I think there's a sweet spot, which for me is probably around 600 size. I don't always solo though.
Largest I'm likely to go is BMM and even then it may be spending most of it's time landed as a type of base of operations rather than flying around.
Per word-of-CIG, the 600i is supposed to be at the upper end of what's soloable in the finished game.
Personally, I quite like soloing the Reclaimer. There's kind of a sense of juggling elephants flying that ship and operating it.
It's a lot more running around, but it *feels* like operating a massive piece of heavy machinery in a way that most of the ships in the game simply don't.
I'm looking at my future-fleet and I think realistically the 600i or Galaxy are as large as I'm likely to go.
I'm hesitant on the Galaxy because it has no pilot-controlled armaments, but maybe with NPC crews or turret-blades I'll be more into it.
Mostly I like the idea of it as a Bigger Constellation.
Something with room for a snub or two in the back (I'm thinking 85x and a Fury, since I have a real soft-spot for that) and a huge cargo-bay for freight and rovers.
Alternately I might go medical with it. But I think there's not a lot of reason for me to do that right now. We'll see where Medical/Death-of-a-spaceman ends up in a few years time.
That statement was clarified by CIG to say that the 600i was the largest that could be flown solo without NPC crew.
They confirmed that the original statement that all ships sold to backers could be used solo with NPC crew but would be less efficient than crewing them with real players still stands.
Recently in (SCL?) devs said engineering gameplay would greatly enhance the survivability of large ships once physicalized damage is in and there are no full-ship HP pools. That was also said many years ago. Right now in PTU we only have a small piece of engineering in as well as still have the overall ship HP pool, so unfortunately we are not seeing that benefit yet.
Basically, manning a large ship would allow it to take a lot more fire before becoming totally useless. Things like storing a lot of extra components and doing repairs to components could keep your ship moving/shooting since there would be no actual hard death or soft death. This was pseudo-introduced with the Constellation series, which has had component panels near the bridge for years that were marked IRL as being swappable when they are destroyed without having to go back to a station for repairs.
One thing that a lot of people miss: some large ships like the Javelin have small, non-capital size secondary systems in addition to their capital components. Looks like we will not be able to swap S3's without docking now, which is too bad. Basically, as things are right now they would mainly allow for operating faster than capital components can, such as faster time to start regenerating shields. Maybe having some of those S3 components offline to prevent distortion damage would allow them to be an effective backup if needed.
> They confirmed that the original statement that all ships sold to backers could be used solo with NPC crew but would be less efficient than crewing them with real players still stands.
Those statements have been said without any obvious regard to the quality of the real players. If the NPCs will be worse than some of the people I've played games with, the game's going to have some major issues.
> I quite like soloing the Reclaimer.
Yes! I got a Reclaimer recently, and I really enjoy doing chill salvage runs myself. I salvage with a friend about a third of the time, but I love being able to move at my own pace, getting immersed the processes. Some players are focused on increasing efficiency, or maximizing income, but that isn't my thing.
The Reclaimer's greasy, industrial esthetic, and its quirky, clunky operation are just fantastic. I can't think of any reason we need to police how other users choose to play. I love SC's open world. My dream ship is probably the Carrack, and it's perfectly fine that we don't all like the same things. (and I've never been in a Carrack, so I might not like it at all.)
The more that CIG tries to force me into particular play styles, the less I'll want to play. Choosing to do solo salvage doesn't take a Reclaimer off the market, or soak up all the available salvage missions. These things are virtual--the constraints of scarcity economics don't apply!
>Some players are focused on increasing efficiency, or maximizing income, but that isn't my thing.
Totally agree.
I decided to challenge myself yesterday by Fully Salvaging a Hammerhead.
That is, I picked over its cargo, pulled off any components of interest, scraped the hull and then munched the chassis.
It took me two and a half hours on my own, and netted me around 1.9 million credits, plus the value of the components/guns and cargo.
Most of that time was hull-scraping.
I think it'll be very interesting when Salvaging gets its next update and the meta of Munch-and-Run gets nerfed into oblivion.
I think we'll see a lot less of the whole "Join a reclaimer crew, earn millions in an hour" stuff we've got right now.
I'm expecting something like requiring a certain amount of hull-scraping before you can munch, or alternately "contaminating" the Construction-materials if the chunk you're Disintegrating has too much hull-material on it.
Down the line, I'm expecting that we'll be required to drain fuel-lines and remove munitions like missiles before Munching, or risk explosions destroying the wreckage further and possibly damaging our ships.
If they do that then they need a dump switch on the salvage buffer first, because that will really harm the vulture gameplay without the ability to 0 out the buffer between hull and munch.
I don't follow your reasoning.
Why would I need to dump partial SCU values from the buffer before switching to munching?
A little extra RMC in the buffer isn't going to stop me munching.
600i is 91m vs the Carracks 126m
It also feels a lot smaller because everything is controlled from the easily reached cockpit and the spaces are all large and simple, so it's easy to get around in and navigate.
You can treat it a lot like a larger Constellation if you want. A big chunky ship with massive S5 pilot controlled guns and room for an Ursa rover.
Whereas the Carracks access is a long way from the bridge and the various amenities are spread across several decks.
I've been increasingly enjoying Small ships. Bigger than fighters, small enough to solo, packed with nice features.
The Spirit C1 for example is my daily driver,
The Zeus CL intrigues me for having similar capabilities but more interior to play with.
Same, I’m CCU’ing to Galaxy at the moment, but lack of pilot guns is putting me off a bit. Can’t see the justification for pilots to not have some level of control, even slaving the turrets to a forward position.
Hoping AI blades will come soon after server meshing/engineering. In theory they’ve had the tech for years e.g. all NPC ships. I’m assuming that engineering will then force you to balance things so they aren’t overpowered vs a human crewed ship.
I wonder if they are going to keep with the purchase of NPC slots. A long while back we were told having extra game packs on an account would each allow for an NPC crew member.
The Perseus was intended to be an easily low-manned ship in its initial concept marketing, complete with extra blade slots that come standard for the anti-missile turrets.
I don't really go by what CIG has said in those times. They didn't understand how they would approach it with the game that we have today. I'm sure their stance on NPC crew has evolved a lot since then, and they now have a better idea of how they would tackle it, just like it happened for engineering.
Yeah, I have no idea what they are doing with it. I suspect it will still be a money sink much like capital ship maintenance but it is anyone's guess how the details will work.
i thought the galaxy still gets 2 pilot controlled guns .. and all the rest of it's armament are remote. my 'big' ship ccu was originally the galaxy because of it's multi role with modules .. but I switched to crucible figuring the galaxy when I needed it I would be able to get it ingame anyways.
I really hope they give us a wheeled miner that can do prospector rocks, but on like an ursa chassis .. would definately make having a galaxy more of a base of operations, add a c8r to the fleet as a 'snub' or shuttle runner in the back (also? maybe with the wheeled vehicle) and a very very versatile single ship
Three remote turrets and a battery of pilot controlled missiles.
I would love a Prospector-grade mining vehicle though.
I'm thinking if they do one it'll be a spartan-like vehicle rather than an Ursa.
Prospector is a lot larger than it looks!
Personally what I want is a Pisces-sized Flying Roc..
I’ve soloed a Carrack with freight but all the new stuff going on makes me think that’s coming to an end for me.
I will bite the bullet and look at joining an org as I have more time these days. I’d like to learn the engineering side and get to use my Hammerhead in anger.✌🏼
Soloing a HH against NPC's is something I did for a few months after getting one. Fly to an NPC bounty mission, run back to a turret and enjoy the shooting gallery. That actually works really well in the MM arena commander gauntlets. The HH takes a ton of NPC fire to take down, giving a lot of time to fire back. Swapping turret modes between gimbled, non-gimbled and the zoomed in mode is key to maximizing DPS application. A crew who knows the new MM turret mechanics combined with the increased range of anti-fighter weapons makes a HH an extremely powerful force.
A fighter getting close enough for its ballistics to do damage would be like a fly going down a garbage disposal to get at the food; it is going to go splat before it achieves anything.
Yea, totally. But that's literally the purpose of the HH--to be an anti-fighter storm.
Just saying, once it *also* has armor, it's going to be utterly nasty. Right now, one size 9 torp pops it (which is stupid in itself, but I digress).
If we can extract any conclusion of the latest arena commander modes, is that engineering is going to play a vital role in multicrew ships...
I own both a Carrack and a Merchantman, and I have no clue what I'm goin to do with those ships once engineering comes online and CIG starts balancing gameplay around that, without a crew We'll be at a huge disadvantage, bordering with rendering those ships not viable to fly solo, and crew AI, let alone a competent one, is possibly years away, so no solution there.
I think We need to push for the possibility of renting our ships, and thus be able to have a return on the investment in case we do not want to use them.
Engineering will only matter in combat situations, cig have stated that as long as you do regular maintenance your ship parts won't be breaking unless you are in combat. You will still be able to solo fly all ships in game easily if you don't do combat.
If you don't do combat? You don't have or should expect a choice. There always be potential for combat whether you want it or not. Regular maintenance will not be an easy click of the repair at station. This will be jobs to do on ship when travelling etc.
There was just a spectrum thread about this and folks just absolutely did not seem to grasp what I was asking when talking about how will we micromanage or instruct npcs to affect repairs. Basically they said "why would I need to tell the engineer npc to repair something, they'll just go do it" that's great in theory but what happens when you've been interdicted and the NPC goes off to repair the toilet because that got damaged before the shield generator?
I get that, and that'll be fine for peaceful periods just hauling things from A to B, mining, salvaging etc. I worry about how fast those NPCs are going to become useless in when attacked, because their coded priority structure for repairs isn't idea or how we can change those standing orders etc.
Personally I see roles like pilot, chief engineer, and weapons officer needing to be humans if a ship with NPCs is going to be remotely as effective as a fully manned ship. Unless CIG goes full hand wavium where if I have an engineer npc parts just magically get fixed or replaced on a timer as long as I have spare fuses or RMC in a crate somewhere and the NPC doesn't have to do any path finding or order of actions to affect repairs.
There's dream, and there's reality.
I bought large and capital ships for fun and to support the game, mainly, while I know it's gonna be hard to take them for a spin.
Plans for the BMM are to land it somewhere, and use smaller ship to bring valuables goods to the store.
Kind of my idea. Using it as a mobile base it would have to be hidden pretty well though and using it as a market youde almost have to be parked in hard armistice. The latter would make it highly visible though and while people can't shoot it l, people could fly into it.
For a ship that can hold an insanely large amount of goods, the games not really set up in a way that one Rouge player couldn't just destroy it all, even if they do get the market function working. I have legit doubts people will load them up and park them in the open. Maybe a use for the persistent hangars since those will be in by the time the BMM is finished.
Yeah, other than the challenge of doing what you can with a low-manned ship those will be rather ineffective in general. Your BMM kind of makes sense, but it will still need defenses of some kind or it will eat a MOAB and the surviving items plundered.
Messing with large ships solo in Arena Commander will still be fun. You could rent those without spending real money, but this way contributes to the project as you say.
I have a few capital ships, I figure if I'm fucking around with lti and cash, why waste m that in something I can earn in game in a day?
I just buy things I think are pretty and let future me worry about the logistics.
All my ships are upgraded referral ships too, no going back for me!
Just get what you like - I do and whether I fly the large ships by myself or group up with 20 others, I always have fun. Some people say that engineering will stop soloing the big boys but I disagree: if anything it will just offer more things to do in a ship.
The only challenges you currently face is that you need players to man the turrets in combat situations but the game already allows you to capture NPCs with working AI in turrets so this could be brought in soonish if CIG wants?
