My go to example of how multi-crew should work is Sea of Thieves. Tasks on board the ship are relatively simple, but constant always keeping the players engaged in and out of combat. Whether it be adjusting the sails for changes in wind, repairing holes and bucketing water from ambient weather, to cooking food for healing buffs, and even managing the ships inventory, there is always something to do. And none of it requires much knowledge or experience to do them. The real skill in the game is communicating and effectively dividing tasks between players to ensure that things are done in the right order and the right time. Our group often says that we have the best damage control on the seas because we are able to keep our ship afloat despite taking huge amounts of damage, we regularly out last our opponents through simply keeping up with repairs better than them. The most amusing part is when you get opponents that are bad at controlling their own ship, and coordinating with their crew, so they try to board using their FPS twitch reflexes and speed as a crutch only to get ganged by our entire crew with blunderbusses waiting for them at the ship's ladder. We always have someone on lookout for boarders, and when someone sees one, we all drop everything and rush to the ladder to take them out. The amount of salt from try hard FPS players is always amazing. If you have a fully crewed and coordinated/experienced Galleon, it will practically dominate a server. For star citizen they need to make engineering a huge buff for large ships, making them several times more durable. In sea of thieves, if you don't repair holes you can sink in under a minute. But if you keep up with repairs, you can keep going for hours of relatively constant combat. Assuming you have the supplies, of course. That being said, sea of thieves only has 3 ships, which makes balance a lot easier.
Part of the problem is that Star Citizen isn't giving engineers the ability to patch the hull and restore ship HP. It is giving us a convoluted mechanism that allows us to repair the rope that raises and lowers the sail. If that rope never gets damaged in the exchange, there is nothing the engineer can do while the ships hull falls apart around them. And even if the rope does get damaged, it is unlikely that he would fix it before the ship sank. And even if that didn't happen, the effect of the rope being out of commission while the engineer gets to fixing it is essentially a damage multiplier for the attacking ships, meaning that by the time the rope is repaired, the ship is now seconds away from sinking anyway. So yeah, as it stands, the current engineering gameplay is nothing but a liability for any ship big enough to worry about having components destroyed *before* the hull HP reaches 0. I think part of the problem is that CIG screwed themselves out of the ability to have ship weapons and shields in clear 'tiers' by overloading the fighters with too much firepower, all in an attempt to sell the ships to players looking for an advantage. If fighters only had size 1- 3 guns, CIG could at least try an arbitrary system where those guns were X% effective against small shields, Y% effective against medium shields and Z% effective against large shields. This would at least help with the durability of multi crew ships versus 1 - 2 fighters..
I would even suggest that Y% should be something like 40%. That way, two fighters shooting at a target with a medium shield are still doing 20% less damage than a single fighter would do shooting at a target with a small shield (e.g another fighter).
@@Siygess I agree. PvP fighter ship players are very vocal in the community. I think CIG went to reduce TTK to appease them. TTK for a ship that has repairable components and other aspects needs to be extremely long. If it isn't, engineers are useless no matter what. I think they need to completely overhaul how damage works in the game (maybe they are, I don't know). Just a simple HP pool isn't enough. For instance, you can shoot one specific part of a ship and the HP will go down no matter what. At some point, there would be a hole completely through the ship in that one specific point and no more damage should be taken. They need to find a way to make it so that ships don't just explode after a certain amount of damage. That honestly makes no sense because if you're shooting a part of the ship that isn't essential to the structure of the ship, it shouldn't matter how much you shoot it, the ship won't explode. You'd need to either spread the damage out enough to cripple the ship, or focus your attack on parts of the ship that actually WOULD explode if they got too damaged (engines or bomb bays maybe). Turrets would then be placed in parts of the ship that would protect those parts from attack. You would actually need to strike from certain angles to manage to disable a ship efficiently, and those angles would be covered by turrets. Shield management would also have a purpose then.
This was a fantastic talk covering all the important discussions about multi-crew. Things that have been discussed here and there of course, but all in one video is awesome for those who arent following SC and have 12 hours a day of work like me to listen to all the content creators talk and talk about SC.
excellent chat ... completely agree on the 1+1=3 overall concept. Yes, it makes balancing harder, but I think the core problem is that they are trying to make single seater ships a jack-of-all-trades. We need actual strengths and weaknesses, so that there are counters to things. Do they have capital ships? Bring bombers/small torp ships. Do they have bombers/torps? Bring fighters to kill them. Do they have fighters? Bring multi-crew ships to destroy those. etc etc
@@BuzzCutPsycho lol yeah, I think they want this, but they have a long way to go before they get there. Master modes is probably more important to them at the moment, but with engineering coming, they have to do something for multi crew ships, even if it is just a temporary buff to turrets
In my view, two, reletively easy, changes to turrets would alieviate a lot of these concerns. 1 - Turrets should double the speed and range of whatever weapon is mounted to them. Come up with whatever lore/physics explaination you want, but that would increase their effectiveness in a big way especially against small fast ships. Maybe heavy fighter turrets only add 50%, but turrets on a hammerhead, connie, corsair, etc should add 100%. 2 - Turrets should auto gimbal, precision fire, and possibly pip track better than any cockpit/pilot controlled guns, with the ability to turn off all of the above for maximum versatility. These two changes would certainly act as a force multiplier and would likely lead to small and medium fighters avoiding fights with turreted ships. They would still be vulnerable to bombers, but with better tracking and more shots on target, bombs would have a harder time getting through. Bomber pilots would also need to be more skilled to get hits. Just my two cents.
Multicrew won't be ideal until three things happen: 1) All large and larger ships need to have their HP/Armor and Shields greatly buffed. Large ships should be tough as nails unless dealing with ships specifically designed to deal with them. 2) Engineering forces large ships to NEED multicrew in combat to prevent easily soloing large ships. 3) Turrets get lots of buffing. Not in terms of DPS, but in the ability to reliably land hits. Since auto aim assist is gone, then auto gimballing and targeting needs to be very reliable.
I agree with everything but I would like to point out the turret's have the old "auto aim" gimbal that used to be on ships. Sadly, it sucks and is not good enough, nor is the velocity (chance to hit) like you said very good. I agree with what you said, but turrets are the first stepping stone to getting everything fixed up and sucking a little less IMO.
This was a good talk! The tech might be impressive but they need to have a person on each of their team that asks each and every time: "Is it fun?". "Is it engaging?".
Honestly i agree with most of your points. Right now gunning feels like a net loss as opposed to having them hop in another ship. I personally enjoy flying and gunning. Gunning lets you relax and just enjoy the scenery
Serious good talk man. I appreciate all the videos ive seen thus far. I think CIG could definitely hear you out. I get the large ships because i aint buying that sht in game. I assume it will be damn difficult to get. It could be easy.. but ive only invested in large ships. Not that i dont love the smaller ships better but ill buy those with in game credits. My take on engineering... You dont fix ships in combat. Patch yes, fix, no. They should look at engineering as a downtime activity not a combat activity. I definitely agree, 100%, that engineers should be managing systems not fixing them AND giving boosts. Thats exactly how it should be. Fun and engaging activity.
You're welcome and I am glad you feel that way! I agree with the "patch" part but is needs to be significant enough to extend the life of the ship until real repair happens. SC right now has nothing like that so in testing with the A2 the ship would just blow up before the engineering had a real role. I know that was fixed by making the health on the A2 for that test super high, but it showed how little they were prepared.
I feel like at least in SC the only way multi crew ships will work well is if the "engineer" role is just a gunner with an extra interface that micro manages something like bulkheads or fire suppressants that only take you off gunning for a few seconds or can be done at the same time. Otherwise getting out of a seat and trying to do an among us mini game while you're getting shot to shit will be impossible to balance.
LOL @ "AMONG US" MINI-GAME You just KNOW they would do something stupid like that. My god I hate you for putting that in my head now and I am going to be using this in the future I promise.
A lot of aviation is missing from 2 seater ships in SC versus DCS, even outside of combat. Not to mention that larger cap ships will work more like large Navy warships with their engineering loops. Example from a 2 seater F-15E in DCS: This was a training mission. Had to travel ~190 nautical miles, while staying under 6000 feet barometric, dodge SAM sites en route to dumb bomb a SAM site complex. A friend of mine was the pilot, I was the WSO. I had one MFD set up to the terrain map to navigate to stay ~100 feet AGL and under 6000 feet barometric. Second MFD I had set to the HUD repeater so I could see a nose camera view and his flight parameters. Third MFD was the radar warning receiver (RWR) to find out where the SAM sights were, so I could navigate the pilot away from them. Fourth MFD was on the HSI for overall navigation. Every time the RWR pinged, I would key up the radio "kick left 30, roll out 0-7-0." Or whatever navigation info to put the SAM site on the beam and keep us roughly pointed at the bombing target. Both of us were busy but not task saturated with the rate of events that came up through a ~25 minute flight in and ~25 minute flight back. A pilot in a single seater would have to do all of that on his own and may be task saturated and get "behind the drag curve" as they say. Then when we got close, we were low enough to be vulnerable to AAA fire, but within the minimum range of the target SAM sites. I took control of the targeting pod, marked the target, and dropped the bombs while my pilot was jinking the AAA fire. SC doesn't really have this. If you're a turret gunner, you can spot and shoot, but not much else. The gunner is sitting and it's fairly dull.
That level of engagement would be fantastic. I'm not a great pilot (in terms of fighters), but systems management and situational awareness I can do (and enjoy doing). That level of depth would have me volunteering for that second seat.
That is a great and welll thought out level of engagement but I hardly think we will get anything as detailed as that. However, I can see a radar job or some such of spotting / target calling being some how transferred over to one of the seats and functioning. Just not as cool as what you described.
@@BuzzCutPsycho This makes me think of the Hornet Tracker. I'm not the first person to mention this, but that long range radar really needed to be a in Super Hornet chassis. Makes so much sense for a second person to call out targets.
@@BuzzCutPsycho SC doesn't need it to be as complicated as DCS, I agree. Crew members need things to do in their positions. SC has a lot of time where people are doing anything. Example: Quantum. I would like to see some depth in long range radar, especially when it comes to fleet combat. "Eight Tali's, 10 million KM, from Hurston, hot."
Re: The captain's chair. I see it being useful in fleet game play when communicating with other pilots. Say an Idris-M has an escort of two Hammerheads along with other support ships. The Idris' captain can call turns for the fleet and then the other ships in formation will have to speed up or slow down to stay in formation. Another duty for an Idris captain would be the marshal stack, controlling ships that want to land in the Idris' hangar for refit and rearm (if it has that capability). Letting the airspace (or spacespace) go unregulated is a recipe for pilots to crash into each other or the Idris itself.
I can see that. Hell man I would be happy with something as simple as an RTS like hud or UI to help guide multiple players along the ship. Anything really. Alas we will never get anything as cool as what you or even I want. :(
I finished the podcast and have a few final thoughts. You mentioned cooldowns while "boosting" the ship's capabilities. Great idea and I like the implications on not just having a cooldown, but also wearing down components as a sort of built in timer for how often this could be used. It actually parallels WWII aerial combat in a way, which I will explain: In general terms, combat aircraft of WWII have war emergency power (WEP) to boost their safe operating parameters. This was achieved in various ways, but the point is there were specific IRL guidelines for how often this could be used. The implications of not using this properly means damaging the engine of the aircraft or causing a lot of premature wear (meaning more service required more often). If you're not familiar (anyone reading this comment) take a look at it and read about it, it would be a fantastic edition to SC. Being able to manage the issues of using this too much in an engagement could be meaningful gameplay for an engineer, as well as the work afterwards to repair all the damage it could cause by using it too much.
That's actually really great and I never would have thought of that on my own. I play WT and I see WEP a lot but most people don't bother turning it off and leave it on as a default. It would also be a great way to introduce wear and tear and keep the economy going, maybe? Some day... Anyway, that is a very good suggestion and mention.
@@BuzzCutPsycho Thanks, I never thought of WEP in the context of SC before until I heard your thoughts on boosting systems. It would be a really interesting to see its impact with ship maintenance costs. It could even matter with component selection - durability to push a component could be a real consideration in addition to just the standard output a component makes normally. It's pretty hilarious that you can leave WEP on all the time without blowing up the engine. Just for fun, I consulted the original WWII operating manual from the North American aircraft company (published September 1944 revision) for the P-51 Mustang. They recommended no more than 5 minutes alongside a strict list of requirements that should be met along with a recommendation of 5 hours before teardown and reconditioning with a host of caveats. :)
To expand on this, it gives things to remember when an engineer switches on the WEP whilst transferring power from places less used to the most used. Knowing the ship, and how far passed the threshold of normal use you can push the WEP would make good engineers sought after. Knowing which power systems you can divert to shields whilst boosting on a Connie, and the exact moment you've pushed too far, and you've done real damage. It's a job of timing and chancing it.
I never found the official discussion forums for the game and I keep wanting to bring this up to the devs. On turrets make ALL TURRETS remote turrets. Then the copilot seat controls all of them, every last turret all at once. In the event of multiple co pilot seats there should be like a toggle switch so players can pick "i get right side on the hammerhead you get left." So while the pilot is stuck in first person view to aim the guns these turret gunners are third person and all the guns turn to aim at where his third person crosshair is. So suddenly you're fighting a connie with a copilot and you're getting hit by the main guns and two turrets at once. You can't maneuver out of the gunner's vision, he can see too well and with something like a connie he always has a turret that can hit you. As it stands something like a hammerhead is dead meat because I can tell you from experience... i can't even see out of that thing in a turret much less shoot down an incoming torpedo...
The idea of making all turrets remote and controllable from the copilot seat is interesting and could potentially enhance the gameplay experience by streamlining turret operations. Also really adds to the remote turret being something other than a flavor. It would definitely add a layer of strategy, especially in multi-seat ships like the Hammerhead. Having the ability for players to toggle turret control based on their seat assignment would also make coordination more efficient. The third-person aiming for turret gunners is a great idea too, as it would give them a better field of view and increase their effectiveness in combat. God knows how AWFUL the visibility is in most of these things. I hate it. Oh! Speaking of the visibility issues in turrets, I completely agree. Improving visibility and control for turret gunners would make ships like the Hammerhead much more viable in combat. I think these suggestions would definitely be worth bringing up to the devs on the official forums. But I am pretty sure they are aware of it and we most likely wont see a single change for them until 4.0.
