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Author Topic: How do we make crew losses matter?  (Read 2904 times)

SonnaBanana

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How do we make crew losses matter?
« on: June 03, 2021, 07:28:15 PM »

Instead of just "meh, we can buy more".
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IonDragonX

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Re: How do we make crew losses matter?
« Reply #1 on: June 03, 2021, 07:43:03 PM »

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SonnaBanana

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Re: How do we make crew losses matter?
« Reply #2 on: June 03, 2021, 08:04:30 PM »


Have some pride in your work and link the image in your signature  :P
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Eji1700

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Re: How do we make crew losses matter?
« Reply #3 on: June 03, 2021, 08:06:22 PM »

Mostly numbers rebalancing and a larger bonus for fully crewed and a more gradual curve for losing crew, and more ways for enemies to target crew.

As it stands crew feels mostly binary.  It's a passive tax and then mostly a "i have enough" or "i don't have enough"...and very rarely does the second happen.

I know there's technically more that's going on, but it's so rare that you notice becuase "do i have a enough crew" is a VASTLY smaller concern than supplies and fuel.

If there were weapons that were known to kill more crew, or situations where crew death was higher, it might incentivize protecting them in the first place.  I know there's lots of stuff that helps with that, but in practice the only time you really ever care is on carriers.

Actually going for crew murder as another way to deal with ships could be interesting (i believe the AI plays by the same rules there?), but it does seem like something that will obviously affect players more.
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Deshara

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Re: How do we make crew losses matter?
« Reply #4 on: June 03, 2021, 08:38:17 PM »

they used to allow you to prioritize ships so that running low you had to start picking which ships you needed to have running at full capacity, & the rest of the ships just got a reduction to their maximum CR as they split the remainder among them. I thought it worked pretty well. Now instead when you run low on crew you just mothball your worst ships until the big red warning goes away and then the remaining ships work at 100% as if you weren't low.
I think it should just be reverted to the way it was before tbh
also it should probably tell you how many crew you lost in the post-battle loot phase. I don't think it does rn; at least in my current run I've never been made aware of how much I lost until I went into the fleet screen, so its not surprise that it doesnt feel like a very compelling system if u dont even know about it in the second-to-second gameplay
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SonnaBanana

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Re: How do we make crew losses matter?
« Reply #5 on: June 03, 2021, 10:39:24 PM »

Do we increase market price of crews by default?
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Tecrys

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Re: How do we make crew losses matter?
« Reply #6 on: June 04, 2021, 12:08:20 AM »

In regards to crew having more effects Starship Legends does a lot of things right but for vanilla it seams a bit to detailed.
I suggest a player reputation among crew bar that goes from -100 to +100 similar to faction rep. The lower the bar goes the worse crew performance gets and vice versa. The bar would be influenced by things like venting crew into the void, war crimes, maybe even raids, ship losses and so on.
Unfortunately I already see some problems with this system as there seem to be more actions that influence this bar negatively.
Positive influence might be gained by relieving planets of shortages, having few or no losses in battle, avoiding battles entirely for some time and salvaging with high success chances.
Also, what might that performance bonus/malus be? We already have CR in which crew performance kind of is rolled into.
Anyway, just spitballing. Maybe someone with a better sense for design can build on top of it.

Edit: Alex got rid of crew experience at some point which increased crew performance slightly over time, so I don't see this reimplemented in a different way.
« Last Edit: June 04, 2021, 12:23:42 AM by Tecrys »
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JUDGE! slowpersun

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Re: How do we make crew losses matter?
« Reply #7 on: June 04, 2021, 12:25:32 AM »

they used to allow you to prioritize ships so that running low you had to start picking which ships you needed to have running at full capacity, & the rest of the ships just got a reduction to their maximum CR as they split the remainder among them. I thought it worked pretty well. Now instead when you run low on crew you just mothball your worst ships until the big red warning goes away and then the remaining ships work at 100% as if you weren't low.
I think it should just be reverted to the way it was before tbh
also it should probably tell you how many crew you lost in the post-battle loot phase. I don't think it does rn; at least in my current run I've never been made aware of how much I lost until I went into the fleet screen, so its not surprise that it doesnt feel like a very compelling system if u dont even know about it in the second-to-second gameplay

This seems reasonable, but since it already got dropped, prolly not coming back...