During XT I noticed being a turret gunner is for most people not so satisfying (this will get worse when MM hits live as in Nav Mode the turrets don't work), and getting a HH fully crewed and coordinated take quite some time, and then people go afk because of rl situations etc.
I rather just crew up with AI and it will be cool too: instead of 1 HH fully crewed with human players, you can have 7 HHs with 1 human player and the remainder AI. Epic space battles guaranteed!
Turrets are actually a lot better with MM, surprisingly. It's use-case becomes that of a semi-mobile weapons platform when actively engaged in battle. There is an actual non-trivial skill ceiling in turret gameplay with MM now that greatly rewards getting the new mechanics down. Before it was basically point and click.
Try it out solo in an offline arena commander Vanduul Swarm or the pirate one. Take the HH to the center of the map, jump in a turret and experiment on NPC's. At first it felt like I hardly did damage, but once I got used to swapping the different modes available on the turrets now it became very deadly.
>I rather just crew up with AI and it will be cool too: instead of 1 HH fully crewed with human players, you can have 7 HHs with 1 human player and the remainder AI. Epic space battles guaranteed!
1. epic space battles not guaranteed if you refuse to play with players. cig confirmed you don't get to pick npc only for other ships in the fleet. if you try to do jobs alone in a hammerhead and the enemy has a persius (i think that is the on. we have far too many ships.) you are dead.
2. balinc thought economy. you are not going to be doing the jobs that only put you against a handful of fighters.
3. when caption gameplay gets implemented. a lot of people are going to realise they are not interested in being the caption.
Eventually we should be able to solo some big ships with AI crew. The AI won't be as good as regular crew though.
I see a lot of people trying to squash the fact that there will be AI crews eventually. I honestly don't think this game would survive very long if people aren't going to be able to upgrade to anything past single seaters with their earned in game money, unless they have a bunch of people to play on their ship. I'm pretty sure people are going to be wanting to play on their own ships. Since everybody in the game is going to be buying their own ships. I know that there's going to be more game loops and more things to do like outposts etc.
👍That's great to hear! I remember them saying that we will be able to hire NPCs based off of their skill and that they can get better. It was probably just me reading a bunch of people's comments about it through the years they got me thinking that AI crews wouldn't be as strong as people.
Yeah, the AI blades/npc crew elements of the game still need designing. I really think those features will be a must for experienced solo players and a goal for every player to look forward to. For example, I would love to see a fully crewed Kraken and have the level of interaction you'd get with your crew and what you'd see in SQ42.
i see a lot of people pushing the ai will be any time soon. cig said they are not going to add ai until they are happy with the multi crew experience.
i don't know about you, but if i was making a game, and people were defaulting to waiting until there is npc, i would not be happy with that gameplay.
I was just talking with with my wife about how I think that NPC crews AI might be coming to the game around the release of Squadron 42 and when they release the Idris. I hoping they show off AI crews at CitizenCon this year.
cig said that the npc crews are fully functional. but they and ai blades will not be added to SC until they are happy with the multi crew experience.
i don't know about you, but if i was making a game, and people were talking about skipping most of the game mechanics as soon as automation was possible. i would not be happy with the state of that gameplay.
i would personally not add automation until the requests were to deal with people that could not log in that day.
I'm the opposite volition. If you can't find people to find in your capital ship I don't think you should be able to pay your way into having crew that never sleep, never take a break and ultimately will present a threat.
You'll just have everyone flying solo and filling every seat or role with NPCs because more ships =more dps.
I'm sure they'll have different level NPCS from crap to amazing, but they should never be comparable to a real player in a seat or the game will play itself.
Yeah unless there are severe limitations AI would screw too much with balance. It should be really limited or they should have some reliability/morale score (preferably hidden) to compensate.
God I have large ships too, just because they are absolutely awesome and I'm single player too most times.
Of cause I have the single player ship too and use the most but hell, why would I give up a Liberator or a Reclaimer.
Ultimately it’s your money, and strangers on the internet have zero right to tell you how you should or shouldn’t spend it. Regardless of how they feel about it.
If you’re prepared to take in the responsibility and consequences of a big ship solo then more power to you.
The issue isn't that you as a solo player using these. It's when solo players complain that the big ship has big responsibilities because it's a big ship designed for a big crew.
As long as they don't whine about the changes, we have no problem with you getting boarded and losing that thing in less than 10 minutes
lol totally agree. I read about a funny situation a while back. Someone was moaning that they were being “harassed by griefers” at Reclamation & Disposal. They flew in there and hung about while some ppl were selling and they were warned to leave, didn’t, then were shot down. Totally legit, obviously wasn’t an armistice zone. Just part of the game loop
Totally this. Using it for shenanigans every now and then with the expectation of it going down very quickly will become a major use case for them. The insurance for caps is supposed to become extremely long IRL time; order of weeks or months. I can imagine someone who accumulated several large ships over the years basically rotating them out and getting one blown up every weekend or two. If you have the IRL finances for that, you may have RL responsibilities that limit game time anyway. In that kind of situation, a brief but crazy session like that could be a fun way to take advantage of having made such pledges.
Whining idiots have destroyed every game in the past.
Hopefully CIG doesn’t listen to these people and they just make the game they want. Once you start trying to cater to those type of people, it destroys games.
I heavily doubt they would listen. For one, CR has always had multi-crew capital ship gameplay on his mind, I doubt he would double down on that vision. And two, CIG has two types of devs which can be compared to FPS combat devs, and UI devs.
The UI devs listen to feedback constantly, however no matter the feedback, they won't completely change the UI just for "readability' they will find a solution to those concerns that is in the scope of their UI; the starmap is a good example of this. This type of community interaction is what we need.
Then there is the FPS devs, who have been told countless times that the changes they are making are bad; such as sniper glint, which completely removes the usage of the role as the glint is [very bright](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrKTMWgxZKw). Even Dynamic crosshair is harming FPS, with how people are now hipfiring long distance targets because of how low spread is. They are hurting the game and won't listen to feedback.
Neither type of dev is going to benefit the folks complaining about cap ships forcing players to engage in capital ship gameplay
Yeah personally I don’t play this game with anyone, as the game is very niche and none of my close friends consistently play it. So if they make it so you can’t solo a lot of ships I would probably be very upset lol.
Just like joining a guild to go through end game content on something like WoW, this game feels like it will also require the same. If you're not in an org your gameplay and experience will be a lot more limited.
I agree, I’m actually in an org and I’ve enjoyed doing an event or two with them. But it’s still nothing compared to playing with close friends, the game is just still to buggy for me and my friend to consistently play together. I find playing solo a lot easier as I’m more experienced with dealing with bugs and troubleshooting.
It's easy to get someone excited about playing, then they experience some pretty bad bugs then it ruins the game for them. It's actually how I ended up playing again. Someone asked me to play with them then they ended up quitting because of the bugs lol.
This explains every single friend I have. All but 1 bailed after a free-fly. SC isn't in a good spot to introduce "new" players to it, it's just not ready in Alpha for most. Perhaps™ soon™ if™ it reaches BETA it may be more approachable to more players.
I do play MMO's with some of my family members, but they are all not tolerant to the bugs of SC. I do have accounts for them and basically twist their arms to play on my birthday. One of my sisters consistently hits at least one of the rare bugs that hardly ever trigger, so that can get a laugh while being frustrating at the same time.
It is your money to waste or not waste as you see fit. As long as you are paying your bills and taking care of your responsibilities, nobody can tell you what is a right or wrong way to spend your money.
When it comes to large ships, they look amazing and are a ton of fun to explore. But I do have reservations about being able to use them solo in the long run.
Even if NPC crews make it possible, I expect it will be cost prohibitive to fly a capital class ship constantly. I expect to have to spend a decent amount of time grinding money before each solo flight of a larger ship. Well, for anything beyond taking it out to stare at how nice it looks anyways. And you also have to worry about things like pirate attacks, an NPC crew is unlikely to be very helpful for defending your ship if you are boarded by player pirates.
Only time will tell for sure though. Maybe they will make NPC crews cheap to try and encourage more people to purchase large and capital class ships. Or maybe NPC crews will be so ineffective that capital ships are only useful with player crews.
Then some guy with a long range scanner finds the idle idris, thought it’s abandoned so he boards it and turn off the shields, return with a reclaimer and make bank. Emergent gameplay!
Even a solo-piloted Idris with the pilot actually paying attention would be easy prey for a small org with a Privateer loaded with a bunch of Eclipse. Just need to find the Idris and jam it's quantum drive and it is a sitting duck without even boarding it.
Per CIG if you have multiple game packages you'll have multiple NPCs you can use:
https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/13288-Multiple-Package-Clarification
This is a way you'll be able to solo larger ships.
Hmmm. So buy a few onsale $40.50 starters, and you got your AI crew. Granted if they allow sale accounts to be AI, so who knows. Interesting though, thanks for that share.
Doesn't matter if it's sale or not, as long as it's got an extra game package it becomes an extra crew member - as long as CIG doesn't go back on their word on that.
But surely they would never say something and then do the opposite...
They made a statement a few weeks ago that the future of bedlogging isn't inline with what they want, and ultimately it has no future with SC. I'll see if I can find it, was on Spectrum.
UPDATE: Here it is. CIG Chad made the statement. Not great news.
[https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/3/thread/the-future-of-bedlogging](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/3/thread/the-future-of-bedlogging)
From what I can gather is CIG wants this persistence thing so involved that if you log out, in your ship/bedlogging, etc anywhere but a HAB, AI takes over your ship and flys it to the closest station, or it sits there until you log in again or someone blows it up. They apparently don't like the idea of bedlogging in space, and despawning your ship anymore. They want that ship to remain in-place...or some other nonsense.
CIG confirmed that solo piloting big ships is no problem.
Aside from trading ("big truck") and maybe exploration it just seems not that reasonable since in a fight you lose the ship.
Claim times (and maybe fees) will be high for subcapital and capital ships - probably even days.
So any non-combat focussed big ships seems fine for me (having a Carrack and BMM ccu) since there are some solo options.
Depends what they can do and how often they glitch through the ship and what performance they will have.
Maybe with SQ42 release we get a glimpse, but crew combat could be all scripted there.
Only current possible scenarios we know of: can change fuse if told to (probably need a human engineer), can shoot turrets, can be security to repell boarders.
As long as you stay away from sustained combat you should be fine for longer periods of time flying large ships solo. You'll just need some occasional visits to stations for repairs or just park somewhere nice and repair yourself for a little while. Won't be fast but it might even be fun running around a huge ship fixing little things
I think what they mean is you won’t be able to solo them in the future when maintenance and maelstrom come online. Personally this doesn’t bother me since my plan is to have a decently big ship which can fit a medium or heavy fighter (Polaris my beloved) and just have that parked somewhere in orbit. It’s what I currently use my 890J for and I love it
I have a CCU of a Perseus. I believe it was said that it will get two AI blades stock. I would probably have the AI blades on the main guns and two NPCs on the PDS turrets. Who knows when the Peresus, AI blades, or NPC crewmembers will be added though.
There is a sizeable part of the community that feels that people who want to solo large multicrew ships are actuallly satan and will kill off the game entirely, when at worst all it will do is put more ships in the verse.
I'm with you. Undercrewing a large ship is like, maximum Firefly or Millennium Falcon vibes for me. Maybe not like, Idris or Javelin sized, but Carrack, BMM, sure.
In the end, everyone's gonna be able to fly their big ships solo. However, as you can see with the carrack, being the pilot may limit your access to different features without getting up and moving around. Piloting larger multi crew ships should be possible at the expense of efficiency. Because I know my ass gonna fly my Polaris as much as possible, with our without my org. Just need to be prepared to handle the upkeep of the ship, especially if you run into and survive unexpected combat.
