Ship Crew. Feedback and suggestions megathread.

guilli88 · April 2013

Hello everyone.

I think it's about time to discuss and *force* a change to the ship crew mechanic trough popular input and discussion. If the thread becomes large enough it will no longer be ignorable.

The big issue with ship crew is small v large ship crew numbers, combat reduction on effectiveness and general speed or crew replenishment. There's also the issue of the consoles that buff/protect crew to be useless.

Proposition:
Mechanical changes to balance ship crew sizes. A large ship crew should be default mean a better repair rate at more incapacitated crew numbers.

Crew regeneration rate needs to be balanced out, it needs a hefty increase in combat for large crews. Alternative, crew consoles that effect the speed at which a crew regenerate need a large buff. The same for crew resistance consoles.

----
Personally, I would actually really like to see medical doff bonuses to crew resistance/regen. And significant bonuses at that. 25/50/75/100% increased regen per Doctor. Based on Doff quality. Purple is flat double healing rate. Stackable as well.

Thoughts, comments, ideas and so fort all welcome. It's about time this mechanic got an overhaul.

frtoaster · April 2013

It is not clear to me that the crew recovery mechanic is even working correctly. From my testing, the stats reported by the UI do not match the observed crew recovery rates. Before discussing what changes should be made, the devs need to determine the following:

1. How is the crew recovery mechanic supposed to function (for both able and alive crew)?
2. Is it actually working as intended?

johnsteward · April 2013

I have nothing against foxing crew. My jh set mk xii should do something but really doesnt so go thread go but i fear that they have to much work with their may update already to debug this.

frtoaster · April 2013

guilli88 wrote: »

Personally, I would actually really like to see medical doff bonuses to crew resistance/regen. And significant bonuses at that. 25/50/75/100% increased regen per Doctor. Based on Doff quality. Purple is flat double healing rate. Stackable as well.

I think there is a space nurse that actually has an effect on crew regeneration.

guilli88 · April 2013

frtoaster wrote: »

I think there is a space nurse that actually has an effect on crew regeneration.

Space nurse sounds kinky for some reason. Even so I doubt it's a proper bonus to the regen, if it even works.

I have yet to really determine myself if the consoles that affect ship crew actually work. I've been playing around with them, and I barely notice any difference with the crew death/able resist stuff. The crew regen console does seem to work, but the regen amount on large ships is so small it's not worth the console slot.

Despite the nurse I still think this mechanic needs a serious look at.

the1tigglet · April 2013

Absolutely OP I agree, this would be a great step in the direction of helping out the cruiser/science defense struggle. It would ensure that if you get a cruiser/sci ship that naturally has more crew you'd naturally have a higher hull repair rate which would give you a better defense rating.

I think that not only should the consoles be fixed but also the doffs should make a difference with these. Medical doffs are something I've focused on and I really haven't seen a benefit of having medical doffs especially the EMH, that should account for something. How many episodes did they have lots of injured coming in but somehow they didn't have anyone die? It's due in part by brilliance of the EMH. We need a buff plain and simple and it should be significant.

Secondly, after a certain side in numerical value the hull repair rates should be boosted dramatically like a sortof buff system based solely on the number of crew available. That way if one's crew was dead in some way one could be destroyed more easily just like the reality of the situation would suggest.

I would also like to point out tho, that plasma by itself should not be killing off crew like it does in game, plasma is not a radiation and is in everything throughout the universe surely the crew didn't start dying at every little plasma storm especially by 2404. I noticed this happens alot when the spheres attack in the borg instances, this needs to be changed because we already have an epidemic of requiring that any damage with beams that must be done has to by default use the romulan plasma set and nothing else. I just think it's a bit unrealistic. There are radiations that breech hulls but I doubt very much that plasma is one of them. This would prevent abuse of the system after the change.

frtoaster · April 2013

guilli88 wrote: »

Space nurse sounds kinky for some reason. Even so I doubt it's a proper bonus to the regen, if it even works.

