Difference between revisions of "Ship Crews (CSM)"
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Latest revision as of 07:50, 17 July 2011
Contents
Stats
- Raised by: Erik Finnegan
- Submission Date: 02 August 2009
- Issue ID: tbd
NOTE
Concept accepted but specific implementation rejected.
Summary
In a nutshell, ships will be able to equip a new kind of boost. Ship crewmen can specialize in certain areas of ship operation, giving you bonus to these areas. In NPC academies you can have your crew trained to higher grades, which improves the bonus, but it requires you to provide the required curriculums to the academy for training you crew, and for commanding them, later, the necessary leadership skill. To take crew on board, you need to invest into a special rig. Care for your crew means you might want to eject early from your ship prior to destruction, thus ejecting your crew with you, or you will lose the training invested into them.
EVE-Online is a space simulation. Simulations always try to build a bridge between gamplay and reality.
- It has been established through the backstory that space ships in New Eden are not actually driven by the Capsuleer only. While they are in an extraordinarily supreme position being neurally connected to the ship's systems, the ships do have personnel operating its subsystems.
- The EVE community has demanded more ship customization ever since the start. Do not only think in terms of color, you paint your ship with. From a game marketing position, ship customization can be seen as game mechanics, which attaches the player to its asset. Ship crews will carry some notion of having to care for your "equipment", since they can be invested in and improved - and lost, when a ship is destroyed. That is something different than modules, which get their bonus solely through the pilot's skill tree.
- While giving bonus, the backdraw is they require to sacrifice one rig slot. The bonus needs further investment in time and money to attain. And you can save the bonus from destruction by early ejecting from your vessel. Much like T3 requires you to eject in order not to lose random skill points.
- Having crew is not mandatory.
Solution
Introduction Into The Game (Backstory)
During the last months, Gallentean Navy found out that the efficiency of keeping ships running by using bots and robots, decreases with the complexity of ship functionality and the speciality of the missions the ships are used for. So Admiral Geronimo Vaganza ordered engineers and technicians to equip some ships with crew quarters, operating centers, and gangways throughout the whole ship to reach every important position.
After few tests only, it became clear that standard ships for standard jobs, for example the usual amunition transports, would not benefit of that kind of specialization. Yet most of the specialized combat ships, like battleships and cloaked operations, showed a significant increase in effectivity - up to 15% - despite the increase mass and inertia.
These results and tests could not be made without the support of the big ship and component industry, which followed the activities closely. When the results are published now, the ship factories now already offer crew rigging; modules built into your ship to allow certain key functions to be manned with intelligent humans instead of machines. Costs vary depending on how many teams you want to employ. Because every crew needs space, the ship gets heavier and has the weight increased by 2%, deteriorating alignment speed by 5%.
Three kinds of crew-package are offered: the small solution for one team plus leader, the mid-size, and the large, which increase the possibility to accomodate more teams respectively.
Abilities, dependencies and requirements
Intro
You acquire freshmen from the academy, a new station service. Equip your ship with the rig for one or more human teams (the crew rigs come in different sizes, as rigs will do in future), and off you go. Through their crew, the crew rigs have similar benefits (and backdraws) like regular rigs, with the added benefit that you may choose which specialized team to put into them. While you cannot exchange rigs, you can exchange the crew in a crew rig to modify your bonus.
Crew can be trained in a variety of specializations. Depending on the specialization and the grade of training, the crewmen will boost respective systems of your ship, giving you the extra power in a fight.
Improve your crew by sending them to the academy. The academy will ask for curriculums in order to teach your crewmen to the higher level. You also need the appropriate skill yourself in order to start a course. And in order to lead crewmen of a certain grade, you will need the sufficient leadership skill.
When taking damage into hull, your crew will suffer. Leading to random casualties until all die when your ship is completely destroyed and only you automatically eject as the hull begins to desintegrate completely. Save yourself and your crew by ejecting early enough.
This all comes as a whole new business area, too: personnel, the training of it, and the trade of experienced ship crew between pilots.
To Start With Crews
You need to acquire and rig your ship with a crew rig. The rigs come in different sizes and allow for one or more (up to three, maybe) teams of any specialization to be assigned to their slots.
Get crewmen from the academy (they will be untrained) or acquire experienced crew from the (contract) market or from corp mates, who are able to train them. Assign the crew to the slots and you are ready to go. When you want to put crew of a certain grade (see training below) onto your ship, you also need the required leadership skill.
