First post is here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/StarCitizenUniverse/comments/1unf37b/why_multicrew_is_a_dumb_idea/

This post, will further hammer home why multicrew is destined to fail.

First,

Minmaxing

Part of the reason why people don't think multicrew will fail, is that right now, its optional.

The game has no stakes. Star Citizen is a game with no stakes.

There is valuable to be lost or gained. The most you can ever lose is your cargo. Ship respawn timers are measured in minutes. You can pay insurance for losing ships for a week in 5 minutes. No battle means anything, so there's no reason to try to optimize combat effectiveness.

This will change, or at least, I hope it changes. God damn does this game need stakes.

And when it does change, when it really matters whether your 5 man group takes out a Redeemer, or a fleet consisting of a Redeemer, two arrows an Ion and a meteor, you're going to choose the later.

You're always going to choose the later, because it will matter that you do. Teams that don't do that, will be punished by the game, because again, there will be stakes involved. Real loss. You don't go and do the thing that ensures that you lose over and over again.

Even if your org is filled with roleplayers that just love sitting around for long stretches of time staring out in the empty blackness of space on a turret gun, if the other team kicks your ass for doing that every time you do it, you'll stop.

That happened in Atlas, and it will happen in Star Citizen as well.

What it would take to make multicrew viable

I think this is a better way to look at it. What would it really take to make multicrew viable...

Well, first you'd have to somehow drastically eliminate the advantages of running a ship solo with NPC crew. You'd have to overcome the disadvantage that this causes. That's the first part.

You'd have to somehow make a Hammerhead, with a crew of 8, more effective than... well... 8 Hammerheads.

This is a big ask, but even that, even if you accomplished that, it wouldn't be enough.

Because even if you did somehow make a human crewed vessel equivalent to a fleet made up of the same number of people with NPC crew, there's still the gameplay problem.

Turret gunning sucks.

For most people, most of the time, turret gunning sucks.

You might be willing to do it if you're going to do a ground mission. You might hop on a turret gun because you're going to be on the ship anyway and it gives you a seat and you have nothing better to do, but are you willing to make that your primary role in the game?

Because that's what we'd be talking about, if the game were a "multicrew game". Most players, most of the time would wind up as turret gunners, and that doesn't sound like the kind of content that will keep people playing.

So in addition to making human crewed ships combat equivalent to NPC crewed ships (which is a big ask), you'd also have to make crew gameplay equivalent (in terms of fun) to piloting.

How the fuck would you do that?

The current plan is mini-games right? You're going to put mini-games everywhere.

Are you going to write in mini-games that are on par with playing the game itself? Is the navigation minigame going to be as good as playing Star Citizen? Is the engineering mini-game going to be that good?

I doubt it.

You'd need to create content so good on ships for crew to do that it competes with having people just play the base game on their own ships.

Good luck with that.

Multicrew will die.