@@BuzzCutPsycho With the sheer volume of labor involved in the change I wouldn't expect anything different. 4.0 is a HUGE project and my proposal would require the remodeling of many ships. The ladder / seat would need to go away on the cutty as an example. The hammerhead sent back to the art team for a complete 100% overhaul ect. Coding it? I don't think that hard comparatively. But the art team would likely be so pissed that I find that suddenly the devs have a vendetta against me when I play lol. But the advantages of it basically means that the player being gunner is able to do the work of several players. They can fire several guns at once on bigger ships and there's no hiding from their FOV so while a gladius can out maneuver the ship there is no getting around getting shot at. The final thing the game could use instead of shotguns is airburst ballistic ammo. Limited capacity but for turrets you could add flak. The issue is an easy way to do detonation range. Basically these two changes would make the big ships not so much tougher but just very painful to try to approach like my favorite tanks in FPS, the BF1 tanks that could shoot you like from any angle lol.
First video of yours I have seen. I really enjoyed it. The only other problem I think you missed would be the impact of blades and NPC crew. I think it warrants discussion for the problems it will present. I think you did mention it, I just think it needs a solid 15 minutes unto itself.
As the vast majority play alone, the game MUST be more solo heavy or it WILL die. Multi-crew has to be majority AI, with human multi-crew as a possibility for the few. Streamers advertising mainly
The solo players have plenty of advantages over a multi crew ship regardless of ship stats because multiple single ships can attack from multiple vectors forcing a big ship to take hits. If a multicrew ship was worth 5 single seat ships in raw stats, 3 single seat ships would still have a reasonable chance of winning because the multicrew ship cant bring firepower to bear in three directions at once if the single seaters attack from very different attack angles. Because of skill and numbers advantage, a multicrew ship needs more raw stats(firepower/shields) to compete.
@@DakkaDakka12 yessssiir. Multicrew ships need to be exponentially better for each additional person needed to run the ship. Or simply, how much time it takes to get a ship under way.
Driving a Tank in Hell let loose can be a riot with a good crew. engineering will come and is concerning execution wise too. I also think the engineer should be multirole, the healer keeping the tank in the fight, electronic warfare and tec expert helping the whole crew maximize their tools to fight. A crewed up Corsair, Hurricane, Redeemer and Hammerhead should strike fear in single seat ships but it just does not now.
I disagree with the tail gun being a design mistake. Attacking ships will try to find a blind spot where they won't get attacked by turret gunners. Not having a rear gunner seat would be an easily exploitable blind spot. Is it better than having a fighter escort? Probably not. I think it's only advantage is the comradely of being part of the ship's crew, the shared experience, which is similar to having an escort but still not quite the same.
The issue with the tail gun is it is in most ships other than the A2 a seat that gets little to no action and the only reason it works on the A2 is because you can use the remote to swap between front or tail turrets. You ain't wrong. But in every other ship it usually becomes a boring seat that hardly gets used in my experience.
Think about this like the navy fleets. The big ships are designed for big ship on big ship combat. The bane of big ships is always the smaller more manverable ships. You should really never send big ships alone. Thats why in Starwars there was always fighters on ships that would intercept smaller ships
For sure. But, like big ships in WW2 found out that using your mass to load up excessive amounts of AA / Armor was pretty helpful for keeping those small planes away. :) Nothing like that in SC yet...
The problem with the engineering playtests was that everything just died too quickly. You didn't just lose one fuse but all 3 at once. You wouldn't just have a damaged component with a chance to repair it, it would die so quickly that you couldn't counteract the damage anyway. There also wasn't any visual feedback with damage on the component so sometimes it breaks and you don't even notice if you don't have another person at the engineering panel. I believe it can be really good. It just shouldn't be as overwhelming to deal with. Regarding the 1+1=3: I think we need to nerf the firepower of pilots on multi crew ships. If the pilot has S4 guns and the turrets S2 guns obviously it's always better to get more pilots.
I fully expect, and want, PILOT FIREPOWER to be nerfed on these ships. I always bring up the Warthog from Halo; that's what I would do. I loved driving and putting other people in position to lay down the hate. I loved being the tank commander role in Hell Let Loose. I admit, I loved being the gunner in PlanetSide 1. But what all those games had in common is that you traded POWER for force multiplication. SC has none of that. I would happily give away every single one of my guns on a Corsair to have better, more powerful, gimbaled, accurate, deadly weapons on it for gunners to use instead of me. Just give me the ship and flares.
To expand on your Cooldown based gameplay Each path of power you can put into the component you're overclocking, decreases the cooldown. So you might pop the CD on shields, and then as a turret is taken out, you divert the power to the shield, dropping the CD timer. The problem we are facing here though, is bigger ships can be bought with bigger wallet IRL. Pay to Win then creeps into the mix. Edit: On Tail Gunners - Manned tail gunners make no sense. Make all tail turrets remote that can have AI blades attached.
Expanding on the idea of power management affecting cooldowns is really smart. Being able to divert power to different systems to reduce cooldown timers would add a lot of strategy to combat. For example, using a cooldown on shields and then reallocating power from a disabled turret to the shields to bring the timer down would make gameplay more engaging for what might otherwise be a boring role. I have no comment on the P2W part. I will reserve judgment for how they handle these LTI ships we all have once, and if, the game ever comes out. Which it probably never will. Manned tail gunners don’t make much sense compared to remote-operated turrets. Making all tail turrets remote-controlled and able to use AI blades would make things more efficient and practical in gameplay. Good comment on this one. I have always hated the idea of tail gunners in this game because so far they have always been the most worthless and uninteresting turret position for any ship that has them.
@@BuzzCutPsycho I don't think LTI will have any effect at all in the game when it comes to quick claims. They have always said it's the least of things, and it's the community that have jumped on it. The amount you'll have to pay on your premium will be per period, month/6 month It's the larger ships that have many peeps that is the P2W aspect, but they have made their bed and now need to deal with it. Making multi crew ships a powerhouse should require more people to work though. Which might be the fix. A $1000 ship that requires 4 people to be effect, makes the P2W aspect $1000/4. Hmm.. Maybe the P2W aspect only is a thing if that $1000 ship piloted by 1 is super effective. Liking these podcasts though.
@BuzzCutPsycho 100%, it's not at all by my estimate necessary, but CiG has this problem with promises to "investors." It's dumb its going to be hard to make a good game with that limitation of balance.
I agree. 5 good friends of mine play SC and 3 of them are concierge. It should make sense for me to be a gunner on my friend's ship but they just spawn another fighter for me because it's more effective.
The Xenothreat Idris event allowed us to capture several Idrises and put them to multicrew use. Our last Idris lasted 184 continuous hours of service with a full crew 24/7, employing logistics, shuttlecraft, fighters, marines, and naval gunners and bridge crew to accomplish any mission we set out to do, and win every PVP engagement we came across (until the last one that saw its death when all its guns bugged out). A taste of the future of SC: ua-cam.com/video/AudEjHYeg3M/v-deo.html
Damn that's an awesome video. The part I liked to most was the short clip of you or somebody repairing it from the outside with the hand tool. It's the small things that make me happy. :) That was awesome. I mean it.
@@BuzzCutPsycho Glad you liked it. It was a LOT of fun. We had to employ damage control teams on a number of occasions due to the occasional flight deck accident... heh. The repair tool came in very handy to keep fighters operational as well as repair the ship inside and out. There are longer Live videos on Rez's channel showing some of our operations from his perspective. Some of it is just fascinating to watch and observe the teamwork that kept the ship running. Also I put together a rather boring training vid for our crews: ua-cam.com/video/4j2pXlGc9Ew/v-deo.html shows the inside and out of our basic Idris ops and what to do when aboard.
I think you're on to something having another player that isn't in the pilot be able to temporarily buff the shields, weapons or speed of a multi crew ship. Perhaps this would great for the co pilot seat since a lot of ships already have them and it would let the player sitting in them still be able to see what's going on from a pilot point of view.
25:29 The problem is we have flak boats without flak. CIG haven’t added the weapon these ships are designed to use! The hammerhead and the redeemer are the most obvious examples of this, but the retaliator as well (since it’s meant to be a midline brawler with torpedo ambush flavor, not a stealth boat like the eclipse). The balance issue you mention for how to avoid endless spam of some single optimal ship with one person in each is pretty straightforward: the bigger the ship, there should be less pilot controlled dps, but new gunners should add more dps than they would soloing a smaller ship (ex: redeemer should have +1 size on its turrets, and the manned turrets should slave to one gunner, so they add 4 S6 instead of being in a Corsair). Bigger ships do need to be more durable, but not to the huge scale you seem to suggest here. I don’t think turrets are a balance issue-it’s a systems issue. Specifically, they haven’t added the last basic weapon type absolutely necessary for the “WW2 in Space” sandbox they are trying to build: flak. Adding flak, and converting multiple turrets into a single gunner station via remote turrets would go a long way to redressing the systemic inadequacy of multicrew. I’d really, really like them to take a breath and imagine the human being who will play as crew. We need things like dampers, emps, scanning, set waypoints, etc to be doable by a copilot/turret officer, and turrets in general need to be more powerful. A pilot gets to fly, control all ship systems, and has an ever increasing arsenal on top of that (ex: Corsair, F8C, F7 Mk II…). We will never see multicrew ships be genuinely viable or even worthwhile unless the prospect of being anyone other than the pilot is genuinely appealing. It needs to be close to 1:1, as in, 2 hornets vs 1 crewed Scorp should be a viable engagement that’s not predefined. In particular, I think expanding systems accessible only to the crew (such as the Scorp changes: either you get 4x S4, or 4x S3 + Damp / Ewar, both genuinely appealing gameplay) and finally introducing flak (proximity fuse, aoe damage. Lowest dps of all weapons, but obviously the best at hitting light fighters) as a weapon option *exclusive* to manned turrets would be an over-night massive improvement to the game. Every single size of ship would now be pvp viable, and have genuine roles. It would mean two light fighters can’t kill anything else with total immunity to return fire. So tackle becomes improtant, things like the redeemer become important to provide escort-either as flak boats, or as gun bots-a pair of redeemers (one flak, one anti-ship) with a mantis could confidently tackle just about anyone and have a fight. Even bombers and heavy fighters are now more viable, as they will be the best at knocking out flak boats to clear the screen. But, fighters would still be viable, they just have to be careful of flak boats. It’s a planned weapon type. They say they want WW2 in space, but haven’t given us the single most common WW2 anti-fighter weapon. It’s absence from the game has given us 12 years of fighter meta, and 12 years of half baked solutions to that meta. Instead, we seem to be getting just endless pilot power creep, and it’s still the case that most ships aren’t viable, and it’s continuing to push these half baked solutions.
I really think almost every manned turret in the game needs to go up at least 1 size, gain a significant function in addition to its current weapons (emp, interdiction, etc), or in some cases simply be swapped with the pilot’s current guns (The Corsair and probs the Constellations are the most obvious examples of this). I’d say the Warden is a clear example of needing to go up 2 sizes (the Harb is already +1 relative to the Warden, and it has torps), to have a manned 2x S4. The Sentinel’s turret can stay S2, but should gain a QED and the emp should be moved to the turret / removed from the pilot. Similarly, the Scorp’s turret should go up 1 size to 4x S4, and the Scorp A gain the current 4x S3 in addition to its current tools. I love the Super Hornet concept, and in addition to a Mk II, I’d love to see an entire series of Super Fighters (Super Glad, Super Arrow, Super Razor, etc) that get either a one size upgraded co-pilot hard point, or get an existing hard point converted to a ball turret of the same size and some ship system added. A pilot gets to fly, control all ship systems, and has an ever increasing arsenal on top of that. We will never see multicrew ships be genuinely viable or even worthwhile unless the prospect of being anyone other than the pilot is genuinely appealing. In particular, I think expanding systems accessible only to the crew (such as the Scorp changes: either you get 4x S4, or 4x S3 + Damp / Ewar, both genuinely appealing gameplay) and finally introducing flak as a weapon option *exclusive* to manned turrets would be an over-night massive improvement to the game. People who pay the most get multi crew ships, but those ships are almost always empty. It just isn’t appealing to crew them, and while Engineering and cargo will help a bit, the combat experience is always going to loom large, and atm it’s awful for crew. You’re literally always more efficient coming in a Gladius than being crew-which sucks for people who don’t want to be fighter jocks. And the wildest part is that SC’s truly big hook is multicrew! There just isn’t another game where multicrew is half as viable as it already is in SC, except maybe some really niche stuff that isn’t anywhere close on immersion or sandbox. The entire SC pitch was explore the verse with multicrew, so from the start they wanted humans playing to crew, and… it’s just not even remotely close. Multi crew ships aren’t viable because flak doesn’t exist, and even if it did, most ships would still be a bummer to crew.
As to engineering/all that micro: That needs to be after combat imo, or after a major component loss has soft killed the ship. You shouldn’t be leaving turrets to do engineering seconds into an engagement. As for the “cooldowns,” that can be done by consumable heatsinks. If the ship is stocked with them, the engineer could insert them and dump the extra power heat waste, etc.
41:00 I think a fire control seat solves this actually. External primary targeting cameras project an external / semi third person view of the ship to the Gunner station’s helmet (they could even put one on) like the interior of that one alien fighter’s cockpit. This lets multiple turrets slave to the gunner, with a powerful and playable viewpoint, without unrealistic firing arcs. Any turret with or without a view of the aim point automatically fires or not. Hammerhead should have two gunner seats, Redeemer only 1, etc.
Pilot power creep is the absolute worst and to blame for most of this. Your comment is actually 100% spot on but this last part here really nails it. A 2024 ship is very different from a 2019 ship in terms of design and firepower and it truly shows. I see no end in sight.
That would be great. Some ships even have what looks like a camera on the outside. I know the Idris does. Your suggestion is a great way to implement that into the universe in a believe way that isn't magic
Big issue I have with turrets is that Chris Roberts seems to insist on having blind spots for turret coverage, leading to some absolutely idiotic turret angles which never will have a firing solution. They have started to not be so afraid of forward facing turrets anymore though. However, the turrets really don't offer enough deterrence to actually make anyone go for blind spots. Seriously, pretty much every turret should have quad guns or some other form of buffs to make it be dangerous to disregard them. If you face a multi crew ship, you should plan your approach, just like facing multiple fighters solo.
You bring up a great point about turret blind spots and their effectiveness. The insistence on having blind so many blind spots is very annoying. No military ship would EVER have turrets this bad LOL. Turrets should be more deadly. Multi-crew ships should feel like a force to be reckoned with, much like facing multiple fighters. That just isn't the case now and it is depressing to try and fly these things with a crew. Especially when you get owned easily by solo ships. Your suggestions would definitely enhance the game, making turret gunners more useful and multi-crew ships more rewarding to operate would be great.
Even if turrets had enough deterrence, don't forget you can snipe them or their weapons with ballistics and missiles through shields and i'm not sure this feature ever is going to go. The precision targeting mode in MM and predecessor games show you what is to be expected. The engineering stuff is nice, but from the inside you can't attach a shot off weapon.