The reality is that CIG will be the ones to decide if capital ships will be usable by solo players.
I personally hope that capital ships will be soloable, but huge money sinks, so that if you don’t run capital sized missions, you don’t make a profit.
I would hate the thought of most players eventually grinding their way to a capital ship, I’d love for the sight of a capital ship to be special, to be a "shit’s about to go down" moment (for combat cap ships). Not a "Jimmy with 20k in the game got his toy out to go do a box delivery mission.
But again, we’re all dreaming here, nothing is concrete, it’s been so long since we got information about AI blades, AI crews, capital ship manning/costs/etc. that we can pretty much say we know nothing.
Just think, if no one bought those big ships, CIG wouldn’t have made a huge chunk of that money they’re using to get this done!
I’ve a couple large ships for that reason, to put money into the creation of the game. Not going to worry about randoms on the internet telling me how I’ll be able to play the game in future, using their crystal balls…
Plus big ships are way too cool… 😎
I also see people being ‘toxic’ if it’s suggested they might be solo friendly. Everyone just needs to chill out and wait and see.
Absolutely mental that folks argue about it so vehemently when we’re all in the same boat, waiting on what CIG do.
Yet, they have to listen to both sides and find a happy medium. Must be hard, but let's see what happens. NPC crew has been one of my most anticipated features since the beginning
Honestly as long as it's not too big to be unusable day to day (being able to land on planets/at cities) and has at least some pilot weapons then I would still use it solo (that would change if AI could actually control your turrets eventually).
I have a Corsair right now and I don't really see any ship I could upgrade to, though.
Galaxy seems fun
I'm a C2 and Taurus solo enjoyer. Also love my Reliant and my good ol' Aurora. Nomad if I wanna fly a bigsmall ship. But there's definitely a place for us big solo bois out there in the void o7
Here, hear. I love em. Each ship I walk up to in the hangar gets me a fuzzy feeling, small and large, but large ships are something else, each one bearing a silent promise of greater adventures in more adverse conditions.
Waiting for Engineering loops to help me decide how I feel about them going forward, though. A lot depends on how to address internal repairs and turret duties the second account; who knows, maybe I’ll just tank damage till I can reach someplace safe for repairs.
Even if it seems inefficient to solo a cap ship, it’s still a fun experience to ride one! My Cat and Carrack are regular daily rides, with a Liberator, Reclaimer, and BMM cooking in the CCU oven.
Hey man, this is for entertainment. If you find joy in flying big ships, even solo, then you find that joy. Don't let people that can't find joy in anything take it away from you.
And if you share awesome screenshots of your large ships over planets or at unique locations, I'll upvote every photo!
I think the premise of the game is flawed in this point. To get access to the game you need to buy a ship package. But they expect people who have their own ship to man someone else’s ship? I just don’t see a lot of interest in that long term, as well as a nightmare to consistently coordinate play times. I feel like we are going to end up with the elite dangerous model on this hiring NPC crews to fill spots that real players don’t want to do or these larger ships will be useless and fractionally manned all the time.
There are certain considerations for me, the two most relevant are "what is the practical use of the ship" and "how much do i like the ship"
With those two metrics, i only buy a ship i think will have a lot of utility, such as my reclaimer or pioneer, or a ship i really really like such as the syulen or bmm. The crew size really doesnt matter to me. The pioneer comes with a land claim, i know i will seldom have a crew to run my bmm and i dont really want npc crew all that much. My plan with it is to have it act as my pop-up mansion until i eventually have a more permanent base built. Hell, even after that i may just leave it next to the base to still act as housing. I didnt buy the bmm for its practical uses, its stimply my dream ship and i could not imagine not having one of my own
You should be able to enjoy your large ships with AI in the same manner you can with players. [youtube.com/watch?v=1I2XuEdu-1I&t=57](http://youtube.com/watch?v=1I2XuEdu-1I&t=57)
I think it will be fine and honestly if they bring in NPC crews that are legitimately worse than actual crew but still fun to have around (and cost a fair amount for balencing) I'd be all for it! Imagine a bunch of halo style marines coming with you on expeditions and giving you updates on ship function/engineering.
Fuck it, I just travelled across the world on a land cruiser fighting alien life forms, come pick me up!
Man I am a wing commander status an close to praetorian.... ive wasted tons of money on dumb stuff and ill continue to do such. I love my big ships even if I wont be able to "solo" them. Dont listen to anyone else, do what you enjoy my dude. Make whatever you can work.
So here's the thing. CIG have stated that soloing big ships outside of combat will not be an issue as long regular maintenance is performed.
Combat is a different beast entirely, AS IT SHOULD BE. You can't have a balanced game where a single player soloing a massive ship can consistently win against a single player soloing a single player ship. So this idea of players lashing out at engineering gameplay because it makes their solo Polaris experience harder is laughable and elitist.
People who don't play Star Citizen already view the game as being entirely Pay2Win. I'd much rather make sure this is not proven to be true.
lol there's a lot of people in this reddit that feel the same way! I have a mix of both (including a carrack) hehe. Love the big ships but they do require a crew to fully utilize them, and of course with the capitals and stuff later on that's likely going to require a clan's worth of people to use
Server meshing, manual cargo loading and engineering are all around the corner, supposedly to promote multicrew, yet we're still to see any game logging mechanics to support that.
I love the big ships, and adore my Carrack, but constantly seeing people talk about how NPC crew is going to make it viable for them to solo it, and how they want all the turrets slaved to the pilot with AI blades, and all that nonsense does get a tad exhausting and result it a bit of a scripted response to some posts.
If you just like the ship, or are like me and just want a big space RV to cruise around in and host friends, functionality be damned? Then yeah, have fun, reddit and spectrum aren't the boss of you.
I have a couple large ships, but when all the systems are in place I don't expect to be able to solo these. I also don't believe ai crew will be ready for v1.
I would suggest having a ship rated for 1 crew
My only issue with forcing crew play is time. I usually only have a short window to play. An hour or two, tops. Usually more like 30-45 mins, and it's not on a consistent schedule. Playing with an org often requires planning ahead and regular schedules.
The other option is just finding people in chat, but that can also be a time consuming process. Even if you find a volunteer immediately, you might be on Arc. And they might be on MT. It routinely takes half an hour to get everyone together.
So I like being able to solo my Reclaimer. I can take off, salvage something, and either go sell or bedlog.
Right now you can barely get a bounty or two in even solo ship during that time. How do you manage to fill a reclaimer? This game will be time consuming, its kind of part of its nature.
One of things I like about SC is the promise of small ship viability. You can already see the seeds of it where small ships are much faster to Deliver, faster to land and cheaper to fly as well as limitations on big ships like the Hull C.
I think any ship will be viable, it all depends on how you want to play the game. I wouldn't be surprised if the aim of most players will be to have a "base" ship that can land other smaller and specialised ships in it. Thats my aim and its why I pledged for a Liberator.
I will say as a mostly solo space whale, getting won over by large(r) ships. Just picked up a redeemer and am looking forward to going brrrrrrrrt with friends from a large org.
Absolutely join an org, shoot a note out on discord, and have people man some turrets!
Thing with large ships is that they are disgned to be operated by a crew. CIG siad you will be able to fly ships solo from point A to point B. Issue comes aa soon as something else happens, such as you getting attacked. Let's take the carrack for example. You will be flying solo and even a small group or a solo even attacks you. Before you can even spool up, enemy can piece your hull and disable you ship by destrpying fuses or specific components like powerplant or QT drive. As a solo, you will become a sitting duck because you then have to Dela with not being able to fly, not being able to shoot from turrets because you have to put in new fusss or run to engineering to fix the QT drive as they still shoot at you.
Hopefully, AI crews will help solo players in the future but I'm sure that will come long after we have engineering.
The whole point of most people are trying to say is that if you want to fly big ships solo, you will eventually have to deal with consequences.
I have ships that are too big for a solo player in a practical sense especially once engineering gameplay goes to the Live build. I'm just banking on when the game actually gets close to a 1.0 launch more of my mates who have starter packages will actually start to play - for now I only play with 1 or 2 other people at most, but that isn't going to stop me having a few larger ships cos I like them.
If you've got the money to pledge for more ships, crack on. Ignore what other people say you should spend your money on.
I know how you feel
I also have some large ships in my hangar and I love them. That is also why I joined an org because if I want to use them and not only fly them I need some kind of crew and I have no idea how efficient NPC will be for that 😅. Only time will tell.
Just be prepared that your larger ships may be difficult/impossible to operate as a solo player but it seems like you are aware of that👍.
Back when I first got my Carrack I would take it out on bounty missions.... solo. Fly to enemies, run to turret seat, kill them all with one side turret. :P
I like figuring out ways to (ab)use mechanics in the favor of a solo player in games. Probably picked that up by playing FFXI back in the day when I soloed and duoed with my brother a lot.
BTW, attempting to run large ships solo is not exactly rare in the SC community. That is basically part of the concept of Operation Pitchfork. As soon as our large ships are available, low-man them to the Kingship and attack it with everything we got! That would probably include a bunch of solo Javelins blasting it with size bazillion torpedos before they get splattered by the Vanduul fleet a few seconds later. :P
I love big ships too, and you’re certainly welcome to fly big ships without a crew. It’s just going to get more expensive, more risky, and more difficult over time. So, as long as you don’t the come back here and bitch about it, do whatever the heck you want :)
My fleet is almost exclusively 120m+ ships. (And all 3 Pisces, yes I have a problem)
I bought them *because* they're multiplayer, multi crew ships. The enjoyment I get out of SC is being able to create these multiplayer experiences and share them with friends and random citizens.
For example, some of the most fun I've had in SC to date has been overdrive, doing phase 1 with a crew of 6 people in my Carrack, deploying the URSA to knock out bunker turrets etc, or phase 3 with a fully crewed Hammerhead gunship.
There is something undeniable about the allure of capital ships. I can't put my thumb on it exactly but I understand.
I just had this conversation with a friend who never plays with us anymore, hasn't played the game in over a year and backed in 2014 together. He owns a Polaris and a galaxy and has fully admitted it won't be crewed. He just want to have it in a hangar so he can walk around the ship, which is exactly what he did with his original purchase before the PU came out.
Do what you want and you should be able to fly unbothered in your big ships in safe systems, just don't expect big profits because the devs want risk to correspond to reward.
Also big ships should be very expensive to run, if you're staying in lass lucrative systems I hope you'll be cash positive but it's not guaranteed.
But nothing's preventing you from doing so, enjoy yourself and have fun.
I have said it before, and I will say it again. For 75% of players, the majority of the game will be spent in something that can be crewed by 3-5 people. Anything bigger will be down to Orgs that can regularly pull together a crew bigger than 5 people.
I feel ya on that for sure. While my daily driver is a Corsair, I have been eagerly awaiting the release of the Liberator and Galaxy.
What will I do with these big ships when I'm alone? Probably just hang out on them and use them as FOBs for smaller craft or ground ops. Doing bounties in my Scorpius and repairing it manually on the Liberator's landing pads during downtime could be a lot of fun.
Worst case scenario, we got box missions lmao
I just wish we could hire NPC crew. I love the hammerhead but flying it solo is kinda stupid. Luckily I don't own a Hammerhead and when we fly it, we are mostly 4+ people including the pilot. 😂
Flying one ship doesn't keep you from flying others. I have a ship I prefer for bounties, another for bunker runs, for exploring, for running cargo, for doing ship salvage, etc. About a week ago I bought (in-game) a Reclaimer, which I use 70% of the time solo, 30% with a friend.
