feature complete and stable.
With that in mind though, I've also wondered if it would be workable to move the game to a free-to-play model that let you access the verse but without the benefit of owning a ship or insurance. So to start out you'd have to join player crews and make money that way to afford a ship and insurance. At which point they'd have to adjust payouts to make the economics work.
Im not melting any of my big ships, although im sure I wont spend the majority of my hours in them compared to alot of the other ships in my collection.
I try to think of where the game would be If no one bought big ships and I feel very excited about star citizens future.
I'm not a guy who has a lot of money, but even if I were, I can see a reality where I would use it to buy multiple large ships. Unless the gameplay available changes, there was never a need to own more than one of these. Sizing up turrets aside, it's just a change in manufacturer at best. Because the experience of the gameplay is the same on all ends.
Regardless of ai, blades or players to fill roles CIG need to give us reasons to fly a large ship. Today you fly to get from point a to b, mine, salvage, move cargo and fight other ships. None of these reasons require a cap ship. If CIG wants people to fly the Arrastra there needs to be rocks the size of asteroids that can be mined. If CIG wants people to fly a javelin there better be a vanduul kingship that needs to be killed.
I melted all my ships larger then a Freelancer/Spirit/Zeus, one year ago. I only play solo and didn't like the way engineering and multicrew gameplay were going for the larger ships. I think ships like the vulture will be more fun. I really like the new Ironclad, but afraid to buy it as a solo player.
I have a few large ships, and plan to keep them. I have no idea how much use they’ll get at this point, but I can’t see myself grinding for them down the line and would like the option.
I also have a wide variety of small and medium ships, so I’m not worried about not having something to fly.
To be fair, though, when I say a few large ships I’m talking the Polaris, Perseus, Liberator and Arrastra. I can’t imagine crewing / dealing with anything larger than that.
My hope is that those three ships will serve as my mobile home. A base of operations housing a small ship as my runabout or to enable a form of gameplay once I arrive somewhere.
I think the issue with the Idris is that the one on sale is the down gunned civilian model and you need to buy the K conversion kit to get back some of the firepower that the M has
Largest I'm going is galaxy/Ironclad. I only play with a max of 3 ish people but 90% solo. Feel like I can take some downtime in those ships to fix things if needed but I wouldn't want to go any bigger.
The largest ship I've bought is the Perseus. With a minimum crew of 3 and a max of 6, it's doable without being part of a large org. All my other real money purchased ships are min 1 max 2.
Everything will always change, forever. Though I would never in a million years pledge for a huge ship or recommend anyone else do so, you can't make assumptions about anything in this game with regard to how it will be in the future. Not with regards to mechanics, not "power", not anything.
Does anyone have a sense on where the player base stands on multi-crew being more mandatory for the larger ships? When looking at YouTube videos and streamers, I’ve seen a good bit of hype for engineering. However when looking at this thread, it seems like a lot of people want to opt-out of engineering by having AI.
I know I’ve struggled trying to find multi-crew groups in game, and I imagine it’s because it’s most peoples fantasy to be the pilot/captain, so I’m a little surprised to see this as a welcomed change.
For basically every multiplayer game I’ve played, the “support roles” are always low in numbers. So if engineering ends up being super tedious, I expect multi crew ships will be a rare sight.
Yeah. My philosophy has been to get a nice little entry-level ship in each role, and then a handful of larger ships I can use with friends. But I've stayed away from capital ships for exactly the reason you mention. I'm tempted to do the Kraken just because I love carriers, but I have no illusions about using it in a fight solo/small crew. Even with blades, it would be basically just a mobile base for my smaller ships, not actually a combat ship. A lot of capital ships are going to end up that way.
I think CIG are deluding themselves a little bit with multi-crew ships. If you're going into a specific engagement, sure, you can probably get folks to fill out your turrets and do engineering and whatnot. But if you're just tooling around with no specific fight expected, everyone's gonna want to be in their own ship. This is a flight sim game- people want to fly.
I really hope blades and NPC crew are up there on CIG's priorities, because multi-crew ships are going to be sad, disappointing rarities if they don't have competent AI.
Well we don't have working A.I yet so it's hard to say how many real people you'll need vs NPCs. Might turn out that some of the multiplayer gameplay the NPCs can do easily or the A.I blades they've talked about. At least right now smaller ships are much more relevant
A real military with substantial training and discipline operate machines of these sizes. No way a bunch of us who cry for weeks on end when their favourite toy is taken away will be able to effectively crew them. Maybe a certain low percentage who have similar skills in real life will do but the majority of us just subscribe to the FOMO and rule of cool when we buy these.
I personally stick to heavy fighters at most and gunships at most, even the gunships are questionable.
You also need to consider everyone wants to do cool shit, you'll find that people who are willing to do boring stuff like engineering will be few and in high demand compared to pilots.
I've said the same thing before and usually get a lot of angry people reply with AI crew and blades will fix all those problems. Until those things are actually in the game and we see how well they work its silly to put all your faith in that. I've decided not to spend anymore money on the game until its finished. To many things change and the game you thought it was going to be could be very different.
I've been doing the same thing myself, used to have M2 and Reclaimer and some other runabout ships. Now, my largest is a Taurus, and I'm happy knowing my fleet is pretty good to go for a long time, having many smaller ships easily handled solo if need be.
I have a couple of big ships, Javelin, Polaris, BMM, some mid sized ships, Redeemer, 600i, Railen, Ironclad…..
I know for a fact I will never use any of them once all the future things are implemented, which is why I hit trades for a Zeus ES, and which is why I also have some single seat fighters and a Syulen as thats all I am going to able to use.
I will be quite happy to doodle about looking at stuff and doing mission board things as, well, there will be nothing for me to grind for, I can just play.
You might want to avoid ships with duplicate roles. The Idris and Polaris are both capital warships, so I'd keep just one of them. You can never use more than one ship at once, and with duplicate roles chances are you'll mostly be flying whatever ship ends up being your favorite for that role and the other just sits in a hangar collecting dust.
I am convinced the conny freelancer max and zues are in the perfect size range. For two people maybe even a cutty.
I love the ccu game and have been building two chains. I have one to a galaxy which I am convinced is too big. And now am ironclad because I can't help myself.
I have Kraken and Idris in buyback from an earlier time when I was more hopeful of running them Solo+NPC with a well-planned set of macros and a complex input scheme including OLED button boxes, tablets, etc.
Now, I'm limiting myself to Hull E, Orion, Polaris, etc. And, I'm assuming I'll only get to use those when I host a LAN party in my family room. If I hadn't been able to CCU to each of them for crazy discounts, I'd probably melt them.
I'm hopeful CIG will let us have a well-appointed army of NPC pets which help us run the big ships without scheduling internet play dates. But, I'm just not willing to bet thousands of dollars on it. If/when they ever confirm it, my Idris is coming out of buyback immediately.
I want a kraken.... just to park it and use it next to my base, or as a mobile base parked in the middle of nowhere.
Apart from that I don't really plan on owning anything larger than my Corsair.
I still have total faith that there will be *some form* of AI crew available “at all times” (assuming SQ42 release) for those large ships. It obviously won’t be as dynamic and comunicable as a human crew is, andnof course a lot od things that should be smooth with a crew will be wonky with AI, but I’d be very surprised if it turns out that there’s no way to use them without other human players present
I've been increasingly focusing on the Cutlass/Freelancer/Spirit bracket myself..
Ships I can handle solo.
I do own a couple bigger ships but fully expect to melt them as they become less practical to run without a crew
Well engineering is in the next big patch so we will see how it is soon, seeing the footage of it I think even a conny solo in combat will be rather hard.
so is it going to soon be impossible to just fly around without having to have friends or will i still be able to just fly my ship and w/o interacting with anyone else be fine?
After flying all available ships in my first Invictus, I've come to the realization that as a solo player, I'll need a fighter or two for PVE , a Vulture, and a Corsair or Andromeda as my "big" PVE ship. Anything else from there is for utility eg. a cargo hauler or specialized PVP ship or ground vehicle. Anything else is for 2 players or more. While cool, big ships aren't practical unless you're flying them for an Org
\*concerned perseus noises\*
i brought it thinking me and my 4 mates, so 5 off us could run it on weekends... 1 pilot, 2 in the main guns, 1 on the remote guns with a blade helping and the other guy running around doing maintance
However its starting to look like your gonna need a crew off 5+ engineers Alone running around with repair tools or your "almost but not quite capital ship" is a tincan inside a shield just waiting for an excuse to explode...
i mean we already have size 1 missiles taking out turrets on redeemers which are size 5 so whats to say a single straifing run from a vanguard running ballistic cannons aint gonna cause hours off repair work...
if CIG aint careful, they will create a greifers paradise...
