new crew abilities

[Klauss]

I would like to suggest a new way which crews could be presented in the game.

Crew type No/of abilities
Green 0
Standard 0
Veteran 1
Elite 2
Legend 3

As soon as a crew reaches a new rank it receives a "roll" on the ability table. It is allowed that a crew can have an ability more than once.
Abilities are additionally to fleet training centers and to fleet attack boni. But abilites replace the ship attack bonus.

Roll Ability
1 Hot shots: +20% To Hit
2 Dodgers: +20% Defense
3 Keen Eyed: +25% more damage per hit (rounded up)
4 Engineers: 25% chance to repair a random damaged or destroyed component per tactical combat turn
5 Ace pilots: vessel has +1 MP in tactical combat
6 ???

Of course a lot more abilities could be invented. Maybe as text script like the rest of game.

for example: Cruiser "Defiance" has a Elite crew. (2 abilities) It is stationed in the 2nd Fleet (with a attack bonus of +12%) and was trained by a +20% fleet training center.

The player rolls 3 and 1. This means that the crew is "keen eyed" and has the advantage to do more damage in combat.
The result shows also that they are hot shots which means they are at +20% to hit. This makes a substantial +52% to hit for this elite ship. (20% hot shot plus 20% fleet training plus 12% fleet bonus)

bye
Klaus

[General Hawkwing]

An interesting idea, the bonuses seem abit high. Would sure hate to lose a crew like that to insurrection or some ship stealing psi.

[This message has been edited by General Hawkwing (edited 15 September 2000).]

[Klauss]

General Hawking
"the bonuses seem abit high"

+20% per level isnt that high IMO, but you can alter this in the ability data files like everything in SE4.
The idea behind the crews are to create a living system with a history and a role playing potential for MP games.

Life Pods:
Crews should be able to be saved (if their ship is destroyed) per life pod component or similar. The player has immediately after a battle the possiblity to replace (green) crews of existing ships by saved (veteran) crews.

Assignment to a new ship:
they should also be able to be assigned to a new ship.

[Noble713]

Seems like too much micromanagement, and keeping track of every crew and what abilities they have for every ship in the game is going to eat up a lot of system resources, whereas the current system, which has a similar but less detailed effect, only takes up a variable or two.

[General Hawkwing]

I like your ideas for life pods and moving a crew from an older ship to a newer ship. However, this would imply that all ship component follow the same basic design principles. Otherwise, how can a repair bonus (or weapons)be used on a new ship with components never before seen (in combat) by a crew. For example, a crew from a destroyer with depleted unranium cannons and armor beng moved to a cruiser with meson bLasters and phased shields. Maybe you could require 1 turn being spent at a planet with crew training facility after ship changes.

[General Hawkwing]

This would depend on personal choice of play mode. Are they just ships or do you like to view them as crews? If the former than the current system is great, if the other than tweak away.