...how will it affect the game without it is the BIG question?
Currently, the only things affected by your Crew level are Hull Repair Rate (aka passive regen) and Subsystem Repair rate (aka Subsystem Offline Resistance). Both are also already improved by Skills in the same manner. We could easily remove Crew, and roll those bonuses into their respective skills.
Again, this is not a proposal or anything. Please don't assume that just cuz a Dev is talking about it, it is something we're necessarily going to do.
Jeremy Randall
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
What if we just completely removed the Crew system? Would anyone miss it?
I'm not saying that we will, or are even considering it. Just spitballing ideas for the discussion.
From a systems standpoint. No I would not miss it
From an Immersion standpoint. yes i would miss it.
The crew system does provide a tiny amount of immersion to the game. I think it would be better to build something to make it more relevant than to the game than to rip it out of the game entirely.
"Wesley - He wants the Impossible
Geordi - That's the short definition of Captain" - and the STO Forums
Currently, the only things affected by your Crew level are Hull Repair Rate (aka passive regen) and Subsystem Repair rate (aka Subsystem Offline Resistance). Both are also already improved by Skills in the same manner. We could easily remove Crew, and roll those bonuses into their respective skills.
Again, this is not a proposal or anything. Please don't assume that just cuz a Dev is talking about it, it is something we're necessarily going to do.
Well personally as a player who generally flies around with 50 crew it's not the biggest deal ever, and it's a nice little thematic thing to look at, but if you had say, 2500 or 3000, I think those players would like it a /lot/ more than I would.
Maybe a more "positive" system where crew number is more a positive than a negative, perhaps? (just rolling out ideas here too...)
Currently, the only things affected by your Crew level are Hull Repair Rate (aka passive regen) and Subsystem Repair rate (aka Subsystem Offline Resistance). Both are also already improved by Skills in the same manner. We could easily remove Crew, and roll those bonuses into their respective skills.
Again, this is not a proposal or anything. Please don't assume that just cuz a Dev is talking about it, it is something we're necessarily going to do.
I would rather see this revamped than removed as it's one of the few instances where a cruiser has an (implied) advantage over escorts. I think it makes perfect sense that it affects these passives, it just needs to be more pronounced. It would make the crew alive consoles worth while.
Currently, the only things affected by your Crew level are Hull Repair Rate (aka passive regen) and Subsystem Repair rate (aka Subsystem Offline Resistance). Both are also already improved by Skills in the same manner. We could easily remove Crew, and roll those bonuses into their respective skills.
Again, this is not a proposal or anything. Please don't assume that just cuz a Dev is talking about it, it is something we're necessarily going to do.
I would be down for any change you can devise so long as it doesn't hamper like the currently used crew system does. 2500 crew on a large vessel is redundant when all of a sudden you enter combat an their innate hull repair drops by like 50% vs out of combat.
Currently, Crew is a gimped third health bar that no one ever pays attention to.
So why not turn it into an actual third healthbar?
How about a system like in EVE? Over there, you have shields, hull and structure in that order.
The first thing to go is shields, then hull and then structure. When your ship reaches zero hitpoints on structure, you explode.
You could do something similar with crew in STO, by turning it into the structure of the game.
Or you could remove the crew mechanic entirely. No one would miss it, i'm sure.
With the state it's in, removal wouldn't be a bad option, but it would kind of take away from a few certain weapon types. I would much rather see it fixed, and better implemented.
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With the state it's in, removal wouldn't be a bad option, but it would kind of take away from a few certain weapon types. I would much rather see it fixed, and better implemented.
I'm with this^
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I like the *idea* of crew. I like to think my ship has all these guys running around doing important stuff, hoping to someday get some recognition for all their effort.
As it is, though, I tend to lose all my crew in the first 30 seconds of combat, and not even notice. I would like to see it make more of a difference, but that'd have to be paired with a way of, well, influencing their status (beyond slotting the KHG set). It's hard though, to come up with any concrete suggestions, as all systems tend to be heavily interrelated as it is.
