[Fame Rework] Crew Salaries

[unborn tusk]

I'm sure most agree the fame system is somewhat boring and uninteresting, and hiring crew is also something that does not feel very substantial at all. It's essentially just a button that you click and number goes up.

In my opinion, Fame is fundamentally flawed. This is understandable, since it's already a very hard mechanic to properly implement, and I think it's alright for this early state of career. This suggestion merely tries to propose a more interesting system that would add immersion to the galaxy while still being simple and within the scope of the game.

CREW SALARY

• You must pay your crew a cut of the payout when a mission payout/resource trading happens. Each crew member would take a cut of the payout/credits gained when received. To prevent cheese, the initial cost of hiring crew should still be higher than the cut they take, while still being a lot lower than it is currently.

• You can reduce crew's salaries to as low as 50% as usual or 200%. Lower wages hurt your fame and reputation with all factions, and higher wages increase fame and relations with the other factions.

• I do think making it only necessary to pay ships that actually participate in a mission their share might be good, but that seems VERY ripe for cheesing

This would require some counterbalancing fame and other game mechanics to make sure everything still functions. This would make the accumulation of fame not very helpful, honestly. I'd say maybe make the better deals from fame more pronounced, for a start.

I like this idea so much personally because it still passively forces you to go to higher systems with more dangerous missions as you grow your fleet.

[ancient elm]

or perhaps, salary goes down with fame, and the more crew you have, the more salary you have to pay per heads.
it keeps fame relevant with a bigger fleet being easier to maintain

[mellow depot]

I think this should be a game setting in the new game screen

[rapid maple]

I've thought about doing a "pay crew a cut" type of mechanic, and I can think of two (potentially solvable) issues with it:

1. How to make it so that crew salaries (as percentage of your income) don't get crazy high once you have a lot of crew or start so low that it barely matters. (Maybe base percentage per crew is tied to fame?)
2. How to prevent exploits where you fire/kill your crew before collecting mission rewards? (I don't think that simply having a high hiring fee is sufficient because you can potentially save huge amounts of missions and turn them in all at once.)

I'm very open to the idea in general, but we need to figure out how to solve the above issues.

[ancient elm]

i was thinking more of a time based constraint, but i guess it comes with its own issues that starsector doesn't have because you have basic income early game and that crew doesn't cost too much ahah.
but i guess it could be per game hours, starting 10% of crew cost (total) perhaps and end up as 0.1% or even 0.01% at the end of the game. just suggestions

that's regardless of number of crew as the crew cost increase with the number of crew you have, it's really how much can you afford crew

[frozen wave]

Personally I'd be okay with just a timed pay rate. Game time or real time is up to Walt. You pay a set price per crew employed by you. This would remove the problem with having to pay your crew from mission rewards and instead from your own pocket. How fame would effect this is again up to Walt.

[rapid maple]

In a game where I want to encourage players to take their time when designing ships, I'm very hesitant to tie crew pay to time.

[golden oxide]

well, most players build while paused

i'd imagine

[unborn tusk]

1. i think it would just be a balancing act of making sure its inline with how mission payouts scale up based on difficulty. Could also be a flat value+percentage at least to fix that specific issue
2. didnt think of saving multiple missions lol. Maybe make crew dying/being fired also apply a fame malus? Would at least make sense logic wise and fame would still hopefully be relevant through additional game mechanics added in the future like you said at one point i think

Ive got ideas in my head but am unfortunately still on mobile rn

This is just a rough idea

[golden oxide]

i think it has promise

[woeful geyser]

Would all players in multiplayer career have to pay at every mission, or just the player handing in the missions

Also, you could just go to an easy mission, have your crew put into a piece of ship, and have it die to the enemy while your ship has no airlock, and still have the bare minimum of killing that weak enemy

Technically you didn't do any firing or killing, it was the pirates

[near inlet]

Once boarding comes around crew will be a consumable resource and so it doesn't really matter.
The upkeep cost is fine if you include methods of passive income, like running a trade station.

But the most important thing to consider is what this mechanic will encourage in play. And that's very simple, it will encourage having less crew.

[woeful geyser]

The same players who had complained about too little crew may then complain about upkeep for their crew

[valid warren]

what about logistics tests where time is needed for autofiring

[golden oxide]

fair

[unborn tusk]

The original idea was a time based wage. However, i didnt think it fits with how career feels, which is a laid back experience pacing wise and doesnt really force you to play faster in any way. A time based wage would force you to play as fast and efficiently as possible which didnt sound fun so I changed the idea to a salary of a cut of the mission payout