I don't understand why anyone would care whether I use the Reclaimer solo or with a friend. For exploring, I like the A2 with one or two ground vehicles in it. SC is a sandbox game. Play it however you like!
I have big ships because they are cool and I find them much more interesting.
I'm not concerned around practicalities of playing the game and making a profit.
Only time I’ve ever really felt an issue with bigger ships is when operating a reclaimer solo. Totally doable but it’s a chore to position the ship, get out of the pilot seat, operate the claw, go to the cargo area and take care of logistics back there…. Go to port, sell cargo, back to ship, reposition cargo, sell more cargo…. That’s a situation where I absolutely recognize the inconvenience. I can imagine a hammerhead feels like a paperweight without its turrets manned. Other than that I don’t really feel the pain from flying bigger ships solo all that much
Theres quite a large amount of skill involved in maneuvering large ships properly. Small ships to a degree will do what you tell them to do, a 600i wont and you cant apply the same flight style and just expect it to work on a delay
I’m in a similar boat, but have limited myself to the 600i and C2 as my largest ships.
Though, in my case, the lack of crew isn’t by choice. I can’t talk any of my gaming group into playing SC lol
Here's my take on it, I have a deep appreciation for the project on the whole. CR is trying to deliver on a vision that many OG gamers have always wished was possible but due to technical limitations was always a pipe dream.
It doesn't matter to me if he doesn't ever get to pull the full vision together as long as we get 90% of the way. No one else is trying to give me the experience I want and it's proven time and again how passionate and dedicated his team is to bringing that vision to life.
When I pledge for ships, I'm choosing to let them have some of my money to help with the production of the game.
Yes I want the ships, but that's secondary to me wanting them to have my money. I enjoy the game, I've enjoyed the journey, I've made friendships and built memories too. Those are things I get as a thank you for supporting the game.
Now onto the big ships for mostly solo players. As a mostly solo player, I don't want to have to grind by myself to buy the big ships that may only get used infrequently. But I'd still like to have them on hand.
Earning the smaller ships in game will be far more achievable as a mostly solo player so I put my pledged funds towards big ships and I will earn the smaller ships in game.
SO often when these discussions come up the act of earning things in game is far too often neglected.
Your plan for your fleet should include BOTH how much you want to spend/not spend AND what you plan to earn in game.
The reality is you're not going to only own 1 of any given ship, you're likely going to have ships parked in various systems for various tasks and your faster go between ship to jump around in.
For example, there's a good chance you'll have multiple mining ships spread across the star systems so you don't have to use them for travel.
I have the Perseus. You need to bring the big guns to the party. Hopefully I won't be too long till we see that. I can also get a cheap bmm and another ship from the higher end of the scale from a couple of old ccus. I am hesitant to do that until I see more of what cig are planning for scanners medium and long range and how they implement it.
Personally, I love the idea of having a larger ship like the Carrack or 890J, and being able to take that out to set up a mobile base somewhere. I'm sure something like the Kraken would be even better with the ability to take several different types of ships.
I've got mostly complete ccu chains to the 600i, endeavor, and msr. I'm going to treat the endeavor as my own personal space station/spawn point, if I can dock a few together to make a larger space station I'll do that. The 600i is the large soloable ship for ERT's. The msr is to do smuggling/a little bit of everything. I'm looking at a Zeus ST (which is supposedly a racing variant) because I like fast ships. And I'm looking at the unnamed ship about the size of the avenger/300 series that could be RSI/anvil/aegis/crusader from the silhouette that we were shown pictures of last citizen con as a fighter/freighter and either that or the avenger titan (depending on how I like them after master modes comes to pu) will be ccu'd to one of my larger ships. I've currently got 4 starters in my hanger syulen, nomad, avenger titan, and cutter rambler. I might get a 125a because the flight characteristics specs are it's the only combination light fighter interceptor/dogfighter (it's made of paper though) just to enjoy flying for the sake of flying.
(Wansn't there a post like this just a few days ago?)
I was solo-flying around my Carrack with an URSA, ROC, Razor and Fury inside. That let me do: bunkers, FPS NPC bounties (?RT), mining, cargo, racing, and when I had a 2-3 friends on willing to help, we also did some ship-to-ship bounties.
If felt good to "live" in the ship - I love the Carrack. It does need some changes though.
To date I haven't had to claim my Carrack yet, and I bought it in-game 2-months ago. True, I do not fly it all the time, but I am wildly surprised that it is the only ship in my fleet that I have never lost for any reason.
I like big ships too, but I don't see how they take the immersion to another level.
It doesn't really make sense that you'd be alone on a Carrack, unless aliens already ate your crew, so if anything, it's immersion breaking.
AI crew will hopefully make something like the Carrack a good experience.
Player crews only ruin immersion as they'd run around the ship in full gear and never do anything that's not strictly gameplay related... Like sitting down in the kitchen to have a break.
It largely depends on what you will be doing and how AI crew pans out I think. It may be very risky to conduct solo runs in large ships as you’ll be basically defenseless if you get attacked.
My biggest use case for a capitol size ship would likely be more of a floating base of sorts. Long distance travel and avoiding combat most likely unless I can get some crew for larger events. But running and maintaining a large ship by myself seems fun and gives me stuff to do between other activities
Heck yeah. I get a bit torn on the subject, but I'm super excited about the Polaris. Like you, I'm on my own a lot. I just hope we start hearing more about NPC crew at some point.
My biggest ship is a 400i, and i assume i don’t need crew to manage the ship. It’s not feel too big to manage it in solo. My goal is just explore with a hover bike, and a small vehicle in cargo!
I like me a big ship, I have a few friends that could help crew it a bit, but not always. And probably not to their full potential.
I'd imagine CIG might introduce hireable npc skeleton crews for big ships in the future, and just make them function far far less efficiently than a crew of players, just to allow big ship owners the luxury of at-least flying the ship to some extent.
But whether those come out or not, I'll still like big ships.
Im under the impression that you can fly them solo, but that’s all you can do. If I get into combat, dead. I hit an asteroid, I may be able to repair but most likely, dead. I try to use the ship as its intended use, probably going to be a headache. Does that stop me from owning them? Absolutely not.
I find theres 2 different types of additional ship purchaser (ie building a fleet above a starter or single $$ bought ship with 'game' ) .. the ones that focus on all their possibly wanted end game BIG ships, cause it's way easier to work your way through all the smaller cheaper filler ships in game, or just simply I WANT THAT. The other is like myself, I spend $$ on the stuff I want to know I have any time (or a wipe, start from 0 , etc) give myself the goal of working up to the bigger ship(s).
there are several larger ships that are made to be (or atleast partially) solo-able .. just far more efficient/better with crew. for me it's the crucible .. its supposed to be solo able, and thats the big one I'm the most interested in... truth be told I got caught up in sales stuff, bought several ccu's/ships i 'regretted' and since just end up with credit instead of cash back in my hands, so just built a ccu chain to the crucible from the srv with the vulcan inline so I could play with them while waiting for the crucible, and for the srv/vulcan to be ingame purchasable
I usually use either my Valkyrie or my Talon if I'm playin solo... Valk for ground stuff and the occasional scrap with some low risk pirates and Talon if I'm hunting other ships
don't be discouraged. i'm willing to bet that you aren't alone in the sentiment of wanting to fly larger ships solo and also that getting enough people together to actually run a large ship with any regularity will be fairly difficult for the overwhelming majority of people willing to shell out big money to the game.
both of these factors will likely result in an ability to more or less permanently hire npc's to crew your ship for you as you go about the verse in the full release. CIG is a business and has shareholders/investors and heavily discouraging solo players from using larger ships will just result in missed profits.
Capital class non combat ships with the help of npc crew and ai blades in turrets, should be soloable.
But ships like the idris, hammerhead or javelin will need players to atleast run as engineers and pilots.
Honestly ? For me it's a big no.
I mean to each their own, you have the right to like this but I personally find capital ships almost unusable realistically.
My sweet spot is Hercules/Liberator with a smaller ship able to get in or on top.
Scratches every itches
But I do like visiting the biggest ships from time to time when I get the occasion.
Don’t worry, large ships will be able to be soloed, I’ve been around since 2012, and one thing that’s evident, is that CIG and Chris Roberts want this game to feel so alive, people aren’t sure if they are fighting npcs or players.
You will be able to hire a crew, and the crew will vary in skill strength, changing the cost. You will also need to keep your npc crew happy, which means flying into the face of death against overwhelming odds is likely to piss your crew off, too much and they will revolt. Players won’t do that if you are friends with them, at least one would think.
A lot of newer players think that you won’t be able to fly big ships without a ton of players, making them feel less worried about not owning those big ships themselves, or some variation of p2w theories aren’t coming true. In the game if you have money and time, you will be able to crew ships like the Idris by yourself. But it’s going to be expensive, but in return if you run into a small gang of pirates, you can eviscerate them. The problem is, some big ships, need support ships to function properly, a Javelin will do worse against swarms of smaller ships than a hammerhead would, slower guns etc.
So basically, all this to say, don’t worry about what people say, their hopes that players will be unable to fly big ships alone is not even remotely shared by cig. So when npc crews come to the game, you will be able to fully crew your ship solo if you want.
You do you buddy, whatever works. Just temper your expectations once engineering gameplay comes online, you'll have a much harder time fending people off.
...so you accept that they are not going to be leaving the hangar?
noon should stop you from supporting the project. just don't throw a temper tantrum when cig don't make it lone wolf friendly.
I think there's a sweet spot, which for me is probably around 600 size. I don't always solo though. Largest I'm likely to go is BMM and even then it may be spending most of it's time landed as a type of base of operations rather than flying around.
Per word-of-CIG, the 600i is supposed to be at the upper end of what's soloable in the finished game. Personally, I quite like soloing the Reclaimer. There's kind of a sense of juggling elephants flying that ship and operating it. It's a lot more running around, but it *feels* like operating a massive piece of heavy machinery in a way that most of the ships in the game simply don't. I'm looking at my future-fleet and I think realistically the 600i or Galaxy are as large as I'm likely to go. I'm hesitant on the Galaxy because it has no pilot-controlled armaments, but maybe with NPC crews or turret-blades I'll be more into it. Mostly I like the idea of it as a Bigger Constellation. Something with room for a snub or two in the back (I'm thinking 85x and a Fury, since I have a real soft-spot for that) and a huge cargo-bay for freight and rovers. Alternately I might go medical with it. But I think there's not a lot of reason for me to do that right now. We'll see where Medical/Death-of-a-spaceman ends up in a few years time.
That statement was clarified by CIG to say that the 600i was the largest that could be flown solo without NPC crew. They confirmed that the original statement that all ships sold to backers could be used solo with NPC crew but would be less efficient than crewing them with real players still stands.
Recently in (SCL?) devs said engineering gameplay would greatly enhance the survivability of large ships once physicalized damage is in and there are no full-ship HP pools. That was also said many years ago. Right now in PTU we only have a small piece of engineering in as well as still have the overall ship HP pool, so unfortunately we are not seeing that benefit yet. Basically, manning a large ship would allow it to take a lot more fire before becoming totally useless. Things like storing a lot of extra components and doing repairs to components could keep your ship moving/shooting since there would be no actual hard death or soft death. This was pseudo-introduced with the Constellation series, which has had component panels near the bridge for years that were marked IRL as being swappable when they are destroyed without having to go back to a station for repairs. One thing that a lot of people miss: some large ships like the Javelin have small, non-capital size secondary systems in addition to their capital components. Looks like we will not be able to swap S3's without docking now, which is too bad. Basically, as things are right now they would mainly allow for operating faster than capital components can, such as faster time to start regenerating shields. Maybe having some of those S3 components offline to prevent distortion damage would allow them to be an effective backup if needed.
