As I went over in my last post, I bought The Burning Life yesterday aside from concerns that points of view in the book would conflict with my own points of view about the RP side of EVE. After reading onward while at work today, one of these concerns came to light.
Crewmen.
I have always imagined a Starship as being something operated by a super powerful human being immersed in a shell filled with goo (ie - a capsuleer). What gave the wonderment of capsuleers for me was that we/they fly in pods that were (in my mind) capable of doing things at a far more powerful and effective rate than we can possibly imagine now. One pod, less than 3 meters tall by 2.5 meters wide could provide all the operational power and capacity to command a ship that is up to many kilometers in length.
The Burning Life has its own views.
They state that a ship is piloted by a capsuleer and that the ship has a crew that runs the most basic of tasks; cleanup, ect.
Now I know I am going to get the comment here eventually from the guy who finds 'it clearly states in paragraph 5, section XIII of the 28th Chronicle that capsuleers depend on their crew for many functions of their internet spaceships!!!!!!1111oneoneoneeleventyone!' But my concern is that there is no real in game function for a crew... why even consider having them.
Other than to satisfy the Trek-Geek in all of us that wants to imagine commanding our carriers into battle from an actual bridge.
But that feels like another game, and another universe, for me. Im going to keep reading on with the book, but with you reading this from your computer/laptop from [insert city/state],[Country Here] , My concerns have been voiced!
=) If you've read the book and have an opinion about this topic as well, please let me know, without spoiling anything please.
Chronicles aside, if you look at the stats of ships from the data dump (which has stuff that doesn't show in game info window), _some_ of them have a crew stat.
ReplyDeleteI think perhaps at one point CCP was considering have a crew, and perhaps a system for how crew might effect ships and their stats, but decided to put all the focus on the caspuleer and having a crew might cause a distraction from that concept.
Personally I think having a crew could be cool. Giving us new ship fitting parts (since id treat crew almost like a ships component when it comes to any bonuses we would get from them).
RP wise it makes sense that a capsuleer might be able to solo fly a frigate, maybe even a destroyer. But even a superhuman pod man wouldn't want to run the systems of a cruiser or bigger by them self. The maintenance requirements of those ships are not things a capsuleer should worry about, thus crew come into play, even if said crew doesn't need to be as large as a non-capsuleer run ship. Not to mention some tasks just can't be done without a physical body in the ship, capsuleers are stuck in their pod.
Capsuleers are demi-gods to the plebs of the worlds, it kinda makes sense that some might want to serve as crew for them.
You are right about one thing, having a crew does seem like a different kind of game, which is why id rather see it as a component style thing rather than something more intricate and out of place. We capsuleers would merely hire them just like we buy ship components on the market, we buy get better crew if we want to pay the ISK/LP points. Maybe some capsuleers earn a crew through faction stuff.
I wrote a little post on ship crews a while back. It shows my opinion on the topic if u want to check it out. Captainserenity.blogspot.com/2010/11/shop-crews.html
ReplyDeletemessed up the link in the other comment. here it is for real. be great if you read it an tell me what you think :)
ReplyDelete