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Greg Vaganza
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Posted - 2009.07.26 22:22:00 -
[1]
In a nutshell, ships will be able to equip a new kind of boost. Ship crewmen can specialize in certain areas of ship operation, giving you bonus to these areas. In NPC academies you can have your crew trained to higher grades, which improves the bonus, but it requires you to provide the required curriculums to the academy for training you crew, and for commanding them, later, the necessary leadership skill. To take crew on board, you need to invest into a special rig. Care for your crew means you might want to eject early from your ship prior to destruction, thus ejecting your crew with you, or you will lose the training invested into them.
The Basic Thoughts Behind Crews
EVE-Online is a space simulation. Simulations always try to build a bridge between gamplay and reality.
* It has been established through [http://www.eveonline.com/background/ the backstory] that space ships in New Eden are not actually driven by the Capsuleer ''only''. While they are in an extrodinarily supreme position being neurally connected to the ship's systems, the '''ships do have personnel''' operating its subsystems.
* The EVE community has demanded more '''ship customization''' ever since the start. Do not only think in terms of color, you paint your ship with. From a game marketing position, ship customization can be seen as game mechanics, which attaches the player to its asset. Ship crews will carry some notion of having to care for your "equipment", since they can be invested in and improved - and lost, when a ship is destroyed. That is something different than modules, which get their bonus solely through the pilot's skill tree.
* While giving bonus, the backdraw is they require to sacrifice one rig slot. The bonus needs further investment in time and money to attain. And you can save the bonus from destruction by early ejecting from your vessel. Much like T3 requires you to eject in order not to lose random skill points.
* Having crew is '''not mandatory'''.
Introduction Into The Game (Backstory)
During the last months, Gallentean Navy found out that the efficiency of keeping ships running by using bots and robots, decreases with the complexity of ship functionality and the speciality of the missions the ships are used for. So Admiral Geronimo Vaganza (;-)) ordered engineers and technicians to equip some ships with crew quarters, operating centers, and gangways throughout the whole ship to reach every important position.
After few tests only, it became clear that standard ships for standard jobs, for example the usual amunition transports, would not benefit of that kind of specialization. Yet most of the specialized combat ships, like battleships and cloaked operations, showed a significant increase in effectivity - up to 15% - despite the increase mass and inertia.
These results and tests could not be made without the support of the big ship and component industry, which followed the activities closely. When the results are published now, the ship factories now already offer crew rigging; modules built into your ship to allow certain key functions to be manned with intelligent humans instead of machines. Costs vary depending on how many teams you want to employ. Because every crew needs space, the ship gets heavier and has the weight increased by 2%, deteriorating alignment speed by 5%.
Three kinds of crew-package are offered: the small solution for one team plus leader, the mid-size, and the large, which increase the possibility to accomodate more teams respectively.
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Greg Vaganza
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Posted - 2009.07.26 22:23:00 -
[2]
Abilities, dependencies and requirements
Intro
You acquire freshmen from the academy, a new station service. Equip your ship with the rig for one or more human teams (the crew rigs come in different sizes, as rigs will do in future), and off you go. Through their crew, the crew rigs have similar benefits (and backdraws) like regular rigs, with the added benefit that you may choose which specialized team to put into them. While you cannot exchange rigs, you can exchange the crew in a crew rig to modify your bonus.
Crew can be trained in a variety of specializations. Depending on the specialization and the grade of training, the crewmen will boost respective systems of your ship, giving you the extra power in a fight.
Improve your crew by sending them to the academy. The academy will ask for curriculums in order to teach your crewmen to the higher level. You also need the appropriate skill yourself in order to start a course. And in order to lead crewmen of a certain grade, you will need the sufficient leadership skill.
When taking damage into hull, your crew will suffer. Leading to random casualties until all die when your ship is completely destroyed and only you automatically eject as the hull begins to desintegrate completely. Save yourself and your crew by ejecting early enough.
This all comes as a whole new business area, too: personnel, the training of it, and the trade of experienced ship crew between pilots.
To Start With Crews
You need to acquire and rig your ship with a crew rig. The rigs come in different sizes and allow for one or more (up to three, maybe) teams of any specialization to be assigned to their slots.
Get crewmen from the academy (they will be untrained) or acquire experienced crew from the (contract) market or from corp mates, who are able to train them. Assign the crew to the slots and you are ready to go. When you want to put crew of a certain grade (see training below) onto your ship, you also need the required leadership skill.
Implementation in the ship's UI (2 Options)
Crewmen either come as individuals or in teams. The authors do not have a clear preference and would like CCP to decide according to implementation constraints, effort, marketability, and balancing aspects.
Similar to both options is the fact that crew takes damage upon the ship taking hull damage. Either they die one by one (option 1) leading to an irrevoquable loss of the crewman's ability who may be replaced by backup from cargo, or they are injured (opiton 2) allowing healing them with the proper equipment.