Went on a 16k mission to destroy some ships at a beacon. We took out the caterpillar. There were 7 ships total that came in waves. Unloaded on their asses, barely managed to kill 6. The 7th one killed us. It was a blast, but not worth for 16k auec. My friend kept getting launched outside the ship. It was hilarious mid combat. Even if we had a smaller ship, it would be more profitable to trade than kill 7ships per 16k reward.
The rewards are terrible and to make matters worse they're not even scaled or tailored towards groups of players. So the extra work and effort is extra pointless and stupid.
@@BuzzCutPsycho server meshing has to work and give them breathing room to work on it he quality of life stuff. I think the game will be grindy. Not sure what’s reasonable. Depends on their pay model post launch and how they keep our existing ships value.
There are a few things missing here 1) Larger ships currently only have a bigger HP pool but not armor, that's why a gladius can, given enough time, kill a Hammerhead. With Mealstrom and armor coming in the guns will not do any damage to the main ship anymore as they wont penetrate the armor. 2) The pilot of the Polaris will not be able to shoot the torps according to an official statement from CIG, I suspect you will also have a dedicated rearmer needed to launch more than two torps in addition to the torpedo guy on the bridge Where you are correct though is that currently the turrets are underperforming, they need a larger range and more firepower in comparison to the same gun on a fighter or else a fighter will always have the advantage as size matters. If a glad can pepper you from 1500m away because youre gigantic and you can't hit it because its too small then its bad gameplay
You make some excellent points. Here’s my take on them: 1) **Armor for Larger Ships**: You're absolutely right that larger ships currently rely more on their HP pools rather than armor. The introduction of Maelstrom and armor mechanics will change this dynamic significantly. This will make smaller ships like the Gladius ineffective against heavily armored ships like the Hammerhead, as their weapons won't penetrate the armor. I wonder what the cutoff would be, though-4 and above? 5 and above? I would be interested to see that personally. 2) **Polaris Torpedo Launch Mechanic**: It's interesting to hear that the Polaris pilot won't be able to shoot torpedoes directly. I don't disagree with it. I just hope that it doesn't take away too much from the ship and that it comes with serious power to make up for it. I actually have no issue with pilots losing guns (controversial take) as long as the other roles more than make up for it. It's a fair trade. You’re absolutely right about the underperformance of turrets. They need to have a larger range and more firepower compared to the same guns on fighters to balance the gameplay. Perhaps even higher weapon velocities for the weapons on the turrets? If a fighter like the Gladius can maintain a distance and continuously deal damage without being effectively countered, it undermines the advantage of larger ships. Great comment. We all seem to be on the same page. I hope we actually get listened to.
@@BuzzCutPsycho Thank, I really like your take in general. 1) I guess the cutoff will be the balancing factor. S4 would be a good starting point for large ships, S5 for caps. That would mean most light fighters would not be able to damage a HH or the like but mediums would at least partially be able to. S5 would make sure that only a few heavy fighters would be a threat to captials but mostly only Connie and up would truly hurt them. For clarification, this is only for the mail hull armor, you would therefore not be able to get the ship to explode for example but you would/should still be able to hit some components of these larger ships and maybe in the end cripple it enough to board it. That would also mean it makes sense to bring a proper crew onto these large ships to fend of smaller fighters and boarding parties. 2) Originally I did not like the idea of a pilot not being able to use guns and now not even torps/missles, however I think it may be a good balancing solution for the larger ships. Yes as a pilot you will always have somehing to do (flying the ship) but your're not doing much more than that during a fight. Other positions on the ship may be a bit boring during travel but see more action during a fight. I'm looking forward to the balancing they will do over the next year or so with MMs, I think it has a good future ahead.
You guys nailed it. For large crewed ships, the more systems like resource management, fire, life support, etc., come into the game, the 1+1=3 equation needs to be cranked up significantly to 1+1=50 or more. Because there is so much more than can go wrong and result in the ship not being able to operate at 100%. The reward for keeping the ship together, not on fire, and the crew alive needs to be much higher than just baseline "normal". But how to make this fun? Replacing fuses with the terrible inventory system is not fun. Whack-a-mole with fires is going to get old real quick. The Resource Network is going to be a big failure. If it is too heavily required, it will be too annoying to deal with and so people won't bother with large ships. If it is insignificant, then everyone will ignore it and we're back where we are now. No way CIG has the interest or ability to balance it on the knife's edge that would be needed to pull off successfully. Multicrew games like Guns of Icarus (RIP) were fantastic. Every crew member had a role and a good one made a HUGE difference. Not sure how SC can do this at this point, but cooldowns/abilities, something super significant needs to happen. This, like most problems in Star Citizen, stem from them making and selling art and concepts first, then designing a game later.
You nailed it yourself. Every single issue we have in this game comes from it seeming like design is only just now beginning to happen versus something that has been happening for over a decade. These are concepts and systems which should have been designed, tested, and refined long ago. Yet, here we are, in 2024, still not fully testing multi-crew or even fully understanding the concept CIG has for it. It is worrisome to say the least.
I'm about half way through the podcast but paused to talk about how impactful an Engineer would be with that power triangle and overall systems management. That's what I pictured Engineering would be like in terms of a combat situation. If shit hits the fan, and only if things are dire, than that engineer shouldn't need to leave their station. I can see a quick and desperate spot repair in combat, but any sort of major engineering work should happen outside of combat when the engagement is over. Even controlling fires could be done from that console - the engineer would have a lot of engaging stuff to do that could matter. The A2 was a great example of how complex systems of repair just aren't feasible when the ship's crew (beyond the pilot) basically only accounts for a single engineer and a bunch of gunners. It frustrates me that they can't decide if they want this game to be more like WWII air-to-air combat, or WWII naval combat. It feels like they want the combat feel of the former (CR has said as much), but the complexity of the latter, and I don't think this can co-exist when engagements can be measured in minutes (or less). You and Malorn get it, and it's so refreshing to hear realistic take on this for once.
I am glad you made it through most of the video. What really resonates with me about this particular comment is the comparison between WWII air and WWII naval engagements. Star Citizen tends to walk the line between both (sort of?) and aligns more with naval combat than with aerial combat. Which is fine by me; I do not care either way. I envision damage control parties in this game being very similar to those in Sea of Thieves, but as you mentioned, an engineer should NEVER leave their station unless absolutely necessary. If I were an engineer, I would want to spend most of my time at my station; that is what I signed up for. The same goes for turret operators. This also raises the interesting question of "who handles damage control parties?" If the answer is that everyone does, then the payoff for leaving those stations to do damage control work better be significant.
You’re comparing firepower but you’ve forgotten an important detail. Turrets have far larger capacitors then normal ships. You compare the redeemer and the andromeda, but while the guns may be similar the size 5s of the redeemer will be able to fire 3 or 4 times longer then the andromeda. This is significant.
Yes, but those capacitors while larger do not make up for just bringing another ship. A Connie for example has the same amount of guns for the pilot as a Deemer has between two gunners. You can bring 3 connies for 1 gunned deemer.
I think a big part of this conundrum is that the role and purpose of a lot of ships is missing. A2s aren't meant to be in dog fights. They bomb ground targets and deliver troops and ground vehicles. All of this would be done under an escort of fighters. The problem is, there are no ground targets or purpose outside of org vs org events. So we bring A2s into dog fights. Also with armor missing, yes i know I groaned too, small ships are damaging bigger ships than intended. The problem now becomes, does CIG spend time to balance the the game we have now and change it later, or do they focus on building the missing systems and balance after its implemented? I do agree with your points that multicrew needs more incentives. I really like the idea of engineers boosting ship capabilities. It adds value to those players and ensures they are an asset vs an opportunity cost liability.
Players are wired to look at things economically. Not necessarily strictly in terms of aUEC, but more broadly weighing the potential rewards (including fun, mission success, and camaraderie) vs the time and effort involved. Right now CIG has left multiplayer in a bad place through many development choices and their reasoning escapes me but is also entirely consistent with the obvious lack of a unified vision for ACTUAL game play. You mention the Conny and Corsair. Want to make those true multi player ships? Put the main guns on a single chin turret. Make those ships dangerous from (almost) any angle IF there is a second person aboard.
Sadly everything you said is correct. The game is in probably the worst state i has ever been and there is no unified vision. And it hurts. And it shows.
I feel the ship components and ship guns should be tweaked with basic ratios and a few adjustments. Example: size 3 guns, it should take 9 size 3 guns to dent a size 2 shield; when talking about single seat fighters. Reducing the range of all size 3 energy guns on single fighter ships; increase the range and DPS of size 3 and four laser/energy weapons for multicrew ships; reduce all single seat fighters to size one components (even if they run multiples); and baseline all multicrew ships with a minimum of size two system components. As you go up in ship/component size, the range/power of turret laser guns should increase. The components should boost the energy weapons DPS and range on multicrew ships. It’s cool for people to show off their agility in a small fighter; such folks can duke it out for fun in AC or in swarm fights. But balance means agility should be countered by increasing fragility and reducing firepower capabilities for single seat fighters
That isn't bad at all. And I'm not gonna discredit but how do you feel about shields passively regenerating at all times? It sort of does what you suggest naturally since lower weapons don't have the dps to brute down bigger ships. Just a random thought I've been kicking around since MM was announced. I am 100% with you just wondering if regeneration can do the same
@@BuzzCutPsycho Hmm. I wish smaller shields were more prone to damage that effect their max capacity…. Something like when our player characters receive damage levels 1,2, and 3 we can only heal to a lesser capacity. Small shields on an arrow should have their max capacity reduced after continuous depletions; when a player zooms away 3 times after losing shields there should be an endurance penalty that requires a repair action. That would be my take
I think you sold the redeemer a little short, the pilot has more firepower than you remember and the redeemer is probably the most “durable” ship in game because of its effective hp and its relatively small size. The redeemer is already worth it in pve missions because you have the survivability and firepower to win any pve task (including fighting an idris but its a hard fight and you will win by the skin of your teeth.) I like your idea of making remote turrets able to be switched between from a single seat, it would help a lot of ships. I feel like the Redeemer and hammerhead are better designed multicrew ships because the pilot doesn’t “out value” the gunners, the connie and corsair are terrible designs for multicrew because the turrets have such tiny guns, they could fix them by swapping the turrets to remote turrets that could be switched between. I could see a connie or corsair with 2 people onboard with their current durability, but not the crew sizes CiG does. I would say the Redeemer, Scorpius, and Hurricane are the closest to viable multicrew and the Redeemer feels the most viable of the 3.
I noticed you mentioned PvE, and sadly, I only ever really talk about things in regards to PvP. So I could very well be wrong about it in PvE. The issue with the Redeemer is that its S3 shields are not enough to hold out against a Corsair or even a Connie using cannons. And the moment anyone pulls a Hammerhead or something similar in size, the ships that come out to blow them up are almost always Corsairs. They will chew right through it. Also, despite the Redeemer's size, it has the handling profile of an 890J for some reason right now. Ironically, you would be better off in a 600i, which has 3 S5 guns the pilot can control and 2 S3 shields. I wish the thing did not suck, but it sadly does. Now, here is the thing. The Redeemer, to me, is how a ship SHOULD be in terms of multi-crew because the pilot has next to no guns and trades it all for his gunners to make the most of. Sadly, the game does not respect that. So no you are not wrong. And the ship may be better in some ways than I remember. But as somebody who does a lot of PvP (AC I admit) I just never see the Redeemer used for anything. Hell, even the HH get's more use in AC because you can ram with it! And, CORRECT ME IF I AM WRONG BECAUSE I MAY BE. But I think it has superior handling to the Redeemer. But I could be wrong.
Turrets should be dangerous. Period. Size 2 guns on a turret is not even enough to fend off civilian class ships and "fighters" 300 rounds in a size 2 chaingun is also ridiculous. Smaller ammo means you can carry MORE of it, not less. That logic still escapes me. We could be missing the point though in the sense that - a new player who doesnt want to spend 100+ dollars on a ship might be enticed to roll in the turret.
@@BuzzCutPsycho Hey man, sorry for the drive by post. I generally like to leave well thought out comments when I post on your content. So there are a few things in this conversation that I want to address - in hopes maybe a dev or two sees it rather than me trying to solve the worlds problems in DM's over discord. Turrets - If I am giving up a man and a fighter to man a turret, that turret is always overclocked, or it behaves as if it has full power. In addition, because of the bespoke nature of manned turrets an added bonus is an EM attribute gets added to the projectiles - thus bringing shields down on targets faster. These benefits come at no cost to the ships power economy these are just perks for dedicating crew to those guns. They also hold more ammo than the gun normally would - its a hard point and the ships space allows for that. None of these attributes messes with the games physics of fitting stuff into a turret like trying to fit a size 5 gun in a size 2 hole. Engineers - we use that term as kind of an all - encompassing position on a ship. If the engineer is repairing stuff he's not an engineer - he is a damage controllman. That position on the ship is solely for emergency repairs. Overclocking stuff like you guys talked about needs to be done from an engineering kiosk that - when it is not being managed for ship attributes like more power to shields - the engineer gets control of the ships secondary armaments - in most cases this is missiles - I think most people can agree the rate of fire for bombs and missiles is underwhelming in SC. If an engineer is dedicating his time to operate that weapons system the fire rate is increased by 300% and the accuracy of the payload is increased by 200% with the added option of the engineer detonating the charge at-will. THis gives the poor sucker more to do than manage bar graphs the whole fight. And it can be explained because the safety checks to launch a missile from the cockpit can then be bypassed. Capitol ship combat. Here is where we have a fundamental issue with the game. Currently winning the fight "when it matters" doesn't really exist. We have the planets, we have the space, we have the ships. We do not have the gameplay. Why anyone would ever fight over random points in space without a grand campaign is beyond me, there just needs to be more points of interest. and most of them need to be on planets if not something akin to SPK. The credits system in this game is intentionally broken for testing as it sits, but resources like better guns that cant be purchased and other things (think a new armament factory magically appears on *picks any moon that no one ever goes to*) Well, the faction or team that controls that weapon manufacturer can scoop the size 5 ultra-rare uber guns and distribute him to his fleet ala Jumptown style (hopefully less claustrophobic than jumptown). But Ryan... what is the point of that if people can just spawn in their gladius and be back 5 minutes after death. Here is where the capitol ships come in. Economy of force is NOT addressed in this game at all. I should not be able to fly across an entire solar system in my ford fiesta. The fuel economy of these ships when we finally get other systems in the game needs to be drastically nerfed. So that when I park my sweet ass Idris overtop of the planet I'm getting ready to assault, and I do the bug swatting required to secure the area - the only other way I should be getting any kind of a credible threat is if another capitol ship is present and those tiny fighters are spawning from it. People want to camp a nursa rover on the X - cool, you get three revives out of it unless it's within 2,000km of an allied capitol ship that's supplying it. ( I mean that literally - I think the game has enough nuance without some poor schmuck flying medical supplies to a field hospital) If you dont have a cap ship, or something large enough to house a couple of light fighters then you are effectively out of supply when this attack goes down. How do we fix that Ryan? - you move the fucking moons with these events on them out of flight range of the tiny spacecraft. Then the fight matters. The fleet has its job of maintaining air superiority - it actually has an impact for the ground guys, and it rewards teamwork. Respectfully, Taz
Hell, you could even go so far as to give ships such as the Andromeda a supply value based off of SCU capacity. Limited range for someone to be considered in-supply for the medical stuff. So it even makes it worthwhile to bring an Idris + a couple of ships playing the role of a frigate.
