What happens with redundant crew when ship switching?

[DwemerManiac]

Hi, finally got to the moment when buying biigger ship= more crew. Will take some time to train these new guys.I wonder what will happen with redundant crew when I decide to switch from bigger to smaller,faster ship (for example for some mission purpose)? Will these 6-12 people wait for me on another ship in dry dock? Hope will not lose them when switching between ships.

[Chose Carrée]

They will prevent you from switching. It makes downsizing rather impractical, unless you planned for it, for instance by sticking to 36 guys with one of the 8-9k mass ships.

[Trese Brothers]

They have to be dismissed.

[Boku]

This is a bit of a shame, as it makes you feel quite a lot less effective and leaves you stuck in your biggest ship. I don't mind the crew so much as the officers - you carefully cultivate your officers and fight with them for decades, and they can't just wait in port for a few months getting some R&R while you go fight things in a combat ship instead of your big cruiser?

Seems unlikely.

Basically a player that ends up in a big ship can't switch to a smaller one even with millions of credits at their disposal. If I was a crew member, I'd hang around in port for double pay?!?

It's unfortunate as this breaks immersion and dissuades against good play (shaping your ships to your missions).

[nephilimnexus]

Port Royale 2, as old as it is, gets it right. You've got a port with crew wandering around. When you want to launch a ship they all pile onboard. If there isn't enough room the extras just stay behind and run up your bills. But they don't vanish or anything.

Likewise, the ancient game Darklands lets you not-permanently retire party members. Depending on their skills, they just take up local jobs and can rejoin you later. Catch being that they still age and their non-job skills (read: adventuring skills) decay over time due to lack of use.

For this game, best balance would be that grounded crew still collect pay and take a slow loss of morale, say 1 point per week, from boredom until you pick them up again. Eventually they would quit, but it wouldn't be instant.

[Trese Brothers]

Originally posted by Boku:

It's unfortunate as this breaks immersion and dissuades against good play (shaping your ships to your missions).

Sorry that you feel like it breaks the immersion. For us, and the universe's lore, having them stick around a starport indefinitely breaks the immersion the other way. Spacers have long lives because they live in space, near a void engine, making highly profitable wages compared to those living on the ground. Your "wait here for a bit, I think I might come back later" is not something many would tolerate, basically "stay here on this rock, drink and get old." Its well known that when a spacer ends their career and stops traveling the void, life catches up with them very hard and very quickly.

Included a link to the lorebook:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/hxev05ooli1rp37/Star%20Traders%20Frontiers%20Lore%20Book%20-%20Volume%201.pdf?dl=0

[Gilmoy]

Also, from a game management standpoint, suddenly the player's cognitive load would soar by yet another huge (multiplicative) factor, because we'd have:

-- multiple ships in shipyards all over the map
-- multiple stashes all over the map
++multiple sets of crew members in ports all over the map

There's something to be said for a lightweight, strongly localized focus of attention, namely one ship (and one Captain). It does create some immersion: you really feel like you're this one Captain, and your attention span follows the one ship around, through its successes and (one-shot-to-a-critical) failures.

If you want multiple ships, and multiple fleets with multiple heroes/commanders, those games also exist, and they're fun too, in other weeks :) (In fact, the Trese Brothers Complete Set is on sale this week, and it contains a Star Traders 4X game with that kind of thing! )

~~~~~~~~

Along this vein, in RPGs like Might & Magic or the various AD&D games (with Drizzt :), I sometimes wish I could create a 2nd player character group, and raid a dungeon re-entrantly, i.e. a 2nd assault through the front door, while the tattered inhabitants have set up their death trap battle line against my 1st party, who's still trapped in the basement. In other words, their backs are all turned to the front door now, get it? No dungeon could stand against this brilliant technique! But it's a hallowed rule in RPGs that There Exists Only One Party. That's not a faulty model; it's the intended niche, and it's fun.

[Trese Brothers]

It is very feasible to have multiple ships in the same mass band, each specialized for different operations and way swapping. Certainly, as you go up to the largest, your options become more limited.

[DwemerManiac]

Ok, must say that LORE and immersion reasons are fair enough...If you leave somebody on planet, he wouldnt sit there and wait all lifec till you have idea to pick them up oner more time...yes, its not comfortable but for immersion, rougelike game ideas, I get it.

[JimmysTheBestCop]

I tend to look at crew and officers and completely replaceable components. Kind of like Battle Brothers is with your merc band.

I might have a couple of of members who last from day 1. But I tend to completely remold my crew/officers for what I want to accomplish in game at the time. With contacts and conscripting you can always find good crew and officers.

Example go an add +50 pilot modules to your ship you'll need like 15 pilots if you make that jump in 1 shot. So its either add them and once they level keep dismissing or conscript high level ones from other ships.

You can start as a non combat (space/crew) trader and end up as a military xeno hunting explorer in crew and space battles all the time.

Now you'll most likely have to completely swap your officers and most of your non standard planet crew around.

STF isn't like Baldurs Gate 2 where everyone was a NPC companion so they had to wait around for you. This game has unlimited crew/officers so I agree it doesn't make sense for them to wait around.

[daemonworks]

It makes more sense as it is. Space is generally equated to historical naval (for lots of good reasons that would take a while to go into), and when it came to private vessels and fleets, if you had more crew than you needed (or somebody you just didn't like), you just drop them at a port with with a letter of recommendation if you liked them, and they'd hire on to the next ship that came by and needing more hands.