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Suggestion: Crew Revamp
tk79
Member Posts: 1,020 Arc User
TL;DR
LONG VERSION
A while ago, the devs have asked for feedback about how Crew could be reworked, and here are my suggestions. This is not a full revamp as I'm looking to keep certain things the way they are, so the change is less incisive and easier to implement.
Crew Damage Calculation Fix
Before anything else, crew damage calculation needs to be fixed.
Currently, powers that damage crew state that they do "-20 or -20% Crew (whichever is less)". However, that function is erroneously returning "whichever is more". As a result, skills like Theta Radiation wipe 100% of any large crew in 5 seconds (20% per second) as opposed to 20 absolute crew per second.
After this is fixed, we can move on.
Simplification of Crew Status
Currently we have three crew status and their colors in the crew bar: active (white), incapacitated (orange), and dead (black).
I think we should simplify that to "active" and "inactive", so it becomes a simple meter with "current" and "max" counters.
In regards of crew activity, incapacitated equals dead. An incapacitated crew member is unable to work on a ship system, just like a dead member. It doesn't (shouldn't) affect crew overall performance. The difference is that incapacitated crew can be brought back into action over time. However, when crew is "dead", they can't come back to life during battle. (Some gear allow this.)
I think all of this, considering the game dynamics, is a hassle. There's a premise broken right there with doffs that bring dead crew back to life. We could assume, for simplicity's sake and more dynamic, streamlined experience, that crew only dies when the ship blows up. Come to think about it, if your whole crew is dead, your ship is pretty much useless and incapacitated (in most cases), don't you think? I believe this could be a fair compromise.
Getting rid of "dead" status means that "inactive" crew can be bring back into action by the ship's skills or doffs, which we already have happening to an extent.
That done, crew recovery would work as normal, except that with "dead" crew being no longer in place, inactive crew would recover just like "incapacitated" crew recovers currently, and still enhanceable by consoles, gear, or doffs in active duty.
(Some gear would need to be changed with the removal of "dead" status. The Honor Guard 2-piece set bonus brings dead crew back to life. This could be changed to a crew recovery bonus instead.)
Crew Buffs
While thinking about which buffs crew should offer, I can think of the following:
Why not damage, or speed, or cooldown reduction?
In my perception, crew makes sure the ship systems are running smoothly. They stand by to address issues as they arise: they are mostly DEFENSIVE assets. Boosting damage, or speed, for example, are more like commands issued by bridge officers and the captain. Crew just needs to make sure the core systems are working correctly so the bridge commands can function as intended, and react to damage to those core systems.
This includes recovering faster from subsystem drains and disables; making sure power loss is timely addressed; watching shield facings so if they drop to dangerously levels, crew allow power among shields to be distributed faster; and finally, repair hull damage as it happens. Things that are better done when you have more crew, more people monitoring and watching over systems.
Maybe cooldown reduction could fit into this, but I wonder if having thousands of crew would really make the usage of skills faster? Sometimes, having too many people affects things negatively (Diminishing Returns). But we don't want to dwell into that, for simplicity and dynamics sake, so I'd rather keep this mechanic out of this.
Considering that the five attributes outlined above would benefit from having active crew, it's time to calculate how much bonuses they would provide.
As a best case scenario, I am using the JemHadar Dreadnought Carrier. It has 3500 crew.
How much buffing would be reasonable with such a large crew, when it's all active?
Throwing numbers without too much deliberation, maybe something along the lines of:
(Values in brackets represent percentage bonuses per active crew member)
All percentages should benefit the base values ("strength", not "bonus").
Of course the above numbers would need tweaking and deliberation.
Let's talk about shield distribution for a moment.
It has become a largely used defensive mechanic. I positively see this buff as being a major benefit for having active crew in shape. Think of not having to need Tactical Team, if you only care about its shield distribution effect? (Remember that TT does more than that.) Not all setups need the other benefits of TT, or they can cope with the lack of these benefits, like removal of Tactical debuffs. Or they don't need the damage bonus it indirectly provides. The bonus I suggested (50% better than TT) was based on, when crew is at about 66%, shield distribution would be the same as if TT were active. If crew starts getting lower, shield distribution speed will suffer, along with the rest of the bonuses (zero crew = no bonuses).
IMPORTANT: TT has an extra effect that it automatically "heals" the shield facing being damaged as well as providing the additional shield distribution speed. The suggested bonus provided by crew would only affect distribution speed, and NOT automatically "heal" the shield facing. That will be up to the player to do, by distributing their shields using commands. I see this as another bridge command rather than something for the crew to do themselves. They just get the system ready for faster shield distribution. If a player has the distribution shield command in their spacebar bind, that could then properly have the desired the TT effect.
Things to think about and consider:
I hope these suggestions are reasonable in the current scheme of things.
Feedback is always welcome.
- Fix the current calculation of crew damage, it's currently inverted
- Simplify crew status: just active and inactive
- Make active crew count give a buff to the following: disable resistance, subsystem drain resistance, subsystem recovery, shield distribution, passive hull and shield regeneration.
LONG VERSION
A while ago, the devs have asked for feedback about how Crew could be reworked, and here are my suggestions. This is not a full revamp as I'm looking to keep certain things the way they are, so the change is less incisive and easier to implement.
Crew Damage Calculation Fix
Before anything else, crew damage calculation needs to be fixed.
