Service crew?

[Regularity]

Does anyone know what they actually do?

I've tried searching thread after thread, and most of them are back from just after launch (when the game had lots of unfinished or broken features), and on top of that nearly every answer was speculation by players.

Does anyone know, concretely, what service crew actually do? Does having a fully staffed ship actually do anything?

(And as a side note, any point on putting marines on ships not being used for boarding or troop carriers? I don't ever recall seeing the AI boarding a vessel, but I don't know if that may have changed in recent patches. Still, the default loadout in shipyards always puts marines as 50% of crew, so I'm not sure if that's intentional or just the default settings for NPC ships...)

[Pathogenic]

@eMYNOCK, we summon thee! Only a dev can properly answer this!

[eMYNOCK]

Originally posted by Pathogenic:

@eMYNOCK, we summon thee! Only a dev can properly answer this!

You call me, here i am.

And now to summarize:

On S Ships they take space away.
On M/L/XL Ships they will perform Repairs.

[pulse112]

Just to further extend OP's question

1. What about Specialists in Service Crew of ships ?? - Haven't seen any so far.. Is it a future feature or the next higher rank for Able Crewman ?

2. What about the stations ?
Besides the Workforce (provided when installing Habitation modules) we can see in the info tab a section named "Player Employees on Board" which typically includes the Manager of the station.
If we position more crew there, what is the benefit ?

On OP's question: I think marines on commercial (or also on military vessels) serve as protecting the ship from NPC eventual boarding attempts - but haven't seen this happening either :)

[Knightframe]

They will speed up repairs on your ship. So if your engine is down and you have a skilled crew, they will repair it pretty fast.
I trained my crew to repair faster by going next to hostile station and taking some rocket hits (wich destroyed my turrets) and then moved away. Then i used seta till it was fixed and went back to take hits.

As for station it generaly gets auto-repaired by bots that you buy and order to manager to get.
You can only have 1 person assigned per station (2 if you are making shipyard-- as you need a seller).

[pulse112]

Have already positioned around 30 persons on a Defense Platform (not even a "proper" station with Production modules) but I can't see any difference. Will try it on a production station as well.

[blizard]

Originally posted by eMYNOCK:

Originally posted by Pathogenic:

@eMYNOCK, we summon thee! Only a dev can properly answer this!

You call me, here i am.

And now to summarize:

On S Ships they take space away.
On M/L/XL Ships they will perform Repairs.

can you make a mass move crew in next update

[JustTony]

Originally posted by pulse112:

Have already positioned around 30 persons on a Defense Platform (not even a "proper" station with Production modules) but I can't see any difference. Will try it on a production station as well.

Service crew is supposed to handle turrets better, I don't know how this applies to defence stations. On production facilities, they boost production and may run production modules at 100+ % efficiency. I have a bunch of modules on my HQ that ran at 112% efficiency last time I checked.

[Regularity]

Originally posted by JustTony:

Service crew is supposed to handle turrets better, I don't know how this applies to defence stations. On production facilities, they boost production and may run production modules at 100+ % efficiency. I have a bunch of modules on my HQ that ran at 112% efficiency last time I checked.

I think you're confusing service crew and station crew. Service crew are the NPCs you talk to and hire, and assign to ships. They have skill points and names and such.

Station "crew" are basically just a number that represents your employment/workforce aboard a station. They are not real crew as far as I can tell; they have no names, no stats, and cannot be interacted with or talked to. They are just an abstracted number like credits. It slowly increases over time as people move into empty habitats.

My station doesn't even have a single service crew member and also has 112% production efficiency.

Also,

Originally posted by JustTony:

Service crew is supposed to handle turrets better.

Didn't an actual developer just say a few posts above that service crew just repairs ships? Unless he gave an incomplete answer, or you know something that developer doesn't...

[pulse112]

Originally posted by Regularity:

Originally posted by JustTony:

Service crew is supposed to handle turrets better, I don't know how this applies to defence stations. On production facilities, they boost production and may run production modules at 100+ % efficiency. I have a bunch of modules on my HQ that ran at 112% efficiency last time I checked.

I think you're confusing service crew and station crew. Service crew are the NPCs you talk to and hire, and assign to ships. They have skill points and names and such.

Well said...

In the Information tab of a station, under Personnel, we can see 3 different sections

- Manager
• The person we assigned as Manager, showing also the skills. We can interact with him.
- Workforce
• It is a number only of people automatically generated by the time when we build Habitat modules for the said station.
  
  
• If such people exist, opening this sub-menu it shows how many people exist by Faction, depending on the Habitation modules used (Argon, Paranid, Teladi).
  
  
• They are responsible for increasing the production rate of station modules.
- Player Employees on Board - This needs further clarification
• Here the above Manager is again shown, and if further persons were transferred to this station (with the same method as the Manager), they are also shown.
  But we cannot see their skills and we can't interact (except with the Mgr), with this list, i.e. with Comm.
  
  
• However, if you land on this station and wander around the platforms, you can find these people and you can interact with them. You will also notice that they are designated as owned by you.
  
  
• You can't (re)hire them, but you can reallocate them to another working place (as with ship Crew).