X4 is about as perfect a space game can be. SC needs to mimic this as much as possible, but obviously allowing for the heavier fps and multiplayer focus.
They may need to remove even forward guns from the pilot in ships larger than large fighters, then balance it around that. I have a connie, but if you want to make it really multi-crew, the pilot should be just the pilot. There are two other seats right there next to the pilot chair. That's the common sci-fi movie trope anyway. If I don't have even a forward gunner available, I pick a different ship.
No I agree but I know this would he w hard sell. The Connie and the corsair are just super heavy fighters as far as I am concerned in their current state.
As of now, its better to bring another ship, instead of having someone in a turret. Maybe if turrets had a much larger capacitor, magazine and/or giving turrets longer ranges, more damage, something.
You're correct. One turret is now worth the power and utility of another ship. Especially now since turrets no longer have their own capacitors that are separate from the ship.
@BuzzCutPsycho Maybe with armor, a turret on a ship with much higher survivability...but the "when armor comes out" has been going on forever now. The Valkyrie has been waiting to be viable because of "armor" since it came out. Le sigh.
Buzz always with the based takes, especially in regards to multi-crew issues. (which btw is one of the most important aspects of this MMO to actually be an MMO). It seems that ships with any turrets that have far less firepower than a player in their own ship, really don't make any sense. There is no benefit to put a person in there right now. So what do we do? Make all size 3 or lower turrets just AI run / automatic fire on pilots target? while size 4 and higher turrets need to be manned? There is no easy answer here.. If this were the case then people would just solo ships with size 3 turrets or less and get even more firepower behind a single player....
I like to think I am based. ;) AI are options and just balance the ships through other methods. Or, just change the weapon weapons perform when mounted on turrets. Higher velocity, bigger cap, something, anything, something that justifies the existence and sacrifice of one's own ship and all the power that comes with it.
I want a robot crew. Not AI NPCs....programmable robots that responds to commands. I like the concept artist Aaron Beck's robot designs. Maybe something like his concepts I would want. And then I would have them crew a ship. That way a solo player can enjoy a large ship without having multiple players. And if I do have friends or people that I hire for the day to crew the ship, I can mix and match a crew with people and robots.
There is a very legit concern for solo players being unable to crew the ships they paid for. Especially when they were sold with the idea of NPC crews. At this point unless CIG can figure out how to justify the crew requirements on bigger ships justifying the effort they may as well throw all that NPC stuff in asap. I cannot see an Idris being manned by players in any regularity.
@@BuzzCutPsycho Yes that is a great concern. I would like to see a system where we can either hire people to crew the ship (or fire them and kick them off the ship if they're being a pain) and/or crew them with robots. NPCs....sure I guess. But I would rather robots if they are not real people. Right about the Idris and ships similarly large. You're going to have such a large crew spawn in and out when something comes up and they can't play anymore. You can't have that happening in the middle of a firefight.
Hi i'm only 37 min in the talk so i don't know if this gets adressed later. IMO the bigger talking point is down time. Last week i managed to get 4 other players than me to play SC. but the week leading to it i was talking to 1 guy. original plan was fully crew a relacimer and play together on one ship. but i had so concerns so i talkd and said what would you prefer? reclaimer or multiple vultures? he said on a reclaimer even with swapping seats you have down time. Then i was thinking about it and finally decided (i was the organizer) we use 1 caterpiller and multiple vultures and 1 guy had not a lot time so he was cargo chief. Advantage was noone had just waiting, everyone was able to play and not just wait. then offload the cargo to the cat, the cargo chief was also always busy because 1 vulture came and left then the next. no one had a major downtime to just wait. Was fun. after more than 2 months not having players i have this friday again a crew to play (don't know the size yet) but all enjoyed it. :D
That is what makes the game and people just do not get how important experiences like yours are. That is what will get players to stick with the game, even if the game isn't doing too well at the moment. Crew play makes everything better.
I agree with this collaborative dissertation. I've been saying this for awhile now, and it feels like being trapped in an echo chamber. CIG has a problem when it comes to foresight planning during design and project management. Lastly, I don't disagree that CIG will get there and getting multiplayer / multi crew gameplay correct. That said like anything. There's zero incentive if they're bringing in the cash. You have to hit them in the pocketbook.
Good podcast, lots of interesting points raised, but as we all know, no real workable solutions, at least for the near or medium future away. Unless, strong farts are imported off EVE Online to take care of them pesky single seat fighters ;)
hey what i am hoping for and i know will be possble with in a short period NPCs that copy how you play the game though input and eye tracking in order to best function like a quanta. including also giving them personality schema types and default skills for minigame function like cooking crafting etc but allow them to also copy the way you produce things (i want food prep to be vr style cooking wiht slicing and soaking and boiling and BBQing etc but having each meal a PLAYER created coctail which can be sold on your ships and at homesteads and other retail places for food and other players can give it up to 5 stars for what it looks like BUT plot twist we make a MOBILE GAME that is called 5 Star resturant and use the ASSET from the PU and allow the mobile game players to rate the designs :) so you won't get trolls doing it BUT we won't tell them we let soccer moms rate their meals. ANYWAY to Crew multipling YEh i really do think we need to make maybe ship co-pilots actually have a bonus or bennfit like maybe shield gens could have FUSES which if one blows it reduces the recharge speed 25% and the shield requires 2 fuses to function top spec. SO knowing you have an engineer who can swap out fuses which should blow after a shield has been poped once and any distrotion damage sets in both may need to be swapped out so you can lose 50% on each shield pklant then you have the same for power plants and coolers that effect other systems thats engineering but for smaller ships like the hurrcane which was the best fighter when Xeno first hit servers,.it's a small hit box high DPS ship 2 size 4 and 4xs3 man just OP guns but What about scanning and radar and having a way for a group of players in seperate ships to hive mind and use PIP sharing system that allows color coded pins and splines to be played in the map area in real time via a scout ship or any ship wiht scanning like the ship functison need to really start making a valid reason to buy each ship even moles gonna be obsoleet with the arastra
This was a pretty deep comment, unlike most I see around UA-cam. You thought a lot about it. For me, the best part of your comment was getting me imagining a world where CIG can design an AI that learns based on human player behavior when they have proven to be unable to get basic AI in bunkers working. Of course, I am being harsh, but I am certainly jaded after so many years of promises. Hurricane, though, man, I miss it. It sucks so much now. It was my favorite heavy fighter before 3.23, and now it's a flying turd. Oh well, maybe it'll change someday.
The cool down suggestion is good. But the fact is the engineer must provide a tangible benefit to firepower or defence or repair, or there will be no reason to have an engineer or no reason to use a ship that requires and engineer. It's crazy to me that with every new development of ship systems it seems cig is making multi crew ships less and less combat viable for the crew requirements. It's gone from 1+1=1, to 1+1=-2. At this point with the engineering test you need 6 people to equal the performance of 1 person in a single seater.... Does anyone at cig even remotely think about this? Its totally ridiculous and yet they seem to continue to have no problems introducing ideas that make this problem even worse. They must really not want people to fly Capital ships.
I will not lie I have found 3.23+ to be very worrisome. Same with 2024 in general. The complete lack of progress and positive movement for a better multi-crew experience baffles and concerns me. Even beyond them understanding 1+1=3.
@@BuzzCutPsycho maybe it's just going to be super slow progress. We got some distance with med bed respawns. Most positive change in years. But obviously now we need proper facilities and defender spawns to support, not to mention the incomplete flight model and totally neglected multi crew design concepts. these are much more complex, and I fear cig doesn't have the desire to do anything other than add pointless realism and screenshot simulator 'mechanics' that serve zero function to gameplay. Cig needs to shift into a gameplay first company instead of a asset development company, or things aren't going to change.
On top of that many of the features on ships are unusable. The attention to detail in applaudable. The playability not so much. I often thought Theaters of War would give a venue for ground based fights with fighters, bombers and dropships, while the medium or bigger ships would be dedicated to space fights, but it never happened.
Right now multicrew really only makes sense for mining and salvage (in certain circumstances). It doesn't have a place in ship combat right now which is a shame. It sounds like CIG plan to use Engineering/Armor to change this but no one will care if it isn't fun......and personally I've not particularly enjoyed the Engineering gameplay. And in most circumstances I would much rather fly my own ship vs. sitting in someone else's underpowered turret.
You are correct. And people DO NOT realize that to sit in a turret of somebody else's ship is to trade YOUR OWN to do that. That is not a fair trade. Not yet anyway. It is going to need a lot imo for it to be that way.
I disagree about captains. You have to think larger with them. They need to be macro. While the pilot is concentrating the captain can be almost all logistics. There are some serious applications they could have. Say all the players contribute skills the captain can apply those skills as needed or even capitalize or enhance those skills. No reason not to utilize larger scope gameplay.
I can totally agree with that. I still fear that cig will not deliver at all on captains or macro game play. At least not in our life time. They're struggling with turrets now :(
What if a solution to players gang up on big ships could be making servers capacity up to 1000 of what ever so it would be to hard co co operate attack or even find other players in the verse. I think npc crew will sort out all boring roles in big ships and fill those guner spots too even enterprise from star trek needed cleaners I quess. Having big ships with crew means obligations, being able to earn enough to even fly pay for fuel missiles etc. This gameplay is more fun than managing 7 humans and that's what I expect from multi crew ship. Perhaps one day will get big fleet battels org vs org but its hard to believe it that it will ever happen just from the arguments you made about balancing nightmare. It would make whales cry.
I sadly cannot ever see it happening and the more I read comments like this, and also think about the situation the more I think that NPC crew or whatever to take away the "boring" jobs is the only real solution. I just DO NOT see a world, especially as time goes on, where players want to play space janny on somebody else's ship. I know I do not. It's going to take a fundamental concept redesign and understanding of the current market. Doesn't mean it cannot happen, doesn't mean what you want cannot happen either, but holy cow, I am VERY skeptical of their ability to make multicrew anything other than a meme.
We don't have the biggest ships yet like javelin hull e bengal and whatever else they bring. Players definitely wouldn't want to crew on big ships for lite reward but for equal share of the profits there will be plenty willing. For example the ship like polaris I think will need about 4-5 humans yo manage captain to pilot, co pilot to manege shield and ai blades, engineer, missiles guy for torpedoes and one more plot to fly a fighter. Other roles like gunners cooks medical crew even putting out fire npc crew will do easily.
Cig are working on npc crew for years I think its 3 most important thig to make this game work. I think they have 10 times more content ready or in development they just don't show it yet I hope this year we might see some at citizen con
And then lets fuck the good ace pilots and solo players personal security and individual skill because we are pass the 30s and we dont have reflex mind or time to learn anymore and let make star citizen a pve co op mmo and make the game only worth for groups of players because we dont want be skilled for our self or even try to learn something new anymore XDDD . then if we have a new friend that enter in the game we gonna give him some money so he can buy a multi crew and now we have 10 multicrew and no single seat and a org with 30 players and not individual skill just credit card war in and out of game for buy big ships and play with multiple people and lets throw to the trash all snoob fighters and skilled types of play because we are old XD
I don't think age matters as much as people think it does. I am pretty up there and do well especially in shooter games. I think SC is just very difficult to understand at times in terms of mechanics and esoteric skills not easily known or understood. Just my 2 cents anyway.
CiG has some great talent, but alot of poor talent too. CiG cannot even make working scoreboards in AC. Have the poorest of data entry developers. (3000ms vannys, to mk2 wiggles, to all kinds of oversights). Point is: i dont think they are capable of finding force multiplier parity until they clean up their clowns devs.
I have very little faith in CIG's ability to deliver on a system which some how makes multi-crew ships, even something like a Hurricane very good in PvP.
@BuzzCutPsycho i agree 100%. fun fact. Yogi was a sound composer. No data entry, no gameplay balance experience. Likewise the balance team. They use tools to enter data. A farcry from being developers. Going to be a wait for a balanced game if that even includes good multicrew....
@@porecemusnox8805 ye but even from a psychological standpoint this gameplay is doomed if you can't give the player that is litteraly doing nothing combat oriented a dopamin kick or anything else rewarding while doing so ..
My go to example of how multi-crew should work is Sea of Thieves. Tasks on board the ship are relatively simple, but constant always keeping the players engaged in and out of combat. Whether it be adjusting the sails for changes in wind, repairing holes and bucketing water from ambient weather, to cooking food for healing buffs, and even managing the ships inventory, there is always something to do. And none of it requires much knowledge or experience to do them. The real skill in the game is communicating and effectively dividing tasks between players to ensure that things are done in the right order and the right time. Our group often says that we have the best damage control on the seas because we are able to keep our ship afloat despite taking huge amounts of damage, we regularly out last our opponents through simply keeping up with repairs better than them.
The most amusing part is when you get opponents that are bad at controlling their own ship, and coordinating with their crew, so they try to board using their FPS twitch reflexes and speed as a crutch only to get ganged by our entire crew with blunderbusses waiting for them at the ship's ladder. We always have someone on lookout for boarders, and when someone sees one, we all drop everything and rush to the ladder to take them out. The amount of salt from try hard FPS players is always amazing. If you have a fully crewed and coordinated/experienced Galleon, it will practically dominate a server.
For star citizen they need to make engineering a huge buff for large ships, making them several times more durable. In sea of thieves, if you don't repair holes you can sink in under a minute. But if you keep up with repairs, you can keep going for hours of relatively constant combat. Assuming you have the supplies, of course. That being said, sea of thieves only has 3 ships, which makes balance a lot easier.
Terrible game and gameplay. No thanks.
So good it gets a pin
Part of the problem is that Star Citizen isn't giving engineers the ability to patch the hull and restore ship HP. It is giving us a convoluted mechanism that allows us to repair the rope that raises and lowers the sail. If that rope never gets damaged in the exchange, there is nothing the engineer can do while the ships hull falls apart around them. And even if the rope does get damaged, it is unlikely that he would fix it before the ship sank. And even if that didn't happen, the effect of the rope being out of commission while the engineer gets to fixing it is essentially a damage multiplier for the attacking ships, meaning that by the time the rope is repaired, the ship is now seconds away from sinking anyway.