I have yet to really determine myself if the consoles that affect ship crew actually work. I've been playing around with them, and I barely notice any difference with the crew death/able resist stuff. The crew regen console does seem to work, but the regen amount on large ships is so small it's not worth the console slot.

Despite the nurse I still think this mechanic needs a serious look at.

I've read posts from other players saying the space nurse works, but I've never confirmed it myself. As I said, I don't think the crew mechanic is working correctly. I'll quote myself from another thread:

frtoaster wrote: »

If you have no bonuses from equipment or doffs, then the UI should report that you have a crew recovery rate of 50%/min out of combat and 5%/min in combat. It is not clear whether these rates refer to alive crew or able crew. As far as I can tell, they apply to neither. The following numbers were estimated by a human counting the number of seconds it took to regenerate 100 able crew and 100 alive crew. Thus, they are rough estimates only.

Ship: Assault Cruiser
Total Crew: 800
Able Crew (in combat): 100 crew in 98 seconds (61.2 crew/min or 7.65%/min)
Able Crew (out of combat): 100 crew in 12 seconds (500 crew/min or 62.5%/min)
Alive Crew (in combat): no change in over 2 minutes
Alive Crew (out of combat): 100 crew in 8 seconds (750 crew/min or 93.75%/min)

Ship: Light Cruiser
Total Crew: 200
Able Crew (in combat): 100 crew in 100 seconds (60 crew/min or 30%/min)
Able Crew (out of combat): 100 crew in 12 seconds (500 crew/min or 250%/min)
Alive Crew (in combat): no change in over 2 minutes
Alive Crew (out of combat): 100 crew in 26 seconds (230.77 crew/min or 115.38%/min)

My guess is that able crew regenerates at ~60 crew/min in combat and ~500 crew/min out of combat, regardless of ship. I also conjecture that alive crew regenerates at ~100%/min out of combat and never regenerates in combat, regardless of ship.

johnsteward · April 2013

Whatever the values currently... Crew can get hurt and crew can die but not at the current rates they are doing it.

frtoaster · April 2013

the1tigglet wrote: »

Secondly, after a certain side in numerical value the hull repair rates should be boosted dramatically like a sortof buff system based solely on the number of crew available. That way if one's crew was dead in some way one could be destroyed more easily just like the reality of the situation would suggest.

The hull repair rate is affected by able crew. Have you even looked at how hull repair rates work? I'm not suggesting that the current crew mechanic is working properly or that it's interaction with hull repair rate is well designed. But I think that before suggesting changes, people should study the actual mechanics first.

the1tigglet wrote: »

I would also like to point out tho, that plasma by itself should not be killing off crew like it does in game, plasma is not a radiation and is in everything throughout the universe surely the crew didn't start dying at every little plasma storm especially by 2404. I noticed this happens alot when the spheres attack in the borg instances, this needs to be changed because we already have an epidemic of requiring that any damage with beams that must be done has to by default use the romulan plasma set and nothing else. I just think it's a bit unrealistic. There are radiations that breech hulls but I doubt very much that plasma is one of them. This would prevent abuse of the system after the change.

As far as I know, plasma does not kill crew. Kinetic weapons and theta radiation kill crew. Do not confuse the plasma fires of plasma torpedoes with the crew-killing effect of the torpedoes themselves.

guilli88 · April 2013

frtoaster wrote: »

The hull repair rate is affected by able crew. Have you even looked at how hull repair rates work? I'm not suggesting that the current crew mechanic is working properly or that it's interaction with hull repair rate is well-designed. But I think that before suggesting changes, people should study the actual mechanics first.

Quite agree with that entire statement. None the less a change is needed. I think there needs to also be a lot more documentation ingame about the mechanic. It's also partially why I want a megathread. To consolidate all the information on the ship crew mechanics. The ingame information is just not enough. Debate is healthy, even if we may sometimes be wrong about the underlying stuff.

As the OP, I will never claim i know everything about the mechanic either, if I did I could just post a suggestion thread.