There was another post recently suggesting adding a crew morale meter to balance along with fuel and supplies, that also seems a reasonable possibility.  If you lose too much crew (or just can't pay crew for more than a few months), morale drops too low and some of your ships mutiny and split off.  So you have to literally either let them get away or pursue them and fight you own ships (and maybe at least one officer).  Not that having another spinning plate meter is the best idea, but it is an idea...
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SCC

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Re: How do we make crew losses matter?
« Reply #8 on: June 04, 2021, 02:18:41 AM »

Increasing crew hiring cost would be a simple way to increase crew value, though not very exciting. It would also add yet another logistical inefficiency for low-tech.
I also miss crew experience.

Deshara

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Re: How do we make crew losses matter?
« Reply #9 on: June 04, 2021, 03:28:42 AM »

heres a suggestion for re-implementing old crew mechanics in a way that's less esoteric than it was;
there are two kinds of crew items, Crew & Veterans. The "Crew Training" skill is offset onto the veteran item; ships get increased CR & decreased supply usage for the amount of its crew requirement provided by veterans, up to 15% & 20%, and when a ship is 100% crewed by veterans it also gets a +30 seconds peak operating time and prevents ship-loss accidents (effectively giving you at least 1 free accident before its possible to lose a ship from being out of supplies). After combat, a proportion of your XP gained causes crew to transform into veterans. The "Crew Training" skill increases the rate of crew conversion, its elite tier makes a proportion of all crew purchased become veterans and makes that officer's flagship get the accident-preventing bonus from having any amount of veterans (allowing your flagship to run on 0 supplies until you run completely out veterans. Some Snow-Piercer maintenance. Get in the reactor, shinji!).
On the fleet screen you can assign ships 3 tiers of priority; 0 is default (all spare crew & veterans are split between 0's), 1 pulls crew from the 0 ships until it's full if there's not enough to go around, 2 pulls veterans from 1 & 0 to have as much CR as possible & crew also if the fleet has a manpower shortage. The drawback to prioritizing a ship is that when it takes damage you're losing veterans instead of crew. if you know a ship is going to die a lot (like if ur running a hulk d-mod fleet..) you can benefit from setting your hulk ships to 0 or 1 priority to save your veterans, and bc veterans reduce maintenance use you're also incentivized to prioritize some non-combat ships that have particularly high maintenance
Additionally, there's no way to produce veterans from markets. They're crew hardened in battle, the only thing that produces them is fleets standing down from service at a market, and they get consumed by fleets prepping for duty at a market so they are effectively impossible to find in any quantity. The only way to get them is to train them in battle, and you get them at a rate so low that damage taken in battle doesn't just cost you supply it also depletes your fleet of veterans unless you use skills & hullmods that reduce crew loss on your high-priority ships to plug the gaps enough to give you a positive veteran intake, which connects the new crew skill mechanic to character skill developement, officer management AND ship customization.
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6chad.noirlee9

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Re: How do we make crew losses matter?
« Reply #10 on: June 29, 2021, 02:32:40 PM »

one way to make it matter is have a nechanic in place that looks for how often and how much crew you lose, as well as how often you allow ships to be destroyed in battle, and based on these factors have situations where crew will sabotage ships (maybe even causing d mods, or removing s mods) and in large fleets (where applicable) having a particularly angry officer rebel against you taking your ships and spawning a fleet which you then must battle to survive or just let go if you cant win the conflict.

its CAPTAIN, jack, sparrow
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edit: edit: maybe were just falling with style LOL.  make a bubble, make the space in front of it smaller and just fall forward

JUDGE! slowpersun

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Re: How do we make crew losses matter?
« Reply #11 on: June 29, 2021, 03:06:16 PM »