I could see it influence the rate of non-tac team shield redistribution, though, for instance, with the current Redistribute Shields ability effectiveness being, say at 25-33% crew of a modified situation. That'd be a way of making the non-escort ships less reliant of tac team, without breaking things too much, maybe?
What if we just completely removed the Crew system? Would anyone miss it?
I'm not saying that we will, or are even considering it. Just spitballing ideas for the discussion.
Honestly, I'd rather not lose it. IMO it just needs a revamp, that's all.
Here's another suggestion. Have the crew level effect cooldowns. The lower the crewman level, the higher the cooldown timers will be. And preferably proportionate to the amount of crew, rather than the percentage. It makes more sense immersion-wise and canonically, as more crew=more things getting done within the ship=less time to wait on things. Twenty guys can load torpedoes faster than four, for instance.
Well personally as a player who generally flies around with 50 crew it's not the biggest deal ever, and it's a nice little thematic thing to look at, but if you had say, 2500 or 3000, I think those players would like it a /lot/ more than I would.
Maybe a more "positive" system where crew number is more a positive than a negative, perhaps? (just rolling out ideas here too...)
Well personally as a player who generally flies around with 50 crew it's not the biggest deal ever, and it's a nice little thematic thing to look at, but if you had say, 2500 or 3000, I think those players would like it a /lot/ more than I would.
Maybe a more "positive" system where crew number is more a positive than a negative, perhaps? (just rolling out ideas here too...)
I would rather see this revamped than removed as it's one of the few instances where a cruiser has an (implied) advantage over escorts. I think it makes perfect sense that it affects these passives, it just needs to be more pronounced. It would make the crew alive consoles worth while.
Plus one for revamp over removal.
^ these for sure.
And yes, there's another class balance waiting to happen. Take our suggestion and scale cooldowns and damage by crew number instead of percentage. Cruisers and other heavy ships need the boost.
Edit: And definitely, most definitely, if you're gonna expand the crewman system with any of these suggestions in mind, please add 'medical'-themed BOFF abilities that allow us to replenish/fortify our crew meter.
Currently, the only things affected by your Crew level are Hull Repair Rate (aka passive regen) and Subsystem Repair rate (aka Subsystem Offline Resistance). Both are also already improved by Skills in the same manner. We could easily remove Crew, and roll those bonuses into their respective skills.
Again, this is not a proposal or anything. Please don't assume that just cuz a Dev is talking about it, it is something we're necessarily going to do.
With the caveated understanding that this is all spitballing, my feeling is that unless there is a clear vision for what to do with the crew system to make it meaningful enough for players to bother managing it, it's best to just remove it.
In a real sense, I feel like the DOFF system is already a better avenue into getting a sense of managing a crew anyway, because at least they have names, instead of being just little "men's bathroom" symbols.
Here's another suggestion. Have the crew level effect cooldowns. The lower the crewman level, the higher the cooldown timers will be. And preferably proportionate to the amount of crew, rather than the percentage. It makes more sense immersion-wise and canonically, as more crew=more things getting done within the ship=less time to wait on things. Twenty guys can load torpedoes faster than four, for instance.
I like this suggestion. The larger the crew of your ship, the more it affects your cooldown on skills. This would make ships with large crews like cruisers very attractive.
Member since November 2009... I think. (UFP) Ragnar
Crew in its current form wouldn't be missed by anyone, no.
However, in its current form, crew can't be used for anything vital. They all get killed way too easily. You might argue that currently no one uses things like the Force Fields consoles that protect crew, but that's no easier to change. We're stretched really thin on console space as it is.
I think I preferred seeing the crew system as the game's real death penalty system. The proposed idea went something like this.
Crew were an irreplacable component of the ship. The more crew died, the less your repair rate was. If you blew up, you lost a permanent part of your crew, which scaled to your overall crew compliment (the more you died in a cruiser, the more overall crew you lost).
In combat, your ship was naturally outfitted with holographic crew which would act as a temporary replacement for lost crewmembers, but weren't a permanent solution. Since holographics (while advanced) are a temporary band-aid. You need organic crew. They could replace lost crewmen in combat, but if you did another mission without recrewing, the holographic crew couldn't replace the permanently lost crew.
