Massively Multiplayer Capital Ships

[darjanator]

The release of the Alpha 3.0 production schedule has started somewhat solidifying the hazy release of Star Citizen, somewhere in the uncertain future and with it comes an awfully daunting question of player controlled capital ships.


Considering how spacious they are and just how many viable posts they will entail (even the little Idris has crew capacity of around 90), what sort of hardcore gameplay will be required to crew one of these beasts? Would it be even possible to fully run one with JUST actual players or will an AI crew be a requirement to run a ship of that size smoothly and is the only viable option to have only the "hero" roles occupied by players and have all the ancillary positions run by efficient and more importantly, non-derpy AI?


We also discussed this on the latest episode of Fortnightly Frontier, which you can check out below, but I'd also like to hear your guys' opinions and visions of this massive gameplay aspect.

 

[Op4ArcticFox]

So my thought is a crew of 90, is the game taking into account 3 shifts of fully staffed stations. And quite simply, we don't need that. AI or otherwise. So my thought, if it is so, means that a fully crewed and active ship at any moment, is ~30 people. Now how many of those "jobs" are actually necessary? There will be redundancies, and when it come to AI crew, they will probably hinder any player rather than support, for redundancies. So things like Power Management, Engineering, and Damage Control, yes fully staffed with players if possible. But other systems, like Life Support engineer... yeah it sounds important, but it's going to be 99% wait for something bad to happen. In which case whoever's on the bridge will probably correct the issue from their end. So in reality you probably have 15-20 actual positions left for players (Keeping in mind this is all my wild conjecture with no basis in released statements, merely what I GUESS will happen). So keeping 15-20 people on a ship probably isn't going to be the most difficult, so long as they don't mind being bored a ton. We have to keep in mind things like travel involved, and staging of fleets, and intel looking for fights/threats, fuel cost and concerns, repairs, players losing connection, involving those who came on or heard about things late. If any Org has the ability to stage and deploy a large destructive fleet, its gonna be TEST. But any war of attrition, people will lose interest quickly. So just don't expect everyone to be ready for a fleet all the time and to stay on for hours and hours at a time. This isn't old school WoW or Eve, I am sure I am not alone when I say 'I have a job, and friends, and a life that I can't just ignore' so ... potential fleet commanders, don't lose your shit when people drop out.

 

[Adiran]

it will all come down to what you can get away with. The biggest thing is cross work and a strong structure of command. Everyone needs to know who they work under and what their job is.

I have actually done a lot of work on my own using sci-fi knowledge and examples (Starfleet) and my own real experience in the US Navy. @darjanator if you want to see it or have me share some of it i can but i'm not gonna go into it all on a forum post.

Capital ships and Fleet Level command will be my primary focus apart from Exploration (in my Carrack with a crew of course. :P ) so I have a lot of good places to start when it comes to capital ships.

In the end crewing and leading the crew of a capital ship will require dedication from the players doing it. Meaning dedicating the time to complete the operation the ship is sent to complete. I doubt they will have the ability to teleport across the galaxy to replace the 1 lead engineer who didn't plan enough time to finish and leaves an hour into the 4 hour operation. not to mention the knowledge required to be the lead engineer on a ship of this level. looking at how they want these roles to be done there will be a skill and knowledge required to do the job properly. i know it's commonly made fun of but things like minimum skill levels (certifications) might be required for capital ships in pvp since the difference between death of the 30+ people and the expensive ship is someone who knows and has proven he knows how that crap works compared to someone who says they know and really don't know half of what they say they do.

I expect to some extent that capital ship crew will be akin to the main raid group or elite pvp team of other games. you must work and grind your way into this group proving your knowledge and skill before being accepted into it. In the beginning sure we will have to fill roles as we can since everyone is new. But as time goes on and pvp is a more hard core thing where we are fighting for real things like space and stations and the like that need to win will drive more elite players being required to give you every edge you can get. Roles like fighter pilot can be saturated with lower skilled players giving you swarm numbers to give you advantage when you don't have 100 high skilled combat pilots but you got 400 average skilled players you can actually use them to win a fight against 100 man fleet your opponent has brought.