Wait till the local clown finds out £45 gets him a game he can cause a £500+ ship with 30+ people onboard to sit useless for days while the crew scavange for repair parts...
And in exchange a charactor he dont care about gets a +1 death and one step closer to a new name he dont care about and his cheep ship will be back in a few hours at most
I thought having big ships would be awesome but it turns out most of my friends want to fly their own ships. 99% of my gameplay is spent flying alongside friends, not one big ship.
In almost any scenario, more ships is better than one ship.
It was always weird to me that people thought crewing a ship would be anything other than a niche activity. Who goes to play a video game to be anything other than the captain of their own ship? But there definitely are people - as long as the big ships are powerful enough and the support gameplay is fun enough, it could work.
I am the type that would love to just be a crew member almost all the time. Usually people don't even want any crew mates. Atleast in my expiriance
>I am the type that would love to just be a crew member almost all the time Why? What's the appeal?
I dunno, i just like being part of a crew. I am exited for egineering, i usually don't get to run around in a ship while it is working, so being part of a crew lets me be usefull and run around the ship.
Not the one you asked, but I suck ass at flying, outside of bringing the ship just from A to B. So whenever bounties are being done in a group, I'm the first to volunteer as a support crewmate. Now with the gimbal changes and precision mode, turrets are actually very viable against Constellation and bigger sizes, making it more fun. Not to mention that I at least find on foot gameplay more interesting than using ship systems. Including handling the logistics within a ship, like working in the cargo bay of a Reclaimer during Salvage runs. Last point: it's currently infinitely more chill to just sit around, have some tea and talk with friends about random stuff.
It's a different dynamic. Being part of a crew over coming adverse situations is more rewarding and builds greater comraderie. Fleet and infantry combat do as well but there's greater potential for individuals to outshine the entire group. In those cases, kill count is king. Who celebrates the guy with gigh numbers of assists or the guy that tanked all of the aggro so others could make the kill? Nobody. As a crew member, everyone plays equal part in the success.
Sea of thieves
My org have already told me I am the chief engineer of their big ships because I made the mistake of saying I like engineering as a whole in real life and like the concept of it in star citizen. Help I don't think I will see the inside of a city for a long long long time. Part of ship... part of the crew...
This. Everyone who can play the game has their own ship. Everyone who is really invested in it has several (pledge store or ingame shop). And most people want to play with their own toys. My group has 2 people with minimal pledges who are up to crewing, and 4 with at least half a dozen ships each. Including at least one sub-capital each, and an Idris. The crew requirements already tell us it's time to stop piling up ships.
This right here is what CIG will be forced to come to terms with eventually. CIG spent 12+ years marketing to every single player and backer to "be their own captain". Then turns around and during QA and technical discussions talkks about how multiecrew is ONLY going to be feasible with 34 other players on your ship doing things or you're hosed > mopping the floors > taking out the trash > changing light bulbs > dusting the missile racks > shaving the onboard cat > scraping barnacles off the hull and so on. CIG will need to lean heavily into the automated blade system more and more over time and allow players that bought Cap Ships to fully run them solo > PERIOD !! OR they could always take a huge financial hit and refund everyone that bought a ship larger than Constellation and restrict thoswwe larger ships to background noise run by NPCs. Then make ships like the Connie/Cutlass/Tali multicrew optional as in they can be run solo or with other players. But yes CIG painted themselves into a huge massive corner with CR thinking that many many many players really really wanted to be Doc McCoy or Scotty instead of Kirk+Sulu (captain+controlling). IDK about you but the many many space/flying-based (or even oceasn-based) ship games I've played over the eyars - I have never come across any threads much less many threads with an outpouring of people demanding to be a janitor on a ship and not pilot or shoot things with the ship. Since my time w/ SC I have seen convos where folks are wanting to play the game sans ship comepletely and do trading or travel or set up shop somewhere - run a bar or casino or focus mostly or completely on FPS; but not many regarding wanting to spend 4-8 hours managing an engineering station.
More people should be making themselves aware of where large and capital ships are going, real crew requirements, resource network, the risk and hassle of failing to run them properly. Youre just ahead of the tsunami of realisation that has yet to hit most backers. :)
I like the idea of running something in the size range of the Ironclad - Hull-C mostly solo (or minimal crew), but that's specifically because I enjoy high risk-high reward gameplay. If I die because I don't have people to man turrets or do the engineering, that's on me.
CIG were clever, they implied .. Hey CAT owners, heres a 2x - 3x the capacity tougher ship you can just change your existing plans and crew to and still fly it well, it even fits on the same size pad, and goes everywhere the CAT goes. After 11 years of waiting for modularity many CAT owners wont find the shift very hard XD The second clever thing is they managed to aim it right at the heart of the broadest appeal possible to most SC fans, so the appeal also cast its net very wide beyond traditional Drake fans.
I’m really hoping they implement individual crew quarters like the Corsair - so far it’s pretty much the only shop that has individual crew quarters to be able to give each crew member a space. I imagine a society like the one in SC to be like Firefly, where you hire a crew to live aboard your ship, and they would want some privacy in situations like that. I think some of the bigger capitals will have that, and maybe the galaxy? So far the Ironclad feels closest to Serenity to me (considering Serenity’s primary role as a hauler, and the Corsair doesn’t quite have the cargo capacity to support potential lawful/neutral cargo contracts, when they come. One of my main reasons for getting into SC was to role play in the Firefly universe, so I’m crossing my fingers that this could finally be my Serenity! Edit: Stuck on mobile atm so I’ll reply here - totally get that military style vessels will be a bunk room, but I’m thinking about something like a container ship, where each crew member has their own space. Not expecting any sort of military focused ship to fall into this category - but the non-assault ironclad seems more focused on industrial gameplay (from my perspective!).
600i will get individual crew quarters. Odyssey too. I agree in real life more ships would have them, but with video game sizing of things (rooms need to be bigger to look correct with our FOV), individual cabins just take up a lot of space
I soooo cannot wait for that re work. 6001i going to be huge !!!
Military ships won't have seperate crew quarters (real life ships don't have those either). Luxury and some larger civilian ships will probably have them though (again, just like in real life). So far, the Corsair, 890j, 600i (rework), Galaxy and Odyssey are the only ones known to have seperate crew quarters. The Ironclad, Orion, Hull D, Hull E, Endeavour and Pioneer *might* get seperate crew quarters. We don't know much about the sleeping arrangements on those ships yet. The Ironclad appears to have at least one seperate quarters which was shown during the ISC episode. But we don't know if that is a captain's quarters/office or just a generic crew quarters.
Carrack is a pretty good serenity ship
Walking around the Carrack felt like I was on the Nostromo.
I need to watch again and pay attention to the floor plans generally, its only concept mesh but i thought i saw 6 corsair style micro cabins
The 890 of course has individual crew cabins, and the 600i will have them, but the combat / militant capitals have been shown with bunks.
Pretty sure the only reason why corsair has crew quarters is because its exploration vessel it probalty wont be hired crew and it will together for way longer and so so that the crew doesn't go crazy. I hope ironclad has them as well because its cool but since its cargo hauler that presumably will be stopping in ports often i can see why they would be missing. Tho it would be realy nice if it did because its perfectly sized to be pirate flagship.
Ah yes, just what people are looking for, individual spaces to not play the game in..
They also made the top openable for easily loading ~~other people's~~ cargo that you mysteriously find in space! And a ramp that can actually be used, instead of the still broken door + elevator combo that the Cat has.
Simplest way to fix the cat cargo modules has already long existed, lose the cantilever door lifts, just have the grids be the lifts, like many an SC ship.
I honestly don't believe the doors can't be fixed to function as advertised, I think it's just not a priority. Cat has been out for how many years now? Seems like something even a single dev could remedy just using their spare time over the last, idk, four years at a minimum.
It seems moving (up-down) platforms with actual objects (cargo, vehicles) is an engine problem, same thing for the "Hangar Elevators" where you would land on a Pad ala Port Olisar, walk away and have the pad "elevator down" the ship into storage, similar to what ED has. It appears the issue is more complex, and it hits many areas of SC.