Currently, powers that damage crew state that they do "-20 or -20% Crew (whichever is less)". However, that function is erroneously returning "whichever is more". As a result, skills like Theta Radiation wipe 100% of any large crew in 5 seconds (20% per second) as opposed to 20 absolute crew per second.
After this is fixed, we can move on.
Simplification of Crew Status
Currently we have three crew status and their colors in the crew bar: active (white), incapacitated (orange), and dead (black).
I think we should simplify that to "active" and "inactive", so it becomes a simple meter with "current" and "max" counters.
In regards of crew activity, incapacitated equals dead. An incapacitated crew member is unable to work on a ship system, just like a dead member. It doesn't (shouldn't) affect crew overall performance. The difference is that incapacitated crew can be brought back into action over time. However, when crew is "dead", they can't come back to life during battle. (Some gear allow this.)
I think all of this, considering the game dynamics, is a hassle. There's a premise broken right there with doffs that bring dead crew back to life. We could assume, for simplicity's sake and more dynamic, streamlined experience, that crew only dies when the ship blows up. Come to think about it, if your whole crew is dead, your ship is pretty much useless and incapacitated (in most cases), don't you think? I believe this could be a fair compromise.
Getting rid of "dead" status means that "inactive" crew can be bring back into action by the ship's skills or doffs, which we already have happening to an extent.
That done, crew recovery would work as normal, except that with "dead" crew being no longer in place, inactive crew would recover just like "incapacitated" crew recovers currently, and still enhanceable by consoles, gear, or doffs in active duty.
(Some gear would need to be changed with the removal of "dead" status. The Honor Guard 2-piece set bonus brings dead crew back to life. This could be changed to a crew recovery bonus instead.)
Crew Buffs
While thinking about which buffs crew should offer, I can think of the following:
- Recovering from disables
- Power drain resistance
- Power recovery speed
- Shield distribution speed
- Hull and shield passive regeneration
Why not damage, or speed, or cooldown reduction?
In my perception, crew makes sure the ship systems are running smoothly. They stand by to address issues as they arise: they are mostly DEFENSIVE assets. Boosting damage, or speed, for example, are more like commands issued by bridge officers and the captain. Crew just needs to make sure the core systems are working correctly so the bridge commands can function as intended, and react to damage to those core systems.
This includes recovering faster from subsystem drains and disables; making sure power loss is timely addressed; watching shield facings so if they drop to dangerously levels, crew allow power among shields to be distributed faster; and finally, repair hull damage as it happens. Things that are better done when you have more crew, more people monitoring and watching over systems.
Maybe cooldown reduction could fit into this, but I wonder if having thousands of crew would really make the usage of skills faster? Sometimes, having too many people affects things negatively (Diminishing Returns). But we don't want to dwell into that, for simplicity and dynamics sake, so I'd rather keep this mechanic out of this.
Considering that the five attributes outlined above would benefit from having active crew, it's time to calculate how much bonuses they would provide.
As a best case scenario, I am using the JemHadar Dreadnought Carrier. It has 3500 crew.
How much buffing would be reasonable with such a large crew, when it's all active?
Throwing numbers without too much deliberation, maybe something along the lines of:
(Values in brackets represent percentage bonuses per active crew member)
- Disable duration reduced by 25% (~0.008%)
- Power drain resistance increased by 25% (~0.008%)
- Power recovery increased by 50% (~0.015%)
- Shield distribution speed about as 50% faster than what Tactical Team provides (not sure how much that would be -- need to have a look at Tactical Team shield distribution speed numbers)
- Hull and shield passive regeneration increased by 20% (~0.005%)
All percentages should benefit the base values ("strength", not "bonus").
Of course the above numbers would need tweaking and deliberation.
Let's talk about shield distribution for a moment.
It has become a largely used defensive mechanic. I positively see this buff as being a major benefit for having active crew in shape. Think of not having to need Tactical Team, if you only care about its shield distribution effect? (Remember that TT does more than that.) Not all setups need the other benefits of TT, or they can cope with the lack of these benefits, like removal of Tactical debuffs. Or they don't need the damage bonus it indirectly provides. The bonus I suggested (50% better than TT) was based on, when crew is at about 66%, shield distribution would be the same as if TT were active. If crew starts getting lower, shield distribution speed will suffer, along with the rest of the bonuses (zero crew = no bonuses).
IMPORTANT: TT has an extra effect that it automatically "heals" the shield facing being damaged as well as providing the additional shield distribution speed. The suggested bonus provided by crew would only affect distribution speed, and NOT automatically "heal" the shield facing. That will be up to the player to do, by distributing their shields using commands. I see this as another bridge command rather than something for the crew to do themselves. They just get the system ready for faster shield distribution. If a player has the distribution shield command in their spacebar bind, that could then properly have the desired the TT effect.
Things to think about and consider:
- This would be a system-wide change and affect NPCs as well. How much crew does Tac Cubes have again? 10K? This could provided out-of-line buffs depending on the numbers decided upon. What about those massive Dreadnoughts in missions?
- Implementing this would immediately give bonuses to every ship with crew. Shuttles would be not affected as much because of their low crew. Maybe base numbers need to be adjusted, but that would introduce nerfs to ships with low crew if the new base values are lower than current.
- The current crew system probably goes the other way around: it nerfs the ship as crew depletes (needs confirmation). With the proposed system, this nerf would be gone. This would immediately buff all ships in the game -- unless the base values are adjusted to reflect the intended amount at zero crew. But this can have negative effects on all ships with low crew.
I hope these suggestions are reasonable in the current scheme of things.
Feedback is always welcome.
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