I've been watching the development of this game, and I apologize for rehashing an old topic, but all the threads I've seen on this have degenerated.  I'm not here to troll, but I'm curious as to how this could work. I'll begin with an example.

Starquest Online has persistent ship crews. You make a character, you broadcast for a berth. You get invited to a crew. This sounds like what the Player Crew bunch want, and it works out okay.

Now you're on the ship. You get the tour. Here's the Transporter Room, here's the Brig, here's Engineering, here's the Bridge. All cool. Here's how Helm works, and Tactical, and Comms. All really cool. You see that you'll need to work together with others to get the best from your ship, and that's what you signed on for.  Good stuff.

The thing I liked the most about SQO was wandering the ship. I log in and I'm in my quarters. Quick shower and I'm on my way.

Go to the gym and run on the treadmill for a bit to build stamina. Go to the target range and get some practice in to raise shooting skills. Go to Engineering and strip down the aft tractor beam and rebuild it again.  Go to the mess and have a burger. Red Alert! Go to the Battle Bridge. All good immersive fun, but there are drawbacks.

Late one night, Ensign Ricky logs in. He's the only one on the ship. Ensign Ricky takes The Big Chair.

Ensign Ricky sets a course right into the Neutral Zone. Ensign Ricky flies right into a solar flare. Ensign Ricky shoots up a Federation science vessel for LULZ and gets you flagged. Ensign Ricky pushes that Big Red Button in Engineering. Your ship is destroyed. Now what?

In SQO you respawn on Terra in the Hospital. No gear, no uniform. You need to contact your ship, assuming someone has salvaged it, and get them to pick you up. Two days later Johnny-Come-Lately needs a pick-up. You need to get the band back together.

There's a lot of merit for a Player Crew in a Star Trek game, but how would you want it to work?

Hey hey, it's my first post on these forums as I have been wanting to avoid joining due to the nerdrage demographic here. Though I figure this site is only going to get bigger, so it's not going anywhere, and I always use it to get news on the games I'd never hear about. So I guess it's about time I broke some ice.

I am type of guy that lives, breaths and excretes video game design, theories and story works and want to get into the industry as a writer/musician or sumfin sumday. Whenever I play a game I am in permanent QA mode and tend to break things down and it fuels my own inspiration, then I troll game forums with "how I would do it" posts all day. So this post is prolly the perfect way to make my first point here on the forums. I will pick up this game for sure, but am in no way a major fan comparably to Star Wars.

________________________

Anyway, first off I think STO needs to take a look at the average guild-setup seen in other games, roll with it, but from a Star Trek perspective. There is no "guilds", but there are "crews" - same thing. No doubt you will have to declare allegiance to Federation/Klingon/Etc, but that comes with the IP territory. To this point, the guild structure should no doubt be focused on having multiple players command various sections of the highest-end ships in the game, and the main drive to be top ranking crew in the faction's fleet. No doubt a very PvE driven game, but PvP in obviously a wonderful given. I'm guessing there will be single+ manned fighters to start with, but nothing will compare to command-type ships - and that is where I am sure (or at least, hope) the Crew thing comes in.

I would have to do my research, but perhaps each major organization has different doctrines, and therefore Guild heirarchies. Like federations ships being ran by the Captain (guildmaster), A few choice officers or a first mate, then a bunch of red suits (/grimace). Now I don't know HOW they plan to go about this or if it's even the case, maybe we will just see NPC crews and entire fleets are a few players. That would make for a more "filled in" epic sense of combat with very few players involved, but it destroys any progression that smaller fighters would have between ships. IMO, tried and true methods of single-man small vessel vs hunking multi-manned ones work and fit the setting perfectly, besides the fact that massive PvP stuff will lag too much with 100 ships when all the players can be stuffed into maybe 20. The end question is what does everyone DO while onboard?

To be true to the setting the Idea would have to be that the captain sits in a chair and gives commands, one guy steers, one guy diverts power between systems, a couple people handle weapons (and FPS-style turrets would be an awesome stretch of the idea), and the rest of the crew patches things up as the walls give off random sparks and doors open/close on their own. I'm serious, how far we hav come... I don't know how much fun this would be for the captain, but the other various jobs that needs doing could very well suit individual playstyle preferences. Piloting, shooting, support... but the Capn's job would truly be pointless, and it would suck if others could only do thier job once commanded to do so. The idea needs more imagination-crack.