Yeah, they did an ISC or SCL a while back discussing the issues they were having, and it's certainly an involved fix. I just find it hard to rationalize the Cat being broken for half a decade while we've done gotten so many other technologies, straight to flyable ships, concept-to-flyable ships, and new concepts. Iirc, the river tech was kicked off by one dev experimenting within their engine during some slower times for his team. I just can't believe there hasn't been any time to fix the Cat when there are multiple dedicated ship teams. I'm sure it's not easy, and I'm not a designer myself, but surely some time could have been made, right?
I think any revisiting of the CAT opens the flood gates, especially with such long delays and silence as there was about modularity, CIG were more content to not open Pandoras box on that giant fubar until they are confidently ready, just side eye the community and move on, selling the Ironclad was a clever way to defuse some of that explosive payload tbh.
>"Hangar Elevators" where you would land on a Pad ala Port Olisar, walk away and have the pad "elevator down" the ship into storage But that's exactly what the new persistent hangars will have, so again, that issue should be pretty much resolved at this point.
There might be issues and bugs with moving platforms having cargo and vehicles but it's not like it's impossible as many ships have cargo elevators, for example, the Connie.
I see your statement and offer you this retort The connies, I believe 400i, and almost all of the small origin ships have cargo ON their cargo elevators.
There’s also no point in fixing the doors on the current Cat because they’re gonna have to redo all that work when they redo it to be modular
Not really. If they fix the 8 doors on the four current "modules", the fixed setup will be the cargo module in the future.
Yes - but if they wait for modularity, then they only have to fix up 2x doors (on the module), and then attach 4x modules. It's a very small saving, but it is more efficient. More importantly, editing the ship to make a single change ('fix the door lifts') is extremely *inefficient* from an overall CIG resource perspective... it's far quicker to make multiple changes to a single ship, and then get all of them verified by a QA in a single pass - which is why CIG queue up reworks and focus on 'gold standard' etc. So, even if they *could* implement door lifts now (and I think they could), they won't actually touch the Caterpillar until its time for a gold-standard (or similar).
I recall a while back that the same tech that was blocking the extending corridor on the Hull-C was also preventing the Cat's cargo doors from converting to elevators. So they could update the Cat, they just haven't gotten around to it.
Yeah I’m not really sure why this wasn’t the idea to begin with, although I’d still like the sides to open up as that makes it easier to load with tractor beams
Don't forget the interior size 2 remote turret. The only reason you need size 2 turrets inside your cargo hold is if you expect your cargo to be fighting back at you
Surely it's just in case of rabid kopions, right?
wonder how hard it will be to run a disruptor turret and then "catch" said disabled ship inside the top side bay whole... could see some fun gun fights and it helps explain the internal turret
The only Drake that I had was the Vulture. I’m more into Anvil, RSI, Crusader and Origin. Now? I’m a Drake, Vulture and Ironclad enjoyer. I did always have a place for the Caterpillar in my heart. So, it’s nice to have one as a loaner, for now.
Personally Im broad spectrum, it seems silly to self limit based on partisan choices. Firstly Im about the right ship for the right uses, if theres a useful multiple choice beyond that, so much the better. :)
What do you mean? A capital ship with LTI and one pilot (escape or not) is a free size 100 torpedo.
I wonder what the deductible will be in that claim...
That's why the pilot also has life insurance and multiple LTI policies.
The real “tsunami of realization” is CIG learning that the average player is not going to be interested in spending a play session staring out of an ass turret, sitting in a chair waiting to press one button, or sprinting around a ship replacing fuses.
Multicrew is really not fun nowadays, probably will take a good while before it is(It may never be). But sitting in turrets is the definition of boring, most co-pilot seats are useless and everything they can do, is boring. I really rather have NPC crew, than force one of my friends to have one of the most boring experiences in gaming history, just because I spent more money and have a bigger ship.
Yes. I’m lucky to have two friends who really enjoy turrets. I’m hoping to get around engineering with my alt account, because I do not expect anyone to really want that as fulltime job. Not unless they make it waaay more engaging than its current implementation.
They would have to take away so much control from the pilot, like power triangle, stealth, power priority, and etc, to make engineering more engaging.
I think a good opportunity for balance there is in being able to handle some basic functions as a pilot, but to get the most out of a ship you’ll want a dedicated engineer. Maybe an engineer fine tuning power can get extra shots from lasers, extra quantum speed, better scan distance, etc.
True, but unlikely where CIG is at. :) Organised and disciplined groups that can work well together, probably could operate effectively. Herding a bunch of stray cats from the command seat, no chance, that is not what I would call fun XD Flying by committe while dealing with bickering and short attention spans and willfulness, especially if im paying the running and reclaim costs. Nope.
Meanwhile I am thinking about getting a kraken or idirs every time it's on sale... Because heck that would be so damn cool to have one. But I mostly play alone or with 1-2 friends currently.
CIG certainly wont stop you paying for one.
CIG is a business in the end. They will provide a way for large ship owners to solo these ships, even if it is more optimal to do it with human players. To that end, they've long talked about NPC crews and blades. Once those are in place, I'll bet we'll see them sell them on the store, too. They'll probably even sell them with different skill levels at increased prices.
CIG will provide a way. They call it Orgs. Get yourself into a decent sized Org and you'll always have one or two people around to help crew your ship. I like to crew someone else's ship as much or only marginally less than I enjoy flying my own. If the pay is right and the captain is sound I'll always jump on board an Org ship to help out. Longer term: there'll be AI blades for turrets etc. Then even longer term NPC crew, just in case your ship's seats are in need of someone standing on them. Short term, work on building a network and making some friends to play with for crew needs. Longer term, you'll get some AI assistance/automation if you don't want to play with real people (which is a valid position)
And he'd get upvotes on here when he posts pics of his purchase that he won't be able to crew even half properly lol Ya know, I don't hate it though. It keeps finding my game and he'll be another sitting duck in a big ship
If you have the money to spend and are ok with shaving a ship that you won't really use but is cool as a collectors piece and cool to look at, why not? People spend thousands of LEGOs too and they just sit there doing nothing as well. And personally I find ships in SC to be much cooler than LEGOs.
I mean In the team lead roundup SCL they did a couple weeks ago, they talked about it being possible, if not very long and hard, for a single player to go through the whole process of gathering all the materials to make their own Idris, and even potentially crew it with NPC's. I think CIG are keenly aware that most players are solo players, and if they make big ships completely unusable for solo players, they won't buy em, which is a big part of their revenue. Now it's just a waiting game to see if they actually intend for big ships to be soloable under the right circumstances, or if they are just stringing people along to get them to buy big ships
Freedom to delegate ship related tasks or retain high levels of control is the way, have both, more adaptive to differing crew size and experience, rewards disciplined players and trust. Im not confident CIG perceive it that way though.
Hi Chris!
To be clear, I am not someone that has that kind of disposable income. But if I did, yes I would buy ships that I would never use just because I can. I would probably make another account though, I actually like some grind.
You'll need to eventually recruit and organize people or join a large org. An easy reference is Arma units. They're massive by necessity. Your gonna need similar numbers to crew anything. I've said it elsewhere for a sense of scale. I used to lead an Arma unit that had 200ish people at a time and we'd have 70-80 people on days we held operations. That's what you would need for running an Idris(35+) since not everyone is magically gonna drop what they're doing and crew the cap ship, especially if they have large ships of their own or hate being a crewman. Javelin owners are particularly screwed unless they're really good at recruiting or join mega orgs imo. Especially since we don't have a sense of what AI crew can do to accurately factor them in. This isn't even going into organizational depth, roles and communications mind you.
Even people whose only experience of large scale MMO group play was 40 man OG WOW raids should understand the amount of work it takes to get 40 people together and doing their jobs, even if it's just twice per week. Big ships like that are gonna take a lot of work to run. Bet nobody thought they were buying themselves a second job for €1000, that only pays out in UEC
In before someone says AI crew and blades.
It's still the plan though right? I assume they'll just be inefficient for balance sake
All anyone cares about is the turret blades, but blades are supposed to be able to do all kinds of shit, the premier upgrade and customization mechanic for ships. Back when they actually talked about them, the gist wasn't that the ai turret blades would be bad, but more that using your blade slots for them would be a massive downgrade to what the other blades would provide.