So yeah, as it stands, the current engineering gameplay is nothing but a liability for any ship big enough to worry about having components destroyed *before* the hull HP reaches 0.
I think part of the problem is that CIG screwed themselves out of the ability to have ship weapons and shields in clear 'tiers' by overloading the fighters with too much firepower, all in an attempt to sell the ships to players looking for an advantage.
If fighters only had size 1- 3 guns, CIG could at least try an arbitrary system where those guns were X% effective against small shields, Y% effective against medium shields and Z% effective against large shields. This would at least help with the durability of multi crew ships versus 1 - 2 fighters..
I would even suggest that Y% should be something like 40%. That way, two fighters shooting at a target with a medium shield are still doing 20% less damage than a single fighter would do shooting at a target with a small shield (e.g another fighter).
@@Siygess I agree. PvP fighter ship players are very vocal in the community. I think CIG went to reduce TTK to appease them. TTK for a ship that has repairable components and other aspects needs to be extremely long. If it isn't, engineers are useless no matter what.
I think they need to completely overhaul how damage works in the game (maybe they are, I don't know). Just a simple HP pool isn't enough. For instance, you can shoot one specific part of a ship and the HP will go down no matter what. At some point, there would be a hole completely through the ship in that one specific point and no more damage should be taken.
They need to find a way to make it so that ships don't just explode after a certain amount of damage. That honestly makes no sense because if you're shooting a part of the ship that isn't essential to the structure of the ship, it shouldn't matter how much you shoot it, the ship won't explode. You'd need to either spread the damage out enough to cripple the ship, or focus your attack on parts of the ship that actually WOULD explode if they got too damaged (engines or bomb bays maybe).
Turrets would then be placed in parts of the ship that would protect those parts from attack. You would actually need to strike from certain angles to manage to disable a ship efficiently, and those angles would be covered by turrets. Shield management would also have a purpose then.
This was a fantastic talk covering all the important discussions about multi-crew. Things that have been discussed here and there of course, but all in one video is awesome for those who arent following SC and have 12 hours a day of work like me to listen to all the content creators talk and talk about SC.
Aww thanks. And 12 hours? YOU WORK TOO HARD.
excellent chat ... completely agree on the 1+1=3 overall concept. Yes, it makes balancing harder, but I think the core problem is that they are trying to make single seater ships a jack-of-all-trades. We need actual strengths and weaknesses, so that there are counters to things.
Do they have capital ships? Bring bombers/small torp ships. Do they have bombers/torps? Bring fighters to kill them. Do they have fighters? Bring multi-crew ships to destroy those.
etc etc
I want to believe that the "archetypes" they introduced are a way to get what you're saying into the game. So far it isn't working though LOL
@@BuzzCutPsycho lol yeah, I think they want this, but they have a long way to go before they get there. Master modes is probably more important to them at the moment, but with engineering coming, they have to do something for multi crew ships, even if it is just a temporary buff to turrets
Single best video on the folly of multicrew gameplay as it exists in SC ever released.
you flatter me
Malorn forgets the meta the 3rd seat in the Harraser was a repair man and mine layer. Actually was really usable for survival.
Yeah. I remember having to aim the repair gun weird in the 3rd seat to repair too.
@@BuzzCutPsycho yep it was a thing.
In my view, two, reletively easy, changes to turrets would alieviate a lot of these concerns. 1 - Turrets should double the speed and range of whatever weapon is mounted to them. Come up with whatever lore/physics explaination you want, but that would increase their effectiveness in a big way especially against small fast ships. Maybe heavy fighter turrets only add 50%, but turrets on a hammerhead, connie, corsair, etc should add 100%. 2 - Turrets should auto gimbal, precision fire, and possibly pip track better than any cockpit/pilot controlled guns, with the ability to turn off all of the above for maximum versatility. These two changes would certainly act as a force multiplier and would likely lead to small and medium fighters avoiding fights with turreted ships. They would still be vulnerable to bombers, but with better tracking and more shots on target, bombs would have a harder time getting through. Bomber pilots would also need to be more skilled to get hits. Just my two cents.
Your suggestions would almost instantly solve the issues with turrets in the short term. 100%.
Multicrew won't be ideal until three things happen:
1) All large and larger ships need to have their HP/Armor and Shields greatly buffed. Large ships should be tough as nails unless dealing with ships specifically designed to deal with them.
2) Engineering forces large ships to NEED multicrew in combat to prevent easily soloing large ships.
3) Turrets get lots of buffing. Not in terms of DPS, but in the ability to reliably land hits. Since auto aim assist is gone, then auto gimballing and targeting needs to be very reliable.
I agree with everything but I would like to point out the turret's have the old "auto aim" gimbal that used to be on ships. Sadly, it sucks and is not good enough, nor is the velocity (chance to hit) like you said very good. I agree with what you said, but turrets are the first stepping stone to getting everything fixed up and sucking a little less IMO.
This was a good talk! The tech might be impressive but they need to have a person on each of their team that asks each and every time: "Is it fun?". "Is it engaging?".
It would be helpful and sadly I think they are more focused on making art as opposed to a good game.
Honestly i agree with most of your points. Right now gunning feels like a net loss as opposed to having them hop in another ship. I personally enjoy flying and gunning. Gunning lets you relax and just enjoy the scenery
Same. The relax part is the best.
Hell yeah, been lookin forward to this.
Based
Love these long form podcasts keep em commin
You got it! We do it once or twice a month time permitting.
Serious good talk man. I appreciate all the videos ive seen thus far. I think CIG could definitely hear you out.
I get the large ships because i aint buying that sht in game. I assume it will be damn difficult to get. It could be easy.. but ive only invested in large ships. Not that i dont love the smaller ships better but ill buy those with in game credits.
My take on engineering... You dont fix ships in combat. Patch yes, fix, no. They should look at engineering as a downtime activity not a combat activity.
I definitely agree, 100%, that engineers should be managing systems not fixing them AND giving boosts. Thats exactly how it should be. Fun and engaging activity.
You're welcome and I am glad you feel that way! I agree with the "patch" part but is needs to be significant enough to extend the life of the ship until real repair happens. SC right now has nothing like that so in testing with the A2 the ship would just blow up before the engineering had a real role. I know that was fixed by making the health on the A2 for that test super high, but it showed how little they were prepared.
I feel like at least in SC the only way multi crew ships will work well is if the "engineer" role is just a gunner with an extra interface that micro manages something like bulkheads or fire suppressants that only take you off gunning for a few seconds or can be done at the same time. Otherwise getting out of a seat and trying to do an among us mini game while you're getting shot to shit will be impossible to balance.
LOL @ "AMONG US" MINI-GAME
You just KNOW they would do something stupid like that. My god I hate you for putting that in my head now and I am going to be using this in the future I promise.
It's inevitable lol
A lot of aviation is missing from 2 seater ships in SC versus DCS, even outside of combat. Not to mention that larger cap ships will work more like large Navy warships with their engineering loops.
Example from a 2 seater F-15E in DCS: This was a training mission. Had to travel ~190 nautical miles, while staying under 6000 feet barometric, dodge SAM sites en route to dumb bomb a SAM site complex. A friend of mine was the pilot, I was the WSO. I had one MFD set up to the terrain map to navigate to stay ~100 feet AGL and under 6000 feet barometric. Second MFD I had set to the HUD repeater so I could see a nose camera view and his flight parameters. Third MFD was the radar warning receiver (RWR) to find out where the SAM sights were, so I could navigate the pilot away from them. Fourth MFD was on the HSI for overall navigation.
Every time the RWR pinged, I would key up the radio "kick left 30, roll out 0-7-0." Or whatever navigation info to put the SAM site on the beam and keep us roughly pointed at the bombing target. Both of us were busy but not task saturated with the rate of events that came up through a ~25 minute flight in and ~25 minute flight back. A pilot in a single seater would have to do all of that on his own and may be task saturated and get "behind the drag curve" as they say.
Then when we got close, we were low enough to be vulnerable to AAA fire, but within the minimum range of the target SAM sites. I took control of the targeting pod, marked the target, and dropped the bombs while my pilot was jinking the AAA fire.
SC doesn't really have this. If you're a turret gunner, you can spot and shoot, but not much else. The gunner is sitting and it's fairly dull.
That level of engagement would be fantastic. I'm not a great pilot (in terms of fighters), but systems management and situational awareness I can do (and enjoy doing). That level of depth would have me volunteering for that second seat.
That is a great and welll thought out level of engagement but I hardly think we will get anything as detailed as that. However, I can see a radar job or some such of spotting / target calling being some how transferred over to one of the seats and functioning. Just not as cool as what you described.
@@BuzzCutPsycho This makes me think of the Hornet Tracker. I'm not the first person to mention this, but that long range radar really needed to be a in Super Hornet chassis. Makes so much sense for a second person to call out targets.
@@BuzzCutPsycho SC doesn't need it to be as complicated as DCS, I agree. Crew members need things to do in their positions. SC has a lot of time where people are doing anything. Example: Quantum. I would like to see some depth in long range radar, especially when it comes to fleet combat. "Eight Tali's, 10 million KM, from Hurston, hot."
@@JL-rj9fl Agree. Crew members need things to do. Hopefully meaningful things. There is a lot of doing nothing in SC at times. Example: Quantum.
Re: The captain's chair. I see it being useful in fleet game play when communicating with other pilots. Say an Idris-M has an escort of two Hammerheads along with other support ships. The Idris' captain can call turns for the fleet and then the other ships in formation will have to speed up or slow down to stay in formation. Another duty for an Idris captain would be the marshal stack, controlling ships that want to land in the Idris' hangar for refit and rearm (if it has that capability). Letting the airspace (or spacespace) go unregulated is a recipe for pilots to crash into each other or the Idris itself.
I can see that. Hell man I would be happy with something as simple as an RTS like hud or UI to help guide multiple players along the ship. Anything really. Alas we will never get anything as cool as what you or even I want. :(
I finished the podcast and have a few final thoughts. You mentioned cooldowns while "boosting" the ship's capabilities. Great idea and I like the implications on not just having a cooldown, but also wearing down components as a sort of built in timer for how often this could be used. It actually parallels WWII aerial combat in a way, which I will explain:
In general terms, combat aircraft of WWII have war emergency power (WEP) to boost their safe operating parameters. This was achieved in various ways, but the point is there were specific IRL guidelines for how often this could be used. The implications of not using this properly means damaging the engine of the aircraft or causing a lot of premature wear (meaning more service required more often). If you're not familiar (anyone reading this comment) take a look at it and read about it, it would be a fantastic edition to SC. Being able to manage the issues of using this too much in an engagement could be meaningful gameplay for an engineer, as well as the work afterwards to repair all the damage it could cause by using it too much.
That's actually really great and I never would have thought of that on my own. I play WT and I see WEP a lot but most people don't bother turning it off and leave it on as a default.
It would also be a great way to introduce wear and tear and keep the economy going, maybe? Some day... Anyway, that is a very good suggestion and mention.
@@BuzzCutPsycho Thanks, I never thought of WEP in the context of SC before until I heard your thoughts on boosting systems. It would be a really interesting to see its impact with ship maintenance costs. It could even matter with component selection - durability to push a component could be a real consideration in addition to just the standard output a component makes normally.
It's pretty hilarious that you can leave WEP on all the time without blowing up the engine. Just for fun, I consulted the original WWII operating manual from the North American aircraft company (published September 1944 revision) for the P-51 Mustang. They recommended no more than 5 minutes alongside a strict list of requirements that should be met along with a recommendation of 5 hours before teardown and reconditioning with a host of caveats. :)
To expand on this, it gives things to remember when an engineer switches on the WEP whilst transferring power from places less used to the most used.
Knowing the ship, and how far passed the threshold of normal use you can push the WEP would make good engineers sought after. Knowing which power systems you can divert to shields whilst boosting on a Connie, and the exact moment you've pushed too far, and you've done real damage. It's a job of timing and chancing it.
I never found the official discussion forums for the game and I keep wanting to bring this up to the devs. On turrets make ALL TURRETS remote turrets. Then the copilot seat controls all of them, every last turret all at once. In the event of multiple co pilot seats there should be like a toggle switch so players can pick "i get right side on the hammerhead you get left." So while the pilot is stuck in first person view to aim the guns these turret gunners are third person and all the guns turn to aim at where his third person crosshair is. So suddenly you're fighting a connie with a copilot and you're getting hit by the main guns and two turrets at once. You can't maneuver out of the gunner's vision, he can see too well and with something like a connie he always has a turret that can hit you.
As it stands something like a hammerhead is dead meat because I can tell you from experience... i can't even see out of that thing in a turret much less shoot down an incoming torpedo...
The idea of making all turrets remote and controllable from the copilot seat is interesting and could potentially enhance the gameplay experience by streamlining turret operations. Also really adds to the remote turret being something other than a flavor. It would definitely add a layer of strategy, especially in multi-seat ships like the Hammerhead.
Having the ability for players to toggle turret control based on their seat assignment would also make coordination more efficient. The third-person aiming for turret gunners is a great idea too, as it would give them a better field of view and increase their effectiveness in combat. God knows how AWFUL the visibility is in most of these things. I hate it.
Oh! Speaking of the visibility issues in turrets, I completely agree. Improving visibility and control for turret gunners would make ships like the Hammerhead much more viable in combat. I think these suggestions would definitely be worth bringing up to the devs on the official forums. But I am pretty sure they are aware of it and we most likely wont see a single change for them until 4.0.
@@BuzzCutPsycho With the sheer volume of labor involved in the change I wouldn't expect anything different. 4.0 is a HUGE project and my proposal would require the remodeling of many ships. The ladder / seat would need to go away on the cutty as an example. The hammerhead sent back to the art team for a complete 100% overhaul ect. Coding it? I don't think that hard comparatively. But the art team would likely be so pissed that I find that suddenly the devs have a vendetta against me when I play lol.
But the advantages of it basically means that the player being gunner is able to do the work of several players. They can fire several guns at once on bigger ships and there's no hiding from their FOV so while a gladius can out maneuver the ship there is no getting around getting shot at.
The final thing the game could use instead of shotguns is airburst ballistic ammo. Limited capacity but for turrets you could add flak. The issue is an easy way to do detonation range. Basically these two changes would make the big ships not so much tougher but just very painful to try to approach like my favorite tanks in FPS, the BF1 tanks that could shoot you like from any angle lol.