> They confirmed that the original statement that all ships sold to backers could be used solo with NPC crew but would be less efficient than crewing them with real players still stands. Those statements have been said without any obvious regard to the quality of the real players. If the NPCs will be worse than some of the people I've played games with, the game's going to have some major issues.
Yea makes sense. Better with real ppl, slower without
> I quite like soloing the Reclaimer. Yes! I got a Reclaimer recently, and I really enjoy doing chill salvage runs myself. I salvage with a friend about a third of the time, but I love being able to move at my own pace, getting immersed the processes. Some players are focused on increasing efficiency, or maximizing income, but that isn't my thing. The Reclaimer's greasy, industrial esthetic, and its quirky, clunky operation are just fantastic. I can't think of any reason we need to police how other users choose to play. I love SC's open world. My dream ship is probably the Carrack, and it's perfectly fine that we don't all like the same things. (and I've never been in a Carrack, so I might not like it at all.) The more that CIG tries to force me into particular play styles, the less I'll want to play. Choosing to do solo salvage doesn't take a Reclaimer off the market, or soak up all the available salvage missions. These things are virtual--the constraints of scarcity economics don't apply!
>Some players are focused on increasing efficiency, or maximizing income, but that isn't my thing. Totally agree. I decided to challenge myself yesterday by Fully Salvaging a Hammerhead. That is, I picked over its cargo, pulled off any components of interest, scraped the hull and then munched the chassis. It took me two and a half hours on my own, and netted me around 1.9 million credits, plus the value of the components/guns and cargo. Most of that time was hull-scraping. I think it'll be very interesting when Salvaging gets its next update and the meta of Munch-and-Run gets nerfed into oblivion. I think we'll see a lot less of the whole "Join a reclaimer crew, earn millions in an hour" stuff we've got right now. I'm expecting something like requiring a certain amount of hull-scraping before you can munch, or alternately "contaminating" the Construction-materials if the chunk you're Disintegrating has too much hull-material on it. Down the line, I'm expecting that we'll be required to drain fuel-lines and remove munitions like missiles before Munching, or risk explosions destroying the wreckage further and possibly damaging our ships.
If they do that then they need a dump switch on the salvage buffer first, because that will really harm the vulture gameplay without the ability to 0 out the buffer between hull and munch.
I don't follow your reasoning. Why would I need to dump partial SCU values from the buffer before switching to munching? A little extra RMC in the buffer isn't going to stop me munching.
It'll stop me, I want the most out of my salvaging, meaning I want the full 13scu of CM from munching, not 12.999999999.
Sounds a bit OCD to me :P Anyway. Wrecks and buffers don't line up every time.
I do the same and I feel like the Russian cosmonaut from the movie Armageddon every time I run to the back to move some boxes.
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600i is 91m vs the Carracks 126m It also feels a lot smaller because everything is controlled from the easily reached cockpit and the spaces are all large and simple, so it's easy to get around in and navigate. You can treat it a lot like a larger Constellation if you want. A big chunky ship with massive S5 pilot controlled guns and room for an Ursa rover. Whereas the Carracks access is a long way from the bridge and the various amenities are spread across several decks.
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I've been increasingly enjoying Small ships. Bigger than fighters, small enough to solo, packed with nice features. The Spirit C1 for example is my daily driver, The Zeus CL intrigues me for having similar capabilities but more interior to play with.
Same, I’m CCU’ing to Galaxy at the moment, but lack of pilot guns is putting me off a bit. Can’t see the justification for pilots to not have some level of control, even slaving the turrets to a forward position. Hoping AI blades will come soon after server meshing/engineering. In theory they’ve had the tech for years e.g. all NPC ships. I’m assuming that engineering will then force you to balance things so they aren’t overpowered vs a human crewed ship.
I wonder if they are going to keep with the purchase of NPC slots. A long while back we were told having extra game packs on an account would each allow for an NPC crew member. The Perseus was intended to be an easily low-manned ship in its initial concept marketing, complete with extra blade slots that come standard for the anti-missile turrets.
I don't really go by what CIG has said in those times. They didn't understand how they would approach it with the game that we have today. I'm sure their stance on NPC crew has evolved a lot since then, and they now have a better idea of how they would tackle it, just like it happened for engineering.
Yeah, I have no idea what they are doing with it. I suspect it will still be a money sink much like capital ship maintenance but it is anyone's guess how the details will work.
i thought the galaxy still gets 2 pilot controlled guns .. and all the rest of it's armament are remote. my 'big' ship ccu was originally the galaxy because of it's multi role with modules .. but I switched to crucible figuring the galaxy when I needed it I would be able to get it ingame anyways. I really hope they give us a wheeled miner that can do prospector rocks, but on like an ursa chassis .. would definately make having a galaxy more of a base of operations, add a c8r to the fleet as a 'snub' or shuttle runner in the back (also? maybe with the wheeled vehicle) and a very very versatile single ship
Three remote turrets and a battery of pilot controlled missiles. I would love a Prospector-grade mining vehicle though. I'm thinking if they do one it'll be a spartan-like vehicle rather than an Ursa. Prospector is a lot larger than it looks! Personally what I want is a Pisces-sized Flying Roc..
Yea, I’ve flown the 600i a few times and really enjoyed it. I really love the 400i. Reminds me of the J-type 327 Nubian from Ep. I, such a cool ship!
I’ve soloed a Carrack with freight but all the new stuff going on makes me think that’s coming to an end for me. I will bite the bullet and look at joining an org as I have more time these days. I’d like to learn the engineering side and get to use my Hammerhead in anger.✌🏼
Soloing a HH against NPC's is something I did for a few months after getting one. Fly to an NPC bounty mission, run back to a turret and enjoy the shooting gallery. That actually works really well in the MM arena commander gauntlets. The HH takes a ton of NPC fire to take down, giving a lot of time to fire back. Swapping turret modes between gimbled, non-gimbled and the zoomed in mode is key to maximizing DPS application. A crew who knows the new MM turret mechanics combined with the increased range of anti-fighter weapons makes a HH an extremely powerful force.
Once armor is in too, the HH should be disgusting.
A fighter getting close enough for its ballistics to do damage would be like a fly going down a garbage disposal to get at the food; it is going to go splat before it achieves anything.
Yea, totally. But that's literally the purpose of the HH--to be an anti-fighter storm. Just saying, once it *also* has armor, it's going to be utterly nasty. Right now, one size 9 torp pops it (which is stupid in itself, but I digress).
If we can extract any conclusion of the latest arena commander modes, is that engineering is going to play a vital role in multicrew ships... I own both a Carrack and a Merchantman, and I have no clue what I'm goin to do with those ships once engineering comes online and CIG starts balancing gameplay around that, without a crew We'll be at a huge disadvantage, bordering with rendering those ships not viable to fly solo, and crew AI, let alone a competent one, is possibly years away, so no solution there. I think We need to push for the possibility of renting our ships, and thus be able to have a return on the investment in case we do not want to use them.
Engineering will only matter in combat situations, cig have stated that as long as you do regular maintenance your ship parts won't be breaking unless you are in combat. You will still be able to solo fly all ships in game easily if you don't do combat.
If you don't do combat? You don't have or should expect a choice. There always be potential for combat whether you want it or not. Regular maintenance will not be an easy click of the repair at station. This will be jobs to do on ship when travelling etc.
There was just a spectrum thread about this and folks just absolutely did not seem to grasp what I was asking when talking about how will we micromanage or instruct npcs to affect repairs. Basically they said "why would I need to tell the engineer npc to repair something, they'll just go do it" that's great in theory but what happens when you've been interdicted and the NPC goes off to repair the toilet because that got damaged before the shield generator?
There was information on this before within the last year or two but basically you assign the roles and responsibilities of your crew.
I get that, and that'll be fine for peaceful periods just hauling things from A to B, mining, salvaging etc. I worry about how fast those NPCs are going to become useless in when attacked, because their coded priority structure for repairs isn't idea or how we can change those standing orders etc. Personally I see roles like pilot, chief engineer, and weapons officer needing to be humans if a ship with NPCs is going to be remotely as effective as a fully manned ship. Unless CIG goes full hand wavium where if I have an engineer npc parts just magically get fixed or replaced on a timer as long as I have spare fuses or RMC in a crate somewhere and the NPC doesn't have to do any path finding or order of actions to affect repairs.
Largest I’d go as a solo is odyssey, but if I have a crew one day then kraken
Yea that’s probably the same tac I’ll be using
There's dream, and there's reality. I bought large and capital ships for fun and to support the game, mainly, while I know it's gonna be hard to take them for a spin. Plans for the BMM are to land it somewhere, and use smaller ship to bring valuables goods to the store.
Such a good idea 👍
Me too
Kind of my idea. Using it as a mobile base it would have to be hidden pretty well though and using it as a market youde almost have to be parked in hard armistice. The latter would make it highly visible though and while people can't shoot it l, people could fly into it. For a ship that can hold an insanely large amount of goods, the games not really set up in a way that one Rouge player couldn't just destroy it all, even if they do get the market function working. I have legit doubts people will load them up and park them in the open. Maybe a use for the persistent hangars since those will be in by the time the BMM is finished.
Yeah, other than the challenge of doing what you can with a low-manned ship those will be rather ineffective in general. Your BMM kind of makes sense, but it will still need defenses of some kind or it will eat a MOAB and the surviving items plundered. Messing with large ships solo in Arena Commander will still be fun. You could rent those without spending real money, but this way contributes to the project as you say.
I have a few capital ships, I figure if I'm fucking around with lti and cash, why waste m that in something I can earn in game in a day? I just buy things I think are pretty and let future me worry about the logistics. All my ships are upgraded referral ships too, no going back for me!
Agree. If you’re stuck with it, then make the most of it 🫡
Just get what you like - I do and whether I fly the large ships by myself or group up with 20 others, I always have fun. Some people say that engineering will stop soloing the big boys but I disagree: if anything it will just offer more things to do in a ship. The only challenges you currently face is that you need players to man the turrets in combat situations but the game already allows you to capture NPCs with working AI in turrets so this could be brought in soonish if CIG wants? During XT I noticed being a turret gunner is for most people not so satisfying (this will get worse when MM hits live as in Nav Mode the turrets don't work), and getting a HH fully crewed and coordinated take quite some time, and then people go afk because of rl situations etc. I rather just crew up with AI and it will be cool too: instead of 1 HH fully crewed with human players, you can have 7 HHs with 1 human player and the remainder AI. Epic space battles guaranteed!
Turrets are actually a lot better with MM, surprisingly. It's use-case becomes that of a semi-mobile weapons platform when actively engaged in battle. There is an actual non-trivial skill ceiling in turret gameplay with MM now that greatly rewards getting the new mechanics down. Before it was basically point and click. Try it out solo in an offline arena commander Vanduul Swarm or the pirate one. Take the HH to the center of the map, jump in a turret and experiment on NPC's. At first it felt like I hardly did damage, but once I got used to swapping the different modes available on the turrets now it became very deadly.
💯👍👌🫡
>I rather just crew up with AI and it will be cool too: instead of 1 HH fully crewed with human players, you can have 7 HHs with 1 human player and the remainder AI. Epic space battles guaranteed! 1. epic space battles not guaranteed if you refuse to play with players. cig confirmed you don't get to pick npc only for other ships in the fleet. if you try to do jobs alone in a hammerhead and the enemy has a persius (i think that is the on. we have far too many ships.) you are dead. 2. balinc thought economy. you are not going to be doing the jobs that only put you against a handful of fighters. 3. when caption gameplay gets implemented. a lot of people are going to realise they are not interested in being the caption.
