HufarTed

Essentially I'm asking if multi-crew ships need dedicated gunners or can the captain, pilot, engineer, etc also control one weapon each? Edit: For small-medium sized ships. Obviously cruiser class & up would need dedicated gunners.

Actually i have one more question, then I'll get off this particular soap box. Does anyone know if non-gunner positions still get to control a gun or is it really just one function per player on anything bigger than a single seater?

I think I'm starting to repeat myself and there's enough food for thought here so I'm moving on. I hope things turn out well for those who still think 1 gun per player is a good idea. Cheers.

In DU i think only the captain and pilot will be consistantly active. Maybe the engineer too if there's a kind of "mini game" where you have to constantly mange power levels & distribution, shield strength & harmonics, etc. Gunners will only be active during an engagement, and even then a gunner might not get to do anything if the enemy ship doesn't pass within that gunner's field of fire. As i said before I'll fill any role in a pinch even if i dont like it, but not everyone is like that. How hard is it going to be to find trustworthy gunners to man all those guns if all they do is stare at a screen and maybe occasionally push a button?

If you're on a large ship manning your 1 gun and simply waiting for your turn to fire, how is that multitasking. Or fun.

Do you think B36 crews tried to stop development of the B52 because it had fewer people aboard? Something like "You can't fly no bomber with less than 13 people! That's crazy talk. And just plain wrong. WRONG I TELL YA!"

The B52 is a large aircraft, but it only has a crew of 5 (pilot, co-pilot, weapons systems officer, electronic warfare officer, and navigator). Those are all the same functions a fighter pilot fulfills so with the right electronics setup a single person could technically fly a B52 with full functionality. Could they do it better than a full crew? Probably not. Could they also perform all the in flight maintenance, repairs, reloading, etc.? No, so probably not a good idea. That's why i suggested the npc or offline-friends-as-npc idea (capped at 5 per player). They could continue the fight while you effect repairs or whatever (or vice versa). The B36 would've been a better example with a crew of 13. Then you'd have to join up with at least 2 more players and their crews. So your logic is "We want multi-crew ships so we're going to limit players to walking OR chewing gum. Not both at the same time!" I know about the memory wipe. I'm wondering if there was any additional brain damage that would affect people's ability to multitask.

Switching systems also brings up questions like: How many elements can you tie in to a console? Can you network your consoles? Different types of elements on the same console? I think I've seen something like this elsewhere in the forum or dev diary or something but not sure what they said about it. I'll look around for it.

I'd be fine with just being able to switch between systems, but the way i understand things as they stand we won't even be able to do that.

Yay! Finally some people that get it. I dont care if it's npc bots, costructed ai droids, or grouped systems, i just dont want to be some kind of simpleton who can only do one thing at a time. RL single-seat fighter pilots must be able to operate multiple weapons systems, sensors, counter measures, nav tools, comms, and a dozen other things all on their own. Why would we lose the ability to multitask thousands of years in the future? Serious question: Did the Arkship crash give us all brain damage beyond the memory wipe? If they put something like that in the lore I'll shut up and move on. I won't like it, but I'll accept it since then the one player per element rule would make some kind of sense.

If a fully bot-ed battleship is a problem (which i understand and even agree with), then cap the crew management at 5 crewmen. This way a player can effectively fly a frigate sized ship on their own if they want to, or join other players on a large ship without their crew, or as officer/nco/department head and manage their own section of npc crewmen as well as their own console.

Unfortunately this will happen regardless of what kind of crew you have. Bigger/stronger/meaner orgs will beat up on smaller/weaker/nicer orgs, and Reavers frag everybody and everything in sight. A large Reaver org is almost a contradiction in terms but they do pop up from time to time and wreck havoc across the gamescapes until they burn themselves out and degenerate into squabbling rival groups.

I realize that. Hence the "outpacing" question. I did not say i like all those roles, i simply listed them in order of preference. I actually hate 4-6 but I'll play them if i have to because no one else in my group wants to. I said most people, not everyone. But I'll amend even that and say "alot of people"Healer is #2 on my list because i like that role. It's almost always a very active/challenging role. I know, right? But that's one of the reasons i like to be a well rounded player, or in games like WoW i have alts for each class.

There's always the /wrist option, but I'll try to come up with a better workaround than that when I'm not so sleepy.

Ah! Unless you're referring to the offline friend as npc suggestion. In which case i can understand some trepidation about logging out in one place and logging back in to find yourself halfway across the galaxy.