For more than 2 months, I wondering about ships with few weapons but full of crew - several thousands of crew, mainly TOs.
Just try to imagine... a vessel overcrowded by "pirates with plenty of swords, knifes, small weapons sailing across the wide space with almost no cannons... but able to defeat a flagship of any size..." That is how I see now certain ships (mainly SSB).

In particular I wonder about the logic, to count the crew attack in PvP battles, where logically only real weapons should be counted +- the needed crew to use them.
I know, that this did happen based on the current game mechanics/rules etc. and that is was again abused by players. Therefore I think, we need to fix this by limiting the actions, where the crew would count.
This idea is aimed to influence mainly the high ranked players (1000+) to make the game for them again challenging and also offer a little of new.

My suggestion therefore is:
To count crew attack from TOs only and only for weapon effectivity, raids, invasions, mission requirements and plus make them needed to get loot from NPCs - raiding. This would allow to raise the spawn rate of NPCs but the rewards would be not quarantined as now but only a chance. (Raid successful, we gain xy item. or Raid not successful, the ship was too damaged)

Weapon effectivity:
E.g. For each Dominion cannon you would need 50 TOs to achieve full attack power. In case of only 4 Dominion cannon and 160 TOs on ship = 40 TOs per dom. cannon, each would have only 80% of full attack power. Dom canon Mark II would need 60 TOs, Dom canon Mark III would need 75 TOs and Dom Auto-Blaster would need 100 TOs to achieve 100% effectivity.
This could be implemented for all light, medium, heavy weapons as well at ratio given by Dan.

Eventually, we could have CTlab item "Autolock chip" which could increase the attack power of weapons with full crew, these would gain 10% bonus to effectivity = 110% attack power. EACH weapon would need such CTlab item and item would be attach to weapon and increase it size by 1.
CTlab formula: 100 ACF, 500 Crimson Obelisk, 50 Crimson Auto-Phaser.
There could be GP item "Attack integrating console" boosting the effectivity of all weapons at once by 5%, max 2 per ship with size 10. This would be available to help with decrease of attack power.

Similar could be implemented for Helmsman - defense modules, Scientists would count for scan and cloak and relays, while Engineers only for reactors, This would put a reason to have +3 Scientist per one rank point.

Battles and raids:
For PvP and PvE including bases, would count only the attack from weapons, which could be determined by Weapon effectivity.
I suggest also to again implement the critical raid (2-3% chance) with possibility of stealing a module from the raided ship. Aim is to make PvP more interesting.
Critically failed raid would again cost 1 crew - TOs or Helmsman.
Only wondering, whether certain GP modules should be raided too or we would raid only researched and artifact modules.

Invasion:
For invasion, the game would count only the stats for TOs, Helmsmen vs soldiers (invasion defense) on planet = the weapons would be needed only to decrease the population and destroy attack/defense structures. So the attack and defense including outposts on the planet would have to be rebuilt after invasion. Like it would be in normal battle.
Per new rules, there would be planetary limit for attack and defense structures per size of the planet. VM and bigger could have 12 def or attack researchable structures max without counting the artifact structures. Average only 8 def/att structures and Very Tiny only 4 def/att structures.

If the above would not make the game hard enough, I would also suggest:
We could have energy requirements per rank of the weapons. Thus each Quasi-Chaotic Blaster would require for each attack 15 energy, while Autocannon only 1 energy.
The experience gained from attack would not change regardless of energy requirements. The limit for installed weapons would stay as it is now.
This would solve the question, how to use energy and not rank out of game content so easily.

Eventually, if anyone would have later problem with too big stash of credits:
We could implement upkeep requirement per plane size

ok here is my thoughts on deck's to crew. First off 1 deck is a lot bigger then you think. There is a Cruise ship out there that has 19 decks and can fit 4100 people on it comfortably. Now one weapon on your ship Can easily take that much space. Normally a bunch more. So these are massive weapons. When I see how much deck they take that means that whole decks are taken just to run and operate these massive guns of destruction. You also have to keep in mind that the more decks you add the longer your ship gets adding even more space to your ship. So if anything I look at most ship out there and wonder how their guns can even work with so little crew. I know I don't have the man power to work nearly a thousand decks of weapons if not more (didn't add them all up. ) So these ships out there with just a couple hundred decks of weapons are more likely then not still lacking the amount of crew it would take to maintain these massive weapons. That is why I think they add so much more attack per TO. The more you have on your ship the more effectively you can shoot these massive guns doing the most amount of damage as possible.

