- Joined
- Oct 24, 2013
- Messages
- 23
- Reaction score
- 1
As of now, there are not many reasons to have a huge crew. Sure, you can build a ship with multiple manned guns. Sure, you can have your friends mine out a space station while you fly the ship around. Sure, you can have a carrier with fighter ships your friends can undock and man. Even still, I feel like there should be more. I want there to be general benefits by having multiple players on one ship.
I'm not saying this should be like Star Trek where you have an engineering, a tactical station, and a pilot. I'm not saying there should be repair parties, ship's security, or other activities for crew mates to participate in. At the same time, what if you could have stuff like this?
Let's break this down by scenario to make this easier.
First is combat. As of now, you can have your crew get in docked ships and man turrets. What if they could do something other than that to help with the battle? Perhaps repair the hull of your ship as it takes damage? Maybe they could augment the shields somehow? Could they provide tactical information to the pilot or the gunners using some sort of interface allowing them to cycle through cockpit cameras? Maybe it would be cool to have some sort of "spy" who could hack into the enemy ships tactical systems (shields maybe) and do some sort of minigame to stop shield regen or even weaken the enemy shields. I know some balance people are freaking out right about now- relax it's only brainstorming. I hope someone replies with the ultimate solution to the crew problem.
Second is mining. Right now, when you have your friends mine using the mining lasers, the person piloting the core gets all the materials. Instead, what if the person using the gun got the materials- or maybe the mining computer could link to storage, allowing the material to get offloaded into the linked storage location. One guy could be sorting the materials or whatever. Not sure how creative mining can get with a crew. Anyone have an idea on how to make this cool?
The biggest problem right now is my crew getting bored during travel. What if we allowed the crew to do other activities aboard the ship. The next part will be different ideas for shipboard activities.
-Ship Management
Having the ability to interface with the ship itself is fun. Maybe each system aboard the ship could have a control block. For example- Thrusters, Shields, Weapons, Power... all of these could have control blocks for management. Right now, weapons have control blocks which allow you to fire the guns. I feel like it would be cool if you could actually tweak these systems on the fly using control blocks. Perhaps you could underpower some systems and overclock others. Having the ability to go to the control blocks and adjust things like thrust power, weapon stats, power allocation, and shield regen/capacity would be a neat idea. Perhaps even allow crew members to take from one system and put power into another. If you are trying to escape, take power away from weapons and give them to thrusters. This could allow you to get the thrust to get you to top speed faster- especially in larger ships. Not sure how well these ideas would work, but they are just that- ideas.
-Activities
Maybe having chill activities for the crew to participate in would be cool. Trading, player interaction, and other things can encourage players to work together, but they don't necessarily encourage players to be in a "crew" on a ship. There should be ship specific actions available. There should be specific reasons to go to a planet, be at a space station, or be on a ship. I hope there is some discussion over what sort of activities there could be.
-Weapons
Let's be realistic- manning the guns IS a large part of having a crew. That being said, let's make it easier and useful to have a crew manning these weapons. For gun turrets, have a "remote access control block" which can be linked to turret docks. This could allow players within the ship to access the turrets. By linking to turret blocks you eliminate any strange balance issues with remote controlled turret cores or ships. Another weapon idea is to have a missile which can be controlled. A drone missile. Have a player in the weapon computer shoot and pilot these missiles to the target would be cool.
-Tactical
As far as a tactical station goes, let's add a player controlled drone/probe to the scene. Allow a probe / drone computer which would let you control a drone, allowing for a player to have a 3rd person perspective of the ship. This probe could even act as a "cockpit" allowing the pilot to see through the camera if they switch to it. Maybe even have a small screen with the drone's perspective... :P Just ideas. Maybe even allow the drone to see things that a normal pilot doesn't see, like extra stats, hull damage indicators (color coded hull - green good - red bad) or even have enemy tactical stats on the enemy ships. Any ship probe is looking at gives the player tactical data on that ship (shield strength, weapon cooldown info, and maybe even add trajectory prediction allowing the gunners to get an additional indicator assisting them leading their shots. Just some ideas. I am sure this could be balanced. I am also sure it could be simplified a little.
Anyway, can I get some dialog? Maybe someone telling me that these ideas were already talked about 7 pages back?