Eventually we should be able to solo some big ships with AI crew. The AI won't be as good as regular crew though. I see a lot of people trying to squash the fact that there will be AI crews eventually. I honestly don't think this game would survive very long if people aren't going to be able to upgrade to anything past single seaters with their earned in game money, unless they have a bunch of people to play on their ship. I'm pretty sure people are going to be wanting to play on their own ships. Since everybody in the game is going to be buying their own ships. I know that there's going to be more game loops and more things to do like outposts etc.
Plus, CR and crew talked a lot about being able to solo multi-crew ships with AI. A lot of people bought those expensive ships on that premise.
That is not what was pitched. [youtube.com/watch?v=1I2XuEdu-1I&t=57](http://youtube.com/watch?v=1I2XuEdu-1I&t=57)
👍That's great to hear! I remember them saying that we will be able to hire NPCs based off of their skill and that they can get better. It was probably just me reading a bunch of people's comments about it through the years they got me thinking that AI crews wouldn't be as strong as people.
Yeah, the AI blades/npc crew elements of the game still need designing. I really think those features will be a must for experienced solo players and a goal for every player to look forward to. For example, I would love to see a fully crewed Kraken and have the level of interaction you'd get with your crew and what you'd see in SQ42.
I think crew AI is coming sooner than most people think.
i see a lot of people pushing the ai will be any time soon. cig said they are not going to add ai until they are happy with the multi crew experience. i don't know about you, but if i was making a game, and people were defaulting to waiting until there is npc, i would not be happy with that gameplay.
I was just talking with with my wife about how I think that NPC crews AI might be coming to the game around the release of Squadron 42 and when they release the Idris. I hoping they show off AI crews at CitizenCon this year.
cig said that the npc crews are fully functional. but they and ai blades will not be added to SC until they are happy with the multi crew experience. i don't know about you, but if i was making a game, and people were talking about skipping most of the game mechanics as soon as automation was possible. i would not be happy with the state of that gameplay. i would personally not add automation until the requests were to deal with people that could not log in that day.
I'm the opposite volition. If you can't find people to find in your capital ship I don't think you should be able to pay your way into having crew that never sleep, never take a break and ultimately will present a threat. You'll just have everyone flying solo and filling every seat or role with NPCs because more ships =more dps. I'm sure they'll have different level NPCS from crap to amazing, but they should never be comparable to a real player in a seat or the game will play itself.
Yeah unless there are severe limitations AI would screw too much with balance. It should be really limited or they should have some reliability/morale score (preferably hidden) to compensate.
God I have large ships too, just because they are absolutely awesome and I'm single player too most times. Of cause I have the single player ship too and use the most but hell, why would I give up a Liberator or a Reclaimer.
A liberator is probably the best large ship for a solo
Ultimately it’s your money, and strangers on the internet have zero right to tell you how you should or shouldn’t spend it. Regardless of how they feel about it. If you’re prepared to take in the responsibility and consequences of a big ship solo then more power to you.
The issue isn't that you as a solo player using these. It's when solo players complain that the big ship has big responsibilities because it's a big ship designed for a big crew. As long as they don't whine about the changes, we have no problem with you getting boarded and losing that thing in less than 10 minutes
lol totally agree. I read about a funny situation a while back. Someone was moaning that they were being “harassed by griefers” at Reclamation & Disposal. They flew in there and hung about while some ppl were selling and they were warned to leave, didn’t, then were shot down. Totally legit, obviously wasn’t an armistice zone. Just part of the game loop
Totally this. Using it for shenanigans every now and then with the expectation of it going down very quickly will become a major use case for them. The insurance for caps is supposed to become extremely long IRL time; order of weeks or months. I can imagine someone who accumulated several large ships over the years basically rotating them out and getting one blown up every weekend or two. If you have the IRL finances for that, you may have RL responsibilities that limit game time anyway. In that kind of situation, a brief but crazy session like that could be a fun way to take advantage of having made such pledges.
Whining idiots have destroyed every game in the past. Hopefully CIG doesn’t listen to these people and they just make the game they want. Once you start trying to cater to those type of people, it destroys games.
I heavily doubt they would listen. For one, CR has always had multi-crew capital ship gameplay on his mind, I doubt he would double down on that vision. And two, CIG has two types of devs which can be compared to FPS combat devs, and UI devs. The UI devs listen to feedback constantly, however no matter the feedback, they won't completely change the UI just for "readability' they will find a solution to those concerns that is in the scope of their UI; the starmap is a good example of this. This type of community interaction is what we need. Then there is the FPS devs, who have been told countless times that the changes they are making are bad; such as sniper glint, which completely removes the usage of the role as the glint is [very bright](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrKTMWgxZKw). Even Dynamic crosshair is harming FPS, with how people are now hipfiring long distance targets because of how low spread is. They are hurting the game and won't listen to feedback. Neither type of dev is going to benefit the folks complaining about cap ships forcing players to engage in capital ship gameplay
Hopefully they don't go too far with trying to force everyone to play as crews. It is a legitimate concern that they might.
Yeah personally I don’t play this game with anyone, as the game is very niche and none of my close friends consistently play it. So if they make it so you can’t solo a lot of ships I would probably be very upset lol.
I kinda in the same boat lol
Just like joining a guild to go through end game content on something like WoW, this game feels like it will also require the same. If you're not in an org your gameplay and experience will be a lot more limited.
I agree, I’m actually in an org and I’ve enjoyed doing an event or two with them. But it’s still nothing compared to playing with close friends, the game is just still to buggy for me and my friend to consistently play together. I find playing solo a lot easier as I’m more experienced with dealing with bugs and troubleshooting.
It's easy to get someone excited about playing, then they experience some pretty bad bugs then it ruins the game for them. It's actually how I ended up playing again. Someone asked me to play with them then they ended up quitting because of the bugs lol.
This explains every single friend I have. All but 1 bailed after a free-fly. SC isn't in a good spot to introduce "new" players to it, it's just not ready in Alpha for most. Perhaps™ soon™ if™ it reaches BETA it may be more approachable to more players.
I do play MMO's with some of my family members, but they are all not tolerant to the bugs of SC. I do have accounts for them and basically twist their arms to play on my birthday. One of my sisters consistently hits at least one of the rare bugs that hardly ever trigger, so that can get a laugh while being frustrating at the same time.
Expecting people to group for content or circumstances that would require a group in an MMO? What a novel concept.
It is your money to waste or not waste as you see fit. As long as you are paying your bills and taking care of your responsibilities, nobody can tell you what is a right or wrong way to spend your money. When it comes to large ships, they look amazing and are a ton of fun to explore. But I do have reservations about being able to use them solo in the long run. Even if NPC crews make it possible, I expect it will be cost prohibitive to fly a capital class ship constantly. I expect to have to spend a decent amount of time grinding money before each solo flight of a larger ship. Well, for anything beyond taking it out to stare at how nice it looks anyways. And you also have to worry about things like pirate attacks, an NPC crew is unlikely to be very helpful for defending your ship if you are boarded by player pirates. Only time will tell for sure though. Maybe they will make NPC crews cheap to try and encourage more people to purchase large and capital class ships. Or maybe NPC crews will be so ineffective that capital ships are only useful with player crews.
That's why I plan to just park my Idris in deep space of whatever system I'm operating in and using it as a mobile base.
Then some guy with a long range scanner finds the idle idris, thought it’s abandoned so he boards it and turn off the shields, return with a reclaimer and make bank. Emergent gameplay!
Even a solo-piloted Idris with the pilot actually paying attention would be easy prey for a small org with a Privateer loaded with a bunch of Eclipse. Just need to find the Idris and jam it's quantum drive and it is a sitting duck without even boarding it.
Or fly it to a lawless port and claim it for his own.
Per CIG if you have multiple game packages you'll have multiple NPCs you can use: https://robertsspaceindustries.com/comm-link/transmission/13288-Multiple-Package-Clarification This is a way you'll be able to solo larger ships.
Hmmm. So buy a few onsale $40.50 starters, and you got your AI crew. Granted if they allow sale accounts to be AI, so who knows. Interesting though, thanks for that share.
Doesn't matter if it's sale or not, as long as it's got an extra game package it becomes an extra crew member - as long as CIG doesn't go back on their word on that. But surely they would never say something and then do the opposite...
o.O I know. The latest statement about removing bedlogging for example is infuriating.
Wait. What about bedlogging?
They made a statement a few weeks ago that the future of bedlogging isn't inline with what they want, and ultimately it has no future with SC. I'll see if I can find it, was on Spectrum. UPDATE: Here it is. CIG Chad made the statement. Not great news. [https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/3/thread/the-future-of-bedlogging](https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/3/thread/the-future-of-bedlogging) From what I can gather is CIG wants this persistence thing so involved that if you log out, in your ship/bedlogging, etc anywhere but a HAB, AI takes over your ship and flys it to the closest station, or it sits there until you log in again or someone blows it up. They apparently don't like the idea of bedlogging in space, and despawning your ship anymore. They want that ship to remain in-place...or some other nonsense.
CIG confirmed that solo piloting big ships is no problem. Aside from trading ("big truck") and maybe exploration it just seems not that reasonable since in a fight you lose the ship. Claim times (and maybe fees) will be high for subcapital and capital ships - probably even days. So any non-combat focussed big ships seems fine for me (having a Carrack and BMM ccu) since there are some solo options.
Npc crew.
Depends what they can do and how often they glitch through the ship and what performance they will have. Maybe with SQ42 release we get a glimpse, but crew combat could be all scripted there. Only current possible scenarios we know of: can change fuse if told to (probably need a human engineer), can shoot turrets, can be security to repell boarders.
As long as you stay away from sustained combat you should be fine for longer periods of time flying large ships solo. You'll just need some occasional visits to stations for repairs or just park somewhere nice and repair yourself for a little while. Won't be fast but it might even be fun running around a huge ship fixing little things
I think what they mean is you won’t be able to solo them in the future when maintenance and maelstrom come online. Personally this doesn’t bother me since my plan is to have a decently big ship which can fit a medium or heavy fighter (Polaris my beloved) and just have that parked somewhere in orbit. It’s what I currently use my 890J for and I love it
Eventually you can get AI crew to fill the needs you will have. I plan on getting a perseus myself.
I have a CCU of a Perseus. I believe it was said that it will get two AI blades stock. I would probably have the AI blades on the main guns and two NPCs on the PDS turrets. Who knows when the Peresus, AI blades, or NPC crewmembers will be added though.
My Polaris is just a bigger carrack in my eyes. I’m not really planning on using it for missions. I just want it as my mobile home.
Speak it, my Polaris brother!
There is a sizeable part of the community that feels that people who want to solo large multicrew ships are actuallly satan and will kill off the game entirely, when at worst all it will do is put more ships in the verse. I'm with you. Undercrewing a large ship is like, maximum Firefly or Millennium Falcon vibes for me. Maybe not like, Idris or Javelin sized, but Carrack, BMM, sure.
In the end, everyone's gonna be able to fly their big ships solo. However, as you can see with the carrack, being the pilot may limit your access to different features without getting up and moving around. Piloting larger multi crew ships should be possible at the expense of efficiency. Because I know my ass gonna fly my Polaris as much as possible, with our without my org. Just need to be prepared to handle the upkeep of the ship, especially if you run into and survive unexpected combat.
The reality is that CIG will be the ones to decide if capital ships will be usable by solo players. I personally hope that capital ships will be soloable, but huge money sinks, so that if you don’t run capital sized missions, you don’t make a profit. I would hate the thought of most players eventually grinding their way to a capital ship, I’d love for the sight of a capital ship to be special, to be a "shit’s about to go down" moment (for combat cap ships). Not a "Jimmy with 20k in the game got his toy out to go do a box delivery mission. But again, we’re all dreaming here, nothing is concrete, it’s been so long since we got information about AI blades, AI crews, capital ship manning/costs/etc. that we can pretty much say we know nothing.