heres a suggestion for re-implementing old crew mechanics in a way that's less esoteric than it was;
there are two kinds of crew items, Crew & Veterans. The "Crew Training" skill is offset onto the veteran item; ships get increased CR & decreased supply usage for the amount of its crew requirement provided by veterans, up to 15% & 20%, and when a ship is 100% crewed by veterans it also gets a +30 seconds peak operating time and prevents ship-loss accidents (effectively giving you at least 1 free accident before its possible to lose a ship from being out of supplies). After combat, a proportion of your XP gained causes crew to transform into veterans. The "Crew Training" skill increases the rate of crew conversion, its elite tier makes a proportion of all crew purchased become veterans and makes that officer's flagship get the accident-preventing bonus from having any amount of veterans (allowing your flagship to run on 0 supplies until you run completely out veterans. Some Snow-Piercer maintenance. Get in the reactor, shinji!).
On the fleet screen you can assign ships 3 tiers of priority; 0 is default (all spare crew & veterans are split between 0's), 1 pulls crew from the 0 ships until it's full if there's not enough to go around, 2 pulls veterans from 1 & 0 to have as much CR as possible & crew also if the fleet has a manpower shortage. The drawback to prioritizing a ship is that when it takes damage you're losing veterans instead of crew. if you know a ship is going to die a lot (like if ur running a hulk d-mod fleet..) you can benefit from setting your hulk ships to 0 or 1 priority to save your veterans, and bc veterans reduce maintenance use you're also incentivized to prioritize some non-combat ships that have particularly high maintenance
Additionally, there's no way to produce veterans from markets. They're crew hardened in battle, the only thing that produces them is fleets standing down from service at a market, and they get consumed by fleets prepping for duty at a market so they are effectively impossible to find in any quantity. The only way to get them is to train them in battle, and you get them at a rate so low that damage taken in battle doesn't just cost you supply it also depletes your fleet of veterans unless you use skills & hullmods that reduce crew loss on your high-priority ships to plug the gaps enough to give you a positive veteran intake, which connects the new crew skill mechanic to character skill developement, officer management AND ship customization.

While I agree that some form of the old crew skill model (experienced crew, more expensive but more efficient CR recovery/repair vs. inexperienced) should at least be salvaged/reimplemented, such a course of action may in fact still not be enough.  This might just end up running into the same problems as before.

Put another way, such a state of affairs allows for further experimentation, possibly even "growth" in the game.  At least a few people have already suggested implementing a crew morale meter to be balanced against supply and fuel usage.  Thus, more experienced crew members would also require more sophisticated means of crew entertainment as an additional tax, and letting crew morale drop too low (like by running out of money and/or not having enough entertainment) might result in some experienced crews mutinying and you having to literally fight your own ships.  Inexperienced crew loses morale faster, but can also gain it back faster (heck, they just happy to be employed).

Morale meter can of course be balanced by just allowing player to visit port allowing for a bump in the morale meter.  But if you want to start REALLY exploring the edge of space, better pack more than just board games...

In any case, now that experience has been implemented for marines, sort of silly to not also bring back crew experience (although I agree that would be easier to have the "experienced" crew be basically a separate commodity that essentially accomplishes more work that normal crew, instead of just having a single crew commodity item that pools experience; less complicated).
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oooh_senpai

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Re: How do we make crew losses matter?
« Reply #12 on: June 29, 2021, 03:54:17 PM »

Yep really want crew to be something that is not fuel for battle ships
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Marco

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Re: How do we make crew losses matter?
« Reply #13 on: June 29, 2021, 04:47:40 PM »

I think there would need to be 3 values for each ship's crew capacity if you wanted more than a binary enough/not enough.

Skeleton crew, just enough the ship is functional. When an encounter happens, the ship will be under-crewed in various areas depicted by random penalties that are generated and reset every encounter.

Fully crewed, every duty station is manned at all times, the ship is never caught under-crewed. Never random penalties.

Maximum capacity, the literal most the ship is designed to hold, every berth is full 24/7.

The number of penalties each encounter would depend on how close the ship is to a full crew. The more people, the fewer penalties. An easy metric would be a skeleton crew is 25% of a full crew and you'd have 3 penalties each encounter. Get over 50% and only get 2 penalties. Between 75% and full crew, only a single penalty.

If one wanted to put in a mechanic similar to Starship Legends without giving randomly rolled bonuses, perhaps the ship gets a reduction in how many crew are needed for the full complement; the crew is so veteran they can run the ship with fewer heads and free up personnel for other ships.
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SonnaBanana

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Re: How do we make crew losses matter?
« Reply #14 on: June 30, 2021, 04:19:26 AM »

Maybe CR loss for crew loss (whether from hull damage or fighter destruction) coupled with increased crew purchasing cost?
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