In-between missions you could purchase shuttle consumables which when used in sector space, could call in a convoy of personnel shuttles that would permanently replace a flat % of crew (in the same way losing permanent crew through death would be a flat %). Alternatively you could simply return to a starbase and replenish crew there for free without the use of consumables. The consumables would be purchasable for EC since it's more of a convenience to replenish your crew out in space.
Obviously certain equipment on your ship would mitigate or potentially remove the death penalty system. Bio Monitor science consoles can be used to lessen crew lost or replace injured crew with organic crew faster (lessening the need for holographic crew), Emergency Force Fields can lower the % of crew lost in combat. Obviously the flipside to this is you'd be taking up console slots to counter the death penalty system rather than use consoles for other useful consoles. Science ships furthermore would have a bigger impact since they could have certain abilities to act as a hospital ship and prevent crewmembers from dying on friendly ships.
More importantly, the number of crew affecting your ship would be more like "death of a thousand cuts". Your individual death 'penalty' would be quite low, and stay low. But over time if you didn't recrew it'd be more and more apparent your ship isn't working well.
But we have the current death penalty system instead. Which while useful, doesn't really address the relative uselessness of the crew system. I would prefer to see the crew system become important since a ship is only as good as the crew that fly her. And in STO that hasn't been the case since launch.
I like the idea of your doffs being your crew tbth -- and the threat of loosing one of these or having them take a forced trip (at random) to sickbay because of a death is a lot of motivation not to die, and a LOT of motivation not to TRIBBLE over or throw your team under the bus. Also, the doffs could give effectiveness bonuses based on their rarities... White 5%, Green 10%, Blue 15%, Purple 25%
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I like this suggestion. The larger the crew of your ship, the more it affects your cooldown on skills. This would make ships with large crews like cruisers very attractive.
Especially when you consider that large ships have orders of magnitude more crew than smaller ships. The currently-overpowered JHAS for instance has a mere 50 crew, while the halfway-decent Obelisk Carrier has a whooping 3,000 crew - 60 times the former's crew compliment. Oh and the Galaxy-class isn't too shabby either with a crew of 1,000, which is still 20 times the amount of the JHAS.
Currently, the only things affected by your Crew level are Hull Repair Rate (aka passive regen) and Subsystem Repair rate (aka Subsystem Offline Resistance). Both are also already improved by Skills in the same manner. We could easily remove Crew, and roll those bonuses into their respective skills.
Again, this is not a proposal or anything. Please don't assume that just cuz a Dev is talking about it, it is something we're necessarily going to do.
For some players, crew strength is a psychological thing. We expect a weakened crew to result in loss of efficiency. The idea that battle damage has nothing to do with crew seems strange.
The problem is that the Crew system as implemented doesn't seem to make sense or have the impact we expect it to have. The same attack, with the same DPS, potentially does as much crew damage proportionally to a cruiser as it does to an escort. Crew regeneration, however, seems to work faster on an escort than it does on a cruiser. I could be wrong, as that is a subjective perception of mine.
Permanent crew loss would be unacceptable, especially at the rate we lose them. Nobody wants to have to "re-crew" after every battle.
Maybe the key here is to think out of the box a little bit.
What if we interpret severe crew damage as something that impacts crew morale?
To take a page from the injury system, what if every time crew strength degrades below a certain point there is a chance for a ship's crew to incur Morale Damage that recovers more slowly than the in-battle crew strength does?
Morale damage could be a temporary effect that only lasts a short while, or could be semi-permanent like injuries are and require special effort to remove/heal. It could be like the injury system and only kick in on Elite difficulty.
Morale damage could then have a far more serious effect on the efficiency of a ship. Traits like Leadership could have an offsetting effect on morale damage. Captains could get a new ability to "Rally Crew" and remove morale damage.
All of this assumes that crew strength and crew damage must be more proportional to the size of the crew than it is now. Ships with a large crew should be more resistant to morale damage than ships with very few crew.
Also... KDF could be more resistant to morale damage from combat than the Federation is, to reflect the view that there's nothing wrong with honorable death in battle.