First video of yours I have seen. I really enjoyed it. The only other problem I think you missed would be the impact of blades and NPC crew. I think it warrants discussion for the problems it will present. I think you did mention it, I just think it needs a solid 15 minutes unto itself.
100%. Soon as I know more about the blades/npc stuff beyond concept I would happily do a short one. 15m or so like you said :D and welcome!
Star Citizen is one of the few games that have a multi-crew. Gameplay and enjoyment should focus on it well above single-seat ships.
They should but aren't yet
As the vast majority play alone, the game MUST be more solo heavy or it WILL die. Multi-crew has to be majority AI, with human multi-crew as a possibility for the few. Streamers advertising mainly
Disagree. Multi-player ships were sold with intent to multiple people. Ai,blades should help reduce headcount but not replace people.
The solo players have plenty of advantages over a multi crew ship regardless of ship stats because multiple single ships can attack from multiple vectors forcing a big ship to take hits.
If a multicrew ship was worth 5 single seat ships in raw stats, 3 single seat ships would still have a reasonable chance of winning because the multicrew ship cant bring firepower to bear in three directions at once if the single seaters attack from very different attack angles.
Because of skill and numbers advantage, a multicrew ship needs more raw stats(firepower/shields) to compete.
@@DakkaDakka12 yessssiir. Multicrew ships need to be exponentially better for each additional person needed to run the ship. Or simply, how much time it takes to get a ship under way.
Driving a Tank in Hell let loose can be a riot with a good crew. engineering will come and is concerning execution wise too. I also think the engineer should be multirole, the healer keeping the tank in the fight, electronic warfare and tec expert helping the whole crew maximize their tools to fight. A crewed up Corsair, Hurricane, Redeemer and Hammerhead should strike fear in single seat ships but it just does not now.
Glad you could relate to the HLL experience. I loved being in the crew for those things, even if not gunning.
I disagree with the tail gun being a design mistake. Attacking ships will try to find a blind spot where they won't get attacked by turret gunners. Not having a rear gunner seat would be an easily exploitable blind spot. Is it better than having a fighter escort? Probably not. I think it's only advantage is the comradely of being part of the ship's crew, the shared experience, which is similar to having an escort but still not quite the same.
The issue with the tail gun is it is in most ships other than the A2 a seat that gets little to no action and the only reason it works on the A2 is because you can use the remote to swap between front or tail turrets.
You ain't wrong. But in every other ship it usually becomes a boring seat that hardly gets used in my experience.
Think about this like the navy fleets. The big ships are designed for big ship on big ship combat. The bane of big ships is always the smaller more manverable ships. You should really never send big ships alone. Thats why in Starwars there was always fighters on ships that would intercept smaller ships
For sure. But, like big ships in WW2 found out that using your mass to load up excessive amounts of AA / Armor was pretty helpful for keeping those small planes away. :) Nothing like that in SC yet...
The problem with the engineering playtests was that everything just died too quickly. You didn't just lose one fuse but all 3 at once. You wouldn't just have a damaged component with a chance to repair it, it would die so quickly that you couldn't counteract the damage anyway.
There also wasn't any visual feedback with damage on the component so sometimes it breaks and you don't even notice if you don't have another person at the engineering panel.
I believe it can be really good. It just shouldn't be as overwhelming to deal with.
Regarding the 1+1=3:
I think we need to nerf the firepower of pilots on multi crew ships. If the pilot has S4 guns and the turrets S2 guns obviously it's always better to get more pilots.
I fully expect, and want, PILOT FIREPOWER to be nerfed on these ships. I always bring up the Warthog from Halo; that's what I would do. I loved driving and putting other people in position to lay down the hate. I loved being the tank commander role in Hell Let Loose. I admit, I loved being the gunner in PlanetSide 1. But what all those games had in common is that you traded POWER for force multiplication. SC has none of that.
I would happily give away every single one of my guns on a Corsair to have better, more powerful, gimbaled, accurate, deadly weapons on it for gunners to use instead of me. Just give me the ship and flares.
To expand on your Cooldown based gameplay
Each path of power you can put into the component you're overclocking, decreases the cooldown. So you might pop the CD on shields, and then as a turret is taken out, you divert the power to the shield, dropping the CD timer.
The problem we are facing here though, is bigger ships can be bought with bigger wallet IRL. Pay to Win then creeps into the mix.
Edit: On Tail Gunners - Manned tail gunners make no sense. Make all tail turrets remote that can have AI blades attached.
Expanding on the idea of power management affecting cooldowns is really smart. Being able to divert power to different systems to reduce cooldown timers would add a lot of strategy to combat. For example, using a cooldown on shields and then reallocating power from a disabled turret to the shields to bring the timer down would make gameplay more engaging for what might otherwise be a boring role.
I have no comment on the P2W part. I will reserve judgment for how they handle these LTI ships we all have once, and if, the game ever comes out. Which it probably never will.
Manned tail gunners don’t make much sense compared to remote-operated turrets. Making all tail turrets remote-controlled and able to use AI blades would make things more efficient and practical in gameplay. Good comment on this one. I have always hated the idea of tail gunners in this game because so far they have always been the most worthless and uninteresting turret position for any ship that has them.
@@BuzzCutPsycho I don't think LTI will have any effect at all in the game when it comes to quick claims.
They have always said it's the least of things, and it's the community that have jumped on it. The amount you'll have to pay on your premium will be per period, month/6 month
It's the larger ships that have many peeps that is the P2W aspect, but they have made their bed and now need to deal with it. Making multi crew ships a powerhouse should require more people to work though. Which might be the fix. A $1000 ship that requires 4 people to be effect, makes the P2W aspect $1000/4.
Hmm.. Maybe the P2W aspect only is a thing if that $1000 ship piloted by 1 is super effective.
Liking these podcasts though.
The engineering role should basically be like having a healer in your party in an MMO at least in reference to flying.
Or even "is it necessary?"
@BuzzCutPsycho 100%, it's not at all by my estimate necessary, but CiG has this problem with promises to "investors." It's dumb its going to be hard to make a good game with that limitation of balance.
I agree. 5 good friends of mine play SC and 3 of them are concierge. It should make sense for me to be a gunner on my friend's ship but they just spawn another fighter for me because it's more effective.
Npc crews lolol
The Xenothreat Idris event allowed us to capture several Idrises and put them to multicrew use. Our last Idris lasted 184 continuous hours of service with a full crew 24/7, employing logistics, shuttlecraft, fighters, marines, and naval gunners and bridge crew to accomplish any mission we set out to do, and win every PVP engagement we came across (until the last one that saw its death when all its guns bugged out). A taste of the future of SC: ua-cam.com/video/AudEjHYeg3M/v-deo.html
Damn that's an awesome video. The part I liked to most was the short clip of you or somebody repairing it from the outside with the hand tool. It's the small things that make me happy. :)
That was awesome. I mean it.
@@BuzzCutPsycho Glad you liked it. It was a LOT of fun. We had to employ damage control teams on a number of occasions due to the occasional flight deck accident... heh. The repair tool came in very handy to keep fighters operational as well as repair the ship inside and out. There are longer Live videos on Rez's channel showing some of our operations from his perspective. Some of it is just fascinating to watch and observe the teamwork that kept the ship running. Also I put together a rather boring training vid for our crews: ua-cam.com/video/4j2pXlGc9Ew/v-deo.html shows the inside and out of our basic Idris ops and what to do when aboard.
I think you're on to something having another player that isn't in the pilot be able to temporarily buff the shields, weapons or speed of a multi crew ship. Perhaps this would great for the co pilot seat since a lot of ships already have them and it would let the player sitting in them still be able to see what's going on from a pilot point of view.
Sure. Something other than being worthless.
25:29 The problem is we have flak boats without flak. CIG haven’t added the weapon these ships are designed to use! The hammerhead and the redeemer are the most obvious examples of this, but the retaliator as well (since it’s meant to be a midline brawler with torpedo ambush flavor, not a stealth boat like the eclipse).
The balance issue you mention for how to avoid endless spam of some single optimal ship with one person in each is pretty straightforward: the bigger the ship, there should be less pilot controlled dps, but new gunners should add more dps than they would soloing a smaller ship (ex: redeemer should have +1 size on its turrets, and the manned turrets should slave to one gunner, so they add 4 S6 instead of being in a Corsair). Bigger ships do need to be more durable, but not to the huge scale you seem to suggest here.
I don’t think turrets are a balance issue-it’s a systems issue. Specifically, they haven’t added the last basic weapon type absolutely necessary for the “WW2 in Space” sandbox they are trying to build: flak. Adding flak, and converting multiple turrets into a single gunner station via remote turrets would go a long way to redressing the systemic inadequacy of multicrew.
I’d really, really like them to take a breath and imagine the human being who will play as crew. We need things like dampers, emps, scanning, set waypoints, etc to be doable by a copilot/turret officer, and turrets in general need to be more powerful.
A pilot gets to fly, control all ship systems, and has an ever increasing arsenal on top of that (ex: Corsair, F8C, F7 Mk II…). We will never see multicrew ships be genuinely viable or even worthwhile unless the prospect of being anyone other than the pilot is genuinely appealing. It needs to be close to 1:1, as in, 2 hornets vs 1 crewed Scorp should be a viable engagement that’s not predefined.
In particular, I think expanding systems accessible only to the crew (such as the Scorp changes: either you get 4x S4, or 4x S3 + Damp / Ewar, both genuinely appealing gameplay) and finally introducing flak (proximity fuse, aoe damage. Lowest dps of all weapons, but obviously the best at hitting light fighters) as a weapon option *exclusive* to manned turrets would be an over-night massive improvement to the game.
Every single size of ship would now be pvp viable, and have genuine roles. It would mean two light fighters can’t kill anything else with total immunity to return fire. So tackle becomes improtant, things like the redeemer become important to provide escort-either as flak boats, or as gun bots-a pair of redeemers (one flak, one anti-ship) with a mantis could confidently tackle just about anyone and have a fight. Even bombers and heavy fighters are now more viable, as they will be the best at knocking out flak boats to clear the screen.
But, fighters would still be viable, they just have to be careful of flak boats.
It’s a planned weapon type. They say they want WW2 in space, but haven’t given us the single most common WW2 anti-fighter weapon. It’s absence from the game has given us 12 years of fighter meta, and 12 years of half baked solutions to that meta.
Instead, we seem to be getting just endless pilot power creep, and it’s still the case that most ships aren’t viable, and it’s continuing to push these half baked solutions.
I really think almost every manned turret in the game needs to go up at least 1 size, gain a significant function in addition to its current weapons (emp, interdiction, etc), or in some cases simply be swapped with the pilot’s current guns (The Corsair and probs the Constellations are the most obvious examples of this).
I’d say the Warden is a clear example of needing to go up 2 sizes (the Harb is already +1 relative to the Warden, and it has torps), to have a manned 2x S4. The Sentinel’s turret can stay S2, but should gain a QED and the emp should be moved to the turret / removed from the pilot.
Similarly, the Scorp’s turret should go up 1 size to 4x S4, and the Scorp A gain the current 4x S3 in addition to its current tools. I love the Super Hornet concept, and in addition to a Mk II, I’d love to see an entire series of Super Fighters (Super Glad, Super Arrow, Super Razor, etc) that get either a one size upgraded co-pilot hard point, or get an existing hard point converted to a ball turret of the same size and some ship system added.
A pilot gets to fly, control all ship systems, and has an ever increasing arsenal on top of that. We will never see multicrew ships be genuinely viable or even worthwhile unless the prospect of being anyone other than the pilot is genuinely appealing.
In particular, I think expanding systems accessible only to the crew (such as the Scorp changes: either you get 4x S4, or 4x S3 + Damp / Ewar, both genuinely appealing gameplay) and finally introducing flak as a weapon option *exclusive* to manned turrets would be an over-night massive improvement to the game.
People who pay the most get multi crew ships, but those ships are almost always empty. It just isn’t appealing to crew them, and while Engineering and cargo will help a bit, the combat experience is always going to loom large, and atm it’s awful for crew. You’re literally always more efficient coming in a Gladius than being crew-which sucks for people who don’t want to be fighter jocks.
And the wildest part is that SC’s truly big hook is multicrew! There just isn’t another game where multicrew is half as viable as it already is in SC, except maybe some really niche stuff that isn’t anywhere close on immersion or sandbox. The entire SC pitch was explore the verse with multicrew, so from the start they wanted humans playing to crew, and… it’s just not even remotely close. Multi crew ships aren’t viable because flak doesn’t exist, and even if it did, most ships would still be a bummer to crew.
As to engineering/all that micro:
That needs to be after combat imo, or after a major component loss has soft killed the ship. You shouldn’t be leaving turrets to do engineering seconds into an engagement.
As for the “cooldowns,” that can be done by consumable heatsinks. If the ship is stocked with them, the engineer could insert them and dump the extra power heat waste, etc.
41:00
I think a fire control seat solves this actually. External primary targeting cameras project an external / semi third person view of the ship to the Gunner station’s helmet (they could even put one on) like the interior of that one alien fighter’s cockpit.
This lets multiple turrets slave to the gunner, with a powerful and playable viewpoint, without unrealistic firing arcs. Any turret with or without a view of the aim point automatically fires or not.
Hammerhead should have two gunner seats, Redeemer only 1, etc.
Pilot power creep is the absolute worst and to blame for most of this. Your comment is actually 100% spot on but this last part here really nails it. A 2024 ship is very different from a 2019 ship in terms of design and firepower and it truly shows. I see no end in sight.
That would be great. Some ships even have what looks like a camera on the outside. I know the Idris does. Your suggestion is a great way to implement that into the universe in a believe way that isn't magic
Big issue I have with turrets is that Chris Roberts seems to insist on having blind spots for turret coverage, leading to some absolutely idiotic turret angles which never will have a firing solution. They have started to not be so afraid of forward facing turrets anymore though.
However, the turrets really don't offer enough deterrence to actually make anyone go for blind spots. Seriously, pretty much every turret should have quad guns or some other form of buffs to make it be dangerous to disregard them. If you face a multi crew ship, you should plan your approach, just like facing multiple fighters solo.
Yes, I hate this. Super illogical
You bring up a great point about turret blind spots and their effectiveness. The insistence on having blind so many blind spots is very annoying. No military ship would EVER have turrets this bad LOL.
Turrets should be more deadly. Multi-crew ships should feel like a force to be reckoned with, much like facing multiple fighters. That just isn't the case now and it is depressing to try and fly these things with a crew. Especially when you get owned easily by solo ships.
Your suggestions would definitely enhance the game, making turret gunners more useful and multi-crew ships more rewarding to operate would be great.
Even if turrets had enough deterrence, don't forget you can snipe them or their weapons with ballistics and missiles through shields and i'm not sure this feature ever is going to go.
