Since you're going to upgrade the crews collectively. How are you going to treat the prospect of mixing crews, like pulling together crews of differing experience into one big cruise? For around 200, I think it'll be alright, upwards from 1000 is going to be tedious if they are controlled individually.
So why should they "sell" their especially trained people to, say, a freelancing miner or trader, like the player? I was implying that experienced people are hard to come by and you wouldnt be able to just casually buy a ton of them and staff all your ships with them, but rather have to rely on training noobs on your own.
Being able to just get elite blokes everywhere would render them a bit useless.. Why waste time and money to rescue your veterans if there are fresh ones on sale next door?
Where did I say they would sell them to you
? They would give some of theirs over if you swear loyalty to them I imagine. It's related to factions, experienced crews are incredibly expensive commodities, it's not something any state will hand over willy-nilly! In what part of the quote you quoted did it appear that these crews would be available to everyone
?
Aren't we supposed to be able to build our own stations and maybe even colonies? I was implying that (being an incredibly powerful supervillain), you could as well order some of your more experienced men to organize regular training in one of your hideouts, while you supply them with "fresh meat" from your raids or recruitment trips :3
I think Alex said that, colonies aren't exactly on feasible side for the player yet, considering that colonies in the setting comprise millions of people. Space stations, not too sure about those, but I think there will be some sort of space structures we can build.
You are right here however, I've forgotten that it isn't just green recruits kidnapped off the street and state sponsored military academies. There are many intermediary institutions in between them that are affordable to a small pirate group for example. Training someone until proficiency doesn't take that much resources, training someone until they are worth their weight in gold is another.
Depending on how the experience system (if there ever will be one), plays out, maybe one or two people from the local colony know how to operate a mining ship, because they're former employees of a big company or something. I agree, tho. It would be a bit weird to have a clutter of randomly experienced people upon recruitment. I hated it in Mount and Blade when I wanted fresh recruits and got some mediocre Archers instead.
Functionally speaking, anyone who has experience mining in space, operating orbital machinery, or perhaps even fighting in old wars would probably sign up in certain companies that profit off their experience. Kind of like odd jobs I guess.
Depends on how big your fleets will be. I think with a good GUI there shouldn't be much of a problem. You could split your crew in groups, like troop tiers from other games.
Might as well just handle it like:
Noob -> Recruit-> Semi-Elite -> Pro
And have a box where you can tick "Always use best/worst crew", and a slider to adjust the loadout in detail.
Though I agree that every ounce of depth you add to a mechanic, might force the player to more and more tedious micromanaging. It shouldn't be too in-depth if youre going to handle a ton of ships, but it should allow you to fine-tune everything IF you want to. Better give the player some freedom that he might never use, instead of tying up his hands so he can't even try what he wants to.
If it comes to perks and skills, you might dedicate captains and officers to that. Let their bonuses influence whole fleets or certain ships. A captain with lvl 8 mining in your armada won't help much, but if you're going to crack some asteroids with your ships he will make you rich..
Maybe we can seperate ranks and experience as well
? One thing I never got in M&B was how a peasant after one or two weeks of heavy fighting and continuously growing with each rank given to him, not get any better in the next few years of fighting simply because I didn't have any more ranks to give him. I think this could also go a ways in allowing the player to pick all the guys that have the most experience and nutured talent, and assign them to a single ship in a fleet to create the hammer or flanking forces.
I think it would be much easier if this whole crew thing was a collective faceless thing. Kinda like how you'd pour water in a glass, you can't distinguish between the individual droplets. You would have a pool of water/manpower and you'd "pour" it into your ships. As you fight more and more battles, the water in these glasses will likely become more and more experience, allowing them to mingle with the rest of the pool gives everyone a collective bonus.
There's also the issue of people who serve on a team for a certain amount of time growing proficiency with the people they work with, but it's probably going to be too complicated at that point.