Crew/Marines: Size, Experience, and Morale

[William the Drake]

As it stands, crew is rather arbitrary when it comes down to what they do and how their effectiveness is measured. For now, as long as you have full crew, you are sailing and fighting optimally. Start losing crew and you begin to take penalties on efficiency and performance across the board, (or at least based on what focus you are on). Encouragingly, this will be addressed in the up-and-coming crew patch, which will begin to go into more specifics as to how the crew works, such as how many crew are assigned to an individual gun or how many it should take to fix a leak.

 

This is a superb step forward in giving more importance top the crew and crew management. However, I would like to think that the crew could be made even more important of an investment than they are now, and the same with marines. This could be done by having both crew and marines operate similar to crews in games like World of Tanks or War Thunder, where the crews gain experience based on the number of fights they have had (or can be trained up to higher experience with extra coin). 

At the moment, when it comes to marines, they are designated as an item, a module for a ship. Furthermore, at the moment marines simply add more crew to the number, instead of taking place of some crew. Instead, I believe that both marines and crew should operate on an opposite spectrum: one that measures Experience, Morale, and size. Both Crew and Marines will act like modules: they are to be bought and placed on a ship. However each ship should only ever have one crew slot and one Marine slot (So basically marines shouldn't take an equipment module slot like they do now, but have their own specific slot alongside crew)

 

Size: This is the only area where crew and marines will operate somewhat differently

• Crew- crew size will operate along the lines of ship sizes: "6th-rate" crew to "1st-rate crew". So if you have either a cutter or a snow, both will need a "6th-rate crew" in order to operate. Even though the Snow requires more crew than the cutter, the 6th-rate Crew will still suffice to fill it. (NOTE: player rank will still determine how much crew can be had optimally: so you may have a "6th-rate crew", but not be able to pilot a snow due to rank). The idea here is to limit someone from using the crew that ranked up in a small ship and immediately having them placed on a lineship with the same level of experience when technically they have never operated on the scale of a lineship.
• Marines- unlike crew, marines should operate in detachments, taking place of a small % of crew based on size. So detachment sizes could be "Marine Detachment-Small," "-Medium," and "-Large," in which a small detachment may only replace 5% crew with Marines, medium with 7.5% and large with 10% (arbitrary numbers here as examples).

Experience: Both crew and marines will have levels of experience, which dictated their efficiency and abilities. Experience is most commonly gained through battles; the more battles the crew/marines fight, the more experience they gain. Experience can also be gained through extra training. Extra training will cost a hefty sum as well as a temporary (or not?) penalty to morale. Naturally, the higher the experience, the better they will perform. Experience levels can be thought of as the crew versions of module or ship grades:

1. Fresh = Basic
2. Tested = Common
3. Experienced = Fine
4. Veteran = Mastercraft
5. Battle-Hardened = Exceptional

Ideally, crew experience will improve how the crew operates, such as reducing time it takes to perform tasks aboard the ship such as moving from one focus to another, reloading, and working rigging (Crew experience will not effect one area in particular, it will effect how the crew handles everything).

More experienced crew could even tackle tasks at the same efficiency of less experienced crew with less men working,  For example, 2 "Battle-Hardened" crew on one cannon could do the same job as 4 "basic" crew on the same cannon (again, arbitrary numbers here).

 

The biggest thing here is that crews are compatible with ships of the same size, so the crew you used on a cutter could still be used on a brig, and thus still be allowed to continue to gain experience. 

 

Morale: For now morale will simply be the willingness of a crew to fight/operate. High morale means they will operate efficiently. Low morale will result in penalties growing faster than normal. The greatest effect on moral for now should be how long one has been at sea; the longer the voyage, the more likely moral will fall. Later on in development, morale could be affected by other things such as success rate, global events, or even things like weather or pay and rations. 

[Francis Tabernac]

There's certainly some possibility there, I think. Moving up to a larger ship and bringing your crew with you would mean that the crew would have the benefit of having worked together and knowing each other well, so even if it's a different class of ship they should still be better off than a fresh crew. The fundamentals don't really change that much. As for Marines, I would suggest that crowding the ship with more Marines should hinder crew performance a little (getting in the way, that kind of thing) if you have many, but I don't think they should take away from your total crew.

[Prater]

 

Marines- unlike crew, marines should operate in detachments, taking place of a small % of crew based on size. So detachment sizes could be "Marine Detachment-Small," "-Medium," and "-Large," in which a small detachment may only replace 5% crew with Marines, medium with 7.5% and large with 10% (arbitrary numbers here as examples).

 

 

Normal should be at least 10-15%, 10% is how it is now.  Roughly, this gives 1 marine per gun, which is the RN practice from what I have read.  Preferably GL would move from a % of crew to % of gun amount.  Full compliment would be 1 for each gun.  Large might be 1.5 to each gun.  Small, 0.5.  Medium 0.75 per gun.  Those are just random amounts I am throwing out.

 

 

Training should be minimal.  It should get you perhaps +2 experience level, and cost a lot of money and take a week to complete.  If you move crew from one ship to another, they should drop 1 experience level.

 

My fear is that crew farming will become a thing.  People will train up multiple different crews and sell them.  Perhaps crew should be tied to a ship and not a module?  Crew experience is reset to 0 if you lose your ship.  Only way it doesn't reset is if you surrender your ship.

[William the Drake]

My fear is that crew farming will become a thing.  People will train up multiple different crews and sell them.  Perhaps crew should be tied to a ship and not a module?  Crew experience is reset to 0 if you lose your ship.  Only way it doesn't reset is if you surrender your ship.

 

I believe the solution to this is simple: make crews non-tradable and cannot be purchased from other players. Ideally, a crew and Marine detachment should stay with one player. This would mean buying a bunch of crew just to "sell" them would be impossible. Kind of like the crews in WoT or Warthunder, but instead of having to retrain crew every tank, you only have to do it every class here. 

 

Alternatively, crew and marines could be tradable/sellable, however upon trade/sale, they would take an experience and morale penalty, meaning training your own crew would be a much more sound option. This option seams more realistic too, as a crew could work well together, but if a new captain comes along and does things drastically different, they still need to adjust.