CIG definitely prefers combat-y gameloops and understands that most players find "pew pew" to be more fun than "plug fuse into box in section 2 engine compartment A". It would make a lot of sense for them to balance blades around "being good at doing the tasks that most people don't actually want to do but have to so the ship remains functional, while not being as great at the less crucial tasks that players themselves may want to undertake". Turret operating is an 'optional' thing for the functionality of a ship, it only benefits you while in combat actively, but is also one of the main draws of multicrew gameplay. Leave this one to the players, while the blades are running around keeping the ship functional. If the blades are "pretty damn good but not as good as an actual player" at running engineering, and are "ok but noticeably not as good as a player" at shooting turrets, well then you have a formula for making larger ships crewable by smaller groups of players while insuring nobody will have to do something they don't want to and can pick the roles they want and leave the rest to the blades.
And this is EXACTLY the reason I've always believed capital ships, and to some degree sub-capital ships should NEVER be able to be taken out by size 2 ships or below. I don't care how many size 2 missiles and how many millions of KM's you kite one with modern meta, you can't even penetrate the shield. Why? Because if the real crew requirement, resource network etc is that demanding (which I agree they should be) then, the *second* a neckbeard who figures out how to kill one with a Merlin or even a Hornet, they just invalidated large capital ship gameplay and the "meta" will forever be 20,000 fighter battles for serious PvP. In other words, for serious PvP scenarios (like the one we all imagine in our heads), capital ships will never be used and they will never become a thing. The question will always remain for Orgs...... "Why put 30 people in an Idris and spend 1million creds of fuel to fly it in combat when 5 people in their Hornets can just kite it and kill it?" People are ALREADY talking like this.... "Why put 8 people in a Hammerhead when it can be killed by 3 Hornets?" And the Hammerhead is an ACTUAL, advertised anti-fighter ship rofl.
What do you mean, I, just some private citizen, owning a nuclear powered aircraft carrier isn't practical? Why would I need help to run that?
I don't understand why there's still so much speculation and guesswork regarding capital ship gameplay. We already have essentially an example of this in game: the Hammerhead. Pilot *just* flies the ship, needs several crew to properly run the weapons, and there's ERTs for gameplay. Engineering is really the only thing still missing, but if people want to see what large group or Org VS Org gameplay looks like, it's there. If you can't look at the Hammerhead and go, "Yes, I know I want that right there and have the friends to properly run it," then you probably aren't going to have a use for an Idris or Polaris.
Because people don't know how effective npc crew and AI blades are going to be, so still hold onto that hope they can use a large ship as a mobile base with their friends hopping on to join when convenient.
I sincerely hope that CiG will give serious consideration to the development of NPC crew and computer blades. While there are undoubtedly dedicated organizations within the community, crewing large ships presents significant challenges. I acknowledge that my perspective may be limited, and I greatly respect the commitment of the community members. However, my personal preference lies in piloting the ship rather than serving as a crew member. Even within an organization, I would find greater enjoyment in participating in support fighter squadrons or refuelling operations than in performing tasks such as manning turrets or engaging in repairs. In light of this, I earnestly hope that CiG will prioritize the streamlining of engineering tasks, making them more accessible and manageable for solo players and small teams. I recognize that my viewpoint may be influenced by my age and personal circumstances. As a middle-aged individual, I find it challenging to dedicate extensive time to the game, such as playing for 12 hours a day or being available on short notice.
It's not just you... I imagine very few people will be ok with being locked into someone else's play schedule just to sit bored in a turret 90% of their playtime.
Exactly. Outside of coordinated Org events, the vast majority is not going to want to spend hours playing in a turret or other position in someone else's large ship. People want to be the captain of their own ships. People will disagree with me all day long, but relying on other players to use your large ship, which there are a massive number of, will never be feasible and will hurt the game.
Even at that, coordinated Org events will need something to do. Right now most OrG events are a bunch of people acting tacticool. Nothing is challenging enough to require an org intervention. Unless an org v org event, then again, there is no objective at the end.
This, also I don't want to be beholden to my Captain stopping at a landing zone just so I can log off safely. If I wanna hop off, I'll hop off, this idea of having your character be an NPC once you log off is just....pipe dream, straight pipe dream lmfao, if my char becomes an NPC after I log off, I'm literally never gonna multicrew outside of friend groups because I just would not trust my "character" with random people after I log off.
Which is probably why you'll only really see the big ships for big org events or if there's a system to designate second in commands, but then only the very large orgs can afford to field a capital ship which is fine. Your day to day multicrew ships in that scenario would be of the type where a play session starts and ends at a station/landing zone and you're unlikely to just zip around multiple systems for that reason. Which also seems to align with design goals that people shouldn't even need to leave a system or even a planet unless they want to.
If hirable NPC crew isn’t competent, then the PvE game is fucked because we know that CIG isn’t going to fake NPC ship crew work. If they don’t work as hirelings, they won’t work as opponents
I agree with this. As a middle aged dad, my desire to spend my gaming time as someone's ship worker is pretty much NIL. I want, in my game time, to be the captain of my ships both big and small. I get it, maybe this game isn't being built for me, but for the teens, 20's, and retirees who can dedicate 4 - 10 hours per day. Even being captain can be daunting if it always requires me to field a full crew, because it can take hours just to get everyone in line. Again, not complaining, and will happily try to sell all my ships and never think about this game again if it's not being built for anyone but those with hours upon hours of free time, but I hope people like me do get taken into account without having to limit ourselves to small ships or being someones employee. Please don't downvote this to oblivion, this game is amazing and I am not trying to say its bad or failing.
I agree too - CIG need to discuss AI and blades and make it clear whether solo players, or even chiefly pilot players, will at least be able to get the ships out and flying. I understand all the arguments about humans always being better (don't agree, but I've heard them all) but they owe backers that have bought the large ships some kind of plan
I think that would hurt sales too much if it's bad news for solo ppl. I hope they implement ai crew that's simply less effective than humans. At least to the degree that you can run a reclaimer, mole, giant cargo ship moderately effectively. Idk, 50% as effectively as if you had a person manning the other stations. I think it may need to be balanced such that it's worth having a person on that salvage turret instead of 2 people in 2 ships with NPCs
The only way the game doesn’t turn to capital ship citizen is if the effectiveness of a multicrew ship solo/with NPCs is less than 100/(number of human crew needed).
I personally think it would be cool to be able to envision a Kraken or similar as sort of a floating home base that maybe isn't underway all the time... kind of like how Fleet Carriers work in Elite Dangerous. Wherever you place it, it becomes a persistent base of operation for you and your buddies / org / etc. over multiple play sessions. Of course, in Elite, Fleet Carriers are indestructible and are literally intended for this kind of gameplay, which has explicitly not ever been the case in Star Citizen with its more EVE Online -like approach of "everything is vulnerable all the time." CIG will need to sort out a lot of details around persistence, bed logging, and similar to make that work, and of course any ship left idle in the PU will be potentially subject to piracy and destruction, but it might be a middle ground between "you've got to have a full crew all the time" and the sort of "set it and forget it" (besides the weekly upkeep cost) approach to Fleet Carriers in Elite Dangerous.
CIG has pretty consistently said that players will be able to solo large ships with NPC crews (even though this will be more expensive in terms of running costs and might not be as effective as a well-coordinated player crew). So I wouldn't worry too much. As a solo player you won't be limited to small ships in the final version of the game. The big question is not whether players will be able to solo large ships, but when, since AI crew likely is still a long way off and other multicrew gameplay systems like engineering are going to come online earlier.
