"Recruiting Club" contact service

[resistor]

Where do your crew go when you fire them? Probably to other captains, of course, but if another captain just hired your seasoned former level 13 crew-dog, why does the player captain always find raw recruits at minimum levels?

I know we can already recruit specialist crew through contacts at non-minimum levels, but what about the more generalist crew you find in starports?

My suggestion is that there be certain contacts that have a box of 2-6 crew that the player can recruit from for a few hundred or thousand credits each. The seasoned-crew box would refresh after a time, and contain crew with random jobs.

Here's an example of what it might be like in-game:

The Captain Smith came down from the celestial realm to trade, spice, and most importantly, find a new navigator to replace the one that died just a few harrowing weeks ago. He gets in touch with his local contact, a Spicetender, to ask her about any seasoned crew who have had recent... disagreements with their captains.
"Aye. I know of four", the Spicetender says. She informs Smith about two level 7 gunners, one level 12 pilot, and one level 3 doctor all looking for work.
Smith, being disappointed about no experienced navigators being available, must now choose to hire a fresh navigator grav or, if he is satisfied with navigation skill being secondary, hire the experienced pilot.

[fallen]

Cool feedback! Seems like a good place we can work on Contacts -- hooking up more types that are capable of recruiting the basic jobs.

[xdesperado]

Like the basic idea that resistor gave, would like to lobby for the contact to not only have the seasoned crew available but also provide 1 or 2 of said crews traits to the Captain looking to hire them.

"Say Mr Smythe any idea why that hotshot pilot (level 12) is currently grounded?" Captain Stormraven asks as he views the data file.
"Well seems her last captain was a bit of a puritan and she enjoyed spending too much time in the Spice Halls (Spice Addict trait)," Smythe replied.

Thinking that way you might at least have a chance to catch a really unwanted trait before spending the big money and having your otherwise carefully built crew suddenly disrupted by the new unknown veteran spacer.

[Cory Trese]

Big dreams, tiny budgets

[drspendlove]

It seems like you're saying I should share the gift of ST:F with more people! Challenge accepted!

[athios]

Consider how the pool you are talking about are crew who have been fired or have deserted for whatever reason, I would almost expect there to be something wrong with them. Maybe bad attributes, lack of skills, or at least one negative trait (Brute, grav sickness, crippled, etc.).

It's basically the price you pay in exchange for higher level.

[resistor]

Jun 19, 2018 9:37:04 GMT -5 athios said:

Consider how the pool you are talking about are crew who have been fired or have deserted for whatever reason, I would almost expect there to be something wrong with them. Maybe bad attributes, lack of skills, or at least one negative trait (Brute, grav sickness, crippled, etc.).

It's basically the price you pay in exchange for higher level.

Not necessarily. Maybe they just left their captain do to low morale they weren't getting enough payments or spice.

Anyway, if they always have bad attributes and one negative trait, the player might as well just conscript crew instead since that is the same quality, but is free.

Maybe there could be two categories of crew here: deserted captain, and fired by captain. The deserters might have overall better stats, but unlikely to have certain traits such as loyal, etc.