The precision targeting mode in MM and predecessor games show you what is to be expected.
The engineering stuff is nice, but from the inside you can't attach a shot off weapon.
Went on a 16k mission to destroy some ships at a beacon. We took out the caterpillar. There were 7 ships total that came in waves. Unloaded on their asses, barely managed to kill 6. The 7th one killed us. It was a blast, but not worth for 16k auec. My friend kept getting launched outside the ship. It was hilarious mid combat. Even if we had a smaller ship, it would be more profitable to trade than kill 7ships per 16k reward.
The rewards are terrible and to make matters worse they're not even scaled or tailored towards groups of players. So the extra work and effort is extra pointless and stupid.
@@BuzzCutPsycho server meshing has to work and give them breathing room to work on it he quality of life stuff. I think the game will be grindy. Not sure what’s reasonable. Depends on their pay model post launch and how they keep our existing ships value.
There are a few things missing here
1) Larger ships currently only have a bigger HP pool but not armor, that's why a gladius can, given enough time, kill a Hammerhead. With Mealstrom and armor coming in the guns will not do any damage to the main ship anymore as they wont penetrate the armor.
2) The pilot of the Polaris will not be able to shoot the torps according to an official statement from CIG, I suspect you will also have a dedicated rearmer needed to launch more than two torps in addition to the torpedo guy on the bridge
Where you are correct though is that currently the turrets are underperforming, they need a larger range and more firepower in comparison to the same gun on a fighter or else a fighter will always have the advantage as size matters. If a glad can pepper you from 1500m away because youre gigantic and you can't hit it because its too small then its bad gameplay
You make some excellent points. Here’s my take on them:
1) **Armor for Larger Ships**: You're absolutely right that larger ships currently rely more on their HP pools rather than armor. The introduction of Maelstrom and armor mechanics will change this dynamic significantly. This will make smaller ships like the Gladius ineffective against heavily armored ships like the Hammerhead, as their weapons won't penetrate the armor. I wonder what the cutoff would be, though-4 and above? 5 and above? I would be interested to see that personally.
2) **Polaris Torpedo Launch Mechanic**: It's interesting to hear that the Polaris pilot won't be able to shoot torpedoes directly. I don't disagree with it. I just hope that it doesn't take away too much from the ship and that it comes with serious power to make up for it. I actually have no issue with pilots losing guns (controversial take) as long as the other roles more than make up for it. It's a fair trade.
You’re absolutely right about the underperformance of turrets. They need to have a larger range and more firepower compared to the same guns on fighters to balance the gameplay. Perhaps even higher weapon velocities for the weapons on the turrets? If a fighter like the Gladius can maintain a distance and continuously deal damage without being effectively countered, it undermines the advantage of larger ships.
Great comment. We all seem to be on the same page. I hope we actually get listened to.
@@BuzzCutPsycho Thank, I really like your take in general.
1) I guess the cutoff will be the balancing factor. S4 would be a good starting point for large ships, S5 for caps. That would mean most light fighters would not be able to damage a HH or the like but mediums would at least partially be able to. S5 would make sure that only a few heavy fighters would be a threat to captials but mostly only Connie and up would truly hurt them. For clarification, this is only for the mail hull armor, you would therefore not be able to get the ship to explode for example but you would/should still be able to hit some components of these larger ships and maybe in the end cripple it enough to board it. That would also mean it makes sense to bring a proper crew onto these large ships to fend of smaller fighters and boarding parties.
2) Originally I did not like the idea of a pilot not being able to use guns and now not even torps/missles, however I think it may be a good balancing solution for the larger ships. Yes as a pilot you will always have somehing to do (flying the ship) but your're not doing much more than that during a fight. Other positions on the ship may be a bit boring during travel but see more action during a fight.
I'm looking forward to the balancing they will do over the next year or so with MMs, I think it has a good future ahead.
You guys nailed it. For large crewed ships, the more systems like resource management, fire, life support, etc., come into the game, the 1+1=3 equation needs to be cranked up significantly to 1+1=50 or more. Because there is so much more than can go wrong and result in the ship not being able to operate at 100%. The reward for keeping the ship together, not on fire, and the crew alive needs to be much higher than just baseline "normal".
But how to make this fun? Replacing fuses with the terrible inventory system is not fun. Whack-a-mole with fires is going to get old real quick.
The Resource Network is going to be a big failure. If it is too heavily required, it will be too annoying to deal with and so people won't bother with large ships. If it is insignificant, then everyone will ignore it and we're back where we are now. No way CIG has the interest or ability to balance it on the knife's edge that would be needed to pull off successfully.
Multicrew games like Guns of Icarus (RIP) were fantastic. Every crew member had a role and a good one made a HUGE difference. Not sure how SC can do this at this point, but cooldowns/abilities, something super significant needs to happen. This, like most problems in Star Citizen, stem from them making and selling art and concepts first, then designing a game later.
You nailed it yourself. Every single issue we have in this game comes from it seeming like design is only just now beginning to happen versus something that has been happening for over a decade. These are concepts and systems which should have been designed, tested, and refined long ago. Yet, here we are, in 2024, still not fully testing multi-crew or even fully understanding the concept CIG has for it.
It is worrisome to say the least.
I'm about half way through the podcast but paused to talk about how impactful an Engineer would be with that power triangle and overall systems management. That's what I pictured Engineering would be like in terms of a combat situation. If shit hits the fan, and only if things are dire, than that engineer shouldn't need to leave their station. I can see a quick and desperate spot repair in combat, but any sort of major engineering work should happen outside of combat when the engagement is over. Even controlling fires could be done from that console - the engineer would have a lot of engaging stuff to do that could matter.
The A2 was a great example of how complex systems of repair just aren't feasible when the ship's crew (beyond the pilot) basically only accounts for a single engineer and a bunch of gunners. It frustrates me that they can't decide if they want this game to be more like WWII air-to-air combat, or WWII naval combat. It feels like they want the combat feel of the former (CR has said as much), but the complexity of the latter, and I don't think this can co-exist when engagements can be measured in minutes (or less). You and Malorn get it, and it's so refreshing to hear realistic take on this for once.
I am glad you made it through most of the video. What really resonates with me about this particular comment is the comparison between WWII air and WWII naval engagements. Star Citizen tends to walk the line between both (sort of?) and aligns more with naval combat than with aerial combat. Which is fine by me; I do not care either way.
I envision damage control parties in this game being very similar to those in Sea of Thieves, but as you mentioned, an engineer should NEVER leave their station unless absolutely necessary. If I were an engineer, I would want to spend most of my time at my station; that is what I signed up for. The same goes for turret operators. This also raises the interesting question of "who handles damage control parties?" If the answer is that everyone does, then the payoff for leaving those stations to do damage control work better be significant.
You’re comparing firepower but you’ve forgotten an important detail. Turrets have far larger capacitors then normal ships.
You compare the redeemer and the andromeda, but while the guns may be similar the size 5s of the redeemer will be able to fire 3 or 4 times longer then the andromeda. This is significant.
Yes, but those capacitors while larger do not make up for just bringing another ship. A Connie for example has the same amount of guns for the pilot as a Deemer has between two gunners. You can bring 3 connies for 1 gunned deemer.
I think a big part of this conundrum is that the role and purpose of a lot of ships is missing.
A2s aren't meant to be in dog fights. They bomb ground targets and deliver troops and ground vehicles. All of this would be done under an escort of fighters. The problem is, there are no ground targets or purpose outside of org vs org events. So we bring A2s into dog fights.
Also with armor missing, yes i know I groaned too, small ships are damaging bigger ships than intended. The problem now becomes, does CIG spend time to balance the the game we have now and change it later, or do they focus on building the missing systems and balance after its implemented?
I do agree with your points that multicrew needs more incentives. I really like the idea of engineers boosting ship capabilities. It adds value to those players and ensures they are an asset vs an opportunity cost liability.
Yes the A2 was prob not the best choice and I wonder if they picked it since it was something easier to throw parts in for the test.
Players are wired to look at things economically. Not necessarily strictly in terms of aUEC, but more broadly weighing the potential rewards (including fun, mission success, and camaraderie) vs the time and effort involved.
Right now CIG has left multiplayer in a bad place through many development choices and their reasoning escapes me but is also entirely consistent with the obvious lack of a unified vision for ACTUAL game play.
You mention the Conny and Corsair. Want to make those true multi player ships? Put the main guns on a single chin turret. Make those ships dangerous from (almost) any angle IF there is a second person aboard.
Sadly everything you said is correct. The game is in probably the worst state i has ever been and there is no unified vision. And it hurts. And it shows.
I feel the ship components and ship guns should be tweaked with basic ratios and a few adjustments. Example: size 3 guns, it should take 9 size 3 guns to dent a size 2 shield; when talking about single seat fighters. Reducing the range of all size 3 energy guns on single fighter ships; increase the range and DPS of size 3 and four laser/energy weapons for multicrew ships; reduce all single seat fighters to size one components (even if they run multiples); and baseline all multicrew ships with a minimum of size two system components. As you go up in ship/component size, the range/power of turret laser guns should increase. The components should boost the energy weapons DPS and range on multicrew ships. It’s cool for people to show off their agility in a small fighter; such folks can duke it out for fun in AC or in swarm fights. But balance means agility should be countered by increasing fragility and reducing firepower capabilities for single seat fighters
That isn't bad at all. And I'm not gonna discredit but how do you feel about shields passively regenerating at all times? It sort of does what you suggest naturally since lower weapons don't have the dps to brute down bigger ships. Just a random thought I've been kicking around since MM was announced.
I am 100% with you just wondering if regeneration can do the same
@@BuzzCutPsycho Hmm. I wish smaller shields were more prone to damage that effect their max capacity…. Something like when our player characters receive damage levels 1,2, and 3 we can only heal to a lesser capacity. Small shields on an arrow should have their max capacity reduced after continuous depletions; when a player zooms away 3 times after losing shields there should be an endurance penalty that requires a repair action. That would be my take
I think you sold the redeemer a little short, the pilot has more firepower than you remember and the redeemer is probably the most “durable” ship in game because of its effective hp and its relatively small size.
The redeemer is already worth it in pve missions because you have the survivability and firepower to win any pve task (including fighting an idris but its a hard fight and you will win by the skin of your teeth.)
I like your idea of making remote turrets able to be switched between from a single seat, it would help a lot of ships.
I feel like the Redeemer and hammerhead are better designed multicrew ships because the pilot doesn’t “out value” the gunners, the connie and corsair are terrible designs for multicrew because the turrets have such tiny guns, they could fix them by swapping the turrets to remote turrets that could be switched between.
I could see a connie or corsair with 2 people onboard with their current durability, but not the crew sizes CiG does.
I would say the Redeemer, Scorpius, and Hurricane are the closest to viable multicrew and the Redeemer feels the most viable of the 3.
I noticed you mentioned PvE, and sadly, I only ever really talk about things in regards to PvP. So I could very well be wrong about it in PvE.
The issue with the Redeemer is that its S3 shields are not enough to hold out against a Corsair or even a Connie using cannons. And the moment anyone pulls a Hammerhead or something similar in size, the ships that come out to blow them up are almost always Corsairs. They will chew right through it. Also, despite the Redeemer's size, it has the handling profile of an 890J for some reason right now. Ironically, you would be better off in a 600i, which has 3 S5 guns the pilot can control and 2 S3 shields. I wish the thing did not suck, but it sadly does.
Now, here is the thing. The Redeemer, to me, is how a ship SHOULD be in terms of multi-crew because the pilot has next to no guns and trades it all for his gunners to make the most of. Sadly, the game does not respect that.
So no you are not wrong. And the ship may be better in some ways than I remember. But as somebody who does a lot of PvP (AC I admit) I just never see the Redeemer used for anything. Hell, even the HH get's more use in AC because you can ram with it! And, CORRECT ME IF I AM WRONG BECAUSE I MAY BE. But I think it has superior handling to the Redeemer. But I could be wrong.
Turrets should be dangerous. Period. Size 2 guns on a turret is not even enough to fend off civilian class ships and "fighters" 300 rounds in a size 2 chaingun is also ridiculous. Smaller ammo means you can carry MORE of it, not less. That logic still escapes me.
We could be missing the point though in the sense that - a new player who doesnt want to spend 100+ dollars on a ship might be enticed to roll in the turret.
You're correct and a new player may be enticed for that. And if he is, I want him to have a powerful and rewarding experience.
@@BuzzCutPsycho Hey man, sorry for the drive by post. I generally like to leave well thought out comments when I post on your content.
So there are a few things in this conversation that I want to address - in hopes maybe a dev or two sees it rather than me trying to solve the worlds problems in DM's over discord.
Turrets - If I am giving up a man and a fighter to man a turret, that turret is always overclocked, or it behaves as if it has full power. In addition, because of the bespoke nature of manned turrets an added bonus is an EM attribute gets added to the projectiles - thus bringing shields down on targets faster. These benefits come at no cost to the ships power economy these are just perks for dedicating crew to those guns. They also hold more ammo than the gun normally would - its a hard point and the ships space allows for that. None of these attributes messes with the games physics of fitting stuff into a turret like trying to fit a size 5 gun in a size 2 hole.
Engineers - we use that term as kind of an all - encompassing position on a ship. If the engineer is repairing stuff he's not an engineer - he is a damage controllman. That position on the ship is solely for emergency repairs. Overclocking stuff like you guys talked about needs to be done from an engineering kiosk that - when it is not being managed for ship attributes like more power to shields - the engineer gets control of the ships secondary armaments - in most cases this is missiles - I think most people can agree the rate of fire for bombs and missiles is underwhelming in SC. If an engineer is dedicating his time to operate that weapons system the fire rate is increased by 300% and the accuracy of the payload is increased by 200% with the added option of the engineer detonating the charge at-will. THis gives the poor sucker more to do than manage bar graphs the whole fight. And it can be explained because the safety checks to launch a missile from the cockpit can then be bypassed.
Capitol ship combat. Here is where we have a fundamental issue with the game. Currently winning the fight "when it matters" doesn't really exist. We have the planets, we have the space, we have the ships. We do not have the gameplay.
Why anyone would ever fight over random points in space without a grand campaign is beyond me, there just needs to be more points of interest. and most of them need to be on planets if not something akin to SPK.
The credits system in this game is intentionally broken for testing as it sits, but resources like better guns that cant be purchased and other things (think a new armament factory magically appears on *picks any moon that no one ever goes to*) Well, the faction or team that controls that weapon manufacturer can scoop the size 5 ultra-rare uber guns and distribute him to his fleet ala Jumptown style (hopefully less claustrophobic than jumptown).
But Ryan... what is the point of that if people can just spawn in their gladius and be back 5 minutes after death.
