Posted this on the reddit but I’ll post this here as well:
Relatively new to the game, I’ve practically only played on the official servers, (60 hours, but I still feel new lol; love how much depth the game has) but I’ve had 5 rounds with the nukies and I’ve come across a certain issue.
I’ve been commander 3 times but I’m not exactly familiar with the flying system. I could only function since I had a ghost role as paramedic, but I just barely figured out how to fly then and still am awkward on controls. Many rounds have happened where designating a pilot was tough, in fact once I had to appoint an op with only 1 shift experience in salvage, and although they happened to be fantastic, they had no knowledge concerning docking, so I still had to take over. I really feel there should be a designated pilot role for the nukies, as an unlucky crew could be left without an adequate pilot to even reach the station in an effective manner (drop off stealth team, extract capt, etc.), and the act of asking for help as the commander diminishes team trust despite knowing war, and stealth tactics. The nukies already have an agent specialized in chem, I believe they could benefit greatly from one who has guaranteed experience flying shuttles in cargo.
agents being the only specialized member of a team of nukies is warranted because staying alive is important, you can’t blow up the station if all your operatives are dead, and it draws players who want that kind of gameplay. i’m sure if a pilot was added it’d have its fair share of people who love playing it, but all in all a pilot is not nearly as vital to an operation as an agent is, as it’s a much more niche role that won’t always be utilized.
I don’t really think they need a designated pilot role, I think it’s more an issue with the playtime requirements for nukies in general(5 hours general for normal nukie and 5 sec hours for commander). I’ve met commanders who didn’t know how to use jetpacks and nukies who didn’t know how to use hardsuits or turn on o2. They should require salv time or something to make sure everyone knows how to move in space without dying.
I’m not trying to sound mean but this is really just a skill issue. Commanders should know how to use a shuttle and it’s extremely unnecessary to have a role dedicated to something that you’ll rarely be doing.
Lol what? Its not metagame for what is meant to be an elite operative who is about to nuke a SPACE STATION to know how to fly a spaceship. Adding the pilot role would not add anything interesting gameplay-wise. Its either:
Just a title and does nothing mechanically
Another role that would be used as a 6th nukie
In my opinion for elite operatives each person should understand how to use all the equipment available to them, but that’s not something that can be guaranteed or necessarily wanted.
Salv time was a bad idea, there needs to be basic tutorials for stuff like this. Gernal movement in space, basic interactions, stuff like that.
Having played a lot more, and with the taking down of grasshopper, I can easily say my previous recommendation was pretty darn silly. firstly, the issue of inexperienced nukies should be less common given grasshopper is gone, and flying a ship should not need a whole role when most op plans involve ditching the ship and jetpacking to the station. An operative team that has no one able to fly, is doomed upon the very notion that they should therefore have little game sense anyways. If this really was an issue, simply placing the book “how to fly for dummies” with syndicate flavoring would be enough to teach any nukie how to get from point A to B.
While I agree the suggested pilot role is unnecessary, I disagree with it being a “skill issue”, everyone starts new. Everybody has to learn. That’s just a necessary part of progression. This game needs a tutorial and more detailed guidebook entries.
I somewhat disagree with this. The idea of a tutorial has been floating around for a long time. The game needs one desperately. Simply tossing a book at an uneducated squad of nuclear operatives is not the solution. More should be done.
This particular training issue could be addressed by a new arcade game that lets you fly a spaceship around and dock. This would effectively just be a disguised remote shuttle console for an unreachable map. Entity clutter might be an issue but could probably be kept under control
I don’t feel like nukies require a dedicated shuttle pilot to get them to the location, with a squad of 5 it would be extremely unlikely for at least one of them not to have played cargo at some point or flown a ship in a different matter such as Fork-servers like Frontier.
This post did remind me of a time my brother and I we’re discussing a funny scenario if the only person during a war-ops that knew how to pilot a ship was the monkey and he had to explain through LOOC how to fly it because monkeys can’t pilot a ship.
Correct, they don’t need a dedicated shuttle pilot. The game needs a proper tutorial, this could be achieved through content bundles.
However, for now, until such a tutorial exists, we should provide any role that is expected to require a shuttle flight the necessary resources to figure out the game. An arcade machine that simulates flight controls would work well for this.