+1

well, thanks.. but it again only make the picture of mainly handguns shooting from windows of your ship on other ships than real space weapons of appropriate size.
I know, that the suggestion is big change, but it is designed to challenge players.
It is more for MSB than LSB (weapon effectivity) or SSB.

Also no comments yet on energy for weapon usage, change for invasion and raids

That would not be good at all. You know how much energy that is? I would just take off all my guns before paying that. If anything that mod would ruin the game even more. No one wants to PVP any more the way it is because of many other things. And NPCing for hours on end for sometimes nothing is hard enough without paying that much extra energy on top of it. Sorry but I'm not seeing it at all.

And how do you still picture that? It doesn't even make since. If you had a ship with just say 20 decks and they each only held 200 crew to make them work as good as they good that would be 4000 crew. There are not many ships out there that can keep up with that kind of stats. And even if they are like I said the more decks you have the more crew each one can hold. Lets just picture for a sec even the smallest gun you can have on your ship. By its self with no TO's to keep up with the repairs, and to help with targeting and so on it would only do one damage to ships. It would break down all the time and not be able to hit hardly anything so it would be pretty much worthless. Now lets say you fill all three decks with the crew needed to fire that ship at the top of its game and your ship is only 20 decks. You now have three decks filled with 200 TO's on each. Now this once worthless gun never miss's, never breaks down, and is doing 601 damage to other ships because of that. And the bigger your guns get the better they get. So if you had one Heavy Quasi-Chaotic Blaster that takes 55 decks. And lets say your ship doesn't get any longer with time, it just keeps growing up like a skyscraper, by its self with no crew it would do 430 damage. Just because of its massive size and power. Now lets say you fill those 55 decks with the 11K To's needed to make it fire at its peak. now its doing 11,430 damage per hit. Which is still way to small since that is not how ships work. The more decks they get the longer they get so the number of crew needed to work that weapon at its best would be much much higher making it better and better. And even if you still had the smallest guns on your ship and you increase your deck size little by little. Those guns will keep getting better and better because you are adding on more space to make the work better and better. Not to mention there are probably more then just one gun on it for all those decks. I'm thinking that it the guns line your ship taking up that many decks. but is all connected at the same time. You wouldn't just have one huge gun sticking out the side of your ship but several of them going all the way down both sides of your ship. Meaning you would need several more TO's to work on all the equipment. But they are all at the same time attached to the same core and same mainframe so they fire better together making it easier to work on them. So the more crew we have to work on the weapons we do have then the faster we would be able to isolate problems we have in one area of the weapon system allowing the others to keep working like needed doing more damage then if we had less crew.

waw... your view-explanation is based on totally different approach/undestanding to weapons and crew.

Per the above, you expect, that one weapon can provide without crew 430 dmg, with 11K TOs the same weapon makes 11430 damage. And I think, here our view is different base on fact I pointed in OP:
Each TO give +2 Attack, thus the weapon is not improving in attack now, just the ship has sum attack:
430 from weapon
22000 from 11K TOs
-------------------
22430 attack. ---> the damage, as you mention mainly damage, depends on damage cap and defense, scan etc.

Therefore I think, we can not agree here, that 11K TOs makes improvement of 11K attack on weapon nor that weapon attack is increasing due TOs. Not per current game setup. Per the change I suggest, this would be happening on lvl of % as mentioned in my original post.
Just try to remove your weapons (uninstall them) and you will see, that you will have still attack power per your TOs each multiplied by two.
I assume, that game was changed during 3 years quite a lot.