Implementation in the ship's UI (2 Options)
Crewmen either come as individuals or in teams. The authors do not have a clear preference and would like CCP to decide according to implementation constraints, effort, marketability, and balancing aspects.
Similar to both options is the fact that crew takes damage upon the ship taking hull damage. Either they die one by one (option 1) leading to an irrevoquable loss of the crewman's ability who may be replaced by backup from cargo, or they are injured (opiton 2) allowing healing them with the proper equipment.
Overcharging might apply just like for other slots - with increased "casualties" due to human errors in operating dangerous equipment.
When you lose your ship, you will lose your crew, unless you eject early (before complete destruction), which will eject your crew with you. Their escape pods will be attached to your capsule, either visualized or not. The basic concept is that they flee with you, if you succeed, and you can save them from destruction and losing all the bonus you trained them for.
Crewmen as Charge
A rig provides one or more slots for crewmen. Any slot can take a limited (maybe 5) crewmen of any specialization, but it must be the same for any given slot. The total bonus is calculated from the average grade of the assigned crewmen, taking empty "positions" into account.
Comparable Existing Logic
Like the name suggests, the ammunition charge is similar to this. Crewmen appear as count in the slot. As crewmen die, the count decreases, and vacant posts can be remanned from cargo.
Crewmen as Team Module
A rig provides one or more slots for crew teams of any specialization. The bonus applied to the ship corresponds to the grade of the team. When you get into hull damage, your crew is injured, decreasing the bonus. You may improve the health using medical equipment like nanite for broken modules.
Comparable Existing Logic
Crew teams are like modules which you fit into the slots provided by the rig. They take damage like modules do, and can be repaired using the right equipment.
Training
In order to improve your crew, you need to send it back to the academy. Academies are a new station service, where you can also get untrained crew, if you do not want (or cannot afford) to buy them off the market. You need the according training skill to do so, appropriate to the specialization of the crew to be trained. Crews have a fixed specialization, which cannot be changed by training. In addition, some curriculum are requested by the academy to start the course.
When you want to put crew of a certain skill onto your ship, you also need the required leadership skill. Such skills can even be split up by specialization, so that for helmsmen of grade engineer, you need a helmsmen leadership skill on level 2.
Depending on whether ship crews are handled as teams or individual crewmen, can be applied to this aspect accordingly.
Comparable Existing Logic
Training works like the blueprints' ME and PE can be improved with research.
Summary of the Penalties
- Crewmen cost money - dayly, weekly or monthly salary. (to be decided by CCP)
- Crewmen can die during fights.
- Crew rigs have downsides like regular rigs.
Grades and Specializations
Teams can differ in their grade
- Level 1: technicians
- Level 2: engineers
- Level 3: specialists
- Level 5: elite
- Level 4: veteran
Wording can be changed, of course, but the basic idea is that you may invest into your crew for better bonus.
Specializations are thinkable in any number of facets :
- helmsmen (offensive weapons)
- shield technicians (shield)
- propulsion engineers (speed)
- scan analysts (exploration)
- drone operators
- mining laser calibrators
- and much much more.
One slot can only accomodate one specialization at any time, but the crew may be changed when docked.
Skills Involved
Leadership:
- Crew Team Management (Required: Leadership III)(Enabling: L1: 1xTeam, L3: 2xTeams, L5: 3xTeams)
- Crew Leadership (Required: Leadership II and Social III)(Enabling: L1: technicians, L3: engineers, L5: specialists)
- Advanced Crew Leadership (Required: Leadership IV and Negotiation IV) (Enabling: L2: elite, L5: veteran)
- For the different Specializations:
- propulsion engineers (Skill Required: Navigation IV) perhaps some more, depending on the level the crew wanted to use has(Technicians, engineers...)
- helmsmen (Required kills from gunnery skill tree)
- and so on..
To start training of the different levels and types you need a special skills from the science sector.
Pros and cons
Being a new feature suggestion, pros and cons are hard to nail down.
Pros
- Can be used by fighters and miners
Cons
- New features take time to be developed and balanced
Relevant Forum Threads
Votes
- Dierdra Vaal - yes
- Vuk Lau - yes
- Zastrow J - no
- Erik Finnegan - yes
- Avalloc - yes
- Omber Zombie - yes
- Larkonis Trassler - yes
- Meissa Anunthiel - yes
- Issler Dainze - yes