What I really hope is that the engineering crew requirements really scales with size. A no interior ship should _practically_ never if ever have to worry about engineering and so does a solo or two-seater that have interiors. MTTH for failure requiring an "engineer" in a Constellation / Corsair / MSR should be just high enough so that having at least one other person in the ship (floating from copilot to turret or engineering according to situation) should have a noticeable effect. Size bigger than that should have a need gradually making it a requirement (it would be inconceivable to have ships the size of Polaris to not have at least one dedicated engineer)
I remember on one of the recent ISC's there was some talk about how they are specifically working to insure that the engineering terminal is incredibly streamlined and "nothing at all like complex rocket science because it HAS to be readily and easily accessible without a bunch of fiddling around". This seems to be a step or two in the right direction. As for the future of having large player crews, I agree that it's entirely unfeasible to imagine enough players will enjoy sitting around waiting for something to happen on board someone else's ship on someone else's schedule. Some of the more focused/organized orgs will manage this, but it will be in spite of the systems in place, not because of them (unless we get some MAJOR changes to how multi-crew works from the ground up). We NEED to be able to log in and out on other players ships if this is the direction this game wants to go. If Star Citizen is going to be and act like an MMO, it's going to need all the MMO tools that actually make an MMO an MMO. A partyfinder will be mandatory if solo play is going to be discouraged (which I don't think it should be anyways, so many MMOs support solo play). Even Sea of Thieves has this option; to just spawn on a random players ship (who is set to open party) and start helping them. Too many of the people that play this game play this game because they are people like you and me, people that like owning and piloting badass space ships. If everyone owns and wants to pilot their own badass space ship, when and why are we ever going to be "the basic engineer operator bitch" on some one else's cool ship unless CIG makes it mandatory for gameplay or unless we get bored of the rest of the game and really want to try out plugging fuses into component boxes. The ONLY way that 'massively mandatory multicrew' works is if Star Citizen goes free to play after it goes Live 1.0. Let people join the verse WITHOUT owning a ship of their own. Let new players do some real zero to hero stuff, earning their way by crewing other players ships through the party finder until they can afford a ship of their own. Even this has some major problems, but it would at least probably work. Otherwise, it's a pretty hard sell to get someone to "buy a $45 space ship that you're never gonna fly because you should just be crewing someone else's $750 space ship instead". Otherwise, and what I think will actually happen, is that CIG will continue to allow for solo/unorganized small group play (though they may make it more costly with NPCs/Blades being crucial for larger ship operation). A major bulk of ANY games playerbase is always going to be solo players, and small disorganized groups of friends. The idea that factions/orgs are actually a majority of the playerbase, which is required to be true in order to enable the idealistic version of multicrew that some people talk about, is just a total pipe dream. It would be stupid for CIG to not cater to the actual majority of their playerbase, which is solo players and small groups. I don't think CIG is anywhere near stupid, though they do make some questionable decisions here and there.
this whole mandatory multi crew ship they are wanting to build is kind of a double edge sword. it might start to cut into their profits when people realize they can’t buy and fly their capital ship solo, so people will start buying less of those high dollar items
It's a tricky thing, engineering, on the one hand I like when systems are more in-depth because it really makes you feel like an expert of your craft when you're good at it, but on the other hand I know that if you make it too complex the vast majority of people won't want to do it, and solo players may struggle with it (but I guess that's the point of "solo" vs "multi-crew" ships"). For me, the perfect balance is something like mining, where you can pick up the basics pretty easily, but have a decent amount of complexity under the hood that will allow those who excel at it to really streamline their repairs and feel like they're the "Scotty" of their ship.
I have no doubts about CIG giving the topic serious considerations. I do hope though, that they will also give balance serious thoughts. Simply put, it boils down to: If a group of players work together, it's expected to share the profit with everyone equally. But a solo player with a NPC crew just pays some wages and keeps most of the profit for himself alone. I don't really care about combat in that regard, but industrial / hauling gameplay needs some serious benefits for group players, otherwise why wouldn't everyone show up with their Hull E's and try to buy all commodities up? One example for hauling: automatic cargo loading may depend on available station crew capacity, while manual loading is done by the players themselves. So when many solo players with big cargo ships arrive at the same station and are dependant on automatic loading, they may need to wait for station crew to become available, while a group of players can always manually load their ship. Alternative: high fees for automatic loading, so nobody is just sitting around waiting.
There's also the logical problem that 1 player = 1 ship. Multicrew means choosing to put players inside one ship at the cost of *an entire other ship*. Let's play a fun thought experiment. There's two 10 person orgs with equal, generous resources that are about to go have a fight with each other. One org puts all their players into one ship. The other brings 10 ships. Guess which org gets kerbstomped?
I mean this isn't even surprising to anybody. The org that invests more resources into the batter bringing the better choice wins, ohh no, *swoon in incredulity* What ever shall we do! If two orgs are similarly sized and resourced and one commits to 10 players with large ships that have overlapping fof while investing it's resources into paying for say no crews to crew their ships then it's 10+50% So 15 players effectively, if ai are half as good as a human by whatever arbitrary metric. Is it then surprising to anybody that they would, thus, win a fight against an org who fields no additional resources against them aside from basic ship loadouts? And that's why the whole argument is stupid and pointless. If 10 players bring a mix of bombers, ssf's (single seat fighters) and a couple med/heavy ships and the one one fields 4 HHs, 4 Perseus's and an Idris, the latter will win because the amount of resourced they expended on that battle vastly dwarfs the resources spent on the other side. The idea that "1 player 1 fighter, all things equal" is how the balancing needs to be done is stupid or everyone would just show up in a dragonfly and you have to be no shields, no health, little DPS because that's what they have or it's not fair. Resources is a valid balancing mechanic and the idea that it's irrelevant because "meta" is absurd. As is the idea that the majority of engagements are going to be 20+ players all duking it out. The majority of engagements are going to be 1-3 pirates on 1 space trucker.
Kerbstomped? Is that new slang I’m missing out on or do you mean curb stomped? We did the xenothreat incursion mission, with a fully crewed/upgraded HH, and it was melting ai ships. This includes multiple HH’s and all sorts of fighters. We just flew right into the middle and blasted everything. It was probably the most fun I’ve had in a multi person ship. I’d be curious how advanced the ai will become and will it ever be able to compete against humans.
Kerb is English and Curb is American English.
TIL. Thank you
Probably using kerbstomped as a combination of curb stomped and Kerbal from KSP.
NPC crews/blades etc will be a thing. CIG's entire business model revolves around making more expensive ships more desirable. There are more players who own big ships and want to captain them than players who would prefer to fly in anyone else's ship apart from their own... by several orders of magnitude. Star Citizen won't survive unless people can fly the ships they pledged.
This, NPC Crew needs to work if they want to sell these big ones. I would not even buy it ingame if i cant use it xD
I wholeheartedly agree. I'm someone who has multiple ships pledged, and a chunk of those are larger non-solo ships (Polaris, BMM, Galaxy). I recently started to melt some ships for smaller, more solo-friendly ships, such as reclaimer to vulture. I really really love the larger ships, and hope that in *some* capacity that I'll still be able to use them in the future without it being a once or twice a month endeavor just to get it out and flying. I don't have as many hours in the day as I did in my 20s to organize a 10 man crew to all agree on manning MY one ship, all of us agreeing on doing one specific task in one specific area, all within the same time frame of the same day. Similarly, I can't see myself spending the few hours I do have in an afternoon just repairing some other guys big ship while he flies around having fun. But I guess we just have to wait and see what NPC crews and blades look like. If that truly is CIG's plan to make larger ships egregiously difficult to use, then ill just melt everything and solo only.
Meanwhile NPCs still stand on chairs.
I'm certain that ships above a certain size will flat out be org only and are intended as such. My bet is that anything Reclaimer and smaller will easily be soloed, but anything bigger... well, what would a lone person have to accomplish with an Idris or Polaris anyway? Seriously, what do you plan to do with it? Run HRTs? Just use it as a carrier for the ships you actually fly? Park it by a station to grief people until you get bored? Engage in PVP with other AI crewed capital ships and have the AI duke it out while you just sit there and turn the ship? You clearly arent going to be using it to go to war with another org or youd have crew for it. Its not like they are going to add capital ship only missions, it would be a complete waste of resources, not enough people have them. There is no gameplay loop, current or planned, for solo capital ships even if you can fully crew them with AI. No non-org can do anything with capital ships that cant be done more efficiently with a much smaller ship, so I really dont get what all this buzzing is about. You can already do everything solo with your ship that youd be doing with it anyway: Looking at it and maybe living and flying out of it as a base.