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Here's another suggestion. Have the crew level effect cooldowns. The lower the crewman level, the higher the cooldown timers will be. And preferably proportionate to the amount of crew, rather than the percentage. It makes more sense immersion-wise and canonically, as more crew=more things getting done within the ship=less time to wait on things. Twenty guys can load torpedoes faster than four, for instance.
I also like this idea, with a small addition.
I would also like to suggest that crew also effect the power of the "teams" abilities such as science team and engineering teams. ie a 2500 crewed Odyssey has much much more powerful teams abilities than a B'rel with 30 warriors. essentially have it act as a fifth power bar, but different and separate, in addition to weapons shields engines and aux.
"Wesley - He wants the Impossible
Geordi - That's the short definition of Captain" - and the STO Forums
To answer Borts question, I would miss the crew but it would make little difference to me in game. Sure I notice the passive regen when I have no dead crew and leave combat vs all dead crew and leave combat but outside of that it makes little difference.
Here's my question to you though.
If you were to get rid of the crew system would you alter repair rates on different ships based on how many crew they would have had.
So an escort might have a repair rate of say 50% but a science ship being slightly bigger would have 75% and a cruiser would have 100%. These are just numbers from thin air but it makes sense that bigger ships repair faster if we got rid of crew.
Also there's a post here detailing how crew affects the bonus from the team abilities. They would probably need to become set bonuses which I'm all for.
Don't get me wrong bort I like the concept and it was a nifty idea adding a form of immersion, but the % of crew loss even when your ship is perfectly fine hull and shield wise, and still losing crew like crazy is redundant, so is the passive vs combat difference for hull and subsystem management by crew.
From an Immersion standpoint. yes i would miss it.
The crew system does provide a tiny amount of immersion to the game. I think it would be better to build something to make it more relevant than to the game than to rip it out of the game entirely.
Same here. While functionally crew is currently pointless, I would love for it to have more of an impact rather than just rip it out completely. I think there is some opportunity here to provide some unique aspect to gameplay that shouldn't be overlooked.
Perhaps they could affect the cooldown rates of abilities? After all, it takes more than just the weapons officer on the bridge pressing a button to make sure the torpedo systems are aligned for special operations like setting up a torpedo spread or loading up high yield rounds.
During STO's beta, crew were actually perishable. Where now the greyed out icons mean they are simply incapacitated and waiting to get healed in sickbay, it used to mean they were actually dead (not regenerating) and you'd have to go to a starbase or friendly planet to recruit/hire more. People balked at actually losing faceless crewmembers, but I think it would promote more activity at starbases and/or planets where our ship captains are recruiting more personnel.
And the DOff system would be nice to integrate, but everyone can have between 100 to 400 DOffs, regardless if their ship can only hold 50 or up to 2000 crew. (I pretend my smaller ships are attached to starbases where these DOffs are actually located, rather than on my ship at all times)
I would not miss the current crew system if it were removed entirely. In fact, I would prefer to see it removed, because it would impliedly remove the nearly-useless consoles that reduce crew loss/increase crew recovery. Less inventory junk.
That being said, I think that there should be some sort of crew mechanic in the game. One of the emotional/dramatic keystones of Star Trek is each captain's struggle to keep their crew safe.
My crew is my family, Bort. Is there anything you would not do for your family?
Obviously that kind of emotional connection isn't one that an MMO can easily attach to a resource or combat mechanic. I would be happy if my crew complement simply had a more significant role in gameplay.
So what could make crew fun, compelling, interesting, or useful? Here are a few of my thoughts.
More choice: There are different divisions in Starfleet and in the KDF. What if we got to choose the rough composition of our crew? So many science personnel, so many security, etc. This could easily be tied in with the duty officer system. Or not.
I picture a pie chart showing the rough proportions of crew by division. Each ship (or type of ship) could be different, or it could be customized to a degree. Going to exploration clusters? Stock up on extra science and operations personnel. Spending some time in PvP? You might want tactical and engineering personnel.
Make crew matter more: This is tricky, since we want to make crew matter without TRIBBLE smaller ships over entirely. Besides the repair buff, add other perks. They don't all need to be combat perks. In fact, I would argue that many of them should not be combat-related.
