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[Plantissue]

Crew system is fine. You are all talking like there is some fundamental problem with it as opposed to the perfectly servicable mechanic it is currently. Why should I have to care about micromanaging crew? I don't even form any sort of attachment to officers at all, nor do I particularily wish to. I don't want officer bonuses from familiarity with their ships or ability to affect other ships. It's already a bit of a annoyance to select skills for officers after a battle or two.

[Gothars]

The game already has stat bonuses for increased CR so just increase the amount of those bonuses for better crew

Still unsure about it due to the second reason, i.e. crew losses are not a thing that's as well regulated/balanced around as marine losses, but will definitely keep this in mind. As far as the effect, I think that's pretty much perfect.

A wild idea: Make crew level a function of crew number. Say, if you have less than 100 crew they are elite on average, less than 300 are veterans, less than 600 experienced and anything more  is regular. Lore wise, this would reflect your ability to pick and choose and personally train individual crew members when you only need a handful. On the other hand, when you need thousands, you have to take what you can get and there's no chance for individual oversight. Gameplay wise, this is a way to a) flatten the difficulty curve and b) boost the small fleet playstile. And of course it would be immune to the effects of the unbalanced crew loss mechanics.

To communicate this easier to the player, instead of elite, veteran etc.  you could even call it handpicked, proven, reliable, normal…

You could of course not sell or buy different crew types, though.
Another disadvantage is that it might feel bad for players to have their crew downgraded as they grow their fleet.

[Alex]

Hmm. Interestingly, this is already how fleetwide skills work, except not being based on the number of crew but generally on the total deployment points - but then those are strongly correlated. E.G. The "Crew Training" skill increases max CR more when you have fewer total DP.

So, yeah, I wonder. This would be very much in line with that, and if the effect of this reverse veterancy of crew was to act as a multiplier for CR effects, and just changed based on how much crew you had. It'd also preempt the question of "why do marines have it and crew doesn't", since the answer would be "look, they have something else!".

The aspect of counteracting the difficulty curve a bit is really nice, though. And, again, it's in line with other mechanics boosting the smaller-fleet playstyle.

The only thing is that this would incentivize ships with lower crew requirements, i.e. high tech ships. If it wasn't for that... but, wait - it doesn't actually have to be based on crew numbers. It could be based on deployment points, too; the idea of being able to hand-pick great crew for X combat capability worth of ships makes roughly the same amount of sense.

Yeah, I think I like this a lot, especially coupled with intrinsic_parity's suggestion as to the effect. Going to have a look to see how straightforward it is to give it a shot.

[Sebenko]

Looking forward to not accidentally decivilising entire worlds while trying to steal their synchrotron core... even if it was funny, it was bad for business.

Does this mean we'll be encouraged to bring along a few marines for opportunistic raids, for example kicking in Garnir's door while running pirate bounties in Corvus?

[Alex]

Does this mean we'll be encouraged to bring along a few marines for opportunistic raids, for example kicking in Garnir's door while running pirate bounties in Corvus?

Hmm, probably? I feel like that's already the case based purely on the resource value you'd get out of it, but now that it's more targeted, I'd imagine it will also be convenient since you could get what you need or what's easy to sell.

[FooF]

@ Gothars idea and Alex's thoughts

Not a fan. It basically creates a system where I'm constantly trying to bring the minimum number of ships into combat to maximize some small stat even when prudence should dictate I bring more ships. For a new player starting out, keeping the "Elite" (or whatever its called) modifier is going to trump other factors because they don't have the perspective to know what their fleet can handle with the ships available.

I like the idea of the early game boost but then as you naturally get a larger fleet, the bonus goes away and since it was probably affecting your flagship, you feel like you're being penalized for being successful. I don't know of many new players that keep their fleet tiny on purpose: half the fun is amassing your fleet to begin with. Whether its crew or DP, there comes a point where I either a.) throw the whole mechanic out because I like big fleets or b.) min/max my deployment and/or c.) just never use the high-tech/big ships. None of those options seem "fun" to me. Even if I go with option A (which results in no net change from current), there's always a nagging feeling that I'm missing out on something because I had it when I started the game. Playing "small" should be an option but this feels like it is at the expense of playing "big."

[Grievous69]

Same thing for me, the end game is all about big fleets and having a lot of firepower. Why would our ships be weaker in the END of all things, makes zero sense. Just because a handful of people whined about big fleets, doesn't mean there should be a silly inverse difficulty system which just makes things weaker in late game for difficulty sake. ''Oh boo hoo my Lasher build that worked vs a destroyer and two frigates doesn't perform well in capital fights''. Now all the ships will suck ass when you have a slightly larger than ''normal'' fleet, huzzah.

[Igncom1]

I just got around to reading this and so I'll ask.

Is raiding and disrupting really worth bothering with outside of collecting blueprints and industrial relics?

Sure I could raid for supplies if I have no money, but I could also just sell the marines and not damage my reputation with the locals, possibly even attracting capital fleets to kill my freelancer fleet.

