What does service crew do?

[dmansail]

are they needed in fighters ? and how many ?

[eMYNOCK]

service crews can also passiely repair anything that is larger than class S, you don't really need them on fighter or courier crafts because why waste a passenger slot?

[SinisterSlay]

Also very confusing where they are in an S class ship.

[Rejected Spavvn]

For the record even a huge number of elite service crew does effectively NOTHING to improve repair speed from what *I* see, it's utterly worthless to have several of them since for some reason the captain weighs far more heavily on how fast the repairs happen and how high the max percentage of repairs stop. Observed multiple times on multiple computers and operating systems (even including Linux) and I've tried to bring it up multiple times as well, either my personal Steam account is secretly X4-specifically bugged and nobody else sees the issue ever or it's that nobody else can be bothered to say anything.

Example: One captain with 5 stars repairs an M ship WAY faster ALONE without ANY service crew than one 3 star captain with 25 service crew with 5 stars in both engineering and morale, YES I CHECKED THE EXACT HULL POINTS PER TICK in case anyone still thinks I can't read numbers, I've checked and rechecked and rechecked countless times. (Last time I brought this up some moron thought I don't understand the difference between percentages and absolute numbers and was dragging repair drones into the argument.) This idiotic issue is exactly 100% consistent on Windows 7, Linux, Windows 11, AMD or Intel CPU along with other extremely varied hardware, tested over and over for several years through multiple X4 patches with identical result and reported over and over by me.

Am I seriously the only one who is hit by this issue? One would think 300 elite crew should be able to repair an Erlking faster than 16 hull per tick even if they don't have any of those suicidal idiot piece of scrap drones that fly out and instantly get destroyed by flying in front of the ships own turrets if any component gets slightly dented in a fight...

[eMYNOCK]

i assume you have not seen them rapidly repairing wrecked surface elements.
if you are looking for the raw hull you will not be statisfied... but a top crew can repair a destroyed engine, shield or turret in basically 4-5 cycles.

[Rejected Spavvn]

Well they have not done that either without repair drones, I didn't bother bringing up the fact to avoid bloating my post. My statement stands, the values I see are ABYSMAL REPAIR RATES no matter how many hundreds of maxed out service crew I stuff into any ship I've tried, if they have drones they repair at great speed but when the drones get destroyed (as they always effin do, I HATE them) or in M ships that don't even have drones, the number and skill of crew matters close to absolutely zero. Gotten some L/XL ships damaged to the point of having no engines and no drones, stranded in hostile territory and every single time it takes absolutely ages to get them operational again, regardless of crew number and skill.

Clearly I must be the only one who gets this issue since it's consistent across operating systems and hardware setups but I'm the only one who keeps seeing it 100% guaranteed every single time no matter what I try to do to test if there's a workaround FOR YEARS. Has the game flagged me as an undesirable player or something, do I need to change my Steam username to a more friendly one or what?

[eMYNOCK]

i don't think its your username... propably just some strange coincidence or weird expectations.

crews do not influence the amount or speed at wich a hull or surface element will be repaired... they influence how close to 100% it can be repaired.

and for surface mounts, like i have said, they work wonders... unless the entire ship is literally a wreck and they have to go through every mount.

[Rejected Spavvn]

That doesn't even make sense in the first place, and clearly isn't working since elite crew can't repair an M ship to even 85% if the captains level is on the low side. Heck the M ships even self repair if *abandoned without anyone on board* which is some spooky Xenon level stuff right there...

I'm calling extremely bad game design to not have the number of crew influence how fast things repair, and major bug that they don't even affect the max percentage that the objects/ships can be repaired. Wish we could have had this discussion good and proper earlier.

At any rate PLEASE either change how this works in the game or MAKE IT CLEAR IN GAME that it's a complete waste of time and resources to painstakingly collect hundreds of highly skilled service crew, seriously why the blazes CAN we even have hundreds of elite crew if they don't provide the slightest value above a single braindead level zero Teladi we hired for 50 credits... I'd prefer the first of those options, PLUS a major cleanup of the missing mechanics explanations in the game since we're constantly forced to guess how things are supposed to work or try to pester whoever happens to be online on forums etc until we get answers - which we often still don't...