Overcharging might apply just like for other slots - with increased "casualties" due to human errors in operating dangerous equipment.
When you lose your ship, you will lose your crew, unless you eject early (before complete destruction), which will eject your crew with you. Their escape pods will be attached to your capsule, either visualized or not. The basic concept is that they flee with you, if you succeed, and you can save them from destruction and losing all the bonus you trained them for.
Crewmen as Charge
A rig provides one or more slots for crewmen. Any slot can take a limited (maybe 5) crewmen of any specialization, but it must be the same for any given slot. The total bonus is calculated from the average grade of the assigned crewmen, taking empty "positions" into account.
Comparable Existing Logic
Like the name suggests, the ammunition charge is similar to this. Crewmen appear as count in the slot.
As crewmen die, the count decreases, and vacant posts can be remanned from cargo.
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Greg Vaganza
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Posted - 2009.07.26 22:24:00 -
[3]
Crewmen as Team Module
A rig provides one or more slots for crew teams of any specialization. The bonus applied to the ship corresponds to the grade of the team. When you get into hull damage, your crew is injured, decreasing the bonus. You may improve the health using medical equipment like nanite for broken modules.
Comparable Existing Logic
Crew teams are like modules which you fit into the slots provided by the rig. They take damage like
modules do, and can be repaired using the right equipment.
Training
In order to improve your crew, you need to send it back to the academy. Academies are a new station service, where you can also get untrained crew, if you do not want (or cannot afford) to buy them off the market. You need the according training skill to do so, appropriate to the specialization of the crew to be trained. Crews have a fixed specialization, which cannot be changed by training. In addition, some curriculum are requested by the academy to start the course.
When you want to put crew of a certain skill onto your ship, you also need the required leadership skill. Such skills can even be split up by specialization, so that for helmsmen of grade engineer, you need a helmsmen leadership skill on level 2.
Depending on whether ship crews are handled as teams or individual crewmen, can be applied to this aspect accordingly.
Comparable Existing Logic
Training works like the blueprints' ME and PE can be improved with research.
Summary
Summary of the Penalties
* Crewmen cost money - dayly, weekly or monthly salary. (to be decided by CCP)
* Crewmen can die during fights.
* Crew rigs have downsides like regular rigs.
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Greg Vaganza
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Posted - 2009.07.26 22:25:00 -
[4]
Grades and Specializations
Teams can differ in their grade
* Level 1: technicians
* Level 2: engineers
* Level 3: specialists
* Level 5: elite
* Level 4: veteran
Wording can be changed, of course, but the basic idea is that you may invest into your crew for better bonus.
Specializations are thinkable in any number of facets :
* helmsmen (offensive weapons)
* shield technicians (shield)
* propulsion engineers (speed)
* scan analysts (exploration)
* drone operators
* mining laser calibrators
* and much much more.
One slot can only accomodate one specialization at any time, but the crew may be changed when docked.
Skills Involved
(For example)
Leadership:
* Crew Team Management (Required: Leadership III)(Enabling: L1: 1xTeam, L3: 2xTeams, L5: 3xTeams)
* Crew Leadership (Required: Leadership II and Social III)(Enabling: L1: technicians, L3: engineers, L5: specialists)
* Advanced Crew Leadership (Required: Leadership IV and Negotiation IV) (Enabling: L2: elite, L5: veteran)
For the different Specializations:
* propulsion engineers (Skill Required: Navigation IV) perhaps some more, depending on the level the crew wanted to use has(Technicians, engineers...)
* helmsmen (Required kills from gunnery skill tree)
* and so on..
To start training of the different levels and types you need a special skills from the science sector.
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Erik Finnegan
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Posted - 2009.07.26 22:31:00 -
[5]
I like it. It is a highly complex "boost" - instead of tweaking with existing weapons and modules. And it caters for mission runners as well as PvP. |
De'Veldrin
Special Projects Executive
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Posted - 2009.07.26 23:13:00 -
[6]
Can we make it so you have to pay them salaries too?
No, I'm serious.
--Vel
Experience is what you get right after you need it.
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darius mclever
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Posted - 2009.07.26 23:55:00 -
[7]
that would have been a better RP idea to T3 than loosing skills.
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WheatGrass
Gallente
Silent but Friendly
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Posted - 2009.07.27 00:43:00 -
[8]
 Originally by: Greg Vaganza
....Get crewmen from the academy (they will be untrained) or acquire experienced crew from the (contract) market or from corp mates, who are able to train them.
Amongst the marines, militants, janitors, prisoners, exotic dancers, tourists, and scientists hanging out in my hangar, perhaps there are some worthy of being sent to the academy. Maybe the Damsel will want to stick around the next time I rescue her from her favorite jet-can. I'm not sure how enthusiastic the exotic dancers will be about going to academy and besides, they might prove to be quite a distraction to the instructors.