If you have a certain number of science personnel, maybe improve the rewards for science DOFF missions? Or make anomalies drop more rare particle traces. Security personnel could reduce the duration/strength of enemy boarding parties. Medical personnel could increase crew regeneration. And so on for the other divisions.
Make them less fragile: Pretty self explanatory. One torpedo shouldn't eviscerate the crew of a Galaxy-class, while only bruising a redshirt on a shuttlecraft.
Give us a reason not to lose them: In elite STFs, it's possible to receive ship damage that hinders your performance. I picture similar debuffs for crew loss in elite PvE content. If I manage to get my entire crew killed or assimilated by the Borg, there ought to be consequences of some sort. These could be removed by science/tactical/engineering teams from other players (representing reinforcements), and they would naturally go away over time as crew recovered or when the mission ended.
We probably wouldn't want these in non-elite PvE or PvP content, for the same reason ship damage is restricted to Elite PvE content.
Make them less fragile: Pretty self explanatory. One torpedo shouldn't eviscerate the crew of a Galaxy-class, while only bruising a redshirt on a shuttlecraft.
This, so much. Ships with small crew seem to have just a handful of invulnerable officers on deck, while ships with large crew seem to have 99% of the guys on perilous catwalks or next to exploding consoles, just so they can die dramatically with every torpedo strike.
Apologies if this was already discussed, just did a quick skim of the thread.
I've always thought that crew in STO should be more along the lines of the sailor mechanic from Uncharted Waters Online.
The short version is that ship performance is directly related to your sailors. Both in the number of the sailors you have and their morale/loyalty. You need a certain amount of them to operate the cannons on your ship properly and affect how well you do in ship to ship melee battles. You also have to feed and pay them otherwise they'll mutiny and/or abandon you. They can also die from starvation, diseases, natural disasters, and combat. They also die permanently. You have to hire new ones at ports. It's actually a valid tactic in combat to target and kill off enemy sailors so that you can loot the opposing ship instead of destroying it. It sounds unforgiving, but it really makes me care about my sailors.
Now obviously that can't be copied directly since STO is a completely different game. I do think though that taking the idea of the crew having a direct impact on the performance of your ship as others have already discussed is a good idea. Lose too many in engineering and your ship is going to move slower. Lose too many in tactical and you lose weapons power or something. Could be interesting.
I also wouldn't be opposed to permanent crew loss and having to restock them since I'm already used to that. But I won't push that one since I don't think others would like it lol.
Anyways I'd say that I'm more in favor of a crew revamp than a removal. If it were removed as it is now I wouldn't care. But I think revamping it would be a better option IMO.
I would also like to suggest that crew also effect the power of the "teams" abilities such as science team and engineering teams. ie a 2500 crewed Odyssey has much much more powerful teams abilities than a B'rel with 30 warriors. essentially have it act as a fifth power bar, but different and separate, in addition to weapons shields engines and aux.
I think there is merit to having the crew as a sort of "power" bar... but in regards to a sort of "resource meter".
Say for example, BOff actions require a certain amount of able crew to activate (say, 1 crew per rank of ability; Ensign powers require 1 crew, LT powers = 2 crew, etc.). Crew used for abilities are marked green for "in use" for the duration of the ability cooldown. This allows ships with bigger crews more flexibility for using their abilities, and ships with smaller crews will have to be a little more tactful with their abilities.
get rid of crew. if you make it mater more, certain ships would randomly get huge benefits from their huge crews and other similar ships wouldn't. compare the crew numbers of the negvar to the galaxy for example.
I would also like to suggest that crew also effect the power of the "teams" abilities such as science team and engineering teams. ie a 2500 crewed Odyssey has much much more powerful teams abilities than a B'rel with 30 warriors. essentially have it act as a fifth power bar, but different and separate, in addition to weapons shields engines and aux.
get rid of crew. if you make it mater more, certain ships would randomly get huge benefits from their huge crews and other similar ships wouldn't. compare the crew numbers of the negvar to the galaxy for example.
There's no rule that says we couldn't altar the number of crew in certain ships.