My final point is that I hope they don't really go the NPC crew route and let single players command motherships. There is a huge lesson already learned in other games that you cannot make an MMO too solo-oriented. This game seems well suited to the point that you can solo vs like-craft, but as a solo-adventurer in a fighter you should not attempt something out of your league. MMOs with RTS mechanics like automated minions do not mix well in multiplayer scenarios since it still comes down to "every man for himself".

Here are some of the issues with player run crews:

1. Time
   1. The idea of guilds is nice, but guilds do not always play 100% of the time together.
   2. With a guild being in charge, how are you going to make sure that the Nurse Ratchet's of the game actually can play whenever the heck they want to?
   3. Forced grouping sucks.
      1. Yes this is an mmo, but there are times when workshifts change, life changes and the only time a person can get a chance to play is between let's say 3:15am and 4:15am.  You can not expect a game to have a healthy community if people HAVE to wait around to get accepted to some jackholes crew
2. Star Trek is a MILITARY organization
   1. Yes, their primary mission is exploration and they have full science vessels etc but its a military organization
   2. In order to have effective bridge crews, ship crews, there is a great amount of training
      1. If you think its that easy, join the Navy of your respective countries and find out exactly how hard a job it is
   3. Yes it is a TV Show however it is written to replicate the above points
      1. You are not going to get the skill and attention of players found in the tv shows and in actual navies.  People have family, friends, tv, phone, IM, etc etc etc, all of which serves as a distraction to playing.  I know I do not want to have to sit through whatever bs because Joe's frickin kid needs to have its diaper changed right now lol.
3. Logistics Logistics Logistics
   1. In order to make it worthwhile for someone to play nurse rand, 3rd Bosun's Mate Smitty, or Janitorial serviceman Adams they would have to create enough content to satisfy all of those people.  Sure the helmsman, Captain and science officer have lots to do but everyone else gets to sit with their thumbs up their asses in a $15 (or w/e monthly fee they come up with) a month chat room.
   2. A ship like the Enterprise E had well over a thousand people on board, if we narrowed it down to 100, or even 50, hell 10, they have to create 10 full games and tie them all in together.

I seriously do not think anyone that wants a fully player run ship crew has even the slightest notion of the amount of crap that it would cause and I guarantee that they would be the first one's to come whining to the forums the first time they log in and aren't able to play the game because there isn't any ship that needs another freakin helmsman.

I do not want player run crews, I want cryptic to make the game that they want to make and let all the armchair developers go off and make their own game if they have such ground-breakingly good ideas.  Just my $.02 :)

The Original Poster and follow up posts all have good points. It seems that at the launch of the game, we will have single players running entire ships in a solo fashion, so that's that. Sometime after launch though, I guess they could impliment multiple players on a single ship in the following way.

1) With a single Captain on board as the only PC, all ship stations and functions are handled by internalized NPC's that perform at a standard level of performance. Maybe there's leeway with getting better NPC's or better training for them later - who knows? It's not especially important.

2) Players can come on board as a formed party on a ship, but the number is limited for the shared "fun factor" that the game program can offer the players. The stations of Captain, Tactical Officer (shields&weapons), Helmsmen (pilot), Engineer (ship repair / power allocation / mid fight customization), Science Officier (ECM / ECCM duty, scanners, ship's computer use? dunno), and Marine Commander (ship's internal defense to repel boarders / leader for aggressive boarding party actions on enemy ships) are all open for use. The assumption here is that with a player actively taking over a role that is handled by an NPC, that the player would be superior to use in that function as long as they were half awake and had a smattering of skill points for the appropriate areas.

