Active ability being tied to the co-pilot

[LeonBraun]

I haven't seen any discussion on this, so thought I'd throw up a thread about it to hear people's thoughts.

 

Currently we get to choose several companions associated with our fighters, then choose a co-pilot to join us. Now there are two ways really that one would make that choice.

 

1. Choose the active ability that best suits your playstyle and get the companion co-pilot by default based on that choice.

 

2. Choose the co-pilot you want to talk to you during the battle and get stuck with the active ability they come with whether you want that ability or not.

 

The dilemma I see here with this is either you will get pilots who try to min/max their fighters to their playstyle and end up using the same companion contantly, or you get pilots who want to use a variety of co-pilots to hear their dialogue, but then don't get an active ability that works best for them.

 

Most of the time I'll use a droid for hydrospanner, or Blizz empire side (which is just as annoying or more) and then all you end up being stuck with is a droid that chirps/beeps or a jabbering Jawa.

 

Imperial side I've enjoyed using Mako or other favorite companions as a co-pilot, but then there is a trade off on the active ability not being as useful to me play style wise as I would like.

 

I would also like to use a favorite speaking companion Republic side, and for most I think Nadia would be who a lot of people use given the popularity of bypass. But personally I still like to be able to repair my ship more that I need the damage bump to kill other fighters.

 

I think it would be really nice to be able to choose the companions you want to use for their associated abilities and then be able to swap an active one for one between two of your companions to get the desired co-pilot you want to use.

 

Really I find it a shame that all this extra companion interaction was recorded for GSF that most people will never hear, simply by using the exact same active ability all the time. Personally there are times I'd like to be out with any number of different companions to hear what they are going to say to me, but currently that comes with a playstyle trade off.

[JediJeffP]

I agree. In fact my preference in setup would be as follows:

 

I. Four Crew members (as is) each with 2 passive abilities.

 

II. Once co-pilot for voice only, no passives gained (unless the chosen copilot was also a crew member above) and no active.

 

III. Current active abilities moved to a "Special Tactics" ship component gated behind a 1,250 fleet requisition charge (same gate as the additional crew member cost).

 

This change would allow for using a copilot of your choice for aesthetic and roleplay reasons plus give the down the road benefit of an additional requisition dump which will be needed as ships get maxed out.

 

It also has the possibility of adding complexity and variety in ship configurations as the current active and passive abilities would be available in more combinations. Right now only a few of the active abilities are actually being used, which thus also limits the passive ability configurations.

[Cashal]

Full game isn't out yet. . . So you might get something similar to your wish.

 

I noticed they had key bindings for more abilities in the GSF Preferences menu.