Require crews for larger ships

[prolog]

As the title says, I think that larger ships should require crews, which would need to be hired before you could go anywhere, and paid weekly or bi-weekly. The larger the ship, the more money required (which would be offset by the fact that the larger ships can do massive cargo runs/deadly bounty missions/etc). In this way, there'd actually be a reason to stick with smaller ships, if you didn't feel like paying anyone but yourself.

[Paslowo]

How about this..

Lets say technology has already advanced in vegastrike to a point where it should require a lot less crewmen to operate a large capital ships..

When I get the time to model large ships for my own chassias, about 75% will be automated.

[Ryder P. Moses]

Something like this would be kinda cute eventually, but I think it would be necessary for it to come as part of an overall modification of the current game to give a feel of population in the ships. Simply tacking extra purchase requirements on top of the existing system would be an unnecessary and unpleasant aggravation that added nothing to the game; if it comes as part of a larger scheme then it might be cool.

The best application for this I can think of will come when all these new gameplay models everyone's been talking about start getting added; the autopilots and power management and repair systems and smart weapons and fancy turrets and et cetera et cetera. It's a lot of functions, and on a large ship it'd rapidly become overwhelming to try and deal with it on one's own. So one could "hire" a "crewman" in that field, a purchase which'd activate (at least for a time), the automated AI controls for that component, so that you can spend your time worrying about more important things, rather than having to constantly switch between operating your gun turrets, running damcon on your engines, and flying the ship in the middle of a firefight.

Aside from actually giving the player a feeling of getting something for their money and finally allowing for some simulation of actual human interaction ingame, this'd have the advantage of allowing the player to tailor their gameplay more; rather than paying a bajillion credits to hire fifty crewmen to sit around and stare at the wall while you fly your stripped-down Mule around space because if that wall goes un-stared-at you for some reason cannot even take off, you can save money by leaving off functions or doing everything yourself, or buy crewmen for only what you need (no point in having a lot of gunners if you always just run away from a fight, say).

[klauss]

Spirit is already working on a crew model for WCU.
If it works out nice, it can be incorporated into VS.

[Halleck]

Cool... *jots down on my "Good For Elite Strike" notepad*.

[shatner]

I just had an idea for this. Why is the player so big and important that they automatically become captain of the first capital ship they buy? Why not earn money by becoming part of someone's crew? The player could have their own station on the ship. i.e. Navigation, Weapons, Repair, etc. I'm not going to add any more to that because this isn't my feature request.

[Psyco Diver 69]

Because thats not why people bought the game. People buy the game to fly thier own ship. I really don't want to go from flying my lil carbo ship to being the captins bitch on a cap ship. I understand your need to prove to be a captin, but think about it like this, you have to earn ALOT of money to buy a cap ship. That means flying tons of missions, fighting off lot of enemys and ect. I think the experience to buy one automatically gives you the right to fly your own cap ship, plus the fact you own the ship so you should be captin anyways

[Miramor]

Umm... Because you were the one who bought the ship and hired out the crew?

[shatner]

Good point. I officially stand corrected.