At this point a game designer might make something a simple as that and then test it out, have others test it, and answer the big question of  " is everyone having fun & feeling useful in doing this, as opposed to having their own ship? "

I could see it being a blast with say, a player Guild that had access to Capital Ships or Dreadnaughts. The big bad boy ships have so much power that if players were actively manning the ship's seperate functions, it would be even that much more powerful to take on as an opponent. Likewise, perhaps a wing of three or four fully PC manned Federation Medium Cruisers or Klingon Battlecruisers would absolutely mop up the floor against 5 to 7 ships of equal strength that only have one player manning each one.

Fun for PvP? Sure. Fun for general purposes of the game with exploration and the like? Kinda sorta not so much.

I like the idea of ship crews.  In BF2142 I loved to be a gunner on a helicopter with someone else flying it.  However in an FPS with a limited amount of players and a reletively short time for one game this is a lot easier to achieve than in an MMO and even then in the BF2142 example you can still fly the chopper solo and shoot the guns.

I haven't followed STO production but what would seem logical is a progession with smaller ships being solo, middle sized with a small crew and the larger you go the larger your crew is.  Being an MMO any ship would have to be able to fly solo with NPC crew or with a mix of NPC/player crews, up to fully crewed which should give an advantage over NPC crews.

Personally the position of captain seems rather redundant.  It sounds great and from an IP perspective necessary but if all you do is sit there and give orders it doesn't look very attractive from a playing perspective. 

For playing the 2 main activities that seem the most interesting would be flying and shooting however that depends on how interactive either activity is made to be.  Flying you can clearly only have one person doing it, shooting on larger ships could be done by several people.  To add more crew positions you could have someone responsible for scanning/jamming other vessels, monitoring the shields, ... However how you can make these extra positions interesting enough to play I have no idea. 

Even if you can make them interesting in combat situations how about when you're not fighting but exploring.  Also what happens when someone wants to go in another direction?  In any fantasy MMO you just drop group and go solo.  Here you would have to have some solo ships in the hold they can fly off in.  I like the ides of ship crews but I don't know if it can be implemented in an MMO.

Originally posted by severius

Here are some of the issues with player run crews:

1. Time
   1. The idea of guilds is nice, but guilds do not always play 100% of the time together.
   2. With a guild being in charge, how are you going to make sure that the Nurse Ratchet's of the game actually can play whenever the heck they want to?
   3. Forced grouping sucks.
      1. Yes this is an mmo, but there are times when workshifts change, life changes and the only time a person can get a chance to play is between let's say 3:15am and 4:15am.  You can not expect a game to have a healthy community if people HAVE to wait around to get accepted to some jackholes crew
2. Star Trek is a MILITARY organization
   1. Yes, their primary mission is exploration and they have full science vessels etc but its a military organization
   2. In order to have effective bridge crews, ship crews, there is a great amount of training
      1. If you think its that easy, join the Navy of your respective countries and find out exactly how hard a job it is
   3. Yes it is a TV Show however it is written to replicate the above points
      1. You are not going to get the skill and attention of players found in the tv shows and in actual navies.  People have family, friends, tv, phone, IM, etc etc etc, all of which serves as a distraction to playing.  I know I do not want to have to sit through whatever bs because Joe's frickin kid needs to have its diaper changed right now lol.
3. Logistics Logistics Logistics
   1. In order to make it worthwhile for someone to play nurse rand, 3rd Bosun's Mate Smitty, or Janitorial serviceman Adams they would have to create enough content to satisfy all of those people.  Sure the helmsman, Captain and science officer have lots to do but everyone else gets to sit with their thumbs up their asses in a $15 (or w/e monthly fee they come up with) a month chat room.
   2. A ship like the Enterprise E had well over a thousand people on board, if we narrowed it down to 100, or even 50, hell 10, they have to create 10 full games and tie them all in together.

I seriously do not think anyone that wants a fully player run ship crew has even the slightest notion of the amount of crap that it would cause and I guarantee that they would be the first one's to come whining to the forums the first time they log in and aren't able to play the game because there isn't any ship that needs another freakin helmsman.

I do not want player run crews, I want cryptic to make the game that they want to make and let all the armchair developers go off and make their own game if they have such ground-breakingly good ideas.  Just my $.02 :)

Well said. The best way to make the player crew crowd happy is to add a feature for the big ships that allow people to group up in 5 man crews. Of course you then are back to giving others besides the captain something to do. But if it's made an option then they should be happy without forcing others to partake in this that don't  want to.
 

