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[Gothars]

A simple idea: If you lose crew, the cost of new crew goes up. It goes slowly back down over time. The amount it goes up should be determined by percentage of crew lost, not absolute numbers.
This should give more impact to losing crew, and thus more use to crew saving hullmods and tactics, without overcomplicating things.

[JUDGE! slowpersun]

Seems like a (if you'll pardon the pun) a low-budget version of a morale system.  But adding a real morale system would likely be more interesting... just also makes player spin more plates.  But the fact that this game doesn't have a possibility of mutiny is tragic!

[SafariJohn]

Seems like a death spiral mechanic.

[Alex]

Hmm. I seem to remember thinking about this very seriously at some point, but I can't for the life of me remember why I didn't end up doing it.

[Sundog]

Only big downside I can think of is that it would further nerf the already woefully sub-optimal scrap fleet style of play that the Industry skill tree is intended for. Of course, part of an industrial skill could be to mitigate or nullify such a mechanic...

[SonnaBanana]

I support this, crew losses cost the players almost nothing right now

[LinWasTaken]

Seems like another mechanic that would put restrictions on the player while the AI could(and would) just ignore it.

[SCC]

Maybe in the next patch low-tech would be strong enough, but it currently definitely is not.

[FooF]

I guess I don’t see added value in this. It just makes me spend more money for Not-Supplies/Fuel. Crew are handled like all other commodities except your ships don’t completely fall apart if you’re a little under optimal. If you’re going to make keeping them around matter, I hate to say it but veterancy is a good carrot. (Not to beat that dead horse again)

I’m of the opinion that it would make more sense to incentivize rather than penalize for keeping crew safe, preferably with in-combat consequences.

[SafariJohn]

Veterancy is really no more interactive than hazard pay.

[Megas]

Personnel levels or "veterancy" are a pain.  With crew in old releases, it was the Tetris inventory minigame.  With marines now, I need to keep at least one in my inventory at all times to not lose the bonus they built up.  I cannot carelessly toss excess random junk into storage with marines included in the item pile.

Yes, crew is yet another resource, which is fine for evil overlord types.  Disposable Heroes from Metallica is very apt here.

[JUDGE! slowpersun]

Personnel levels or "veterancy" are a pain.  With crew in old releases, it was the Tetris inventory minigame.  With marines now, I need to keep at least one in my inventory at all times to not lose the bonus they built up.  I cannot carelessly toss excess random junk into storage with marines included in the item pile.

If crew veterancy makes a comeback (which, IMO, it should in some form), crew and officers would likely end up needing a dedicated crew screen, a la the intel screen.  Basically completely shift crew and marines out of fleet inventory system... although dunno how that would be handled when getting crew and marines in port (maybe recruiting would be like the going to a bar option, RNG guesses how much crew or marines you get per try).  Primary issue I can really see is how would this system impact easily using crew for colonies (ie, building, adding, subtracting), since might complicate simple swapping of crew/marines back and forth.  But shouldn't be too hard to overcome in terms of code and design, just would be kinda radical from a player's point of view (as likely to be controversial and prolly hated as liked/enjoyed).

[Alex]

With marines now, I need to keep at least one in my inventory at all times to not lose the bonus they built up.  I cannot carelessly toss excess random junk into storage with marines included in the item pile.

I'm fairly certain you can in fact do that - if you transfer all of your marines to colony storage or cryopods, they'll keep their veterancy with them. The ones in your fleet will keep the maximum they can but e.g. if you transfer half of your elite (i.e. fully maxed out) marines somewhere, you ought to have two stacks of maxed out marines.

[Gothars]

Seems like a (if you'll pardon the pun) a low-budget version of a morale system. 

Exactly! A full blown morale system would be expected to interact with all kinds of mechanics, events and quests. Which, don't get me wrong, would be great, but a lot to ask for at this stage. Hazard pay seems so much simpler, while preserving the core function of making you care about losing people.