[dmansail]

So, no service crew om fighters , on M class ships ? On L and XL class? I think that they are under - made by our devs , as the marines , as they do not do anything special . I would like this to change , so the crew can have a more effective influence in the game.
And, for the stations ?

[Wraith]

No that incorrect service crew contribute to a ship overall star level as well

For fighters this mean they can’t fully be 5 star without them

A true 3 to 5 star fighter are pretty awesome to watch if you put them in the right ship

[hurepoix]

Crews are mostly useless on any ships except miners. Repair is a false argument since it is so slow than in combat situation it cant have any influnece on ship s survivabilaty.
For miners ships crews experience seems to have an effect on ship effiencency.

The only interrest to have a handful of crew on a ships is they gain experience so it give you a reserve for futurs pilots or managers.
From my experience best experience growth occurs on building ships where once more, otherwise crews are completly useless. Have just the captain or the captain + 200 5 stars crews dont reduce construstions time.

[flywlyx]

There is a guide here:https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3120616748

You can look up "Combinedskill" to comprehend its meaning in the guide (a combination of pilot and crew skill) and observe how it influences ship behavior.

[🎮 PalkoVvodets 🔑]

Originally posted by Rejected Spavvn:

if they have drones they repair at great speed

There is currently weird behavior in game when ship of any size with drones at some hull health threshold may start boosting their health value significantly faster than any shield regeneration.

Originally posted by Rejected Spavvn:

I'm calling extremely bad game design to not have the number of crew influence how fast things repair

From what I recall from mentioned guide crew speeds up health repair, but if component destroyed completely only size of that component matters towards restoration time.

Originally posted by eMYNOCK:

crews do not influence the amount or speed at wich a hull or surface element will be repaired... they influence how close to 100% it can be repaired.

According to guide service crew do impacts repair speed. I didn't test myself, but Wraith provided video with high skilled and rookie crew repairs back in the day.

[hurepoix]

Repair is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. It cant be enough fast in combat to save the ship. Once you are not more in combat who care if repair will take 20 mn instead of 10 ?

I saw no where evidence that a military ship is faster, more agile, more accurate or have a better ROF with experienced crew. Captain have an influence, probably yes, but crew not.

Crew dont make a freighter or constrution ship more efficient ; here it is sure crew is completly useless.

For miners ships, some hints convinced me that crews can be usefull. In all other case, may be some people could stop to play the fanboys and try to justify crews usefulness where they have not. Crew is obviously an unexploited/empty part of the game.

Nota ; I hire crews anyway for all of my ships, but it is only my rp side that makes I act like that.

[Wraith]

Originally posted by hurepoix:

Repair is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. It cant be enough fast in combat to save the ship. Once you are not more in combat who care if repair will take 20 mn instead of 10 ?

I saw no where evidence that a military ship is faster, more agile, more accurate or have a better ROF with experienced crew. Captain have an influence, probably yes, but crew not.

Crew dont make a freighter or constrution ship more efficient ; here it is sure crew is completly useless.

For miners ships, some hints convinced me that crews can be usefull. In all other case, may be some people could stop to play the fanboys and try to justify crews usefulness where they have not. Crew is obviously an unexploited/empty part of the game.

Nota ; I hire crews anyway for all of my ships, but it is only my rp side that makes I act like that.

captain has the majority of effect yah because he gives the most to the overall level of the ship
without a crew though the ship total level isn't gonna get anywhere which does affect the ship reaction and performance in pretty much all combat ship

The level of the ship doesn't make ship faster, shoot faster etc.
It makes them able to react faster and unlock more advance behavior in ship combat.

[The Gunsmith]

so to definitively answer op's questions, in order:
- functionally nothing but this doesn't seem to be the intended way
- absolutely not, infact you are worse off for doing so
- 0, zero, none, dont waste your credits

Rejected spavvn and hurepoix's experiences seem to match my own, cant speak for them but im un-modded.

Originally posted by Wraith:

No that incorrect service crew contribute to a ship overall star level as well

For fighters this mean they can’t fully be 5 star without them

A true 3 to 5 star fighter are pretty awesome to watch if you put them in the right ship

you are right crew contributes to level, but it is blatantly false that a fighter cannot reach 5 stars without extra crew. you need 5 star piloting AND morale for your total score to be 5 stars on captain alone.

i've never personally wasted the time sticking a 5 star captain in anything smaller than L ships because it feels bad when they die.