I've played a few mods with Crew, and it seems to add something to the game.
Crew is a resource representing trained officers, troops and starship crew. It is generated (passively) by pops and much faster by soldiers.
For hive-minded (machine and organic), it still makes sense -- it represents units specialized for the chaos of combat.
Ideally this would be done along side making assault armies a ship component.
Here are proposed mechanics:
1) Ships have a crew amount, just like they have Hull/Shields/Armor. This can be damaged. A ship's fire rate is reduced to (% Crew Alive)^(1/2) -- at 50% crew, your ship only attacks 70% as fast. A ship's movement rate is reduced to (% Crew Alive)^(1/8) -- at 50% crew, the ship is 10% slower.
2) Smarter central combat computers reduce crew requirements.
3) Assault armies are a G sized ship component. Basic armies might require 100 crew and 100 minerals. These crew (grunts) are tracked separately than naval crew (you can't use marines to run your ship). More advanced armies might require less crew and more alloys. "Land armies" is an action for a fleet with armies in it.
4) Hangers now require crew, and destroyed fighters consume it, and returning fighters recover it. You can't launch fighters if you run out of fighter-crew. Hangers also create ground assault units, as the fighter craft can enter the atmosphere.
5) Hull damage kills crew; a hull at 50% life loses 50% of its crew. This also kills grunts.
6) Replacing crew at a starbase drains the crew of the empire.
7) "A-slot" components like "Clone Vats" can give you crew regen; for example, "+0.5% crew per month, max 80%". Or "Cyrosleep Pods" might give you a fixed number of extra crew to replace casualties.
I'd envision that ship Crew requirements are lower than alloy requirements, but the upkeep is higher; something like 1% of Crew requirements per month (this represents turnover in the military). Decommissioned ships return all crew to the pool. The pool of crew you have available might naturally decay rather than have a hard cap (say, 1% of trained crew retires or needs retraining every month; this means that if you produce 100 crew per month, your crew supply caps out at 10,000 either in active service or in reserves).
Ethics can have fun effects on crew. Lots of buildings can interact with crew, from necromancer encampment to culture workers to slave processing facilities.
Empire policies can interact with crew -- you can trade off crew upkeep rates (the 1%) for more or less effective crew.
Between armies-as-weapon-slots and high crew costs for armies, technology can interact with armies in interesting ways. The base army -- 100 minerals and 100 crew -- costs lots of crew and ship slots. More advanced armies can cost less crew per unit of pew-pew, but also cost alloys or exotic materials.
As this moves the assault army from being something you mass produce on planets to something you embed within ships, planets should also behave similarly. For each kind of assault army, have a building you can build on a planet spawns similar defence army. Clone vats might spawn clone soldiers.
Crew is a resource representing trained officers, troops and starship crew. It is generated (passively) by pops and much faster by soldiers.
For hive-minded (machine and organic), it still makes sense -- it represents units specialized for the chaos of combat.
Ideally this would be done along side making assault armies a ship component.
Here are proposed mechanics:
1) Ships have a crew amount, just like they have Hull/Shields/Armor. This can be damaged. A ship's fire rate is reduced to (% Crew Alive)^(1/2) -- at 50% crew, your ship only attacks 70% as fast. A ship's movement rate is reduced to (% Crew Alive)^(1/8) -- at 50% crew, the ship is 10% slower.
2) Smarter central combat computers reduce crew requirements.
3) Assault armies are a G sized ship component. Basic armies might require 100 crew and 100 minerals. These crew (grunts) are tracked separately than naval crew (you can't use marines to run your ship). More advanced armies might require less crew and more alloys. "Land armies" is an action for a fleet with armies in it.
4) Hangers now require crew, and destroyed fighters consume it, and returning fighters recover it. You can't launch fighters if you run out of fighter-crew. Hangers also create ground assault units, as the fighter craft can enter the atmosphere.
5) Hull damage kills crew; a hull at 50% life loses 50% of its crew. This also kills grunts.
6) Replacing crew at a starbase drains the crew of the empire.
7) "A-slot" components like "Clone Vats" can give you crew regen; for example, "+0.5% crew per month, max 80%". Or "Cyrosleep Pods" might give you a fixed number of extra crew to replace casualties.
I'd envision that ship Crew requirements are lower than alloy requirements, but the upkeep is higher; something like 1% of Crew requirements per month (this represents turnover in the military). Decommissioned ships return all crew to the pool. The pool of crew you have available might naturally decay rather than have a hard cap (say, 1% of trained crew retires or needs retraining every month; this means that if you produce 100 crew per month, your crew supply caps out at 10,000 either in active service or in reserves).
Ethics can have fun effects on crew. Lots of buildings can interact with crew, from necromancer encampment to culture workers to slave processing facilities.
Empire policies can interact with crew -- you can trade off crew upkeep rates (the 1%) for more or less effective crew.
Between armies-as-weapon-slots and high crew costs for armies, technology can interact with armies in interesting ways. The base army -- 100 minerals and 100 crew -- costs lots of crew and ship slots. More advanced armies can cost less crew per unit of pew-pew, but also cost alloys or exotic materials.
As this moves the assault army from being something you mass produce on planets to something you embed within ships, planets should also behave similarly. For each kind of assault army, have a building you can build on a planet spawns similar defence army. Clone vats might spawn clone soldiers.
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