I like the way SQO did it too, but I think you left out one important game mechanic

You log into Ensign Ricky, and no one is onboard the ship (guild) at the moment, and you don't want to fly this ship into a flare or shoot at things you're not supposed to, what do you do ?

You have 5 other character slots, you log into your civilian character and craft some items for sale, or run some cargo, or go mine an asteroid

You log into your bounty hunter character, and go snuff some alien scumbag with a price on his head

Etc.  etc. etc.

In other words, player crews are a great way to play a game, as long as there is other stuff for people to do who are not in crews

Some interesting ideas. I think that ship size could relate group size. On your own, off you go in a shuttle, nice group of six, capital ship time :)

Role broken down into piloting, shooting, command (shoot that one, run away now etc), engineering, targetting (scanning).

While this setup would work for "fighting", questing might be more probematical (unless there was a lot of fighting).

Guilds could have ships, which would be fairly easy to lock down much in the way loot is in many MMOs (thus stopping Johnny Newbee trashing the guild's Ent3rpri3e capital ship).

PvP, would work fairly well, as a number of players could either play in a battlegroup in "shuttles" or take out the starbase's "standard" defiant class. With a little thought, I think it would be possible to contruct a game with Player crews and solo crafts which would work.

Here's how it works in the real world.

Everyone has a capital ship.  There are no fighters or shuttles or anything else like that in STO that we know of.   Everyone can and will fly capital ships solo.  That's what you do when nobody else on your crew is around or if you don't want to be part of a crew.  You'll probably also see that in PvP because six people in six Birds of Prey will always be better than six people on one Bird of Prey.

But for PvE, for Trek Fans, for roleplayers and folks who just like the starship experience the multiplayer ship will be home.   It's the guildhall and the raid group all in one place at the same time.

What happens if some ignoramus blows up my ship?  Well, in SWG you have ship permissions.  You can specify who is allowed to control the ship or pick up/drop objects in it.  I imagine you'll be able to set different duties with different permissions in STO.  But the real answer is you should be paying attention to who is on your ship what they're doing.  It's still your ship.  It won't exist if you're not online and on board it yourself.  You just invite other people to fly with you.

Still, my ship got blown up!  Yes, that does suck.  You're all back at a starbase and might have to click on a button to get back on the ship again.  Wait, that somehow doesn't sound so terrible.

What about Ensign Ricky?  You've just learned a valuable lesson about Ricky and it might be time to update your crew roster.

How do I get a crew?  How do you get any adventuring party together?  Ask around or, if you're wise, form a guild.  Focus on multiplayer ships in general or one ship in particular.  Sure, it's really a fleet of many captains on one level but on another it can be just a captain and his crew.  Or several captains and players who take turns being crew for each other.   This is how it works in SWG.

There's no major drama or trauma to this.  It's no harder than anything else in any MMO from a player's perspective.

And it's huge fun.   If you haven't played a multiplayer ship game you really should.  One caveat is that you certainly want to pick your crew wisely and have good natured, fun, people around.  Especially roleplayers.  That's when the experience shines.

As for the technical details of a starship in STO and the roles of individual crew I'd say look to FASA's old tabletop RPG.  Everyone had pads and systems to oversee.  The captain didn't.  His job was focusing on the big picture, and ship-to-ship tactics, and coordinating tactical with navigation with ops with engineering with security to make sure things were getting done.

This also worked very well in HSPACE, a system for MUSH spaceflight.

The team dynamic is very powerful and exciting.  Describing in detail how each position would function in detail doesn't do it justice it's the gestalt of everything working together that's so powerful.

I think they could do a one ship type of thing.

The Ship is essentially the guild hall. There is one captain. I know that brings up some issues but really, in a clan or kin or whatever game you play, there is usually a guild leader who makes the decisons and sets the tone of the group.

The captain can give permission to other to fly the ship if needed, however, like any party, whether it's pve or pvp you have a group. The group is usually set up with damage dealers, buffers, healers, crowd control, etc.