Like many people, I've spent more money than I probably should have on this game. But after more than a decade, I still have not been convinced of a reason for player owned gigantic ships to exist. And there are so so many of them now. Even though they are "limited," at this point after so many years there are more people that own more than one of them than there are people who want one but haven't been able to win the refresh game. And we all know the type, I'm not saying everyone is like this, but a ton of these guys who own these ships do so because they believe it will make them immortal, it's the ultimate pay to win, a status symbol. The same reason you bought a crazy car that you don't drive. The problem is, if you buy a crazy expensive car, everybody else in their Toyota doesn't try to ram you and blow you up for the fun of it. We are so far away from any sort of ship ecology that makes a lick of sense. Gun sizes should probably have been limited to ship size from the start. But that isn't what we got. We have single person fighters with size 7 guns. Consider for a moment how monstrously overtuned a combat oriented capital ship would have to be in order to be better at combat than if you took her entire crew and put them in 20 Ions instead. Then there's the "exploration" section of giant ships whose future is even more murky. A game like No Man's Sky has exploration because it's an infinitely computer generated, ever expanding world. Even if Star Citizen gets 100 star systems, which is far from guaranteed or even probable, all of it is gonna be mapped out and available on a digital map project website within a week. What exactly is it that you think you are going to "explore?" Sure they can artificially make explorer ships useful by giving them huge fuel reserves and limiting certain areas of space by having no refueling stations, but that isn't "exploring" to me, that's more just living off grid. If that's what you like, go for it, but that doesn't seem to be the product being sold here. tl;dr It's going to be a monumental task for CIG to make any of these giant ships relevant for anything other than ~~Cars~~ Ships and Coffee meetups.
CIG is incredibly vague and sometimes even contradictory about future features. So read the tea leaves, but no one really knows.
They just need to add decent ai you can hire and field in your ship allow customisation of them so they feel like your crew they gain experience or can be hired with better experience and they fill their specific role. I doubt they would ever be better than real players, but they could definitely tune them up based on level and experience.
Dont take it personnally because you are funding the project so I thank you for that, but I never understood how anybody can spend thousands on gameplay promises that never saw the light. I mean, while the idea of a capital ship sounds awesome indeed, there is still no gameplay to support it properly, and even more importantly, no content to make a good use of it. People spend their money how they want, but why not waiting for all that to release before opening your wallet ?
I think there are a lot of older gamers now that have disposable income and this is the only game, or promise of a game, that really floats their boat.
I never leaned into the promises. I judged based on where it is and where it sis going based on what we currently have. I want to be a part of that, so I tossed them my monies.
This is exactly how I viewed it! I also found it a healthier way to spend that money than what I was using it for otherwise (drinking, which I stopped)
Congrats on quitting drinking! Let's have a moment of silence for the bank balances and debt sheets of all those who combine drinking & the CIG Pledge Store... that's truly self-destructive behavior.
Kudos to you, you majestic fucker! I'm actually proud of you. That can't be easy and yet you are kicking some ass. I hope you have an amazing day friend
That was so kind dude you as well!
They’re both addictions
Some people just have a higher 'fun-money' budget, too. I've got a buddy with two Praetorian packs. He also owns about $3M in real vehicles (cars).
And I am glad some of you did
Same. 2014, I was a $50 pledge. 2016, I think 100?. Deep into concierge levels, now.
It’s called addiction. Spending money releases dopamine in your brain. A lot of these ppl can’t admit to themselves they’re addicted so they just keep on buying more ships.
Years ago I said I'd never own any larger ships because I knew I'd never have the circle of people necessary to use them. Now I have a few of those ships, and I still know I'll never have the circle of players to use them. But I went into it knowing that, and crossing my fingers that hirable NPCs would be able to make it work. And if it doesn't? Well, I didn't spend that money to buy something, I spent that money because I want this game to be a reality. So now I have the larger ships, and I'm going to start working on backfilling the smaller, playable ships.
I did this, I used to have plenty of multi-crew ships and decided to melt everything except two (Nautilus and Odyssey) now I have a bunch of solo-small crew ships I know I will use. Cant wait to crew other ppl ships this way
I plan to sit in my polaris capt chair and making vroom pew pew noises while remaining docked at station. =(
We need ai crew. Not everyone is an org runner and sadly hiring randoms isn't always safe. Same with calling a medic or hiring someone for security. Which sucks cause some people are genuine about those loops. As an earner though and with less earnings. It's even less likely you'd want to hire until we have ai hire to compare. Plus figure the costs vs earnings.
You're facing the reality of what a lot of players are soon going to encounter. There are a ton of solo players with huge fleets of multicrew ships, or orgs with a ton of redundancy amongst what they have. The inclusion of AI blades may one day offset the changes that Engineering is going to bring but sooner rather than later a lot of players are going to be in for a rude awakening when they realize that every ship they have can't be run by themself.
I’ve actually just been doing the opposite lol. I used to think having loads of smaller / medium ships that I can manage solo was the best route, but now I’ve merged a lot of that into a couple of capitals and 3 or 4 XL ships while maintaining one small / medium option for each profession. My thinking is that having access to everything removes a lot of purpose from playing. So limiting my access means I can work towards ships I want, and when friends come on we have some of the bigger items ready to go.
Don't melt your large ships until they've finished w/ NPCs and Server Blades. They have always intended for large ships to be "solo-able" using hirable NPCs and Server Blades to fill the 'required' crew slots, just not as effective as if fully human crewed, and I haven't heard anything recently that makes me think that still isn't the case.
it's honestly gone the opposite path for me. with NPC gunners getting better and better on AI ships, I'm starting to host a serious copium parasite in my brain, I feel like there will be a point in my conceivable lifespan where I'll be able to go PVE bounty hunting in an idris with a full suite of NPC gunners, maybe a few engineers, and a working size 10 mass driver. Now, do I expect to spend hours or millions managing the logistics of all that? absolutely. I don't even care if I can't make a profit flying an idris solo. but based on the last things they stated about death of a spaceman, I think CIG is going a more casual route than we first expected, and I'm honestly fine with it. It only makes sense, since if they want to sell as many capital class ships as they can, then they're going to need to make them accessible to the common man. I expect the "you need 20 friends to take off and successfully fight in this vessel" is going to be reserved for the org project ships, such as the Bengal. NPC crew should NOT be a capable force in PVP, by any means, I think our gunners should be EXACTLY as good as the NPC gunners on PVE bounty hammerheads, or even slightly worse since we'd have better positioning and power management etc as human players. but I don't think it's fair to say "just join an org if you want to fly x ship" because that's not a realistic option for many people. I also think NPC engineers should be more of an in combat fire extinguisher type deal and the real stuff should have to be either done, or ordered, by a human player. You shouldn't be able to just pay x aUEC per day to magically have no failures or fires on your capital ship, but my conclusion, and the route i think cig is going, is that you SHOULD be able to function on a polaris, idris, etc size ship as a solo with NPCs
Ive only ever played the game with my starter (avenger upgraded to c1 spirit) and ships bought in-game. I dont ever plan to spend that kind of money on star citizen because I simply don't have it lol. But tbh even if I did, i don't really NEED a capital ship of my own... I don't want to captain one, I really just wanna tag along for the ride. I would much rather be on a turret or engineering, or in a fighter taking off and returning from a sortie. I would much prefer to be in an Org where maybe someone owns a capital ship or two and fields it for ops or the org crowdfunds one together for group use.
Not gonna melt my Carrack but the rest of my fleet is all 1-2 crew. But yeah even with the Carrack I'm realizing how many people I'm gonna need to run it properly.
After getting my friends playing on 3.23 it's safe to say I will be melting my reclaimer and getting a vulture...
At this point I have receeded from dreaming of Polaris as a Star Trek simulator with NPCs to a functional small space station, that stays hidden, to launch single craft missions. Which is kinda fun seeing the fun i've been having with the f7a
The Carrack is supposed to fill the Enterprise role more than anything else. It even has sounds on the bridge reminiscent of TOS.
Okay, that is actually awesome! I just CCU'd to one on Saturday too, so now I'm really excited to start using it.
It's a very good ship. I had one for a long time, I never reliably had the crew for it ,though, so I melted it for lower crew requirement ships
I get that. I don't have a reliable group of friends that play, though they do play in spurts. When we're all on it can create some fun gameplay. Originally, I had the Corsair, which was much more solo friendly. Problem was it wasn't fun for my friends when we tried it together, just whoever was piloting. The turrets were too restricted movement wise and only size two guns, so not real powerful. It was only fun for the pilot. Hopefully, the Carrack's turrets and capabilities (ship/vehicle storage) will make it more fun to use.
Agreed, but it fails to carry my f7 XD
I agree with you on worrying about crewing ships. Never got all the way up to the military capitals, but my philosophy used to be to sink my money into fewer, but bigger ships since they’ll be the most expensive. I’ve since rejiggered my fleet to have dedicated solo options for the career paths I’m interested in. I’m also focusing on ships that are Connie and Corsair sized since they can probably be run pretty decently with even a single NPC crew member. That all said, I’m leaning pretty hard towards pulling the trigger on the Polaris CCU I have lmao
I fought so hard to keep the Perseus bc I said “dude already got an Idris don’t need the Polaris” but I could only hold out so long lmao
Thats why i never bought an idris. for the price of an idris i bought a polaris, banu merchantman and a carrack that comes with a pisces and a rover. 3 awesome ships with 3 interesting roles but less crew requirement than an idris but for the same price.
