Multicrew

The four-player limit came from wanting to test a curated, linear mission without outside influence, with bigger parties possible later, while the old Siege, built for fewer players and later upped to around a hundred, was unbalanced.

In 4.5 the Polaris's back-right bridge station will get torpedo control, but the pilot won't, because the team wants enforced balance between ships and the Polaris torpedoes are far stronger than the Perseus's.

Huckaby says this is a mission-team matter and that a Missions 2.0 refactor, long planned, should enable rewards beyond credits and the kind of multi-crew payoffs asked about, though he gives no specifics or date.

Backpacks will need to be stowed when flying, with dropship seats having their own inventory that automatically stores and restores backpack and weapon; other seats are being looked at, nothing confirmed.

Solo flying a multi-crew ship is possible and works smoothly while it's new and unworn, but maintaining damaged parts alone gets painful, and a crew makes the ship more survivable and effective.

Friends can help, but the mission is meant to be solo and cannot be shared, so only the mission holder's CrimeStat is cleared while helpers who kill guards keep their murder charges.

No fix is in 3.12 for party nameplates because the team was busy elsewhere, but they've been converted to a new UI system that will more than likely fix the bug in a future patch.

The Kraken will likely get a medbay since its lack was probably a concept-stage oversight, but medbeds are powerful, so the team wants to limit them to ships where it makes sense.

In the first-tier design, a party leader can share any member's accepted mission with the party, where others join as junior owners who can't make decisions, rewards split evenly, and leaving the party forfeits it.

Dan Trufin says it's still the plan: each NPC will follow a schedule covering duty, eating, sleeping and exercise, and will switch to a combat schedule and run to their stations when combat starts.

This refers to hired NPC crews on player ships in the PU, where the captain can order red alert but keeping crew at stations lowers morale and performance, and Trufin says it's coming "soon".

The Bengal's existing interior art and RSI design rules are being reused for the Polaris, with roughly 40% reuse and 60% made unique.

The Polaris differs from the Retaliator by carrying another ship in its hangar, supporting a full crew, and holding cargo without a module, with facilities supporting a broader range of contingencies.

NPCs will have RPG-style skill levels and traits, are hired at rookie to veteran levels, and improve through battle, though the detailed background stats may not be exposed to players.

Crew will have roles tied to stations, and ship owners are meant to flag permissions for crew, player or NPC, so unauthorised people can't simply take the pilot seat.

Signal range, signature, CPU-based encryption, transmitting and receiving equipment, interception and code cracking are all planned as team gameplay on bigger ships, with a fair amount of it in the long run.

A friend taking over an NPC crew slot doesn't get paid for it; the NPC still draws its agreed pay as a running cost for the ship owner.

Bribing a competitor's NPC crew into mutiny isn't currently planned and may be revisited later, though NPC crew will have hidden stats like morale that can improve over time.

Friends joining bigger ships is definitely planned, but the first release will have only small single-seat ships because larger ones need many more assets; bigger ships may come around mid-next-year, hopefully.