So instead of having players in a fantasy game fulfill these roles, make it so that it makes sense at a ships stations.

Your damage dealers control the weapons, your healers handle repairs, buffers for extra power to the engines, weapons, etc.

Make it so that the players, once they enter combat mode get a console where they can apply their skills and fulfill these roles.

In Lineage 2 it is common to have large alliance battles so I don't see why you couldn't even have a ship be alliance controlled with players all contributing.

There might have to be a small bit of bending to the rules in order to have 6 damage dealers controlling weapons but I think it would be a small price to pay for large ship to ship combat.

The best way I've heard is to have npc positions be "relieved" by pc's if you invite them into a party (recruite them for your ship). It would help with the problem of keeping a group together if red shirts took over all the open slots. You could still solo with all your red-shirts, but they wouldn't be as good.

I think you should be able to play different roles, either like jobs in FFXI, or roll different character types. I just don't see how playing a full-time crew-member on a ship would be fun, with the exception of the captain.

Also, I *hate* pvp, but I think it could work well for everybody on the same server if it was sufficiently hard to get to another factions territory. Think how hard it would be to get a Federation ship into Klingon territory without being ganged up on and destroyed. That's how it should be, imo. If your not interested in pvp, stay in your own territory and you *should* be safe.

Ensign Ricky Logs in.

Ensign Ricky dosnt have a player crew because everyone is a captain and has some magical crew.

Ensign Ricky can not walk around his ship.

Ensign Ricky can not decorate his ship to his personal touch because there are no interiors.

Ensign Ricky realizes he is paying 14.95 a month for a space shooter.

Ensign Ricky hits /cancel

Originally posted by Cola

Ensign Ricky Logs in.

Ensign Ricky dosnt have a player crew because everyone is a captain and has some magical crew.

Ensign Ricky can not walk around his ship.

Ensign Ricky can not decorate his ship to his personal touch because there are no interiors.

Ensign Ricky realizes he is paying 14.95 a month for a space shooter.

Ensign Ricky hits /cancel

 

 

Here's what the game is like when folks like you get your way...

Ensign Ricky Logs in

Ensign Ricky can't play because the captain and first officer is over at Quark's gambling

Ensign Ricky is tired of listening to the Lt. at OPS talking about his personal life. He'd REALLY prefer exploring the Galaxy.

Ensign Ricky can't do anything but sit on the bridge, listen to a LT's social life and admire the scenery

Ensign Ricky realizes he is paying 14.95 for a space sim

Ensign Ricky hits/cancel

ok here is an idea how you can kind of make this work.    may not be valid have to think on this more.

If You will have ships based  on skill level and story arc advancement.

so you have a few level 30's in a wing/fleet along with 5-10 level 10-15, the higher rank people can roll out a much larger ship so you allow the other charcters to help man you dreadnaught/BBS and make it more effective for a serious engagement. 

that would mean that if you had a science officer on the bridge you would get better shield recharge and control.

if you had a weapons officer you would have better control and more options on your targeting and weapon control.

if you had a security officer you could beam marines aboard other ships and set explosives or sabotage.

if you had a engineer you would generate more power and  some other bonuses

all of these would be active functions, forcing the players to use there brains not just have the right skills on a charcter.

This would mean a fleet of 3-5 larger ships with personal crews would be more effective in combat than

3-5 npc crew dreads with 10-15 npc crew frigs/cruisers

I am not sure that this makes sense.

its kind of like a raid concept more people on a single ship is stronger than a group of NPC manned ships.

Originally posted by ktanner3

 

Here's what the game is like when folks like you get your way...

Ensign Ricky Logs in

Ensign Ricky can't play because the captain and first officer is over at Quark's gambling

Ensign Ricky is tired of listening to the Lt. at OPS talking about his personal life. He'd REALLY prefer exploring the Galaxy.

Ensign Ricky can't do anything but sit on the bridge, listen to a LT's social life and admire the scenery

Ensign Ricky realizes he is paying 14.95 for a space sim

Ensign Ricky hits/cancel

Exactly. Nothing would kill the game faster.