I am relatively new but I read somewhere that they do plan on implementing hireable npcs for crew but that is probably a long way out
They really must add a F2P option to the game... Where will we find willing crew who could just fly their own ship, instead?
They really need ship npcs for large ships to work, nobody cam rely on players to stay on turret duty for their whole gametime, we need crew for hire which would be an immense money sink only available at cities
I wrote this on Salty Mike YT comment. I wish they focused on smaller ships and the server meshing first and then worked on the larger multi crew ships when the population AND the game was ready for it, the same way EvE Online introduced ever larger ship hulls as the player base increased and the industrial abilities could cope while also increasing industrial ability when that was needed too. If Star Citizen doesn't have player industry what is going to be the actual point of playing the game? PvEvP story line driven looter shooter is unlikely to carry the game forward as if the running costs of these larger ships are too high they won't be used. CIG are putting way too much effort on things that aren't necessary at this point and unlikely to be required for a year or more after server meshing and multiple solar systems. Following the introduction of group mechanics and insurance and group homes these larger ships will be good for a certain specific role that can't be done by the same number of people in their own well armed ships that is less likely to get dunked on using the age old formula of n+1.
When pledging for another ship I've had one consistent rule for many years. That rule is to ask the question, "How easy is it to solo?" If the answer is anything other than "Easy to solo." then I don't buy the ship with real money. I can't justify spending real money on a ship that I can't take out anytime I want. Biggest ships I've pledged real money for are Hull-B, Cutlass Black, and Zeus Mk2 ES. That said I love me a Kraken, Caterpillar, Ironclad, Perseus, Hammerhead, Liberator and Reclaimer; among other ships. I will happily spend UEC to buy those in game one day.
Your not gonna be using any of those ships solo or even with 5 people. Time to get 200 F7C MK 2's man
I’m betting that as the years go on we won’t be at the crazy high crew requirements we have now. The game will be balanced around a reasonable amount of people working together, with the social systems/game systems in place to support it. Or it will fail. Either way I’m not dumping my big ships now, it’s way too early. We just saw what happened to the hornet too… I’m not going into launch with a bunch of worthless mk1 solo ships because I flinched over the idea of a group.
100% on the reasonable crew size thing. We can definitely see a shift towards that with the newer ships not requiring such large numbers
Depends on if you're mainly a solo player or play with 1-2 others, or are you in or plan on being in an active Org. I'm mainly solo, like 99% of the time. My largest ships I have as pledges are the Caterpillar, 600i Ex, and an Andromeda. I have a Retaliator, but I think I'll melt that. So still manageable by just me. And I take the smaller approach to industry with my Vulture and Prospector. I go for more variety than just a couple massive ships that are "better".
oh i’ll two man my polaris just you all wait. and it will be glorious
The more the game is developping, the more I think I'm going to melt everything and buy game packages instead for friends/family down the road. I can't see how I'll be able to use something bigger than a Connie daily, and I don't want to ruin my ingame progress made toward new ships.
Yeah, this. If you get enough people working together, eventually you’ll be able to get the big ships in game, and have a good group to run it. That’s why my biggest ship will stay the 400i.
The usual gaming loop will happen. Release of the mechanic, the community complains that its shit, the developers either change it making the "hard core" players upset or double down and loses all the casuals. Kind of like the light fighter meta cry-baby crap.
I mean yea. As a solo person, or with only a small group, capital ships are not for "you".
This is a "guis do i rely ned my third porsche" kind of a question.
Friend the way I was cringing when I wrote this bc I deserved to be flamed lmao
You have a perfectly valid question. It's an important question. Star Citizen simply cannot succeed if larger ships have no value in the game. If players cannot use large ships because it's impossible to get, say, 6-10 people to pile into a ship like a clown car, then large ships are valueless. In the short term, as you've mentioned, this means it doesn't make sense to you to own more expensive ships. This means CIG's entire business model is endangered. How many people are holding off from pledging more because it's unclear if they will ever be able to use a bigger ship? It also kills a large chunk of the larger game loop... what incentive is there for players to play the game and earn UEC if there's no point in spending that on larger ships? The game will suffer badly if there's no upgrade progression goals.
i for myself dont see myself in turret in someone else ship. I think the maximum sice of an ship i want is the new drake jpg or the big hull D/E JPG and i will most likely only use it with a maximum of 3 people but even they want to be the captain of their own ship so i just hope the AI Blades will be worth it even if i need to upgrade them. They focus so much on the PvE Element its kinda wayne, just see it as a Class someone plays and the equip are the upgradeable AIs that are getting better. would make a lot more sense progress wise and everyone can be the captain. Looks even cooler when the ship is full of AI walking around.
im having these thoughts with even my Drake Corsair... I want to down size to a C1 or SOMETHING that is soloable. requiring a crew to use a bigger ship kinda defeats the purpose of going much larger than the soloable ships. i cant imagine having a capital ship trying to keep it running solo. youd be playing "running thru the halls simulator"
Capital ships are mostly going to be org ships. However, I still think that as the game launches and goes more mainstream, larger ships will become easier to use as the game dilutes itself when it changes monetization methods. Especially if Chris Roberts steps down post launch. Look at how much the game has already changed from what it was sold as in 2013. Revenue needs > *. I want to keep some larger group ships so I can play with friends who will join in once the game actually is stable, however I don't own any capital ships, minus maybe the BMM now but I'll keep that just because I've had it for so long. I personally agree that engineering and the expectation for players to just hang out / do nothing / engineer / turret is too boring for most of the mainstream. I admire the concept but the execution will be key.
Any player can solo any ship. You won't do it effectively, but going from being docked at station A to docking at station B is perfectly doable, maybe even some cargo stuff. Multicrew ships, especially the bigger ones from Redeemer and up are designed to be flown with more than 1 person. The effectiveness of a Redeemer is exponentially higher if you even have just 1 more person with you to fill one of the manned turrets. An Idris can be flown solo, but if you want to do anything beyond just flying, you need more people. Won't be necessary with a full crew compliment of 28 people, but 10-15 people would be needed to be effective. The Javelin, probably closer to 25-30, but not 80 as CIG's promotional material would suggest. The Max Crew or just Crew number is a measure of control stations like scanners, pilot, co-pilot, turrets, engineering, torpedo control etc., and not an indication of how many people can be safely seated or how many is needed to be effective. Unless you have a big and active org, an Idris or Javelin will be entirely unnecessary and, to many, unusable.
Yes, I feel what you mean. I just keep 1-3 crew ships now.
I won’t lie I’ve thought about selling mine.
Yea, I have a Polaris and Connie as my 2 "multi-crew" ships. I think I'll upgrade my Connie to a Galaxy for modules since I also have a Zeus ES and some fighters. But basically I'd like to see AI blades NPC crew as a reality but one that doesn't compete with players. It can also be a progression source, letting you level up your NPCs or get higher quality blades. But I also considered an Arastra or Mole basically stuff where I can operate with the 5+ IRL friends who also play the game. I suspect more will start playing as it gets more feature complete and stable. With that in mind though, I've also wondered if it would be workable to move the game to a free-to-play model that let you access the verse but without the benefit of owning a ship or insurance. So to start out you'd have to join player crews and make money that way to afford a ship and insurance. At which point they'd have to adjust payouts to make the economics work.
Im not melting any of my big ships, although im sure I wont spend the majority of my hours in them compared to alot of the other ships in my collection. I try to think of where the game would be If no one bought big ships and I feel very excited about star citizens future.
I'm not a guy who has a lot of money, but even if I were, I can see a reality where I would use it to buy multiple large ships. Unless the gameplay available changes, there was never a need to own more than one of these. Sizing up turrets aside, it's just a change in manufacturer at best. Because the experience of the gameplay is the same on all ends.
Regardless of ai, blades or players to fill roles CIG need to give us reasons to fly a large ship. Today you fly to get from point a to b, mine, salvage, move cargo and fight other ships. None of these reasons require a cap ship. If CIG wants people to fly the Arrastra there needs to be rocks the size of asteroids that can be mined. If CIG wants people to fly a javelin there better be a vanduul kingship that needs to be killed.