Ps: I have a feeling my post comes off a bit strongly/offensive. This is not my intention at all. I tend to be that way in my communications, I have a severe lack of skill in that area.

frtoaster · April 2013

guilli88 wrote: »

Quite agree with that entire statement. None the less a change is needed. I think there needs to also be a lot more documentation ingame about the mechanic. It's also partially why I want a megathread. To consolidate all the information on the ship crew mechanics. The ingame information is just not enough. Debate is healthy, even if we may sometimes be wrong about the underlying stuff.

As the OP, I will never claim i know everything about the mechanic either, if I did I could just post a suggestion thread.

I've posted above what I know about crew regeneration. I haven't tested it thoroughly, however. But you can already see that what the UI says isn't what actually happens. So it's probably broken.

In general, the in-game documentation is poor. The tooltips are often wrong or misleading.

guilli88 wrote: »

Ps: I have a feeling my post comes off a bit strongly/offensive. This is not my intention at all. I tend to be that way in my communications, I have a severe lack of skill in that area.

No offense taken. I did not mean to be offensive either. I just think that is difficult to say what needs to be fixed if we don't know how the mechanic is supposed to work and if it is actually functioning properly. I believe that it's probably both broken and poorly designed. It would be best if the devs could give us some clarification.

nicha0 · April 2013

You can't suggest a single change to crew mechanics until crew works properly.

Repairs rates do work now, but even a 2500 crew cruiser or carrier or a 100 crew escort both end up with the same number of crew after 15s of combat the reality is that escort and cruiser passive repair rate ends up very close. When the issue gets fixed so that single torpedoes don't take 10% of your crew every shot, then we can see how things really work, until then, its a guessing game.

zarathos1978 · April 2013

Outside of repairing crew resistance and kill rates?

I think it would be nice to tie all "team" BOFF powers to crew rate. The bigger the team the better the power.

Say each 100 crew give 5% of "heal/resistance/shield transfer/damage" plus something from the rank of skill (10% per rank?) with hard cap at 80%? Ship with 200 crew will get 10% out of crew and 10% basic bonus, ship with 1000 crew will get 50%+10%. Maxing out on 80% for big ships (1000+crew) on 3rd skill level.

Hull repair rate based on crew would also be nice.

frtoaster · April 2013

zarathos1978 wrote: »

Hull repair rate based on crew would also be nice.

I feel have to say this again. Hull repair rate is based on able crew. Read all about it here:
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=8340431&postcount=3

The above post should be accurate on Holodeck, but there are changes to leadership on Tribble.

haravikk · April 2013

My proposal is simply; fix the crew mechanic!

I doesn't need inventive solutions, it just needs fixed, as torpedoes blocked by shields shouldn't be killing off large numbers of crew, period. Just take the torpedo's damage, work how much bled through to the hull, and scale any crew damage by that proportion, so if only 15% of damage made it through to the shields, then only 15% of normal crew damage would occur (e.g - if it would have hurt 30 crew, it instead hurts ~5).

After that... I'm not sure how well crew repair works really, but it needs to have a base amount scaled to total crew size (representing scaled medical facilities) with any bonuses to recovery applied to that basic rate.

cryptkeeper0 · April 2013

I agree with above, I also would like them to add to one of the armor or structural integrity or threat skills a slight passive crew death resistance.

I would also like to see if they do end up making armor some with it built in.

the1tigglet · April 2013

frtoaster wrote: »

The hull repair rate is affected by able crew. Have you even looked at how hull repair rates work? I'm not suggesting that the current crew mechanic is working properly or that it's interaction with hull repair rate is well designed. But I think that before suggesting changes, people should study the actual mechanics first.

As far as I know, plasma does not kill crew. Kinetic weapons and theta radiation kill crew. Do not confuse the plasma fires of plasma torpedoes with the crew-killing effect of the torpedoes themselves.

All I know is crew starts dieing when plasma fire hits my hull from both romulan beams and borg beams, neither should be doing that. Dunno if it's a bug or what but they need to fixit because none of these enemies are using radiation weapons

the1tigglet · April 2013

zarathos1978 wrote: »

Outside of repairing crew resistance and kill rates?

I think it would be nice to tie all "team" BOFF powers to crew rate. The bigger the team the better the power.