When it comes to capital ships being a limiting factor due to resources and personnel required to deploy them every advantage you can get when it comes to crew will be necessary since 1 engineer taking apart and fixing something can be the difference between losing your 1 of maybe 3 destroyers you have on field giving your opponent the advantage of having 3 destroyed and leaving you with 2.

 

[FZD]

I want to be a space janitor. I'll just go around sweeping the floors of the javelin with a broom, playing with the multiple interaction mechanism with the broom and some rubbish. Unarmed, of course. The first sign of battle I'll be first to die.

Well, seriously. It's about team work, and you need people who understand team work. Because people who understand teamwork, know that you need a rearguard. And they know that most of the time, a rearguard does nothing, they'll only shine when the enemy has managed to get behind the force somehow, or when the force is in retreat. So the rearguard never sees any action in an optimal scenario. So in a javelin, a "rearguard" would be any important position that doesn't much action, but is vital when things go south. Like possibly some repair crew or suchlike. I don't really mind filling positions like that, and I'm sure there are others who wouldn't mind either. It's part of teamwork.

 

[Crymsan]

To have a reason for everyone to get on board they have to be the only types of vessel that could survive an encounter with the big wheels vanduul, big bennies delivery truck etc. Then you could have massive guild envolvement taking a big fight to the enemy (whoever they are).

 

[FluffyVonRage]

I can see something akin to puzzle pirates training crews becoming a valuable tool - Groups of experienced players taking ships out on low-danger / non critical missions, and allowing anyone who wants to learn to come with them, get used to stations and work out what they want to become proficient at, all while a guiding hand is giving them competent advice.

I can really see this being a big draw for new players, as a kind of insulation for them against the sudden vastness of space.

In addition to Sanzennin's post about rearguards, I'd like to float the concept of 'Damage control teams' - Covering minor duties that are non-essential, waiting for something to go wrong. Depending on ship size and crew size, maybe the best way to deal with it would be to rate every station on board, and then over comms call the stations up based on damage severity - ie: tier 1 being active combatants, bridge crew etc, tier 5 being space chef, etc. (Tiering would have to be based around how much that station contributed to the combat effectiveness of the ship)

Lots to think about :D

 

[AstroSam]

I really don't want to crash the party but: did you know that Javelins actually are "the smallest UEE ship-of-the-line" and "are surplus ships with their military weapons removed"...? "Purchasing a Javelin means a new quest for your Org or team as you rearm and upgrade it for your needs!"
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/14335-Introducing-The-Javelin-Destroyer

So, basically you are paying 2.500 bucks for a better camper van... :grin:

 

[JackAvalon]

@darjanator I believe that how efficient the AI is at handling commands and how efficient it is to give those commands will be huge for capital ship play. Any org cannot expect 100% member participation every day nor can any player expect to have their capital ship fully crewed by players every time they logon. Especially this org because of....beer(love you guys :)). With this in mind, folks will be relying on AI to fulfill their needs with respect to capital ship ops. It seems like CIG is putting forth a lot of effort into nailing down AI functionality but to think that AI will work flawlessly is just wishful thinking imho. There will be downsides (inefficiencies) that come from using AI vs. employing players.

Employing players will be incredibly important. Players will be able to predict what will happen next and be able to setup their stations to adjusting conditions faster than AI. Additionally, players working together should be able to overcome an AI crewed ship of the same type. Communications will be key to this happening. That's why every capital ship captain should dedicate a lot of time to training their crews on what procedures they should follow for a variety of scenarios/environments. Furthermore, an efficient communication network will need to exist in order to communicate the captains needs effectively. Part of this is the comms platform itself, and the other part is the compartmentalization of tasks.