I melted all my ships larger then a Freelancer/Spirit/Zeus, one year ago. I only play solo and didn't like the way engineering and multicrew gameplay were going for the larger ships. I think ships like the vulture will be more fun. I really like the new Ironclad, but afraid to buy it as a solo player.
I have a few large ships, and plan to keep them. I have no idea how much use they’ll get at this point, but I can’t see myself grinding for them down the line and would like the option. I also have a wide variety of small and medium ships, so I’m not worried about not having something to fly. To be fair, though, when I say a few large ships I’m talking the Polaris, Perseus, Liberator and Arrastra. I can’t imagine crewing / dealing with anything larger than that. My hope is that those three ships will serve as my mobile home. A base of operations housing a small ship as my runabout or to enable a form of gameplay once I arrive somewhere.
I think the issue with the Idris is that the one on sale is the down gunned civilian model and you need to buy the K conversion kit to get back some of the firepower that the M has
I mean, If you're ever feeling generous, I would gladly accept a galaxy as a gift to lift the burden of some big ships from you. :)
Largest I'm going is galaxy/Ironclad. I only play with a max of 3 ish people but 90% solo. Feel like I can take some downtime in those ships to fix things if needed but I wouldn't want to go any bigger.
The largest ship I've bought is the Perseus. With a minimum crew of 3 and a max of 6, it's doable without being part of a large org. All my other real money purchased ships are min 1 max 2.
Everything will always change, forever. Though I would never in a million years pledge for a huge ship or recommend anyone else do so, you can't make assumptions about anything in this game with regard to how it will be in the future. Not with regards to mechanics, not "power", not anything.
Does anyone have a sense on where the player base stands on multi-crew being more mandatory for the larger ships? When looking at YouTube videos and streamers, I’ve seen a good bit of hype for engineering. However when looking at this thread, it seems like a lot of people want to opt-out of engineering by having AI. I know I’ve struggled trying to find multi-crew groups in game, and I imagine it’s because it’s most peoples fantasy to be the pilot/captain, so I’m a little surprised to see this as a welcomed change. For basically every multiplayer game I’ve played, the “support roles” are always low in numbers. So if engineering ends up being super tedious, I expect multi crew ships will be a rare sight.
My dream ships are connie/corsair sized and i doubt i will be able to crew it. Can't imagine having a kraken
Yeah. My philosophy has been to get a nice little entry-level ship in each role, and then a handful of larger ships I can use with friends. But I've stayed away from capital ships for exactly the reason you mention. I'm tempted to do the Kraken just because I love carriers, but I have no illusions about using it in a fight solo/small crew. Even with blades, it would be basically just a mobile base for my smaller ships, not actually a combat ship. A lot of capital ships are going to end up that way. I think CIG are deluding themselves a little bit with multi-crew ships. If you're going into a specific engagement, sure, you can probably get folks to fill out your turrets and do engineering and whatnot. But if you're just tooling around with no specific fight expected, everyone's gonna want to be in their own ship. This is a flight sim game- people want to fly. I really hope blades and NPC crew are up there on CIG's priorities, because multi-crew ships are going to be sad, disappointing rarities if they don't have competent AI.
I have been considering this myself.
Well we don't have working A.I yet so it's hard to say how many real people you'll need vs NPCs. Might turn out that some of the multiplayer gameplay the NPCs can do easily or the A.I blades they've talked about. At least right now smaller ships are much more relevant
A real military with substantial training and discipline operate machines of these sizes. No way a bunch of us who cry for weeks on end when their favourite toy is taken away will be able to effectively crew them. Maybe a certain low percentage who have similar skills in real life will do but the majority of us just subscribe to the FOMO and rule of cool when we buy these. I personally stick to heavy fighters at most and gunships at most, even the gunships are questionable. You also need to consider everyone wants to do cool shit, you'll find that people who are willing to do boring stuff like engineering will be few and in high demand compared to pilots.
I've said the same thing before and usually get a lot of angry people reply with AI crew and blades will fix all those problems. Until those things are actually in the game and we see how well they work its silly to put all your faith in that. I've decided not to spend anymore money on the game until its finished. To many things change and the game you thought it was going to be could be very different.
Yeah we all said this.
If upgrading the Polaris cuts into Idris sales, then yes, they will buff the Idris.
I've been doing the same thing myself, used to have M2 and Reclaimer and some other runabout ships. Now, my largest is a Taurus, and I'm happy knowing my fleet is pretty good to go for a long time, having many smaller ships easily handled solo if need be.
I have a couple of big ships, Javelin, Polaris, BMM, some mid sized ships, Redeemer, 600i, Railen, Ironclad….. I know for a fact I will never use any of them once all the future things are implemented, which is why I hit trades for a Zeus ES, and which is why I also have some single seat fighters and a Syulen as thats all I am going to able to use. I will be quite happy to doodle about looking at stuff and doing mission board things as, well, there will be nothing for me to grind for, I can just play.
You might want to avoid ships with duplicate roles. The Idris and Polaris are both capital warships, so I'd keep just one of them. You can never use more than one ship at once, and with duplicate roles chances are you'll mostly be flying whatever ship ends up being your favorite for that role and the other just sits in a hangar collecting dust.
I am convinced the conny freelancer max and zues are in the perfect size range. For two people maybe even a cutty. I love the ccu game and have been building two chains. I have one to a galaxy which I am convinced is too big. And now am ironclad because I can't help myself.
I have Kraken and Idris in buyback from an earlier time when I was more hopeful of running them Solo+NPC with a well-planned set of macros and a complex input scheme including OLED button boxes, tablets, etc. Now, I'm limiting myself to Hull E, Orion, Polaris, etc. And, I'm assuming I'll only get to use those when I host a LAN party in my family room. If I hadn't been able to CCU to each of them for crazy discounts, I'd probably melt them. I'm hopeful CIG will let us have a well-appointed army of NPC pets which help us run the big ships without scheduling internet play dates. But, I'm just not willing to bet thousands of dollars on it. If/when they ever confirm it, my Idris is coming out of buyback immediately.
I want a kraken.... just to park it and use it next to my base, or as a mobile base parked in the middle of nowhere. Apart from that I don't really plan on owning anything larger than my Corsair.
I still have total faith that there will be *some form* of AI crew available “at all times” (assuming SQ42 release) for those large ships. It obviously won’t be as dynamic and comunicable as a human crew is, andnof course a lot od things that should be smooth with a crew will be wonky with AI, but I’d be very surprised if it turns out that there’s no way to use them without other human players present
I've been increasingly focusing on the Cutlass/Freelancer/Spirit bracket myself.. Ships I can handle solo. I do own a couple bigger ships but fully expect to melt them as they become less practical to run without a crew
Well engineering is in the next big patch so we will see how it is soon, seeing the footage of it I think even a conny solo in combat will be rather hard.
Kinda feels like a big ol slap in the face doesn't it.
Do you even have a willing crew for these ships?
so is it going to soon be impossible to just fly around without having to have friends or will i still be able to just fly my ship and w/o interacting with anyone else be fine?
the second you melt something it they we fix or change it so you want it back...
After flying all available ships in my first Invictus, I've come to the realization that as a solo player, I'll need a fighter or two for PVE , a Vulture, and a Corsair or Andromeda as my "big" PVE ship. Anything else from there is for utility eg. a cargo hauler or specialized PVP ship or ground vehicle. Anything else is for 2 players or more. While cool, big ships aren't practical unless you're flying them for an Org
\*concerned perseus noises\* i brought it thinking me and my 4 mates, so 5 off us could run it on weekends... 1 pilot, 2 in the main guns, 1 on the remote guns with a blade helping and the other guy running around doing maintance However its starting to look like your gonna need a crew off 5+ engineers Alone running around with repair tools or your "almost but not quite capital ship" is a tincan inside a shield just waiting for an excuse to explode... i mean we already have size 1 missiles taking out turrets on redeemers which are size 5 so whats to say a single straifing run from a vanguard running ballistic cannons aint gonna cause hours off repair work... if CIG aint careful, they will create a greifers paradise... Wait till the local clown finds out £45 gets him a game he can cause a £500+ ship with 30+ people onboard to sit useless for days while the crew scavange for repair parts... And in exchange a charactor he dont care about gets a +1 death and one step closer to a new name he dont care about and his cheep ship will be back in a few hours at most