Comments
I'm not saying that we will, or are even considering it. Just spitballing ideas for the discussion.
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
Bort I would say hell yes in a heart beat, but how will it affect the game without it is the BIG question?
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Currently, the only things affected by your Crew level are Hull Repair Rate (aka passive regen) and Subsystem Repair rate (aka Subsystem Offline Resistance). Both are also already improved by Skills in the same manner. We could easily remove Crew, and roll those bonuses into their respective skills.
Again, this is not a proposal or anything. Please don't assume that just cuz a Dev is talking about it, it is something we're necessarily going to do.
Cryptic - Lead Systems Designer
"Play smart!"
From a systems standpoint. No I would not miss it
From an Immersion standpoint. yes i would miss it.
The crew system does provide a tiny amount of immersion to the game. I think it would be better to build something to make it more relevant than to the game than to rip it out of the game entirely.
Geordi - That's the short definition of Captain" - and the STO Forums
Well personally as a player who generally flies around with 50 crew it's not the biggest deal ever, and it's a nice little thematic thing to look at, but if you had say, 2500 or 3000, I think those players would like it a /lot/ more than I would.
Maybe a more "positive" system where crew number is more a positive than a negative, perhaps? (just rolling out ideas here too...)
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I would rather see this revamped than removed as it's one of the few instances where a cruiser has an (implied) advantage over escorts. I think it makes perfect sense that it affects these passives, it just needs to be more pronounced. It would make the crew alive consoles worth while.
Plus one for revamp over removal.
I would be down for any change you can devise so long as it doesn't hamper like the currently used crew system does. 2500 crew on a large vessel is redundant when all of a sudden you enter combat an their innate hull repair drops by like 50% vs out of combat.
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So why not turn it into an actual third healthbar?
How about a system like in EVE? Over there, you have shields, hull and structure in that order.
The first thing to go is shields, then hull and then structure. When your ship reaches zero hitpoints on structure, you explode.
You could do something similar with crew in STO, by turning it into the structure of the game.
Or you could remove the crew mechanic entirely. No one would miss it, i'm sure.
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I'm with this^
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After fixing the crew death rate thing...
1. Add a new BOff ability: Beam Target Life Support.
2. Crew deaths below a certain percent (60%?) give a mild/moderate debuff to cooldowns. Perhaps a max of 25% longer cooldown with "0" crew.
As it is, though, I tend to lose all my crew in the first 30 seconds of combat, and not even notice. I would like to see it make more of a difference, but that'd have to be paired with a way of, well, influencing their status (beyond slotting the KHG set). It's hard though, to come up with any concrete suggestions, as all systems tend to be heavily interrelated as it is.
I could see it influence the rate of non-tac team shield redistribution, though, for instance, with the current Redistribute Shields ability effectiveness being, say at 25-33% crew of a modified situation. That'd be a way of making the non-escort ships less reliant of tac team, without breaking things too much, maybe?
Here's another suggestion. Have the crew level effect cooldowns. The lower the crewman level, the higher the cooldown timers will be. And preferably proportionate to the amount of crew, rather than the percentage. It makes more sense immersion-wise and canonically, as more crew=more things getting done within the ship=less time to wait on things. Twenty guys can load torpedoes faster than four, for instance.
^ these for sure.
And yes, there's another class balance waiting to happen. Take our suggestion and scale cooldowns and damage by crew number instead of percentage. Cruisers and other heavy ships need the boost.
Edit: And definitely, most definitely, if you're gonna expand the crewman system with any of these suggestions in mind, please add 'medical'-themed BOFF abilities that allow us to replenish/fortify our crew meter.
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With the caveated understanding that this is all spitballing, my feeling is that unless there is a clear vision for what to do with the crew system to make it meaningful enough for players to bother managing it, it's best to just remove it.
In a real sense, I feel like the DOFF system is already a better avenue into getting a sense of managing a crew anyway, because at least they have names, instead of being just little "men's bathroom" symbols.
1) Let me save my BOFF layout per ship...please
2) Let me save my DOFF layout per ship...please
Doing this would eliminate a lot of Captain Frustration.
