Solar's wishlist

[Dioxine]

Yeah, I was thinking of this a lot.
 The last people/person is not the worst... they should anyway be the last to step off the craft... you want your pilots alive

Forgot to tell you, but I came up with the same idea independently . Craft deploys were long crafted with Pilots being the last guys on the craft in mind (that's why last hand on the Airbus spawns near the console, etc.). So it's all cool I especially like the way some ships may need multiple pilots! Um, but whose stats are taken into account? The best of all pilots? (that'd be the best I think, so multi-pilot ships would have an advantage - select a specialist with high bravery, another one with high Firing, and the last one with high reactions!)

[Meridian]

Forgot to tell you, but I came up with the same idea independently . Craft deploys were long crafted with Pilots being the last guys on the craft in mind (that's why last hand on the Airbus spawns near the console, etc.). So it's all cool I especially like the way some ships may need multiple pilots! Um, but whose stats are taken into account? The best of all pilots? (that'd be the best I think, so multi-pilot ships would have an advantage - select a specialist with high bravery, another one with high Firing, and the last one with high reactions!)

Currently, the skills of all pilots are averaged.

Maximum from all pilots is also a good idea... I'll let people respond what they think would be better for the game (not better for the player, since that's clear).

Would it be difficult to designate 'roles' for ships with interception capabilities and multiple Hand slots?
For example you have a Gunner slot which governs the Accuracy bonus, and a Pilot slot which governs the approach speed and Dodge bonus.
It is a small thing admittedly, but would be a nice touch.

It's not difficult to implement.
It's difficult to display/put it somewhere on the GUI(s)... if you prepare good mockups, we can discuss it further.

EDIT:

- [DONE] Soldiers as pilots
- [DONE] Exclude a soldier type from driving
- [DONE] Unhardcode approach/disengage speed per ship ..per pilot(s)?

The rest will take longer, as my holidays are slowly coming to an end.

[Solarius Scorch]

I have removed the already implemented features from the list and moved them to a new section below.

Thank you for your hard work!

[Surrealistik]

Currently, the skills of all pilots are averaged.

Maximum from all pilots is also a good idea... I'll let people respond what they think would be better for the game (not better for the player, since that's clear).

It's not difficult to implement.
It's difficult to display/put it somewhere on the GUI(s)... if you prepare good mockups, we can discuss it further.

EDIT:

- [DONE] Soldiers as pilots
- [DONE] Exclude a soldier type from driving
- [DONE] Unhardcode approach/disengage speed per ship ..per pilot(s)?

The rest will take longer, as my holidays are slowly coming to an end.

If specific pilots are assigned and mandatory, the best stat amongst the pilots makes the most sense.

Also it should be possible to build Slave AI pilot modules; the basic Slave AI would be baseline, conferring no especial bonuses or penalties, and it could be later upgraded into ones that feature bonuses to dodge, aim, etc, with adequate research into related technologies (AIs/materials/ship designs/tech). A maxed out Gal will always be better than even the best Slave AI module.

As to the GUI, what I would do is simply add X slots to the Pilot window, each with a button titled Assign Pilot or Assign Gunner, where X is the number of pilots and gunners required. Clicking on the slot allows you to assign a gunner or pilot from any Hand on the ship (they'd be displayed in a table listing the relevant attributes/stats), or to assign a Slave AI pilot module in storage at the base.

[khade]

Will shooting down shipping give stat increases to the pilots?

Also, we'll need a commendation for aces.

[Dioxine]

We need Commendations for many things, as of now, the only section of Commendations that is done well is kills/captures (even if comm. for grenade kills doesn't seem to be working). The rest is a hardcoded mess, not really working outside of vanilla.

[Arthanor]

Cool stuff! We're moving well into a RPG territory!

The "pilots are the last deployed" thing is going to mess me up though. Normally my last people are snipers with the best firing accuracy I can get (good!), little regard for bravery (if you berserk all alone on top of the Bonny, there's nobody to hurt, so I don't care much compared to frontlines) and low reactions (if you've got good ones, you are at worst in the midfield. Long Range reaction firing is useless since snap accuracies decrease so much with range. If snipers could effectively reaction snipe, that'd be different...).

How about checkmarks in the crew list allowing you to pick your pilots?

[Dioxine]

The "pilots are the last deployed" thing is going to mess me up though.

Good!

[legionof1]

It would be a sorta relative error wouldn't it? Those hands that one assigns to craft (outside of pre training facilities portion of the game) would not have negatives if my memory is accurate. Engagement speed would be the most influential stat but only if forced into range disadvantage. Dodge matters only for reducing recovery time of prolonged engagements, something one should avoid anyway. So long as your pilots can shoot reasonably well  everything else can be compensated for outside of combat. Unless craft get considerably more fragile to enforce dodge need but then you risk player craft get deleted by damage range rng. Losing more then a few craft is potentially crippling for player progress/enjoyment.

Pilots is a really cool feature with potential but lacks sufficient impact if you can compensate for all but one stat check with marginal effort/playing the air game like we already do. Other then the need a butt to fly craft thing which I'm all for. Mystical vanishing pilots in case of ground attack was suspension of disbelief junk.

[ivandogovich]

Thoughts on Piloting:

Frankly I don't think I'll worry too much about who is piloting my dropships.  I don't intend for them to lead the assault to begin with.  So keeping snipers at the rear for their topside duties on the Bonny is fine.  The Bonny just shoots a bit better in a dogpile. 

What I will do, however, is train better pilots for leading interceptors and other craft.  The Jetbike will get someone good, as will any tough ships designed to tank damage.  Those High Damage ships like Brave Whalers will need high accuracy to try to get as many of their missiles on target as possible, etc. 

I think this means, I'll keep Civilian ships flying a lot longer and continue to let my interceptors do solo missions on those small crews.  There is lots of accuracy/reaction/bravery training potential in those missions.

[Surrealistik]

Cool stuff! We're moving well into a RPG territory!

The "pilots are the last deployed" thing is going to mess me up though. Normally my last people are snipers with the best firing accuracy I can get (good!), little regard for bravery (if you berserk all alone on top of the Bonny, there's nobody to hurt, so I don't care much compared to frontlines) and low reactions (if you've got good ones, you are at worst in the midfield. Long Range reaction firing is useless since snap accuracies decrease so much with range. If snipers could effectively reaction snipe, that'd be different...).

How about checkmarks in the crew list allowing you to pick your pilots?

That's essentially what I'm proposing; the whole 'last deployed thing' is pretty clunky/kludgy.

[Solarius Scorch]

In the end it depends if we have a completely new GUI with a dedicated screen and so on.

If we do, then pretty much anything is possible, including having dedicated roles sitting at their own consoles or whatever. But it would probably be a major task.

Also, I am afraid we can't really go too far without adding more skills. And that would be an even greater task.

[Meridian]

OK, I'll add:

1. new flag on craft to decide whether to take average or max stat (if multiple pilots)

2. ability (and necessity!) to choose pilots... except for case, when selected crew size is equal to amount of required pilots (all will be selected automatically... hopefully useful for interceptors)

[Meridian]

1. new flag on craft to decide whether to take average or max stat (if multiple pilots)

I just did that and realized that it is stupid during testing.
If you need for example 2 pilots... one of them has max stats and second has min stats... the max stats of the first pilot would be used and second pilot would make no difference. That defies the purpose of requiring a second pilot.
So, I will revert the change and use average stats as per now.

[Dioxine]

Good enough for me. So far implementation seems succesful.