About crew limits...

[Skyrocitor]

Okay first off the game is fantastic and has had me hooked since I bought it even though I have yet to beat it. Unlocked all but three of the ships and the variants for most of the ones I have. Most recently I unlocked the Mantis ship, which comes with a teleporter to start and since the Mantis are all pretty badass it's now a viable tactic for me to teleport half my crew onto the enemy ship and tear stuff up. This nets better rewards than when you just blow them up from the outside so I've been getting more gear, scrap and crew members.

And it's that last one that's starting to piss me off. See, I can only teleport two people at a time anyways so whats the harm in letting me have more crew to teleport. Why is there an upper limit at all? I keep having to turn away good crew that I just liberated even though half the rooms in my ship are empty. I can carry 22 missiles even though I sold my only missile launcher an hour ago but I can't store more troops on my ship?

Just once I want to find a huge battle that can be won by sending wave after wave of men (or other crew) at it, and watch as the killbots shutdown upon reaching their kill limit.

Yeah I guess it would be kind of broken to have people all over your ship to repair it, but if you think about it, it would balance out in the fact that the more full your ship gets the harder it gets to get people where you want them to go. Getting that one Rockman 2 rooms over from the medbay would become a challenge in itself when you have to shuffle it past all the Mantis in between. Like those sliding puzzles with the one space and 8 peices in a 9x9 square, only instead of an image it's people, and when you mess up, people die.

I mean its not as thought there is any sustaining resource besides air for the crew to run out of. If they added food or something it would make more sense but be a lot more annoying, and frankly I'm only just getting over the fact that the Engi, a mostly ROBOTIC race, need air to live.

[hghwolf]

8 Crew are already more than you can use most of the time. 2 boarders, one each for the 4 mannable systems still leaves two crewmembers sitting around with their thumbs up their arse most of the time. 8 is a good number for max crew.

[Skyrocitor]

Not when you fully upgrade the teleporter and try and deply 4 boarders to minimize time spent in the med bay. It works pretty well, but every other system it seems like I get stuck in a standoff where my boarders are in the room outsie their medbay, and eveytime they reach low health they run back to their medbay and heal. I can't fight them in the medbay, that's suicide, and with only two boarders the cycle goes on ad infinitum, with four boarders, they can just barely take one of the enemy crew down as they reach the door.

I can see why they put in a crew limit, but I just think it would be more fun if they left it up to us and let us learn the hard way how many crew we could handle at once.

[sir autismo the mid]

Solution to the teleporter problem: use the basilisk.

[Skyrocitor]

I'm just gonna go ahead and assume thats one of the few ships I don't yet have access to.

[hghwolf]

Solution to medbays : Bombs.
Basilisk is the alt of the Gila Monster. It has a 4 pad teleporter.

[Crossbow]

It becomes too crowded if more than eight people are on board since each room only holds 2-4 people. Then manoeuvering becomes a pain the ass.

[Skyrocitor]

Ah, yeah, just got the Gila today, so I haven't gotten its alt yet. In fact completing those achievments to get it is one of the reasons I wanted more crew memebers.

And yeah I already said manevering that many ppl would be a pain, I just think it should be up to the player to decide whether or not its worth it.

[bodregg]

Well, I'd have to agree with you. However, the game isn't supposed to be made as a 15+ man raid on a fleet. It's supposed to be a tiny little ship that just barely has the things it needs to win, almost like David and Goliath. As cool as it'd be, the game's emersion doesn't support a 9+ crew, the Rebel Flagship being the sole exception, having 11 crewmembers because, well, it's a flagship. Also, think: in a real situation, how would the captain keep so much crew in line?

[Jimmy_Carter]

personally i dont like this game because the ship you start off win is so weak and everywhere i go im being attacked. i hate when you find a sun and then when you leave and try to cool of the fire you are engaged in combat and at the early part i get boarded and killed because my crew is usually smaller than the other crews and then the other crews have guns and they massacre my crew and destory my ship.

[Red Spot]

Look at a modern navy, half the ship is supplies, room for the crew, and places to cook/wash/take a dump, and everything else needed to support that crew and facilitate in their needs. Just saying it breaks immersion that you cant just keep loading more crew onboards seems rather inconsistent with reality imo.

[hghwolf]

We could split the difference and have "crew module" system that determines how many crew members you can have - 4 are free, every further 2 cost one power/system upgrade to maintain and die 10 minutes after the current amount exceeds the max amount.
That way you can have massive crews but need to gimp your ship in other areas to do it.

[Hurok, Master Climber]

HGHwolf's idea sounds great. more ways to spend that 25 power you have YAY! When I reach max crew I usually assign 2 to security 2 to engineering/repair and the other 4 to system. perhaps another way to make ships more interesting would be to have each have different crew capasities. but I'm happy with 8 I have only had to turn down crew once or twice and I've played the game over 80 hours

[Skyrocitor]

Ehhhhh I think the responsiblity of keeping all those crew members alive with only one medbay or engi medbots despite the dangers of fire and pressure would still balance it out.

But clearly I'm in the minority, so nevermind.

[Bodmans]

sometims more crew is good, mostly its not. i mean, what are you supposed to do with them, do a mantis(zerg)-rush at the enemy (flag)ship? or having half of them dead because you didnt got to tele em back to your ship in time?

[Skyrocitor]

I fully upgrade my teleporter so I can get four of them on the other ship or rotate them out in teams of two. So far I've only made it to the flagship with a teleporter once, mostly due to automated drones...