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Aethrwolf
Home for Wayward Gamers
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Posted - 2009.07.27 00:58:00 -
[9]
I like the idea in general. Perhaps the slots would actually be for specialized ship Officers as opposed to crew in general, as its my understanding that we already have crews on our ships, they just dont do anything from a game mechanics perspective. Using the slots for officers would have the same effects you stated, just the explanation would be changed a bit to reflect that you are adding officers to enhance your existing crews.
Perhaps we could also implement something like T2 pods that would allow us to have a better chance of saving experienced officers when the ship explodes, as their "escape pods" would actually be compartments in the enhanced pods. Enhanced pods would have higher EHP, but slightly slower align times and speed to reflect the need to protect the officers who dont have the same protection vs acceleration in the compartments as we do in the pod proper.
Absolutely everything is subjective. |
Herschel Yamamoto
Agent-Orange
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Posted - 2009.07.27 01:18:00 -
[10]
It might be interesting, but even in Eve, there are limits on how much complexity can be thrown at the player at once. I think this change is entirely too likely to be on the wrong side of that line. Not supported, even though I think I'd personally enjoy it a lot.
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Kaito Haakkainen
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Posted - 2009.07.27 08:00:00 -
[11]
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Daquaris
Dreams of Desolation
Systematic-Chaos
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Posted - 2009.07.27 08:12:00 -
[12]
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Steven Dark
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Posted - 2009.07.27 08:59:00 -
[13]
I like this Idea, but it may be a strong interference with the gameplay. At the moment I am very dependent on my corp mates or friends. If i need a hauler or tackler, i have to ask my corp mates for their support. With this change I am playing alone in the future, because there isn't any need for these kinds of relations.
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Cap II
GoonFleet
GoonSwarm
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Posted - 2009.07.27 09:18:00 -
[14]
Edited by: Cap II on 27/07/2009 09:18:47
There are at least 1000 things in this game that could be improved or balanced before CCP should worry about little people inside ships.
[yellow]Sig removed, inappropriate content. If you would like further details please mail [email protected] - Cortes[ |
Eve Mentor
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Posted - 2009.07.29 12:05:00 -
[15]
Edited by: Eve Mentor on 29/07/2009 12:06:55
Edited by: Eve Mentor on 29/07/2009 12:06:21
I like it!
This gives more flexibility to the players and we have a new wide area for production/training. It seems also to be basically balanced - when you wanna use crews you have to sacrifice a rig-slot. But I hope that crews in the rig-slot, when they are all of the same type, have a bit more bonus than the sacrificed rig-slot would have with a rig of the same bonus type in it.
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Herzog Wolfhammer
Aliastra
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Posted - 2009.07.30 23:52:00 -
[16]
I like the idea of crews.
One, it makes sense.
Two, everybody complains about somebody getting a free lunch, and having to pay for or support a crew fixes that.
CCP has already provided cosumables and commodities that look exactly like something that is intended for a crew. Foodstuffs, supplies, booze, dancers (party ship!). You get the idea.
Crews can also fit into the "cost-consequence" concept that makes this game popular and challenging. Also, they would be an ISK sink for both the economy, cutting inflation, and an ISK sink for all players that takes the "Endless ISK Machine" element out of the game that also damages the economy.
Here is .02 ISK from me on this for this that could help the crews concept.
1. Crews need supplies and commoditys that keep them alive, taking up cargo space.
2. The longer in space, the more tired less efficient a crew is. No more free lunch in WH exploitation.
3. Running out of supplies means a starving and demoralized crew which means a less efficient chip. The ships stats SHOULD suffer.
4. Crews would need consumer goods, spirits, etc, to be more happier. Therefore items sticked up for "needs" and items for morale would be different and a pilot would have to balance this.
5. Crews are lost or reassigned when a ship is destroyed, therefore it is more incentive to not get a ship blown up so often. This could balance the ship capability between the careful missioner running lowsec with an experienced crack crew and a pirate who loses ships and crews constantly and has a ship staffed with green horns.
6. Players who lose a lot of ships would have to pay more for a crew than a player with a better reputation. Who wants to work for a captain who loses scores of ships? It would cost more. Therefore those who fly poorly would be punished for it.
7. To keep with the storyline, Amarr ships could have slaves, but the drugs used to control them actually mean something in the game and become sought after as commodities, making drug running a career in EvE (which seems like it was once intended but never picked up).
8. Crews should have drug boosters like capsuleers, but of course there is legality, addiction, etc.
9. For the Drama, when a ship is at that level of structure where it loses control, it would be interesting to see escape pods punching out. But use of smartbombs and killing crew wholesale would at this point be a heinous security hit.