RM
I like this suggestion. The larger the crew of your ship, the more it affects your cooldown on skills. This would make ships with large crews like cruisers very attractive.
(UFP) Ragnar
However, in its current form, crew can't be used for anything vital. They all get killed way too easily. You might argue that currently no one uses things like the Force Fields consoles that protect crew, but that's no easier to change. We're stretched really thin on console space as it is.
I like the idea of your doffs being your crew tbth -- and the threat of loosing one of these or having them take a forced trip (at random) to sickbay because of a death is a lot of motivation not to die, and a LOT of motivation not to TRIBBLE over or throw your team under the bus. Also, the doffs could give effectiveness bonuses based on their rarities... White 5%, Green 10%, Blue 15%, Purple 25%
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For some players, crew strength is a psychological thing. We expect a weakened crew to result in loss of efficiency. The idea that battle damage has nothing to do with crew seems strange.
The problem is that the Crew system as implemented doesn't seem to make sense or have the impact we expect it to have. The same attack, with the same DPS, potentially does as much crew damage proportionally to a cruiser as it does to an escort. Crew regeneration, however, seems to work faster on an escort than it does on a cruiser. I could be wrong, as that is a subjective perception of mine.
Permanent crew loss would be unacceptable, especially at the rate we lose them. Nobody wants to have to "re-crew" after every battle.
Maybe the key here is to think out of the box a little bit.
What if we interpret severe crew damage as something that impacts crew morale?
To take a page from the injury system, what if every time crew strength degrades below a certain point there is a chance for a ship's crew to incur Morale Damage that recovers more slowly than the in-battle crew strength does?
Morale damage could be a temporary effect that only lasts a short while, or could be semi-permanent like injuries are and require special effort to remove/heal. It could be like the injury system and only kick in on Elite difficulty.
Morale damage could then have a far more serious effect on the efficiency of a ship. Traits like Leadership could have an offsetting effect on morale damage. Captains could get a new ability to "Rally Crew" and remove morale damage.
All of this assumes that crew strength and crew damage must be more proportional to the size of the crew than it is now. Ships with a large crew should be more resistant to morale damage than ships with very few crew.
Also... KDF could be more resistant to morale damage from combat than the Federation is, to reflect the view that there's nothing wrong with honorable death in battle.
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I also like this idea, with a small addition.
I would also like to suggest that crew also effect the power of the "teams" abilities such as science team and engineering teams. ie a 2500 crewed Odyssey has much much more powerful teams abilities than a B'rel with 30 warriors. essentially have it act as a fifth power bar, but different and separate, in addition to weapons shields engines and aux.
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Here's my question to you though.
If you were to get rid of the crew system would you alter repair rates on different ships based on how many crew they would have had.
So an escort might have a repair rate of say 50% but a science ship being slightly bigger would have 75% and a cruiser would have 100%. These are just numbers from thin air but it makes sense that bigger ships repair faster if we got rid of crew.
Also there's a post here detailing how crew affects the bonus from the team abilities. They would probably need to become set bonuses which I'm all for.
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Same here. While functionally crew is currently pointless, I would love for it to have more of an impact rather than just rip it out completely. I think there is some opportunity here to provide some unique aspect to gameplay that shouldn't be overlooked.
Perhaps they could affect the cooldown rates of abilities? After all, it takes more than just the weapons officer on the bridge pressing a button to make sure the torpedo systems are aligned for special operations like setting up a torpedo spread or loading up high yield rounds.
During STO's beta, crew were actually perishable. Where now the greyed out icons mean they are simply incapacitated and waiting to get healed in sickbay, it used to mean they were actually dead (not regenerating) and you'd have to go to a starbase or friendly planet to recruit/hire more. People balked at actually losing faceless crewmembers, but I think it would promote more activity at starbases and/or planets where our ship captains are recruiting more personnel.
And the DOff system would be nice to integrate, but everyone can have between 100 to 400 DOffs, regardless if their ship can only hold 50 or up to 2000 crew. (I pretend my smaller ships are attached to starbases where these DOffs are actually located, rather than on my ship at all times)
Raptr profile
That being said, I think that there should be some sort of crew mechanic in the game. One of the emotional/dramatic keystones of Star Trek is each captain's struggle to keep their crew safe.