-1 I dont like it

if we follow your logic with the Dominion cannons, you would need 80 T.O.s and 40 Scientists
to operate a simpel Composite Ray - Type S (size 13, attack 80, scan 40)

(presice numbers would depend on how you set the raton on each type off weapon, but presuming 1 T.O. pr attack, 1 Scientists pr scan/cloak and 1 Helmsmen pr defence - as that semes to be the numbers you used for Dominion Cannon ( Size:8, Attack:50) and 50 T.O's needed to operate it)

so basickly you would need 13 (decks) + 40 (T.O's) + 13 (Scientists) = 66 Rank points to operate it effiently
atm you "only" need 13 rank points, to get the 13 decks needed to install it

for a low rank player we are looking at 3 ranks vs 14 ranks to get the points needed to install a weapon like this
this would make it quite hard to install any systems, as they would need to spendt 80% off all rank points on crew just to get the crew needed to operate any systems efficiently

for mid rank players, you more or less frack up all the work they have put into theire ships based on present options
a SSB ship, could basickly end up with 0 attack, + 0 defence, and a max decks build ship, could easily end up with to few crew members to suport the systems installed on ship, making them more or less useless....

and for high rank players, you just take away any option to futher improve theire ships. depending on what type build they use, all they have to spendt theire points on are crew.....
so unless we also get some new recearch that gives us new weapons, hull and defence systems they will have nothing left to spendt points on

Its realy simple. Each tactical officer has a cannon he/she mans and fires. The deck based weapons are scaled up versions of these and therefore provide more attack but take up more space especialy for the cooling systems used to makes sure they work effecintly and dont overheat.

The sames true for helms men but they use small localised deflectors they move to block the shots fired by the enemy ship.

Yes each crewman has a personal hand gun and cutless for raiding but they cant take their ship to ship gun round with them.

well, I want to see that low rank to have 304 Dark badges and in the same moment problem of too few rank points to allocate


Yeah, they have probably 4+hands and they to do their actions thru special huge windows in ship hull.. otherwise they have to shoot and deflect thru the hull of their own ship...



Still no comment on new CTlab item suggested, rework of invasion/raid logic etc. Also no word for energy requirements for attack...
Well, in general not sure, but all did miss the point, that this is to make the game more challenging? ... and slow down the progress thru game content.
Lets see, if the complains are accepted only against the game or we can have some new difficulty level for players

JUST the current abused in-game logic is more like 14th-16th century pirates without cannons destroying full equipped military flagship from 19th century.
The suggested in-game logic is like we could see in Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Stargate etc.

-1

on the invasion/planet defence idea, planets are tough enough to defend now as it is without limiting how many defence structures we can build on it.

As for the CT lab item, no one over rank 500 (i think) could build it as we cant see the Crimson Blade NPC that drops the Auto-Phaser.

The thought that someone needs X amount of certain crew to use a module heavily penalises those who've struggled to get enough effort for the badges, credits, minerals and thousands/millions of research points just to unlock those modules. Even mission rewarded modules are getting harder to get, with the random nature of the Klorvis daily mission, as well as the time pressure and huge artefact demand of newer mission chains, especially the recent Litheor/The Uninvited chains

the system realy doesnt matter, took Composite Ray - Type S as it was one off the first none standart weapons on my list
but you can make the same simple calcylation for any easy to pick up system

Ion Pulse Ballistae (size 10, attack 80) = 10 + 40 = 50 Rank points to install
Korteth Twin-Blaster (size 14, Attack +100) = 14 + 50 = 64 rank points
Leviathan Rift-Emitter (size 13, attack 35, cloak 30) = 13 + 18 + 10 = 41 rank points
Kronyn Anomaly Engine ( size 10, defence 40, Cloak +25) = 10 + 20 + 9 = 39 rank points
Sha'din Hypergrid Core (size 14, scan 55, cloak 55) = 14 + 110/3 = 50 rank points

etc etc etc
(or the basic versions off these)

or even a standart
Heavy Quantum Devastator ( size 35, Attack +168) would end up costing you 35 + 168/2 = 119 rank points or 24 ranks just to get the points needed to use it at full efect, or just under 200 ranks for a full set off 8 Heavy Quantum Devastator = 280 decks + 1344 T.O.s for a full set

lower the requirement, to 1 TO pr 10 attack, 1 Helmsman pr 10 defence, and 1 scintist pr 10 Cloak/scan, and things might be posible for low rank player....but also make it pointless for high rank players, as they wont have any problems picking up enougth androids and prisoners from theire artifact shipments that crew wont be a problem

but as I see it, all you are realy doing is, making it cost more rank points to install systems
and making it imposible to get more attack/defence/energy then the actual systems you have on ship = making crew useless for high rank players

Yes, basically as my idea.. the equipment need some crew



I saw as seller, that is so easy for 1000+ ranks to invade planets without sabs help, that well, I can not agree with your statement about "tough enough"... depends on rank/strenght.



the ratio was given as pure example for very first idea.
I think increasing the requirements of rank points, would help to handle the situation with high arti production compare to available content. And yes, my main focus in on high ranks.