Word would instantly start to spread that it's nothing but a game for middle aged Trek nerds only wanting to live out their fantasy Star Trek life chattering with each other as they walk around their ship. Most people would avoid it like the plague, leaving only a few thousand to play it for the few months they kept it up and running.

I think you just need to use your imagination and think outside the crap that has been done. There are hundreds of ways. The best ways in my opinion have already been said and might I add ignored by those who say it cannot be done.

First point that was important, is to make it optional but benificial to have PC crews and it wouldn't be hard to have some sort of optional system were others beside the captain could sit in the command seat.

Than you could have the whole thing able to be automated with NPC's but less effectively than PC's. Or in other words do what they are going to do but give the option and benefits for PC's to take over some of those task. From there there are many ways the idividual task could be done/enjoyed but its trivial

Player crewed ships worked for 2 decades now in Mu* based games. The problem is the design philosophy Cryptic is using. They're not going sandbox, they're going theme park. Player crewed ships is a sandbox based mechanic and Cryptic simply isn't shooting for sandbox. At the core is the sandbox/theme park debate. Online games work off the ability to interact with others in meaningful ways in a zone/environment. It could be any zone/environment -- including a ship. A ship is a moving zone that goes from place to place allowing you to explore even more locations. Cryptic doesn't get that the consoles need not be interesting they merely need to work to do what is needed. The game should be about community interaction, not the systems needed to fly a ship. It shows where Cryptic's design focus is and where it isn't. It also shows that they don't get it. What needs to be engaging is the crew interactions and the places they go and what they do in their free time on the ship. Hopping into a console and flying the ship is a fraction of what makes up a crew ship -- a rather minor point of it. In a sandbox Wolf-359 is not going to happen every 3 hours on a cycle, but they're going mindless theme park route, which is a mistake imho.

I DARE Cryptic to spend time on space based Mu* and actually realize that these system design problems they think are new are very old and were solved in the 90's. I'd know, I was an old empire director working on ATS TrekMUSH and TOS TrekMUSE. Shame on them for not even able to feature match games that are 15 years old.

Originally posted by Ghimpi

Player crewed ships worked for 2 decades now in Mu* based games.

Yes, and we all know how popular they were. /sarcasmoff

Fact is, every game that has tried to introduce too much "sandbox" has been a major fail. Even UO started to change from being too "sanboxish" eventually. SWG was a major fail of epic proportions, and the list goes on. The games today that are sandbox, like A Tale in the Desert for instance, sit with miniscule populations even though they're very well crafted games.

You're actually daring Cryptic to make a game that will fail within a year.

Originally posted by Hagonbok

Originally posted by Ghimpi

Player crewed ships worked for 2 decades now in Mu* based games.

Yes, and we all know how popular they were. /sarcasmoff

 

Fact is, every game that has tried to introduce too much "sandbox" has been a major fail. Even UO started to change from being too "sanboxish" eventually. SWG was a major fail of epic proportions, and the list goes on. The games today that are sandbox, like A Tale in the Desert for instance, sit with miniscule populations even though they're very well crafted games.

 

You're actually daring Cryptic to make a game that will fail within a year.

Actually alot of people play SWG ONLY for the space expansion JTL.

No body is daring Cryptic to make anything.

Due to thier decision not to add ship interiors means that they cant.

What a pathetic company!

Cryptic needs to get out of the gaming business.......Companies like this is the reason the mmorpg market keeps churning out trash year after year.

Originally posted by Cola

Originally posted by Hagonbok

Originally posted by Ghimpi

Player crewed ships worked for 2 decades now in Mu* based games.

Yes, and we all know how popular they were. /sarcasmoff

 

Fact is, every game that has tried to introduce too much "sandbox" has been a major fail. Even UO started to change from being too "sanboxish" eventually. SWG was a major fail of epic proportions, and the list goes on. The games today that are sandbox, like A Tale in the Desert for instance, sit with miniscule populations even though they're very well crafted games.

 

You're actually daring Cryptic to make a game that will fail within a year.

 

Actually alot of people play SWG ONLY for the space expansion JTL.

Yes, and by an extremely overwhelming large margin those that do prefer solo ships. Funny that eh?