Originally posted by Regularity:

Originally posted by JustTony:

Service crew is supposed to handle turrets better.

Didn't an actual developer just say a few posts above that service crew just repairs ships? Unless he gave an incomplete answer, or you know something that developer doesn't...

That was my 2nd question (in my post above) to the Dev.

What is really the purpose of those persons (Player Employees on Board) if we allocate them. Is that implemented ?

I guessed that they could assist in repairing the station (along with repair drones, as for ships) or even handling turrets in case of an attack. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any clues about it, and my Def Platform (with 30 such persons) is not attacked so far.

It still remains unanswered...

[Pathogenic]

Originally posted by eMYNOCK:

Originally posted by Pathogenic:

@eMYNOCK, we summon thee! Only a dev can properly answer this!

You call me, here i am.

And now to summarize:

On S Ships they take space away.
On M/L/XL Ships they will perform Repairs.

From the online x4 manual:

"Ship crew management is an essential part of improving your fleet's abilities. The skill of Service Crew will also improve the rate of ship actions and the quality of steering, repairing, aiming, trading and fighting (Everything gets better with a good crew!) although their skills will not count as much as those of the captain/pilot. The sum quality of a ship's crew is increased with the number of people and with the SKILL of each individual."

So does crew skill level and number affect only repair as you implied, and the x4 manual is in error, or does crew actually improve the things listed above? Which is it? I want to know so I know whether to bother paying a bit extra to add service crew to my fighters.

[eMYNOCK]

Originally posted by Pathogenic:

The skill of Service Crew will also improve the rate of ship actions and the quality of steering, repairing, aiming, trading and fighting (Everything gets better with a good crew!) although their skills will not count as much as those of the captain/pilot.

The Level of Service Crew directly influxes the Ships Total Skill, seen in the Infos of that Ship.

A Trade Ship with good Crews will not need to go to a Dock for repairs, keeping it trading without interruptions.

A M Combat Ship with a good Crew will stay in combat much longer and will go back into it faster.

A Capital Ship with a well trained Crew will keep its Shields up and its Hull mounts combat ready and should the Capitain has to flee from an engagement his Crew will get the Ship back in a good shape very fast.



This was the long and non-vague description... like in the Handbook.

And now to be really short:

Good Crews will keep their Ship repaired, their Turrets and Shields Operational and if a Capital Ship looses its Turrets and/or Shields the Crew will repair them.

More or less fast depending on their Main Skill.

[Pathogenic]

Originally posted by eMYNOCK:

Originally posted by Pathogenic:

The skill of Service Crew will also improve the rate of ship actions and the quality of steering, repairing, aiming, trading and fighting (Everything gets better with a good crew!) although their skills will not count as much as those of the captain/pilot.

The Level of Service Crew directly influxes the Ships Total Skill, seen in the Infos of that Ship.

A Trade Ship with good Crews will not need to go to a Dock for repairs, keeping it trading without interruptions.

A M Combat Ship with a good Crew will stay in combat much longer and will go back into it faster.

A Capital Ship with a well trained Crew will keep its Shields up and its Hull mounts combat ready and should the Capitain has to flee from an engagement his Crew will get the Ship back in a good shape very fast.



This was the long and non-vague description... like in the Handbook.

And now to be really short:

Good Crews will keep their Ship repaired, their Turrets and Shields Operational and if a Capital Ship looses its Turrets and/or Shields the Crew will repair them.

More or less fast depending on their Main Skill.

So, I read from this that, assuming no damage takes place, a trade ship will perform equally well with no crew as it would fully crewed? The service crew only exists to repair damage, and nothing else, on a trade ship. Correct?

M sized ships with no crew, as long as they are undamaged, will perform the same as fully crewed M sized ships?

Crew on capital ships affects shield recharge rate? That's what it seems to be from what you said. Unless you are referring to capital ships repairing damaged shields.

In the absence of any damage, will turrets on a capital ship that is fully crewed have any greater accuracy, rate of fire, and ability to fire, compared to a capital ship that has just a captain and no other crew?

Thanks for chiming in, I'd love to more fully understand the crew mechanics. To be honest, I like the requirement to have crews, and feel that they should be a necessary part on ships, and that without crews, the ships should have severe limitations. It's just that I struggle to understand what it is, besides repair (a nice but non-critical function) the function of service crew.

[JustTony]

Originally posted by pulse112:

What is really the purpose of those persons (Player Employees on Board) if we allocate them. Is that implemented ?

My guess is, it's something to be expanded upon in the future. I can see that special assignments become more important and you will explicitly need to assign drone operators, logistics officers and the likes in order to establish either the base functionality of your ship or even get bonuses. The nondescript numbers which apparently don't hold a lot of weight just seem to be the foundation (pun intended) for this.

[adam]

I'm waiting for the game to go on sale and for the reviews to be updated, but it looks like this game could do with a good wiki for all this info.

[Knightframe]

Originally posted by adam:

I'm waiting for the game to go on sale and for the reviews to be updated, but it looks like this game could do with a good wiki for all this info.

Not the best, but its fine for a little:
https://roguey.co.uk/x4/