My thoughts on Crew

[Jatzi]

So crew is finally here and it's cool. It's nice to see hits take out some crew members. But I have issues with it. I know it's the first version, I'm aware of that. And I know the focus isn't going to be in making it all that complex right now. I'm fully aware of all of that. But I want to take about where I think it should go from here after playing a bit. Just a bit, few hours so this stuff might change once I play more. 

The biggest thing to me is the attritional nature of the crew losses. You lose a guy here, another two over there. All throughout the battle. But it just doesn't make sense for it to work like that. Giant explosions are happening inside tight spaces, anyone inside a compartment a decently sized shell would probably be injured to some degree right? There are certainly situations where maybe a gun gets knocked out and only 1 or 2 members of the gun crew get wounded. Sure. You can always play the what if game with stuff like this. But when I see a hit on the very bow of the ship kill 2 people, another penetrating engine room hit kill another 3 but then an overpen on a torpedo launcher kills 12 I know it's not right.

Why would ppl be at the very bow of the ship? I know there are internal rooms there obviously and maybe some ppl would be there during combat but I have a feeling if you shot at the bow of a ship endlessly you'd keep getting crew kills. It seems to me that there's an overall pool of crew and each hit has a chance to kill some and there's probably a dice roll to see how many die and whatnot. Certain modules getting hit naturally result in more deaths, more dice for those modules I guess. And that's fine for now. But I'd really like to see crew be localized to parts of the ship. Like if you put a 12in turret on a ship it'll have like 30 crew. And if it gets destroyed then among those 30 crew some number gets killed or wounded, likely a large one I'd imagine but not necessarily. Not just from a overall ship wide pool but from that specific turret's crew pool. Because it's weird to see a torpedo launcher or gun get destroyed and the total number of crew manning their battlestations for torpedoes or secondary guns stay at 100%. Like I just killed 3 torpedomen presumably, are there extra's or something? I mean maybe but like ships don't just have extra crew sitting in a waiting room until they're needed. They'd be out at their battle stations lol. 

I just don't want to repeatedly see penetrating hits to things like engine rooms that flood the entire compartment but only cause 2 casualties. Or 1. It's just so unrealistic it takes me so out of the game. Flooding especially would really get people, even more so during the pre-dreadnought era I imagine. 

I want to see crew die to fire. I want to see crew training affect deaths in situations like fighting fires or having compartments flood out. A poorly trained crew should lose more ppl to a flooding compartment than a veteran crew who knows what to do in that very terrifying situation.

Also are crew casualties just deaths or do the numbers include wounded? Because wounded numbers are generally very high, humans are squishy and don't do well in explosive environments. And most wounded probably can't crew a ship any better than the dead guys. 

So yeah localize the crew to their specific modules. That way, when said modules get hit the correct number of people get hurt. More casualties in general I think. I completely destroyed the citadel of a heavy cruiser and literally the second before it sank it'd only lost 69 crew. After every engine getting destroyed, the rudder as well. Multiple guns and torpedoes gone, the entire ship is flooding, 180+ hits, many of them penetrating 8 and 12in hits. And only 69 losses out of 570.

Another thing, sorry. Not really related to crew but turrets need to jam. And rudders. Damaged turrets, while killing some crew should also actually damage the turret, potentially jamming it. If crew losses are localized to specific turrets and whatnot then you can have said losses apply debuffs to specific turrets which would be interesting. A ship with some turrets damaged and unable to fire in sync with the others making salvo fire hard to do would mess up all sorts of things I imagine. 

[Cptbarney]

Yeah, we need to have models and proper simulations done too have a more accurate effect on crew. So we will need actual shell models interacting with the models of ships themselves to create a better effect in-general.

Plus fires, flooding, internal damage, smoke, internal explosions, accidents and also debris falling or collapsing should all have roles to play in crew deaths and injuries. Along with crew deaths by attrition, the effectiveness of the ship should go down too as obviously i doubt a ship can be ran by one very sweaty bloke running at 100 mph back and forth to sort everything out at once.

Also wounded should be sorted into the following:

Trivial, Minor, Moderate, Major, Severe, Critical. We could also apply these to other aspects of the ship like, rudders, funnels, engine, ammoracks, storage, radar, rangefinders, turrets, etc.