My crew is my family, Bort. Is there anything you would not do for your family?
Obviously that kind of emotional connection isn't one that an MMO can easily attach to a resource or combat mechanic. I would be happy if my crew complement simply had a more significant role in gameplay.
So what could make crew fun, compelling, interesting, or useful? Here are a few of my thoughts.
More choice: There are different divisions in Starfleet and in the KDF. What if we got to choose the rough composition of our crew? So many science personnel, so many security, etc. This could easily be tied in with the duty officer system. Or not.
I picture a pie chart showing the rough proportions of crew by division. Each ship (or type of ship) could be different, or it could be customized to a degree. Going to exploration clusters? Stock up on extra science and operations personnel. Spending some time in PvP? You might want tactical and engineering personnel.
Make crew matter more: This is tricky, since we want to make crew matter without TRIBBLE smaller ships over entirely. Besides the repair buff, add other perks. They don't all need to be combat perks. In fact, I would argue that many of them should not be combat-related.
If you have a certain number of science personnel, maybe improve the rewards for science DOFF missions? Or make anomalies drop more rare particle traces. Security personnel could reduce the duration/strength of enemy boarding parties. Medical personnel could increase crew regeneration. And so on for the other divisions.
Make them less fragile: Pretty self explanatory. One torpedo shouldn't eviscerate the crew of a Galaxy-class, while only bruising a redshirt on a shuttlecraft.
Give us a reason not to lose them: In elite STFs, it's possible to receive ship damage that hinders your performance. I picture similar debuffs for crew loss in elite PvE content. If I manage to get my entire crew killed or assimilated by the Borg, there ought to be consequences of some sort. These could be removed by science/tactical/engineering teams from other players (representing reinforcements), and they would naturally go away over time as crew recovered or when the mission ended.
We probably wouldn't want these in non-elite PvE or PvP content, for the same reason ship damage is restricted to Elite PvE content.
Thoughts?
This, so much. Ships with small crew seem to have just a handful of invulnerable officers on deck, while ships with large crew seem to have 99% of the guys on perilous catwalks or next to exploding consoles, just so they can die dramatically with every torpedo strike.
I've always thought that crew in STO should be more along the lines of the sailor mechanic from Uncharted Waters Online.
The short version is that ship performance is directly related to your sailors. Both in the number of the sailors you have and their morale/loyalty. You need a certain amount of them to operate the cannons on your ship properly and affect how well you do in ship to ship melee battles. You also have to feed and pay them otherwise they'll mutiny and/or abandon you. They can also die from starvation, diseases, natural disasters, and combat. They also die permanently. You have to hire new ones at ports. It's actually a valid tactic in combat to target and kill off enemy sailors so that you can loot the opposing ship instead of destroying it. It sounds unforgiving, but it really makes me care about my sailors.
Now obviously that can't be copied directly since STO is a completely different game. I do think though that taking the idea of the crew having a direct impact on the performance of your ship as others have already discussed is a good idea. Lose too many in engineering and your ship is going to move slower. Lose too many in tactical and you lose weapons power or something. Could be interesting.
I also wouldn't be opposed to permanent crew loss and having to restock them since I'm already used to that. But I won't push that one since I don't think others would like it lol.
Anyways I'd say that I'm more in favor of a crew revamp than a removal. If it were removed as it is now I wouldn't care. But I think revamping it would be a better option IMO.
Mine Trap Supporter
I think there is merit to having the crew as a sort of "power" bar... but in regards to a sort of "resource meter".
Say for example, BOff actions require a certain amount of able crew to activate (say, 1 crew per rank of ability; Ensign powers require 1 crew, LT powers = 2 crew, etc.). Crew used for abilities are marked green for "in use" for the duration of the ability cooldown. This allows ships with bigger crews more flexibility for using their abilities, and ships with smaller crews will have to be a little more tactful with their abilities.
Raptr profile
There's no rule that says we couldn't altar the number of crew in certain ships.
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