Pirate Playstyle Mod Discussion and Suggestions

[M3ssiah]

As someone who has roughly 85 hours with the Crimson Fleet doing general piracy, I have a few thoughts on improving the gameplay and adding some features that might be good for the pirate playstyle and space combat. First, I will list them out, then explain in more detail below. Each paragraph will correspond to a point. Feel free to discuss or offer suggestions below.

Crimson Fleet mod ideas:

1. 
   
2. Bounty clearing / Bounty evasion
   
3. Better Mission Rewards
   
4. Key as a Chop Shop
   
5. More useful crew
   
6. Crew Size Limit
   
7. Crew Salary
   
8. Remove Ship Level Restrictions (in regards to unlocking parts.)
   
9. Choose between the UC and Crimson Fleet early on.
   

If you're a Crimson fleet member, there should be options to get rid of your bounty other than going to the bounty board and paying it off. I imagine the Crimson Fleet would have connections within the UC to handle that. The way the bounty system currently works is very prohibitive to the pirate play style. If not clearing bounties, you should at least be able to avoid detection. You already get scanned when you enter occupied space, so why not have that scan also determine if you are "noticed" as having a bounty? If you pass the scan, you can go about as if you don't have a bounty. Otherwise, you get stopped by the authorities.

It is hard to play as a pirate because you must pay your bounties to go to the main areas. I usually make between 5,000 - 9,000 credits per mission for the Crimson Fleet, but I might accrue a 10,000 - 20,000 credit bounty or more on that same mission, not to mention the fees for paying your bounty. So I have to pay out four or five times what I make to clear myself to go and do anything outside of the Key. Another issue is that almost all of the missions for the Crimson Fleet take you to the systems where you'll have the most considerable trouble they'll take you to, like Cheyenne, Narion, Alpha Centauri, or Sol. The second you warp in there, get wrecked, and even if you can hold your own, it doesn't matter because you can't visit any of those planets.

Regarding credits, you should not have to register your ship to sell it at the Key. We are pirates. Why would we pay the registration fees? It just does not make sense. The Key could be a giant chop shop where they strip the ships and sell the parts. Even if I only get half the value of the ship, it's still better than what you get after registering the ship to sell.

Moving on to the crew mods. It would be nice to have a mod that would allow crew members to help in combat on ships, such as manned gun turrets or damage control. Expand it so that all crew can be helpful, even those who don't have ship-based abilities. You may have some companions that are less ship-oriented. If they have more stuff to do, for example, perhaps you could have an actual ship doctor stationed at the Infirmary, so if you get damaged while you are on a planet or exploring, you can come back to your ship and get healed up by your ship doctor. Another example would be a chef or bartender. All of this would help with immersion and serve as a gameplay benefit.

Another thing that I was thinking about is the crew size. It will have to be bigger if you want to be more in line with what real ships are like. I was looking at some of the ship sizes, and from what I've seen, the maximum ship size is 40 meters long. 40 meters is close to the average length of a US destroyer, and the destroyer has a couple hundred crew members. We don't need that many in Starfield, but it would be interesting to expand the crew into the double digits, maybe Max it out at a certain point. Assuming that the previous mod exists so that those crew have something to do.

My last point on the crew is that if we expand on crew abilities, we will have a better system for paying them. It shouldn't be one lump payment upfront. They should get a salary, and the game already has a system for this. For example, perks like kid stuff, you send 2% of your money every so often to your parents. I had that perk on my main character, and I never even noticed that I was sending money away, to be honest. I was making enough money that I never had to worry about it. So if it's a small percentage, like 2 to 5% of your income per crew member, with a system like this, you can be very frugal and have fewer crew members and have a less effective ship but be richer, or you can spend a little bit more money on a better crew and have a much better ship, but you'll be making a slimmer margin. That's an interesting dynamic to have as a captain.

Now, I want to talk about level restrictions for ships. I reached Class C ships and rank 4 in starship design extremely early, by level 20. I assumed that that was a good thing to rush because, as a pirate, I am engaging in a lot of space combat and boarding. I quickly found this a waste because even though I could fly Class C ships, they were worse than my Class A ships. What I learned at the time was that ship parts are locked behind the player level, not the perks. This is too restrictive. Why punish a player who wants to rush a specific playstyle? I put in the time and effort to be able to fly and build the ships, so why can't I? Because of an arbitrary requirement. Nothing feels worse in a game than having your time investment discarded by hidden rules. There are already two prerequisites to flying high-level vessels: perk investment and Money investment. A mod could un-level the ship parts and make them all available but be locked behind the appropriate perks.

The last mod suggestion is for the Crimson Fleet quest line. There needs to be a mod where you can ignore the UC part. I hate that you must constantly go back to the Vigilance and report to them even though you want to avoid participating in their operation. Why can't you leave the Vigilance and never come back? A mod that makes that part optional would keep everything intact. You could still report to them if you want, but how will they know if you choose not to? It's fantastic that if you're playing as part of the UC, you can take down the Crimson Fleet from the inside, but it just doesn't make sense when you're trying to play a pirate. Why would you ever go back to them? They can't track me; if they send ships after me, I'll kill them. After all, I'm a pirate.

[Strokend]

Definitely like this idea. Feedback/ideas from me:

 

• Bounty evasion: Could work off the scan-jammers? A chance that your ship isn't recognized--both when attacking and when entering the system again.
• Mission rewards: I feel like simply doubling them could be useful, countered by them being penalized if you accrued a bounty doing it (in exchange for paying off that bounty immediately), make it similar to the Ryujin quests.
• Chop shop: Absolutely. Let me just sell ships there.
• Better crew: Good even outside of piracy. If you use mods to make oversized ships, you can especially build up a city on your ship.
• Crew size: Maybe have Ship Command simply unlock a percent of your crew stations or "at least" so many (in case you don't have that many stations to start with)?
  • For example: Ship Command could grant 40/60/80/100, and you get 20% without it, or at least 3/4/5/6/8 if that's all the slots you have. 50 stations would then be 10/20/30/40/50.
  • Otherwise: More expensive "Crew Unlocked" modules that boost your permissable crew.
• Crew salary: I prefer the Dream Home sort of fee. A lump sum when hiring could be decreased but be considered a "contract" for them so that they'll be available when you need them, and then having them on ship or in outpost would cause you to have to send a specified sum to them every week or so. This method's less feasible for big crews for a small-earning captain, but more feasible for big crews for a big-earning captain than the percentage.
• Level restrictions: Never realized that was a thing! It's definitely silly to lock parts behind both skills and level.