A solution for more control of the crew without weighing down the UI

[Nalyd]

The current crew management added in the last patch made the game more realistic which is a good leap in the right direction.

However this system still remains quite basic, mainly because of its rigidity, like the fact that you can't divide precisely your crew for each task as you wish since the game is doing that for you instead.

I've read many post about how to fix this issue, like adding a slider, allowing the use of the num pad etc... 

The issue with those ideas is that they are weighing down the UI further more or add more key binds, which will make the game even more complicated.

 

So here are the different cases we currently have with the crew management system :

 

Case 1 : Every toggles are ON

 

In this case, the game will just automatically spread your crew across every task, you have no power over how many sailors you want to put for X or Y task.

 

Case 2 : Some toggles are ON and others are OFF

 

In this scenario you can actually force sailors to switch from one task to another. If you toggle off the gunnery, your sailors will switch toward the sailing task. However, if you do that, you are forced to fill completely the task that are still toggled on even if it means crippling entirely your ability to sail or use guns.

 

ex : you have 100/200 guys sailing, and 200/400 guys on the guns.You want more guys manning guns, the only thing you can do in this case is to switch all your crew from sailing to gunnery, and you'll end up with 0/200 sailing and 300/400 manning guns so you basically lose your ability to sail.

 

Case 3 : Every toggles are OFF

 

Just like in the first case, the game will just spread your crew across every task with or without your consent.

 

So we have 2 different cases doing the same thing, therefore here's my suggestion :

 

Solution : make it so that when every toggles are OFF like in the third case, your crew don't move around.

 

By doing that, you'd be able to manage your crew as you wish, and all that without adding more stuff on the screen nor adding more keybinds.

Just so everybody understand correctly :

 

Example  :

 

Your ship have 500 crew every toggles are ON except for boarding, and the game distributed them as follow :

 

 200/300 sailing ; 300/500 gunnery ; 0/500 boarding.

 

You are planing on boarding a vessel and start to toggle on the boarding option, however if you do so, you won't have any men left sailing nor manning the guns. You believe that 200 men on boarding should suffice, but you still need your 200 men or so on sailing to maneuver but don't mind switching most of your guys from gunnery to boarding.

So this is what you do in that order :

 

Step 1 - turn ON the boarding's toggle -> Your men from both sailing and gunnery will start draining toward the boarding task.

Step 2 - turn OFF the gunnery's toggle. -> The game will only drain your men from gunnery to boarding, leaving the guys sailing to their task until there is no more men left in gunnery.

Step 3 - wait for the boarding to reach 200/500, which will take about 40s (5 men per second)

Step 4 - boarding just reached 200/500, turn OFF both sailing and boarding so none of your sailors move.

 

And voilà, all of your toggles are off and you have now 200/300 sailing ; 100/500 gunnery ; 200/500 boarding.

 

If you have any question (I kind of suck at explaining stuff) or suggestion, disagree or agree with me, feel free to leave your comments below  .

[Balsafer]

Why turn off boarding?

[Galileus]

LOVE IT!

[Nalyd]

Why turn off boarding?

 

Because if you don't, the boarding will suck dry all your crew from both sailing and gunnery

[Kaskeria]

This is something really clever. Make it happen.

-It would be also great if you could just toggle a default 25-50-75% on each section.