Here is where the capitol ships come in. Economy of force is NOT addressed in this game at all. I should not be able to fly across an entire solar system in my ford fiesta. The fuel economy of these ships when we finally get other systems in the game needs to be drastically nerfed. So that when I park my sweet ass Idris overtop of the planet I'm getting ready to assault, and I do the bug swatting required to secure the area - the only other way I should be getting any kind of a credible threat is if another capitol ship is present and those tiny fighters are spawning from it.
People want to camp a nursa rover on the X - cool, you get three revives out of it unless it's within 2,000km of an allied capitol ship that's supplying it. ( I mean that literally - I think the game has enough nuance without some poor schmuck flying medical supplies to a field hospital)
If you dont have a cap ship, or something large enough to house a couple of light fighters then you are effectively out of supply when this attack goes down.
How do we fix that Ryan? - you move the fucking moons with these events on them out of flight range of the tiny spacecraft. Then the fight matters. The fleet has its job of maintaining air superiority - it actually has an impact for the ground guys, and it rewards teamwork.
Respectfully, Taz
Hell, you could even go so far as to give ships such as the Andromeda a supply value based off of SCU capacity. Limited range for someone to be considered in-supply for the medical stuff. So it even makes it worthwhile to bring an Idris + a couple of ships playing the role of a frigate.
X4 is about as perfect a space game can be. SC needs to mimic this as much as possible, but obviously allowing for the heavier fps and multiplayer focus.
You know what? I am goonna check X4 out.
They may need to remove even forward guns from the pilot in ships larger than large fighters, then balance it around that. I have a connie, but if you want to make it really multi-crew, the pilot should be just the pilot. There are two other seats right there next to the pilot chair. That's the common sci-fi movie trope anyway. If I don't have even a forward gunner available, I pick a different ship.
No I agree but I know this would he w hard sell. The Connie and the corsair are just super heavy fighters as far as I am concerned in their current state.
@@BuzzCutPsycho Yeah current state, for sure. Fair enough. Hard sell, even more for sure lol. People are used to it now.
As of now, its better to bring another ship, instead of having someone in a turret. Maybe if turrets had a much larger capacitor, magazine and/or giving turrets longer ranges, more damage, something.
You're correct. One turret is now worth the power and utility of another ship. Especially now since turrets no longer have their own capacitors that are separate from the ship.
@BuzzCutPsycho Maybe with armor, a turret on a ship with much higher survivability...but the "when armor comes out" has been going on forever now. The Valkyrie has been waiting to be viable because of "armor" since it came out.
Le sigh.
Buzz always with the based takes, especially in regards to multi-crew issues. (which btw is one of the most important aspects of this MMO to actually be an MMO). It seems that ships with any turrets that have far less firepower than a player in their own ship, really don't make any sense. There is no benefit to put a person in there right now. So what do we do? Make all size 3 or lower turrets just AI run / automatic fire on pilots target? while size 4 and higher turrets need to be manned? There is no easy answer here.. If this were the case then people would just solo ships with size 3 turrets or less and get even more firepower behind a single player....
I like to think I am based. ;)
AI are options and just balance the ships through other methods. Or, just change the weapon weapons perform when mounted on turrets. Higher velocity, bigger cap, something, anything, something that justifies the existence and sacrifice of one's own ship and all the power that comes with it.
I want a robot crew. Not AI NPCs....programmable robots that responds to commands. I like the concept artist Aaron Beck's robot designs. Maybe something like his concepts I would want. And then I would have them crew a ship. That way a solo player can enjoy a large ship without having multiple players. And if I do have friends or people that I hire for the day to crew the ship, I can mix and match a crew with people and robots.
There is a very legit concern for solo players being unable to crew the ships they paid for. Especially when they were sold with the idea of NPC crews. At this point unless CIG can figure out how to justify the crew requirements on bigger ships justifying the effort they may as well throw all that NPC stuff in asap. I cannot see an Idris being manned by players in any regularity.
@@BuzzCutPsycho Yes that is a great concern. I would like to see a system where we can either hire people to crew the ship (or fire them and kick them off the ship if they're being a pain) and/or crew them with robots. NPCs....sure I guess. But I would rather robots if they are not real people. Right about the Idris and ships similarly large. You're going to have such a large crew spawn in and out when something comes up and they can't play anymore. You can't have that happening in the middle of a firefight.
Upgun all the turrets.
And / or improve performance of weapons on a turret
Hi i'm only 37 min in the talk so i don't know if this gets adressed later. IMO the bigger talking point is down time.
Last week i managed to get 4 other players than me to play SC. but the week leading to it i was talking to 1 guy. original plan was fully crew a relacimer and play together on one ship. but i had so concerns so i talkd and said what would you prefer? reclaimer or multiple vultures? he said on a reclaimer even with swapping seats you have down time. Then i was thinking about it and finally decided (i was the organizer) we use 1 caterpiller and multiple vultures and 1 guy had not a lot time so he was cargo chief.
Advantage was noone had just waiting, everyone was able to play and not just wait. then offload the cargo to the cat, the cargo chief was also always busy because 1 vulture came and left then the next. no one had a major downtime to just wait. Was fun. after more than 2 months not having players i have this friday again a crew to play (don't know the size yet) but all enjoyed it. :D
That is what makes the game and people just do not get how important experiences like yours are. That is what will get players to stick with the game, even if the game isn't doing too well at the moment. Crew play makes everything better.
I agree with this collaborative dissertation. I've been saying this for awhile now, and it feels like being trapped in an echo chamber.
CIG has a problem when it comes to foresight planning during design and project management.
Lastly, I don't disagree that CIG will get there and getting multiplayer / multi crew gameplay correct. That said like anything. There's zero incentive if they're bringing in the cash. You have to hit them in the pocketbook.
I don't think the pocket book will ever get hit sadly. Those chairs also sold pretty well I heard. At least according to the Financials for the month.
@@BuzzCutPsycho all good things must come to an end. What comes up, must come down.
Let's hope they get a bad next year.. (just bad enough to clean clown dev up house and get shit done)
Good podcast, lots of interesting points raised, but as we all know, no real workable solutions, at least for the near or medium future away. Unless, strong farts are imported off EVE Online to take care of them pesky single seat fighters ;)
It is no where near coming out sadly. You're right. SC makes me feel old and forces me to realize my own mortality.
hey what i am hoping for and i know will be possble with in a short period
NPCs that copy how you play the game though input and eye tracking in order to best function like a quanta.
including also giving them personality schema types and default skills for minigame function like cooking crafting etc but allow them to also copy the way you produce things (i want food prep to be vr style cooking wiht slicing and soaking and boiling and BBQing etc but having each meal a PLAYER created coctail which can be sold on your ships and at homesteads and other retail places for food and other players can give it up to 5 stars for what it looks like BUT plot twist we make a MOBILE GAME that is called 5 Star resturant and use the ASSET from the PU and allow the mobile game players to rate the designs :) so you won't get trolls doing it BUT we won't tell them we let soccer moms rate their meals.
ANYWAY to Crew multipling YEh i really do think we need to make maybe ship co-pilots actually have a bonus or bennfit like maybe shield gens could have FUSES which if one blows it reduces the recharge speed 25% and the shield requires 2 fuses to function top spec. SO knowing you have an engineer who can swap out fuses which should blow after a shield has been poped once and any distrotion damage sets in both may need to be swapped out so you can lose 50% on each shield pklant
then you have the same for power plants and coolers that effect other systems thats engineering
but for smaller ships like the hurrcane which was the best fighter when Xeno first hit servers,.it's a small hit box high DPS ship 2 size 4 and 4xs3 man just OP guns but What about scanning and radar and having a way for a group of players in seperate ships to hive mind and use PIP sharing system that allows color coded pins and splines to be played in the map area in real time via a scout ship or any ship wiht scanning like the ship functison need to really start making a valid reason to buy each ship even moles gonna be obsoleet with the arastra
This was a pretty deep comment, unlike most I see around UA-cam. You thought a lot about it.
For me, the best part of your comment was getting me imagining a world where CIG can design an AI that learns based on human player behavior when they have proven to be unable to get basic AI in bunkers working. Of course, I am being harsh, but I am certainly jaded after so many years of promises.
Hurricane, though, man, I miss it. It sucks so much now. It was my favorite heavy fighter before 3.23, and now it's a flying turd. Oh well, maybe it'll change someday.
The cool down suggestion is good. But the fact is the engineer must provide a tangible benefit to firepower or defence or repair, or there will be no reason to have an engineer or no reason to use a ship that requires and engineer.
It's crazy to me that with every new development of ship systems it seems cig is making multi crew ships less and less combat viable for the crew requirements. It's gone from 1+1=1, to 1+1=-2. At this point with the engineering test you need 6 people to equal the performance of 1 person in a single seater.... Does anyone at cig even remotely think about this? Its totally ridiculous and yet they seem to continue to have no problems introducing ideas that make this problem even worse. They must really not want people to fly Capital ships.
I will not lie I have found 3.23+ to be very worrisome. Same with 2024 in general. The complete lack of progress and positive movement for a better multi-crew experience baffles and concerns me. Even beyond them understanding 1+1=3.
@@BuzzCutPsycho maybe it's just going to be super slow progress. We got some distance with med bed respawns. Most positive change in years. But obviously now we need proper facilities and defender spawns to support, not to mention the incomplete flight model and totally neglected multi crew design concepts. these are much more complex, and I fear cig doesn't have the desire to do anything other than add pointless realism and screenshot simulator 'mechanics' that serve zero function to gameplay. Cig needs to shift into a gameplay first company instead of a asset development company, or things aren't going to change.
On top of that many of the features on ships are unusable.
The attention to detail in applaudable.
The playability not so much.
I often thought Theaters of War would give a venue for ground based fights with fighters, bombers and dropships, while the medium or bigger ships would be dedicated to space fights, but it never happened.
Nope. TOW was the great let down, one of many. I would have loved to use it as a test for future systems we may never get.
Right now multicrew really only makes sense for mining and salvage (in certain circumstances). It doesn't have a place in ship combat right now which is a shame. It sounds like CIG plan to use Engineering/Armor to change this but no one will care if it isn't fun......and personally I've not particularly enjoyed the Engineering gameplay. And in most circumstances I would much rather fly my own ship vs. sitting in someone else's underpowered turret.
You are correct. And people DO NOT realize that to sit in a turret of somebody else's ship is to trade YOUR OWN to do that. That is not a fair trade. Not yet anyway. It is going to need a lot imo for it to be that way.
I disagree about captains. You have to think larger with them. They need to be macro. While the pilot is concentrating the captain can be almost all logistics. There are some serious applications they could have. Say all the players contribute skills the captain can apply those skills as needed or even capitalize or enhance those skills. No reason not to utilize larger scope gameplay.
I can totally agree with that. I still fear that cig will not deliver at all on captains or macro game play. At least not in our life time. They're struggling with turrets now :(
What if a solution to players gang up on big ships could be making servers capacity up to 1000 of what ever so it would be to hard co co operate attack or even find other players in the verse. I think npc crew will sort out all boring roles in big ships and fill those guner spots too even enterprise from star trek needed cleaners I quess. Having big ships with crew means obligations, being able to earn enough to even fly pay for fuel missiles etc. This gameplay is more fun than managing 7 humans and that's what I expect from multi crew ship. Perhaps one day will get big fleet battels org vs org but its hard to believe it that it will ever happen just from the arguments you made about balancing nightmare. It would make whales cry.
I sadly cannot ever see it happening and the more I read comments like this, and also think about the situation the more I think that NPC crew or whatever to take away the "boring" jobs is the only real solution. I just DO NOT see a world, especially as time goes on, where players want to play space janny on somebody else's ship. I know I do not.
It's going to take a fundamental concept redesign and understanding of the current market. Doesn't mean it cannot happen, doesn't mean what you want cannot happen either, but holy cow, I am VERY skeptical of their ability to make multicrew anything other than a meme.
We don't have the biggest ships yet like javelin hull e bengal and whatever else they bring. Players definitely wouldn't want to crew on big ships for lite reward but for equal share of the profits there will be plenty willing. For example the ship like polaris I think will need about 4-5 humans yo manage captain to pilot, co pilot to manege shield and ai blades, engineer, missiles guy for torpedoes and one more plot to fly a fighter. Other roles like gunners cooks medical crew even putting out fire npc crew will do easily.
Cig are working on npc crew for years I think its 3 most important thig to make this game work. I think they have 10 times more content ready or in development they just don't show it yet I
hope this year we might see some at citizen con
who the hell disliked ?
some JERK
And then lets fuck the good ace pilots and solo players personal security and individual skill because we are pass the 30s and we dont have reflex mind or time to learn anymore and let make star citizen a pve co op mmo and make the game only worth for groups of players because we dont want be skilled for our self or even try to learn something new anymore XDDD . then if we have a new friend that enter in the game we gonna give him some money so he can buy a multi crew and now we have 10 multicrew and no single seat and a org with 30 players and not individual skill just credit card war in and out of game for buy big ships and play with multiple people and lets throw to the trash all snoob fighters and skilled types of play because we are old XD
I don't think age matters as much as people think it does. I am pretty up there and do well especially in shooter games. I think SC is just very difficult to understand at times in terms of mechanics and esoteric skills not easily known or understood. Just my 2 cents anyway.
If SQ42 flops this game will be abandoned.
Hope it doesn't flop than!
CiG has some great talent, but alot of poor talent too. CiG cannot even make working scoreboards in AC. Have the poorest of data entry developers. (3000ms vannys, to mk2 wiggles, to all kinds of oversights). Point is: i dont think they are capable of finding force multiplier parity until they clean up their clowns devs.
I have very little faith in CIG's ability to deliver on a system which some how makes multi-crew ships, even something like a Hurricane very good in PvP.
@BuzzCutPsycho i agree 100%. fun fact. Yogi was a sound composer. No data entry, no gameplay balance experience. Likewise the balance team. They use tools to enter data. A farcry from being developers. Going to be a wait for a balanced game if that even includes good multicrew....
I just don't think they have the right kind of staff creating this game
Sadly not.
engineering is doomed , they need to introduce nanobots that repair the ships via some repair tool from inside, ofc with cooldown etc.
I disagree. I would like to see accessable engineering gameplay - and the need to multicrew larger ships with support/maintanance in mind.
I wouldn't mind some repairs. Something to extend the life of the ship.
@@porecemusnox8805 ye but even from a psychological standpoint this gameplay is doomed if you can't give the player that is litteraly doing nothing combat oriented a dopamin kick or anything else rewarding while doing so ..
@@0BLACKESTFUN0 I don't know how the "final" iterstion of engineering will look like - neither do you.