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Idea: Vehicle crews


Drusus

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I got this crazy idea about changing the "resource" of the game. It could be interesting to make equipment cheap, but crews expensive. Would go something like this:

You have a few categories of different crews, the more advanced the vehicle they can use, the scarcer they are. So, the groups could be:

AA crew: Could use Hermes and Bacchus.

Leader crew: Could use Mercury.

Mortar crew: Could use the different mortars.

Hovercraft crew: guess...

Kinetic weapon crew: Could use the over 20mm caliber vehicles.

Recon vehicle crew: Could use the 20mm vehicles.

And then ATGM and dropship crews. Maybe I am missing some...

The idea is that when your vehicle gets destroyed, the crew would escape the vehicle and then you'd need to drop another vehicle for them or extract them. Basically priority one would be surviving at all. Dropping just a vehicle would be fast, dropping a vehicle with crew would be slow. That is, the dropship should stay about 10 seconds on the ground level, making it an _easy_ kill if in direct view of the enemy. Dropping without the crew could be as it is now.

Additionally Thors could requires 4 or 5 crew members, while Apollo takes 3 or 4 and 76mm Paladin takes only 2.

Benefits of this system:

- Would force players to stop soloing. If you are alone and get killed, the crew is very likely to get killed also.

- Would make long range combat less risky but also less effective. While you might be able to kill the vehicle, getting the crew would be hard.

- Short range combat would be risky but if you win, then you would be able to kill the crews also. On the other hand getting killed would mean a high chance of losing the crew also.

- A whole new use for artillery. It could be that artillery could be even less effective against vehicles, but great for killing the crews of. Again, you need cooperation.

- Would make the combat a bit less fluid. If you don't have crew available on the ground, you would be forced to drop a vehicle with crew inside. This you can't do into direct enemy view. I think this would be good for the game.

- You don't have anymore 10 Thors and 20 Apollos in your inventory. If you want to use Thors, then getting the crew killed would reduce your ability to use the general class of vehicles.

- Would incorporate infantry fighting much tighter into the game.

Then the why not section:

- Would require a lot of coding work.

- Would change the whole core of the tactical idea of the game. This means a lot of planning and balancing work.

- No guarantee of the system actually working as wanted.

- It could get boring to cycle the killed -> escape -> drop cycle.

- Add your own here...

There could be some more ideas based on this: The defenders have a bunker where there is some crew "stored". You could drop just vehicles into the objective and there would be crew on the ground already. Then if your enemy gets infantry inside that building => a lot of crews killed.

To make this thread OT in the first post, there is something strange going out with the wheeled vehicles. If I am not wrong the concept which isn't working as wanted is the static VS kinetic friction. To me it seems that Paladins are _always_ sliding, it is just the amount of sliding which is changed when on different ground. It should be so that there is no sliding at all, unless you push the vehicle too far and then you enter the sliding stage. However, maybe this impression is just because of laggy over Atlantic connection.

Having said all this, the game has definitely gotten a lot better.

PS. Great timing with that updated demo. When I got out of my last exam and visited battlefront.com there it was. Lucky for me that you didn't release it a week earlier... ;)

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  • 2 weeks later...

Maybe the timing of your post was a bit unfortunate... smile.gif

I think is a good idea but, as you said, would change the game a lot. Its also IMHO a bit too complicated with the different troop types. What I like, however, is the idea of being able to man empty vehicles.

I'll try a simplified version: each vehicle is operated by a crew of two (as is). A crew consists of a driver and a gunner. Each of them can operate all vehicles (maybe allow them to operate everything but half speed/double reload time if not specialized).

Crews are a resource like everything else. In the drop menu you can choose with/without crew. A manned drop is as is. An unmanned drop will be done like the infantry pods only bigger and faster (no squishies inside).

Empty friendly vehicles can be entered like buildings. Neutral vehicles have to be taken over cutter style (crews can do that). Enemy vehicles, too, but this would mean that there would be some means to repair vehicles (hmmm... ;) ). Functioning enemy vehicles would just drive away or kill those attackers, wouldn't they? smile.gif .

Dead crew members in a vehicle can be replaced by outside crew. That may leave a single crew man alone which is an awkward situation: without a vehicle nearby what do you do? A player should then be able to order himself to go to a point and get a pickup (or wait) and then leave the unit alone.

All this would change the game a lot. We would have many crew members running around on the battlefield looking for vehicles and many empty vehicles waiting for crew.

It would also allow for many new tactics and scenarios but even if its an intriguing idea I think it would probably not make it a much better game overall. Better let Clay use his resources on the core game. smile.gif

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While I am not so sure about crew members running about looking for empty vehicles to drive around, I do think that the crews are important, in fact, given the nanotech on the Liveships, humans are probably the most precious commodity.

While it is hard to model a "morale" level in a game like DT, crews that are abandoned or wasted should incurr a point penalty to that team. Vehicles that suffer casualties would have to find a way to extract the casualites. Maybe a "CASEVAC" order can be added that would drop a dropship on a CASEVAC mission, extracting wounded crew members and replacing them with fresh bodies, but the vehicle remains on the ground. Maybe a few extra rounds of ammo is dropped off too, and other things that can be repaired, such as a new tactical computer (assuming the system is modular).

I also think that once a gunner or driver is killed, the other crew member should be able to do both, with reduced performance, since the vehicles are advanced and some kind of dual controls at both stations should exist. Like a dual-seated fighter aircraft.

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