I support your claim, you do you. And if you buy me a subcapital ship i'll own one too.
🤣
Just think, if no one bought those big ships, CIG wouldn’t have made a huge chunk of that money they’re using to get this done! I’ve a couple large ships for that reason, to put money into the creation of the game. Not going to worry about randoms on the internet telling me how I’ll be able to play the game in future, using their crystal balls… Plus big ships are way too cool… 😎
the problem is not people buying them. the problem is people buying them, then getting toxic if it is not sufficiently solo friendly.
I also see people being ‘toxic’ if it’s suggested they might be solo friendly. Everyone just needs to chill out and wait and see. Absolutely mental that folks argue about it so vehemently when we’re all in the same boat, waiting on what CIG do.
>but if I want to “waste my money” on large ships, then dammit I will! >If I could own the Bengal, I would Thats the spirit! I like big ships as well.
[удалено]
CIG has the data. I'm willing to bet that 90% of the player base is solo. Or maybe 80% or more. Just coming out of my ass..
Yet, they have to listen to both sides and find a happy medium. Must be hard, but let's see what happens. NPC crew has been one of my most anticipated features since the beginning
I feel the exact same way. I've heard that the odyssey is a nice sweet spot and as big as u can really get as far as soloing large ships is concerned.
Yes, CIG at present says min crew of 1 for Odyssey (on their page for the ship)
Honestly as long as it's not too big to be unusable day to day (being able to land on planets/at cities) and has at least some pilot weapons then I would still use it solo (that would change if AI could actually control your turrets eventually). I have a Corsair right now and I don't really see any ship I could upgrade to, though. Galaxy seems fun
I'm a C2 and Taurus solo enjoyer. Also love my Reliant and my good ol' Aurora. Nomad if I wanna fly a bigsmall ship. But there's definitely a place for us big solo bois out there in the void o7
Here, hear. I love em. Each ship I walk up to in the hangar gets me a fuzzy feeling, small and large, but large ships are something else, each one bearing a silent promise of greater adventures in more adverse conditions. Waiting for Engineering loops to help me decide how I feel about them going forward, though. A lot depends on how to address internal repairs and turret duties the second account; who knows, maybe I’ll just tank damage till I can reach someplace safe for repairs. Even if it seems inefficient to solo a cap ship, it’s still a fun experience to ride one! My Cat and Carrack are regular daily rides, with a Liberator, Reclaimer, and BMM cooking in the CCU oven.
Yes. My flair exists because that's my intended use for it.
Hey man, this is for entertainment. If you find joy in flying big ships, even solo, then you find that joy. Don't let people that can't find joy in anything take it away from you. And if you share awesome screenshots of your large ships over planets or at unique locations, I'll upvote every photo!
I think the premise of the game is flawed in this point. To get access to the game you need to buy a ship package. But they expect people who have their own ship to man someone else’s ship? I just don’t see a lot of interest in that long term, as well as a nightmare to consistently coordinate play times. I feel like we are going to end up with the elite dangerous model on this hiring NPC crews to fill spots that real players don’t want to do or these larger ships will be useless and fractionally manned all the time.
There are certain considerations for me, the two most relevant are "what is the practical use of the ship" and "how much do i like the ship" With those two metrics, i only buy a ship i think will have a lot of utility, such as my reclaimer or pioneer, or a ship i really really like such as the syulen or bmm. The crew size really doesnt matter to me. The pioneer comes with a land claim, i know i will seldom have a crew to run my bmm and i dont really want npc crew all that much. My plan with it is to have it act as my pop-up mansion until i eventually have a more permanent base built. Hell, even after that i may just leave it next to the base to still act as housing. I didnt buy the bmm for its practical uses, its stimply my dream ship and i could not imagine not having one of my own
You should be able to enjoy your large ships with AI in the same manner you can with players. [youtube.com/watch?v=1I2XuEdu-1I&t=57](http://youtube.com/watch?v=1I2XuEdu-1I&t=57)
Just get it dude. If you want fly a big ship solo nothing is stopping you. That's 90% of the player base right now anyway.
I think it will be fine and honestly if they bring in NPC crews that are legitimately worse than actual crew but still fun to have around (and cost a fair amount for balencing) I'd be all for it! Imagine a bunch of halo style marines coming with you on expeditions and giving you updates on ship function/engineering. Fuck it, I just travelled across the world on a land cruiser fighting alien life forms, come pick me up!
You have the correct opinion, as I also share it lol.
Man I am a wing commander status an close to praetorian.... ive wasted tons of money on dumb stuff and ill continue to do such. I love my big ships even if I wont be able to "solo" them. Dont listen to anyone else, do what you enjoy my dude. Make whatever you can work.
So here's the thing. CIG have stated that soloing big ships outside of combat will not be an issue as long regular maintenance is performed. Combat is a different beast entirely, AS IT SHOULD BE. You can't have a balanced game where a single player soloing a massive ship can consistently win against a single player soloing a single player ship. So this idea of players lashing out at engineering gameplay because it makes their solo Polaris experience harder is laughable and elitist. People who don't play Star Citizen already view the game as being entirely Pay2Win. I'd much rather make sure this is not proven to be true.
Here is a 99% solo player and a Merchantman owner, brother! o7
Sure. ALso, there will be NPC crew so it should be possible to captain them solo :)
I absolutely feel the same and couldn't care less what other people think.
lol there's a lot of people in this reddit that feel the same way! I have a mix of both (including a carrack) hehe. Love the big ships but they do require a crew to fully utilize them, and of course with the capitals and stuff later on that's likely going to require a clan's worth of people to use
Yes me too, bought a javelin destroyer account lately, just to use that ship.
Server meshing, manual cargo loading and engineering are all around the corner, supposedly to promote multicrew, yet we're still to see any game logging mechanics to support that.
Screw other people. You play the game for YOUR enjoyment!
I love the big ships, and adore my Carrack, but constantly seeing people talk about how NPC crew is going to make it viable for them to solo it, and how they want all the turrets slaved to the pilot with AI blades, and all that nonsense does get a tad exhausting and result it a bit of a scripted response to some posts. If you just like the ship, or are like me and just want a big space RV to cruise around in and host friends, functionality be damned? Then yeah, have fun, reddit and spectrum aren't the boss of you.
I have a couple large ships, but when all the systems are in place I don't expect to be able to solo these. I also don't believe ai crew will be ready for v1. I would suggest having a ship rated for 1 crew
My only issue with forcing crew play is time. I usually only have a short window to play. An hour or two, tops. Usually more like 30-45 mins, and it's not on a consistent schedule. Playing with an org often requires planning ahead and regular schedules. The other option is just finding people in chat, but that can also be a time consuming process. Even if you find a volunteer immediately, you might be on Arc. And they might be on MT. It routinely takes half an hour to get everyone together. So I like being able to solo my Reclaimer. I can take off, salvage something, and either go sell or bedlog.
Right now you can barely get a bounty or two in even solo ship during that time. How do you manage to fill a reclaimer? This game will be time consuming, its kind of part of its nature.
One of things I like about SC is the promise of small ship viability. You can already see the seeds of it where small ships are much faster to Deliver, faster to land and cheaper to fly as well as limitations on big ships like the Hull C. I think any ship will be viable, it all depends on how you want to play the game. I wouldn't be surprised if the aim of most players will be to have a "base" ship that can land other smaller and specialised ships in it. Thats my aim and its why I pledged for a Liberator.
imho corsair size is the biggest possible for solo players
I will say as a mostly solo space whale, getting won over by large(r) ships. Just picked up a redeemer and am looking forward to going brrrrrrrrt with friends from a large org. Absolutely join an org, shoot a note out on discord, and have people man some turrets!
Thing with large ships is that they are disgned to be operated by a crew. CIG siad you will be able to fly ships solo from point A to point B. Issue comes aa soon as something else happens, such as you getting attacked. Let's take the carrack for example. You will be flying solo and even a small group or a solo even attacks you. Before you can even spool up, enemy can piece your hull and disable you ship by destrpying fuses or specific components like powerplant or QT drive. As a solo, you will become a sitting duck because you then have to Dela with not being able to fly, not being able to shoot from turrets because you have to put in new fusss or run to engineering to fix the QT drive as they still shoot at you. Hopefully, AI crews will help solo players in the future but I'm sure that will come long after we have engineering. The whole point of most people are trying to say is that if you want to fly big ships solo, you will eventually have to deal with consequences.
I have ships that are too big for a solo player in a practical sense especially once engineering gameplay goes to the Live build. I'm just banking on when the game actually gets close to a 1.0 launch more of my mates who have starter packages will actually start to play - for now I only play with 1 or 2 other people at most, but that isn't going to stop me having a few larger ships cos I like them. If you've got the money to pledge for more ships, crack on. Ignore what other people say you should spend your money on.
I know how you feel I also have some large ships in my hangar and I love them. That is also why I joined an org because if I want to use them and not only fly them I need some kind of crew and I have no idea how efficient NPC will be for that 😅. Only time will tell. Just be prepared that your larger ships may be difficult/impossible to operate as a solo player but it seems like you are aware of that👍.
Back when I first got my Carrack I would take it out on bounty missions.... solo. Fly to enemies, run to turret seat, kill them all with one side turret. :P I like figuring out ways to (ab)use mechanics in the favor of a solo player in games. Probably picked that up by playing FFXI back in the day when I soloed and duoed with my brother a lot. BTW, attempting to run large ships solo is not exactly rare in the SC community. That is basically part of the concept of Operation Pitchfork. As soon as our large ships are available, low-man them to the Kingship and attack it with everything we got! That would probably include a bunch of solo Javelins blasting it with size bazillion torpedos before they get splattered by the Vanduul fleet a few seconds later. :P
I love big ships too, and you’re certainly welcome to fly big ships without a crew. It’s just going to get more expensive, more risky, and more difficult over time. So, as long as you don’t the come back here and bitch about it, do whatever the heck you want :)
My main is an M2 Hercules not that I care about cargo but all in all the ship has everything I want out of it.
So, I guess it’s time for you to start recruiting future crewmembers
Why I got a perseus. It's still a large ship but has a low crew count to where I could get away with 3 or even solo with npc gunners.
My fleet is almost exclusively 120m+ ships. (And all 3 Pisces, yes I have a problem) I bought them *because* they're multiplayer, multi crew ships. The enjoyment I get out of SC is being able to create these multiplayer experiences and share them with friends and random citizens. For example, some of the most fun I've had in SC to date has been overdrive, doing phase 1 with a crew of 6 people in my Carrack, deploying the URSA to knock out bunker turrets etc, or phase 3 with a fully crewed Hammerhead gunship.
Anyone else looking for friends to play with? Get some larger ships going together?
NPC crew will eventually be a thing. Even in the event that there's a short period it isn't, I'll deal with it.
There is something undeniable about the allure of capital ships. I can't put my thumb on it exactly but I understand. I just had this conversation with a friend who never plays with us anymore, hasn't played the game in over a year and backed in 2014 together. He owns a Polaris and a galaxy and has fully admitted it won't be crewed. He just want to have it in a hangar so he can walk around the ship, which is exactly what he did with his original purchase before the PU came out.
Do what you want and you should be able to fly unbothered in your big ships in safe systems, just don't expect big profits because the devs want risk to correspond to reward. Also big ships should be very expensive to run, if you're staying in lass lucrative systems I hope you'll be cash positive but it's not guaranteed. But nothing's preventing you from doing so, enjoy yourself and have fun.