Say each 100 crew give 5% of "heal/resistance/shield transfer/damage" plus something from the rank of skill (10% per rank?) with hard cap at 80%? Ship with 200 crew will get 10% out of crew and 10% basic bonus, ship with 1000 crew will get 50%+10%. Maxing out on 80% for big ships (1000+crew) on 3rd skill level.

Hull repair rate based on crew would also be nice.

would completely agree with this, as well as tying the defense bonuses of ships to the amount of crew they have that way cruisers and carriers and science ships would rightly have more defense then escorts by design, which would restore much of what was lost in the most recent season where escorts can do the most damage and outlast everything.

wrathofachilles · April 2013

My favorite part of how the crew mechanic works currently is that bonuses to crew defense work best on small crews. For example. if you equip the jem hadar shield with the "jem hadar crew bracing" to a ship with a large crew, you'll hardly notice a difference in crew damage if you do at all, equip it to a bop or a defiant and you'll have an invinci-crew and maintain uber repair rates. You would think that a big thick ship would protect the crew better and have larger medical facilities... but nope, you lose your whole crew in 3 seconds and wait three years for them to raise from the dead. Freaking slow zombie crew... must need a better voo-doo magic console or to put a necromancer on active duty.

And speaking of the vent theta radiation console, the crew death on that needs to be dropped from the top of the nerf tree and hit every branch on the way down. To insta-wipe your whole crew is absolutely ridiculous.

blaumker · April 2013

wrathofachilles wrote: »

My favorite part of how the crew mechanic works currently is that bonuses to crew defense work best on small crews. For example. if you equip the jem hadar shield with the "jem hadar crew bracing" to a ship with a large crew, you'll hardly notice a difference in crew damage if you do at all, equip it to a bop or a defiant and you'll have an invinci-crew and maintain uber repair rates. You would think that a big thick ship would protect the crew better and have larger medical facilities... but nope, you lose your whole crew in 3 seconds and wait three years for them to raise from the dead. Freaking slow zombie crew... must need a better voo-doo magic console or to put a necromancer on active duty.

And speaking of the vent theta radiation console, the crew death on that needs to be dropped from the top of the nerf tree and hit every branch on the way down. To insta-wipe your whole crew is absolutely ridiculous.

Have to agree, hehe. If starfleet came to earth right now to get recruits I'd demand they place me next to a plexiglass window on an unshielded escort instead of inside a shielded and armored panic room in the dead center of a super dreadnaught carrier equipped with Jem'Hadar shields and crew force fielding because I'd live longer.

Unless, of course, one part per million of theta radiation came within a light year of the ship, since apparently everything but the bridge is made out of the same material as screen doors when it comes to this stuff.

As mechanics go, this is the very thing that has completely turned me off of my Vo'kuv carrier and Bortasque anniversary ship. Being the type of guy that can't ignore something like literally thousands of my crew still being dead because I took a few torpedoes that almost made a paint scratch, I just can't fly these things because of the tremendous downtime out of combat, and the horrifying mortality within it.

ocp001 · April 2013

haravikk wrote: »

My proposal is simply; fix the crew mechanic!

I doesn't need inventive solutions, it just needs fixed, as torpedoes blocked by shields shouldn't be killing off large numbers of crew, period. Just take the torpedo's damage, work how much bled through to the hull, and scale any crew damage by that proportion, so if only 15% of damage made it through to the shields, then only 15% of normal crew damage would occur (e.g - if it would have hurt 30 crew, it instead hurts ~5).

After that... I'm not sure how well crew repair works really, but it needs to have a base amount scaled to total crew size (representing scaled medical facilities) with any bonuses to recovery applied to that basic rate.

Okay, I'm on my smart phone, so this may sound blunt, but it's in order to save my thumbs. You should educate yourself on how crew works before you advocate fixing it.

1 nurse doff and an emergency force field console ensures crew survival. Almost absurdly so. This pales to using the Adapted MACO 2 piece set and a Nurse doff. My crew in an Odyssey take drags of theta radiation like fine cigar smoke giggling madly.