Communications platform such as Discord could work but as far as I know everyone will be in the same room. That's a lot of chatter that could happen and would more than likely lead to confusion and inefficiency. Teamspeak 3 works well in that you can assign roles to folks so you could have a command channel and other channels dedicated to specific roles. This would be ideal as you limit confusion and orders are able to be clearly stated and communicated down to whoever is in charge of that specific role (e.g. chief engineer) without too much chatter or confusion.

Compartmentalization of tasks/roles will be important as well. A capital ship captain cannot effectively do everything. Therefore, positions such as First Officer, Chief Engineer, Weapons Officer, or Navigator will be vital. Players in these roles will be able to manage their section more efficiently than a single player controlling everything. Also, this will allow players to be responsible for an aspect of ship ops which will make gameplay fun/exciting. Finally, these players will need training in these roles and a set of standard operating procedures (SOP's) will need to be drafted so that way all the key roles on the ship are operating on the same page.

I am really looking forward to being a capital ship captain. I currently own an Idris-P and am excited to possibly be leading folks on some interesting adventures. Once capital ships are available in-game, I hope Test will hold a meeting with the capital ship owners so we can clarify what the org's expectations/procedures are so that way we can all train the same so if one player wants to be on an Idris one day and then on a Javelin the next, the player will already know the commands associated with the role they are filling and the only thing they will need to learn is the ship layout.

Great post as always.

- Captain Jack Avalon

 

[AstroSam]

Communications will be done via Spectrum. Imho finally it will outrun Discord or Teamspeak because Spectrum will be a) integral part of the game engine and b) is developed for exactly this purpose, having a coordinated communication system and -structure especially for MP ships/instances.

 

[Harkonan]

The uncertainty of how large ships will work both on a technical level and game-play-wise is exactly why I chose to buy all smaller 1-2 people ships.

I have a ship for essentially any role I might find in SC enjoyable while having access to larger ships as a deck hand role incase large ship gameplay is what becomes most enjoyable. Granted, if everyone had this same mentality in TEST ... we'd have no large ships. But TEST already had a large armada of big ships before I even came aboard.

 

[A.Santos]

Are the testicle-Officer a hero role ? :smile:

Im gonna sign up for duty on a capital ship for sure
i can see my self spending 4-6 hours as a marine / security on a capital ship.
hehe ..... anyway great post

 

[Shadow Reaper]

I think CIG's current word is instances will top out at 50 players and 16 ships, and they are hoping to extend this to 32 ships. It seems to me it would well behoove the commander of any large ship or operation to have significantly more players attached to a ship by setting to spawn in berths aboard. Even if you planned just 4 shifts of 6 hours each, you would need far more than 50 players to run a single Idris. Odds are most players would sign up quickly for 2 hour shifts so long as plenty of action was planned, but good luck getting people to hang around waiting to man a turret unless you are headed straight into battle.

There is always room for players to fill turrets. The real staffing issues concern filling vital roles like power management, scan ops, e-war, and tactical to coordinate between ships. If we find there are 8 roles aboard an Idris one needs manned, filling those for more than a few hours is going to require serious coordination between players. Personally I think we need a year of practice with smaller ships like the Polaris. Keep in mind that most players seek after their own goals first, and all the time aboard an Idris is time they are not grinding out transports, or mining, or harvesting off gas giants. The best leaders will not only be those who can plan a great operation and staff it by sharing their vision of what can be, but who are sensitive to the needs of each player for adventure.

Personally I think it would be far easier to plan an exploration op with a StarG, a Carrack and a Polaris, and with other smaller ships popping in and out at their leisure, than to fill these big cap ships with players. What that means is when you meet a Javelin it will be a rare occasion, and dangerous; since everyone aboard her will be wanting to fire all those guns!

 

[Op4ArcticFox]

It wasn't long ago, maybe last GamesCon(?) that CR stated they were bumping the goal of "Number of players per instance to ~30ish to ~3000ish. The tech is still in development, but who knows, maybe they will get it to work.