This is one of those things that perhaps might make more sense as a opportunistic trader kinda player, but otherwise is it ever really worth bombing and disrupting colonies? Yeah they'll attack a colony, but this isn't exactly a 4x, I don't get a win screen from destroying the other half of civilisation. And if I don't have a base, then why bother disrupting at all? To create trade opportunities? Is that even worth trying?

[Gothars]

@ Gothars idea and Alex's thoughts

Not a fan. It basically creates a system where I'm constantly trying to bring the minimum number of ships into combat to maximize some small stat even when prudence should dictate I bring more ships.

Playing "small" should be an option but this feels like it is at the expense of playing "big."

As I understand it, the total DP of the fleet would determine crew level, not the currently deployed DP. So, no min-maxing.

Also, late game fleets would have the same strenght as now, only early/small fleets would have a boost.
I love using small fleets even in late game, btw.

[Alex]

Is raiding and disrupting really worth bothering with outside of collecting blueprints and industrial relics?

Sure I could raid for supplies if I have no money, but I could also just sell the marines and not damage my reputation with the locals, possibly even attracting capital fleets to kill my freelancer fleet.

I mean, it's substantially cheaper to take the supplies without paying for them

As far as disrupting: it's more intended as a later-game "increase colony profits by disrupting a competitor" option that's less severe than bombarding them.

@ Gothars idea and Alex's thoughts

Not a fan. It basically creates a system where I'm constantly trying to bring the minimum number of ships into combat to maximize some small stat even when prudence should dictate I bring more ships.

Playing "small" should be an option but this feels like it is at the expense of playing "big."

As I understand it, the total DP of the fleet would determine crew level, not the currently deployed DP. So, no min-maxing.

Also, late game fleets would have the same strenght as now, only early/small fleets would have a boost.
I love using small fleets even in late game, btw.

The key thing here which I wasn't thinking about is that unlike with skills, you'd *start* with this bonus, so, yeah, it could/would likely feel like your flagship gets worse as you go. That's... not great.

Wouldn't have the same issue if the stat affected was a non-combat stat such as supplies to recover or supplies per month, though. Then you'd have a "lower supply cost in the early game" (which is nice) without affecting the mid/late game much. Hmm...

(And, yeah, it'd hypothetically be based on total DP, so min/maxing a specific deployment wouldn't be a concern.)

[bobucles]

I can see the pain of getting less from more, and it's certainly not an easy situation to deal with. It's not easy to find a place for large and small ships, especially given the massive scales between them. One of the biggest differences is with the time scale, where capital ships can basically fight forever while small ships die half way into the fight.  Some of that is an important part of balance, but at the same time it makes small ships struggle with bigger battles. Perhaps PPT should be more even across the board? There already exists a system where ships don't lose PPT when they have overwhelming force. If PPT was treated more like a "morale" system where ships burn out faster when the battle was clearly decided, frigates would live naturally short lives in bad battles but endure in larger ones. There can be a perk where frigates don't suffer PPT strain under such situations, giving them more options towards the late game.

 Obviously some of the perks of running a small fleet belong on the strategic layer. A light fleet can travel fast, lay low and stay out of trouble. Even if they get into trouble, fast ships have a much higher success rate for escaping than bigger or slower ships.

[SafariJohn]

The key thing here which I wasn't thinking about is that unlike with skills, you'd *start* with this bonus, so, yeah, it could/would likely feel like your flagship gets worse as you go. That's... not great.

Couldn't officer'ed ships, including the player's ship, just always have the max bonus?

[Alex]

I can see the pain of getting less from more, and it's certainly not an easy situation to deal with. It's not easy to find a place for large and small ships, especially given the massive scales between them. One of the biggest differences is with the time scale, where capital ships can basically fight forever while small ships die half way into the fight.  Some of that is an important part of balance, but at the same time it makes small ships struggle with bigger battles. Perhaps PPT should be more even across the board? There already exists a system where ships don't lose PPT when they have overwhelming force. If PPT was treated more like a "morale" system where ships burn out faster when the battle was clearly decided, frigates would live naturally short lives in bad battles but endure in larger ones. There can be a perk where frigates don't suffer PPT strain under such situations, giving them more options towards the late game.

I feel like the skill changes largely cover this, as far as making smaller ships more useful.

Couldn't officer'ed ships, including the player's ship, just always have the max bonus?

Thought about that! Kind of makes the whole thing nearly pointless, though...

[ChaseBears]

instead of tracking it directly via marines or using marine officers, you could have Marine NCOs that represent experience via their ratio to your marine count.  They suffer casualties proportionate to their ratio; they're what you find at bars; and you have a good chance at finding frozen ones as loot.  Your chance of getting additional NCOs from experience would be inverse to your ratio so maintaining a high ratio would be difficult. 

[Megas]

As far as disrupting: it's more intended as a later-game "increase colony profits by disrupting a competitor" option that's less severe than bombarding them.

If the days are greatly shortened as shown in the pics, will it be worth it?

The times I remember disrupting (spaceport) was to cut off supply to the military structures (because they cannot import without a functional spaceport) and crash their defenses before I nuke them from orbit with repeated sat bombing.