Also, this suggestion is open to modifications. Based on recent comments, maybe the crew requirements could be not 1 TO : 1 attack but per deck size or other logic/ratio taking in consideration the progress in game.
I do not want to harm much the low ranks and new players, but also I do not want to set a line from which the logic will be applied and put higher difficulty only to part of players.
Light Cruiser need less crew, colossal galaxy destroyers need crew in thousands...

a lot of typing for a lot of crap. -1 to the lot.

as others have already stated, nerfing crew would be *BAD*. your 'abuse' is everyone else's strategic planning.

raiding for modules on the opponent's ship ?? so mento comes along and raids all your dominion cannons ? or maybe just all of your mission mods that YOU CAN NOT GET AGAIN (except by raiding some other poor sap ?) *BAD*.

limiting defense structures to size of planet ?? so, basically just destroying the value of ANY defense structures for lower levels. goodbye to every small exotic out there ! *BAD*.

crew to destroy planetary structures ... so nerfing the saboteur profession completely out of relevance ?? *BAD*.

that's 4 strikes out of 4.

well, BAD is that you did read thru buy did not pay attention...
because:
"nerfing crew" - the crew would stay, but the effect would change.. they would not count for attack if there is more crew, than equipment need for full effectivity. The crew would count for raids/invasion and other actions.
Raiding would be only chance!!! not a given fact.
no crew to destroy any structure, absolutely opposit is written in my OP = weapons to destroy structure and population, crew to fight with soldier from outposts etc. Therefore sab profession remain needed.

btw, you did wrongly read and also not provided any constructive comment.
I wonder, why people have no problem to complain but are not able to make constructive suggestion how to change.
The entire suggestion is only about slowing down the progress thru game content - new difficulty level.
But sometimes I have the feeling, that it is not worthy to suggest, if people accept only suggestions, which will they demand to get more for free.

Maintaining guns might be one point, but I think it's assumed you have a load of menials on-board with you. The guys actually calibrating the weapons and stuff? You're gonna need, what, one guy to aim, one guy to check his aim, one guy to monitor power levels (Probably the engineers, really) and then maybe a dozen guys per gun to solve problems that might arise. The technology we'd be dealing with would be designed very specifically to have machines doing all of the turning/lifting according to what is put into computer. I've got 1330 Tactical Officers and 37 guns (Out of 45 weapons; other things are like Taltherian Sentries, Drone Cluster, ect...). Most watered down, so over the 45 weapons, this is 29-30 Tactical Officers working on one gun. 30 men all screaming about how many degrees to turn, when to fire, when to hold fire for a moment, how much power to put into a single shot ect ect. I'm not sure what I think really about how Tactical Officers working on-board. Helmsmen would be managing defenses; maneuvering and stuff, though how many guys do you need to point you in the direction your pilot tells you to go. Look at the ships from Stargate. The main controls are run primarily by like three people with maybe a dozen being in the control room and relaying orders to menials; people running about the place and doing maintenance, tests on components and fixing repairs as much as they can. I think that a ship of the calibre of GL's ships would need less than 20 helmsmen, less than 100 tactical officers and something ridiculous like 20,000 engineers. On top of that, you'd also need an army for planetary invasions. Read a 40k novel; invasions aren't simple.

yes, finally somebody with understanding the main idea.
The crew for invasion would be still needed in huge numbers.
The requirements for modules would need some crew, as mentioned in discussion, the ratio is to be decided - I provided only a simple sample.

This entire suggestion changes too many mechanics of the game. I for one would certainly stop playing GL if this were implemented. We're already unhappy about some things. Don't make us mad.

which one suggestion would make you stop playing? I mentioned several partial updates to have from what to choose.
Aim is not to make anybody mad, but discuss how to make the game content harder and thus requiring more time and slower ranking. This would be more probable than additional content till rank 4000 from Dan.