Edit: Also, what if they added player controlled shields- like have a shield computer that a player could control allowing them to "block shots" with a direction related shield? He could reduce the damage of shots coming from certain directions...
I'm not saying this should be like Star Trek where you have an engineering, a tactical station, and a pilot. I'm not saying there should be repair parties, ship's security, or other activities for crew mates to participate in. At the same time, what if you could have stuff like this?
Let's break this down by scenario to make this easier.
First is combat. As of now, you can have your crew get in docked ships and man turrets. What if they could do something other than that to help with the battle? Perhaps repair the hull of your ship as it takes damage? Maybe they could augment the shields somehow? Could they provide tactical information to the pilot or the gunners using some sort of interface allowing them to cycle through cockpit cameras? Maybe it would be cool to have some sort of "spy" who could hack into the enemy ships tactical systems (shields maybe) and do some sort of minigame to stop shield regen or even weaken the enemy shields. I know some balance people are freaking out right about now- relax it's only brainstorming. I hope someone replies with the ultimate solution to the crew problem.
Second is mining. Right now, when you have your friends mine using the mining lasers, the person piloting the core gets all the materials. Instead, what if the person using the gun got the materials- or maybe the mining computer could link to storage, allowing the material to get offloaded into the linked storage location. One guy could be sorting the materials or whatever. Not sure how creative mining can get with a crew. Anyone have an idea on how to make this cool?
The biggest problem right now is my crew getting bored during travel. What if we allowed the crew to do other activities aboard the ship. The next part will be different ideas for shipboard activities.
-Ship Management
Having the ability to interface with the ship itself is fun. Maybe each system aboard the ship could have a control block. For example- Thrusters, Shields, Weapons, Power... all of these could have control blocks for management. Right now, weapons have control blocks which allow you to fire the guns. I feel like it would be cool if you could actually tweak these systems on the fly using control blocks. Perhaps you could underpower some systems and overclock others. Having the ability to go to the control blocks and adjust things like thrust power, weapon stats, power allocation, and shield regen/capacity would be a neat idea. Perhaps even allow crew members to take from one system and put power into another. If you are trying to escape, take power away from weapons and give them to thrusters. This could allow you to get the thrust to get you to top speed faster- especially in larger ships. Not sure how well these ideas would work, but they are just that- ideas.
-Activities
Maybe having chill activities for the crew to participate in would be cool. Trading, player interaction, and other things can encourage players to work together, but they don't necessarily encourage players to be in a "crew" on a ship. There should be ship specific actions available. There should be specific reasons to go to a planet, be at a space station, or be on a ship. I hope there is some discussion over what sort of activities there could be.
-Weapons
Let's be realistic- manning the guns IS a large part of having a crew. That being said, let's make it easier and useful to have a crew manning these weapons. For gun turrets, have a "remote access control block" which can be linked to turret docks. This could allow players within the ship to access the turrets. By linking to turret blocks you eliminate any strange balance issues with remote controlled turret cores or ships. Another weapon idea is to have a missile which can be controlled. A drone missile. Have a player in the weapon computer shoot and pilot these missiles to the target would be cool.
-Tactical
As far as a tactical station goes, let's add a player controlled drone/probe to the scene. Allow a probe / drone computer which would let you control a drone, allowing for a player to have a 3rd person perspective of the ship. This probe could even act as a "cockpit" allowing the pilot to see through the camera if they switch to it. Maybe even have a small screen with the drone's perspective... :P Just ideas. Maybe even allow the drone to see things that a normal pilot doesn't see, like extra stats, hull damage indicators (color coded hull - green good - red bad) or even have enemy tactical stats on the enemy ships. Any ship probe is looking at gives the player tactical data on that ship (shield strength, weapon cooldown info, and maybe even add trajectory prediction allowing the gunners to get an additional indicator assisting them leading their shots. Just some ideas. I am sure this could be balanced. I am also sure it could be simplified a little.
Anyway, can I get some dialog? Maybe someone telling me that these ideas were already talked about 7 pages back?
Edit: Also, what if they added player controlled shields- like have a shield computer that a player could control allowing them to "block shots" with a direction related shield? He could reduce the damage of shots coming from certain directions...