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Emperor Cheney
Celebrity Sex Tape
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Posted - 2009.07.31 06:21:00 -
[17]
Way, way too complicated. By this proposal, crewing a ship becomes more complex than fitting it.
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Discrodia
Gallente
Guardian Legion
SCUM.
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Posted - 2009.07.31 13:56:00 -
[18]
I like it. Would add another level of depth to the beautiful ship customization.
___________________________________________
I can see my house from here! It's just... err.... you know, a few galaxies over. But I swear it's there! |
Larkonis Trassler
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Posted - 2009.07.31 14:08:00 -
[19]
This is all very complex. I think if such a system were to be introduced it would need to be kept simple.
4-5 Crew slots on a ship.
Crew cannot be transfered and are lost if the ship is repackaged or destroyed.
As you fly around in space a crew division has a random chance to level up.
Crew give VERY basic bonus' for example:
Engineering 0-5% Cap recharge
Gunnery 0-5% Damage
Navigation 0-5% Velocity
I like the idea, but I feel it would benefit mission runners more. The average lifespan for any ship I buy for PVP is usually less than a month. A lot of people might not want to risk their vessel with an Elite Vector Assault Force Crew etc etc. The idea does have merit though.
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Harry Bowen
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Posted - 2009.08.01 01:41:00 -
[20]
the only way this would work if something that if it was a new class ship bigger or stronger than titans or more effective and they only way to operate such beast if muliple players had to be inside it as a crew and operate and manage it for combat,defenses,and propulsion.
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Harry Bowen
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Posted - 2009.08.01 01:43:00 -
[21]
Edited by: Harry Bowen on 01/08/2009 01:43:58
meaning you would have to find players near your sp or whatever to even get it useable so u would have to have titans 5 or something
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sukmanobov
Minmatar
Interstellar Brotherhood of Gravediggers
Privateer Alliance
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Posted - 2009.08.01 02:57:00 -
[22]
Originally by: Emperor Cheney
Way, way too complicated. By this proposal, crewing a ship becomes more complex than fitting it.
Agree'd
Also it would be extremely difficult to implment game engine wise and i could see 6 months of bug solving constant server down times etc..
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Bobbeh
Minmatar
Navy of Xoc
Wildly Inappropriate.
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Posted - 2009.08.01 07:49:00 -
[23]
Love the idea but i agree with above its icing on the cake and complicated to boot
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Necrotic Zeal
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Posted - 2009.08.01 08:25:00 -
[24]
It's a pretty neat idea, I'll give you that, but I can think of 5 bugs/imbalances off the top of my head that could be fixed by the time this idea even got off the ground. When it comes down to it, I would rather see the bugs and imbalances get fixed before something like this gets implemented. What you are suggesting opens up a whole new aspect of gameplay that is extremely complex and would add to EVEs already steep learning curve, which can be a good or bad thing.
Maybe one day, after some of the bigger issues are dealt with this could be implemented but I wouldn't hold my breath.
All in all it's an interesting idea that I would support if it where not for some other issues that really need attention first before an idea such as this gets even looked at.
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Change Chaaaaaange
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Posted - 2009.08.01 08:30:00 -
[25]
Originally by: Herzog Wolfhammer
9. For the Drama, when a ship is at that level of structure where it loses control, it would be interesting to see escape pods punching out. But use of smartbombs and killing crew wholesale would at this point be a heinous security hit.
sorry dude, but the lag from this one point would be horrific.
as for the rest of the proposal, i like, i like.
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Melos Tellemey
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Posted - 2009.08.01 15:46:00 -
[26]
Edited by: Melos Tellemey on 01/08/2009 15:46:19
I think it shouldn't take a rig slot. Instead being it's own "thing".
otherwise, I love it.
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Lord Kreios
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Posted - 2009.08.01 22:51:00 -
[27]
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Agent Known
Apotheosis of Virtue
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Posted - 2009.08.02 07:36:00 -
[28]
Make it kind of like implants...only for ships...oh wait.
I like the idea, but I feel there's more pressing matters for CCP to worry about really. I once played an older DOS-based game (Battlecruiser 3000AD) that used something like this, except that micromanaging crew is so damn tedious it's sometimes not worth it.
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maya ibuki2
THORN Syndicate
Mostly Harmless
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Posted - 2009.08.02 12:17:00 -
[29]
Originally by: Herschel Yamamoto
It might be interesting, but even in Eve, there are limits on how much complexity can be thrown at the player at once. I think this change is entirely too likely to be on the wrong side of that line. Not supported, even though I think I'd personally enjoy it a lot.
i agree with herschel here. it is an awesome idea; one a hell of a lot of eve players would enjoy imo. but im not sure itd be good for eve itself per se.
0ok! |
Joe Widowmaker
Quantum Industries
RAZOR Alliance
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Posted - 2009.08.02 13:01:00 -
[30]
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