It could of course also serve as a basis that other mechanics could connect to later.

Hmm. I seem to remember thinking about this very seriously at some point, but I can't for the life of me remember why I didn't end up doing it.

Well, one disadvantage is that it's one more reason to avoid risks in combat. But many things do that, hazard pay at least emphasizes a specific, immersion-relevant part of that risk.

Taking a step back, I think its actually a bit weird to have these crew saving hullmods while crew doesn't really have value and serves little function. Thinking only about game mechanics, a good argument could be made to replace crew altogether, but I think it would be a real loss in terms of game world immersion. The player would feel  more removed from his ships and the idea that actual people are serving on them. Instead that idea should be strengthened by giving crew more value and impact on gameplay.

[JUDGE! slowpersun]

Seems like a (if you'll pardon the pun) a low-budget version of a morale system. 

Exactly! A full blown morale system would be expected to interact with all kinds of mechanics, events and quests. Which, don't get me wrong, would be great, but a lot to ask for at this stage. Hazard pay seems so much simpler, while preserving the core function of making you care about losing people.

I mean, only if the designer wanted to... or is a masochist! I had assumed it would just be a meter reflecting a Gaussian curve with the expected value always set to slightly below the middle of the meter (so player at a minimum would always have to make some basic attempts to please crew, which is mostly just paying their salary on time, every time), and then allow crew to eat a little bit of certain other commodities in order to generally get over the hump in early game when out exploring (measuring time away from port would then add bonus morale when landing at next port based on how long since last visiting port).  Put another way, crew morale should stay basically roughly in middle when in core, but require dragging around only a few extra commodities at a minimum while in core, since visiting ports left and right.

Player would just have to carry some more stuff around when exploring, but would be kinda canceled out by salvaging, and gets a big bump once fleet gets back to cancel out player maybe being kinda broke (and therefore having to sell salvage in ideal market, not first market visited).  Admittedly commodity consumption would vary based on both crew size (larger crew would require moar) and commodity type (Food is cheap, but doesn't help much vs domestic or luxury goods), with maybe some extra bonuses for compounding commodities (more efficient to carry some variety than lots of any single commodity).  Battle victories would handle morale in mid and late game, with colonies also helping in late game.

What happens when crew is unhappy for long period of time is pretty self explanatory (they either leave like normal at next port if kinda unhappy, eventually some ships mutiny if very unhappy).  Plus maybe base rate of fleet morale decay/ship could be controlled with one or two cheap OP hull mods (like 1/2/3/4 OP).  Maybe also skills, but no new skills (ie, tacked onto already existing logistic skills, perhaps).  However, skill system has enough issues, seems easier and more lore friendly to just control without adding skills to mix... except for S-mod ships, those ships have to be recoverable even if crew mutinies (although I guess since there is the bonus XP added in next patch to handle respeccing and losing 3 S-mods skill, that could be an alternative to always making S-mod ships recoverable after mutiny).

So exploring with a small fleet hopefully more efficient than large in early game, but salvaging and winning battles later should cancel out increased demand of a larger crew (so long as player can pay the bills).  Connecting to events and quests likely too tedious for a game system until after initial game system designed/added.  But that seems like something to worry about AFTER game system even introduced, since likely to be controversial with players... and would obviously still require at least some testing in order to measure edge cases and possibility of negative feedback loop.  Still, not expecting this any time soon, peeps are complaining enough just about battle AI (although some of that is as likely due to player error as it is tutorial failure when explaining difference between officer aggression levels).

And if anyone is wondering why I've bothered to spend so much time thinking about this, it's because I have partially designed a mod idea to use existing game systems instead, and best I can come up with currently in lieu of a new system is affecting fleet supply consumption rate and CR decay/recovery rates (using just salary seemed too simplistic).  Which seems to me to be both inadequate and ripe for exploitation without adequate balance (for which a more complex system would be required, but not easily implemented with current gameplay systems).

Edit: Punctuation