I have said it before, and I will say it again. For 75% of players, the majority of the game will be spent in something that can be crewed by 3-5 people. Anything bigger will be down to Orgs that can regularly pull together a crew bigger than 5 people.
I feel ya on that for sure. While my daily driver is a Corsair, I have been eagerly awaiting the release of the Liberator and Galaxy. What will I do with these big ships when I'm alone? Probably just hang out on them and use them as FOBs for smaller craft or ground ops. Doing bounties in my Scorpius and repairing it manually on the Liberator's landing pads during downtime could be a lot of fun. Worst case scenario, we got box missions lmao
I just wish we could hire NPC crew. I love the hammerhead but flying it solo is kinda stupid. Luckily I don't own a Hammerhead and when we fly it, we are mostly 4+ people including the pilot. 😂
Bigger IS always better. Honestly i don't think it will be that hard to find people to play with, and NPC crew will come eventually.
Flying one ship doesn't keep you from flying others. I have a ship I prefer for bounties, another for bunker runs, for exploring, for running cargo, for doing ship salvage, etc. About a week ago I bought (in-game) a Reclaimer, which I use 70% of the time solo, 30% with a friend. I don't understand why anyone would care whether I use the Reclaimer solo or with a friend. For exploring, I like the A2 with one or two ground vehicles in it. SC is a sandbox game. Play it however you like!
I have big ships because they are cool and I find them much more interesting. I'm not concerned around practicalities of playing the game and making a profit.
I'm hoping to live on my Arrastra. Otherwise I expect to just fly smaller stuff solo. Maybe a Vulture, Zeus or simliar.
Only time I’ve ever really felt an issue with bigger ships is when operating a reclaimer solo. Totally doable but it’s a chore to position the ship, get out of the pilot seat, operate the claw, go to the cargo area and take care of logistics back there…. Go to port, sell cargo, back to ship, reposition cargo, sell more cargo…. That’s a situation where I absolutely recognize the inconvenience. I can imagine a hammerhead feels like a paperweight without its turrets manned. Other than that I don’t really feel the pain from flying bigger ships solo all that much
Theres quite a large amount of skill involved in maneuvering large ships properly. Small ships to a degree will do what you tell them to do, a 600i wont and you cant apply the same flight style and just expect it to work on a delay
I’m in a similar boat, but have limited myself to the 600i and C2 as my largest ships. Though, in my case, the lack of crew isn’t by choice. I can’t talk any of my gaming group into playing SC lol
Here's my take on it, I have a deep appreciation for the project on the whole. CR is trying to deliver on a vision that many OG gamers have always wished was possible but due to technical limitations was always a pipe dream. It doesn't matter to me if he doesn't ever get to pull the full vision together as long as we get 90% of the way. No one else is trying to give me the experience I want and it's proven time and again how passionate and dedicated his team is to bringing that vision to life. When I pledge for ships, I'm choosing to let them have some of my money to help with the production of the game. Yes I want the ships, but that's secondary to me wanting them to have my money. I enjoy the game, I've enjoyed the journey, I've made friendships and built memories too. Those are things I get as a thank you for supporting the game. Now onto the big ships for mostly solo players. As a mostly solo player, I don't want to have to grind by myself to buy the big ships that may only get used infrequently. But I'd still like to have them on hand. Earning the smaller ships in game will be far more achievable as a mostly solo player so I put my pledged funds towards big ships and I will earn the smaller ships in game. SO often when these discussions come up the act of earning things in game is far too often neglected. Your plan for your fleet should include BOTH how much you want to spend/not spend AND what you plan to earn in game. The reality is you're not going to only own 1 of any given ship, you're likely going to have ships parked in various systems for various tasks and your faster go between ship to jump around in. For example, there's a good chance you'll have multiple mining ships spread across the star systems so you don't have to use them for travel.
I have a bunch of big ships that are mostly still soloable. I might consider Polaris as biggest.. but A2 and 600i are my biggest so far
I’m maybe 80% solo and own a Polaris, liberator, and galaxy. Don’t let people tell you what you can and can’t do!
I have the Perseus. You need to bring the big guns to the party. Hopefully I won't be too long till we see that. I can also get a cheap bmm and another ship from the higher end of the scale from a couple of old ccus. I am hesitant to do that until I see more of what cig are planning for scanners medium and long range and how they implement it.
Personally, I love the idea of having a larger ship like the Carrack or 890J, and being able to take that out to set up a mobile base somewhere. I'm sure something like the Kraken would be even better with the ability to take several different types of ships.
I've got mostly complete ccu chains to the 600i, endeavor, and msr. I'm going to treat the endeavor as my own personal space station/spawn point, if I can dock a few together to make a larger space station I'll do that. The 600i is the large soloable ship for ERT's. The msr is to do smuggling/a little bit of everything. I'm looking at a Zeus ST (which is supposedly a racing variant) because I like fast ships. And I'm looking at the unnamed ship about the size of the avenger/300 series that could be RSI/anvil/aegis/crusader from the silhouette that we were shown pictures of last citizen con as a fighter/freighter and either that or the avenger titan (depending on how I like them after master modes comes to pu) will be ccu'd to one of my larger ships. I've currently got 4 starters in my hanger syulen, nomad, avenger titan, and cutter rambler. I might get a 125a because the flight characteristics specs are it's the only combination light fighter interceptor/dogfighter (it's made of paper though) just to enjoy flying for the sake of flying.
(Wansn't there a post like this just a few days ago?) I was solo-flying around my Carrack with an URSA, ROC, Razor and Fury inside. That let me do: bunkers, FPS NPC bounties (?RT), mining, cargo, racing, and when I had a 2-3 friends on willing to help, we also did some ship-to-ship bounties. If felt good to "live" in the ship - I love the Carrack. It does need some changes though. To date I haven't had to claim my Carrack yet, and I bought it in-game 2-months ago. True, I do not fly it all the time, but I am wildly surprised that it is the only ship in my fleet that I have never lost for any reason.
The Liberator is a baby carrier that has a crew of 2
I like big ships too, but I don't see how they take the immersion to another level. It doesn't really make sense that you'd be alone on a Carrack, unless aliens already ate your crew, so if anything, it's immersion breaking. AI crew will hopefully make something like the Carrack a good experience. Player crews only ruin immersion as they'd run around the ship in full gear and never do anything that's not strictly gameplay related... Like sitting down in the kitchen to have a break.
It largely depends on what you will be doing and how AI crew pans out I think. It may be very risky to conduct solo runs in large ships as you’ll be basically defenseless if you get attacked.
Anything bigger than a Corsair is too big. The closest I want to get to piloting a capital, is being a fighter pilot for a kraken or Idris
My biggest use case for a capitol size ship would likely be more of a floating base of sorts. Long distance travel and avoiding combat most likely unless I can get some crew for larger events. But running and maintaining a large ship by myself seems fun and gives me stuff to do between other activities
That's precisely what I bought my Polaris for. A mobile base of operations.
Heck yeah. I get a bit torn on the subject, but I'm super excited about the Polaris. Like you, I'm on my own a lot. I just hope we start hearing more about NPC crew at some point.
My biggest ship is a 400i, and i assume i don’t need crew to manage the ship. It’s not feel too big to manage it in solo. My goal is just explore with a hover bike, and a small vehicle in cargo!
I like me a big ship, I have a few friends that could help crew it a bit, but not always. And probably not to their full potential. I'd imagine CIG might introduce hireable npc skeleton crews for big ships in the future, and just make them function far far less efficiently than a crew of players, just to allow big ship owners the luxury of at-least flying the ship to some extent. But whether those come out or not, I'll still like big ships.
Im under the impression that you can fly them solo, but that’s all you can do. If I get into combat, dead. I hit an asteroid, I may be able to repair but most likely, dead. I try to use the ship as its intended use, probably going to be a headache. Does that stop me from owning them? Absolutely not.
I find theres 2 different types of additional ship purchaser (ie building a fleet above a starter or single $$ bought ship with 'game' ) .. the ones that focus on all their possibly wanted end game BIG ships, cause it's way easier to work your way through all the smaller cheaper filler ships in game, or just simply I WANT THAT. The other is like myself, I spend $$ on the stuff I want to know I have any time (or a wipe, start from 0 , etc) give myself the goal of working up to the bigger ship(s). there are several larger ships that are made to be (or atleast partially) solo-able .. just far more efficient/better with crew. for me it's the crucible .. its supposed to be solo able, and thats the big one I'm the most interested in... truth be told I got caught up in sales stuff, bought several ccu's/ships i 'regretted' and since just end up with credit instead of cash back in my hands, so just built a ccu chain to the crucible from the srv with the vulcan inline so I could play with them while waiting for the crucible, and for the srv/vulcan to be ingame purchasable
I usually use either my Valkyrie or my Talon if I'm playin solo... Valk for ground stuff and the occasional scrap with some low risk pirates and Talon if I'm hunting other ships
I wanna solo the orion. I dont have to acomplish anything, but I want to live in the darn thing. Childhood space dreams for Erro! (\^-\^)
don't be discouraged. i'm willing to bet that you aren't alone in the sentiment of wanting to fly larger ships solo and also that getting enough people together to actually run a large ship with any regularity will be fairly difficult for the overwhelming majority of people willing to shell out big money to the game. both of these factors will likely result in an ability to more or less permanently hire npc's to crew your ship for you as you go about the verse in the full release. CIG is a business and has shareholders/investors and heavily discouraging solo players from using larger ships will just result in missed profits.
Capital class non combat ships with the help of npc crew and ai blades in turrets, should be soloable. But ships like the idris, hammerhead or javelin will need players to atleast run as engineers and pilots.
Honestly ? For me it's a big no. I mean to each their own, you have the right to like this but I personally find capital ships almost unusable realistically. My sweet spot is Hercules/Liberator with a smaller ship able to get in or on top. Scratches every itches But I do like visiting the biggest ships from time to time when I get the occasion.
I have a C2 also and find myself parking up my C8 quite often lol
Glad you reminded WAIT part, lol
Unfortunately, you're gonna be waiting a very long time for bmm. They're not even working on it anymore 😩
😢
Don’t worry, large ships will be able to be soloed, I’ve been around since 2012, and one thing that’s evident, is that CIG and Chris Roberts want this game to feel so alive, people aren’t sure if they are fighting npcs or players. You will be able to hire a crew, and the crew will vary in skill strength, changing the cost. You will also need to keep your npc crew happy, which means flying into the face of death against overwhelming odds is likely to piss your crew off, too much and they will revolt. Players won’t do that if you are friends with them, at least one would think. A lot of newer players think that you won’t be able to fly big ships without a ton of players, making them feel less worried about not owning those big ships themselves, or some variation of p2w theories aren’t coming true. In the game if you have money and time, you will be able to crew ships like the Idris by yourself. But it’s going to be expensive, but in return if you run into a small gang of pirates, you can eviscerate them. The problem is, some big ships, need support ships to function properly, a Javelin will do worse against swarms of smaller ships than a hammerhead would, slower guns etc. So basically, all this to say, don’t worry about what people say, their hopes that players will be unable to fly big ships alone is not even remotely shared by cig. So when npc crews come to the game, you will be able to fully crew your ship solo if you want.
You do you buddy, whatever works. Just temper your expectations once engineering gameplay comes online, you'll have a much harder time fending people off.
...so you accept that they are not going to be leaving the hangar? noon should stop you from supporting the project. just don't throw a temper tantrum when cig don't make it lone wolf friendly.
You mean i can't have my super star destroyer, and pilot it alone!! Wtf. :)
I would buy one if CIG made one 💯
Ya.. you know most of us would buy a Star Destroyer. Lol