If you had an absurd desire to ensure no one ever dies on your ship put all the above on with the Jem Hadar shields. Can't have that one guy fall out of an airlock or trip in the shower.

cryptkeeper0 · April 2013

That is really weird becuase I have tried doing all of what you have said and my crew still dies right and left in my oddy. While i don't have completely dead ship half my crew is gone in a minute or two

ocp001 · April 2013

cryptkeeper0 wrote: »

That is really weird becuase I have tried doing all of what you have said and my crew still dies right and left in my oddy. While i don't have completely dead ship half my crew is gone in a minute or two

I use the purple MK XII emergency force field console, 40% death/disable resist. Dirt cheap BTW. The purple nurse if I recall correctly is +100% crew regen under the 75% mark. Those can stack too. They seem to be additive.

The crew does YO-YO a little, but after the adapted 2 piece the crew never seems to die. Ever. Also you could throw on a bio function monitor. That also steroids up those frail redshirts.

On a side note: I think the irking factor is how torpedoes attack percentages of crew. It probably should be altered to be a flat number. As mentioned prior the larger crew numbers make the effect larger initially, but as crew gets closer to zero the amount of crew being affected also decreases (scales.) this makes nurses of blue or purple quality more useful on larger ships.

guilli88 · April 2013

ocp001 wrote: »

I use the purple MK XII emergency force field console, 40% death/disable resist. Dirt cheap BTW. The purple nurse if I recall correctly is +100% crew regen under the 75% mark. Those can stack too. They seem to be additive.

The crew does YO-YO a little, but after the adapted 2 piece the crew never seems to die. Ever. Also you could throw on a bio function monitor. That also steroids up those frail redshirts.

On a side note: I think the irking factor is how torpedoes attack percentages of crew. It probably should be altered to be a flat number. As mentioned prior the larger crew numbers make the effect larger initially, but as crew gets closer to zero the amount of crew being affected also decreases (scales.) this makes nurses of blue or purple quality more useful on larger ships.

I totally agree with the torpedo = % crew damage. It needs a change.

Suggestion:

On event of a torpedo hitting the HULL (not shields).

100% chance to incapacitate between 1 to 20 crew.
5% chance to kill between 1 to 10 crew.

Crew regen then doesn't need to be changed at all.

** On a different note: upon equipping a force field console, I get 0 crew deaths, however if I do not equip one, but I do have the Jem hadar shields that give +50 crew able/death bonus, they die in droves. Is the bonus on the Jem hadar shield even working?

wrathofachilles · April 2013

guilli88 wrote: »

** On a different note: upon equipping a force field console, I get 0 crew deaths, however if I do not equip one, but I do have the Jem hadar shields that give +50 crew able/death bonus, they die in droves. Is the bonus on the Jem hadar shield even working?

That's odd, for me, the force fields and jem shield never did anything on ships with large crews, but with small crews like 200 or less, particularly something like 50 on the defiant or 75 on the bop, and the jem shield made my crew neigh invulnerable. Not sure if force fields had the same effect on those small crews though.

guilli88 · April 2013

Bump for justice.

Finishing Crystal entity with 0 crew alive is unacceptable. 2500 crew DIED in the first 10 minutes. This with 87.5 crew dead resists. (jem shield + 1 console)

I have 3 space nurses with crew regen as well (3x +150%). Doesn't work on DEAD crew. This is just hilariously bad mechanics.

guilli88 · April 2013

Upon further testing:

Biofunction monitors (the science consoles) STOP crew death completly. Pretty sure that's a bug.

Re-equiped one and not got a single crew death since. Not in borg stfs or even CE.

melisande77 · April 2013

While I would /love/ to see crew actually effect the power your weapons, etc. Fixing their death rate first is something that should happen. Torpedos, and other kinetic attacks, need to lose their ability to kill percentages of your crew. It needs to be a fixed number, so that having a higher crew is actually a benefit. Beyond that, the effect of the Nurse doff almost needs to just be applied, and remove the DOFF.

Ship Crew. Feedback and suggestions megathread.

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