Hopefully by next year we get some of this stuff regardless oh and a leaderboard as well showing an in-depth list of stats of the ships that got damaged and who killed what and how many etc.

[Nick Thomadis]

Hello, I have replied elsewhere for the same subject and quote here:

Quote

Crew losses are supposed to simulate realistic conditions. Despite players wanting crew to die by the hundreds, in history ships were not having extreme losses, unless they were sunk or detonated. You can read about the casualties of Derfflinger and Seydlitz in the Battle of Jutland for the matter.

We try to properly simulate the conditions of crew casualties caused by direct hits, fire and flooding and do not want to go to extreme levels of unrealistic damage just for the shake of playing a game.

Ship casualties are already localized. If you hit a secondary gun, crew of the secondary guns die. Flooding, fire, ramming, everything causes crew losses. But you should not see ship crew dying by the hundreds in every situation. 
Crew Quarters play a major role on ship efficiency, because if you have the minimum setting, there are typically no crew reserves and every crew casualty matters and reduces the respective Station efficiency. 

[Commander Reed]

On the topic of crew, what about actually seeing crew roaming about the deck (Or something like this) occasionally? Silent Hunter 5 had this with their ships, and the same with UBOAT. 

I think this would add a little more life to ships, as they still feel pretty dead, even with the addition of the current crew system.

[neph]

4 hours ago, Commander-Alexander-Reed said:

On the topic of crew, what about actually seeing crew roaming about the deck (Or something like this) occasionally? Silent Hunter 5 had this with their ships, and the same with UBOAT. 

I think this would add a little more life to ships, as they still feel pretty dead, even with the addition of the current crew system.

Strongly doubt many folks are milling about on the deck of a superdreadnought under 15' fire & returning the same!

[neph]

@OP I'm guessing the issue is less with the mechanics behind the crew deaths & more about how it's communicated. From what I gather reading Nick's responses to feedback, the new system is already quite nuanced, it's just not behaving how player expect & (I guess) the UI isn't explicit enough about "hey, that shell just took out 5 dudes in your secondary turret, but you've got replacements so your secondary battery's performance isn't quite impeded yet" or "yeah, you do have 40 people in your bow".

That said, because responses have been strongly "I don't like/get/believe this", I'm guessing the 'issue' will persist (at least in the perception of many players) until something changes.

In this case, I'd guess less is more, and that displaying effectiveness (reloading, torpedoes, etc) in percentages is probably leading to misinterpretation & suprise over the numbers. Maybe more qualitative UI would be better: 'excellent', 'nominal', 'impeded', 'inoperable' etc?

[Commander Reed]

2 minutes ago, neph said:

Strongly doubt many folks are milling about on the deck of a superdreadnought under 15' fire & returning the same!

You're right, perhaps you have better ideas? 

My proposal is indeed flawed in most aspects, but as I stated before, even with the current edition of crew (And yes, I am aware it is early) ships feel as if they're controlled by a remote control or something along the lines of that. At least to me - They just don't feel alive. 

[Dirlinger]

5 hours ago, Commander Reed said:

You're right, perhaps you have better ideas? 

My proposal is indeed flawed in most aspects, but as I stated before, even with the current edition of crew (And yes, I am aware it is early) ships feel as if they're controlled by a remote control or something along the lines of that. At least to me - They just don't feel alive. 

I am divided on this. Yes, it would give better immersion but I suspect novelty would last first 5-10 minutes of the game and then you would forget all about that. While at same time, animations of crew on the ships can slow down the game and will definetly steal time from development.

Right now I don't feel that it would be in our interest if devs do anything to slow down development (like adding new features which have not been communicated before).

 

 

[Commander Reed]

4 hours ago, Dirlinger said:

I am divided on this. Yes, it would give better immersion but I suspect novelty would last first 5-10 minutes of the game and then you would forget all about that. While at same time, animations of crew on the ships can slow down the game and will definetly steal time from development.

Right now I don't feel that it would be in our interest if devs do anything to slow down development (like adding new features which have not been communicated before).

 

 

Oh of course! I am aware that this is quite a minor thing, and should - if considered, be added after the main mechanics and campaign are done.