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[Achataeon]

I don't think that crew should be treated like commodity. It's a thing. Whenever I acquire for myself a new batch of crew I've always felt that I was buying some sort of slave that is forced to do my bidding until he dies. So here's an idea of how crew could be more, organic? Realistic? At the least bit believable.

Crew would work on a contract based system. Essentially you hire crew for X amount if time for Y amount of money. Should you end up in space for longer than your contract period, the next time you drop into a station you would pay the crew an extra fee. Or you may renew your contract.

The icing on the cake would be having some form of notoriety system for the crew. A bit like the relationships you have with the different factions. I don't like how you can burn through thousands of crew in battles and you would still end up with people lining up to join your fleet. It's ridiculous. If you were notorious for having your crew killed, you should have less crew that are willing to join you, and the ones who are willing will ask for more money for their services. On the flip side, if you were careful with your crew, there should be more willing to line up to join your fleet for cheaper amounts of money for their contracts.? Your average notoriety for the past week will decide how rare/copious and cheap/expensive the crew are. This is to avoid having to spend ludicrous amounts of money to replace the crew that you've lost when you are utterly decimated that one time you underestimated your opponent. But constantly losing would drive the prices and rarity of the crew sky high.

Just some idle thoughts before I head to sleep. Please shoot it down or back it up as you see fit.

[Megas]

I like crew best as disposable commodities.  I miss spacing them.  Poster children of Disposable Heroes.

[Taizo Puckett]

I've always felt that I was buying some sort of slave that is forced to do my bidding until he dies.

From the lore point of view, it may be close to sector's reality. :\

[Achataeon]

I thought that the lore makes it, such that people are opportunistic when it comes to earning money. So I'm thinking that they're an independent sort of people clambering up to get some cash, hence their willingness to get contracts.

[Gothars]

I' not sure what the point of crew is at the moment. Crew management feels like busywork with no challenge of any kind involved, it could just as well be abstracted into a ship stat. I think crew should be either tied into an interesting gameplay mechanic or crew management should be expanded into its own sub-game (with pay, health care, loyalty etc., basically the direction Achataeon is suggesting).

I'd prefer the first option, though.


One way to do that would be to transform acquiring crew  into a real challenge. If you can't just buy them in shiploads at every station but have to actively work, search and fight for people, it makes them so much more valuable. Maybe you can only hire (any more than a trickle of) crew after you personally helped out their home market during a food crisis, or assisted their fleet that was under attack, or fulfilled a mission. Basically, get popular with them.
Maybe that crew value increase would make it necessary to have very sub par crew (basically street scum, refugees and idiots, with extremely slow level growth and a big ship performance deduction) still widely available so you don't get stranded too easily, though.


One other thing that might be interesting is if officers could be occasionally recruited from (elite) crew.

[Achataeon]

On hindsight, I'm starting to think that my suggestion was way too hands-on. Sure, it'd be nice to have another layer of gameplay (I like to keep my mind occupied with things), but with the buttload of not-yet-implemented content, (*ahem* industry *ahem*) we don't really know how the crew would factor into that.

Still, it would be nice to have the said system in place.