Crew Wages

[-Pv-]

I've never worked for a company where the employees asked for a raise (diff turns red) every 10 minutes or so. I don't get it.

-Pv-

[SeeJay]

Hi.

This is from the old Legend Guide, but I think it works the same in Mercenary.

The 'fair' wage value they expect to be paid is based on several criteria including their skill, loyalty, and your wealth.
Each crew member's trade also impacts how much they expect to the paid. Here is the calculation used to establish the base fair wage for each trade:

Engineer (((skill+loyalty)*10)+(cash/1000000))*1.75
Navigator (((skill+loyalty)*10)+(cash/1000000))*1.25
Weapons Ops (((skill+loyalty)*10)+(cash/1000000))*1.5
Science Ops (((skill+loyalty)*10)+(cash/1000000))*1.0

Hope this answers your question.

[PaulB]

I've never worked for a company where the employees asked for a raise (diff turns red) every 10 minutes or so. I don't get it.

-Pv-

Once you get to 100% Loyalty the wages won't increase as much except for a couple of things
(1) the richer you are the more you pay for everything includning crew and wingmen and Hangar storage - I mean big time - The crew I don't mind so much - 3k - 5k per crew per pay period I consider worth it.
(2) if you fail any Contracts then the Crew Loyalty drops and if you keep failing and it keeps dropping they will jump ship sometime when you dock at a station. That doesn't bother me. I may fail "a" contract because I don't understand something (like a Terrain Walker contract to Find a Lost Item from a Crash and I guess I didn't search a big enough area to find the "real" item so I failed- and watch out for Deliver Items to a Waiting Ship if that sucker is in the atmosphere of a gas giant - I couldn't complete that one) but in general I don't fail Contracts - the exception being some Combat contracts and I will freely admit that I always try to remember to Save Game before taking Combat Contracts so I can Reload if i do fail and try again or get more experience 1st.
But I REELY am disappointed that (at my current credits) I have to pay 200K /period /wingman and 102k /period for each Hangar I store stuff in.
If each hangar could hold say 10 - 15 items for the same price instead of just 5 then I think I would consider it worth. There are certain item I need at certain times and other items and other times - and I don't buy the argument that you should just go out and fly the Pearl or some place to buy the hard to find items when you want them - it's not practical and very inefficient, especially when you need those items "then".

As for Wingmen - as I've complained before - it would be nice just to have some company (even AI company) but not when you can't even break even doing contracts - so I've just given up on the idea of Wingmen - it might as well be non-existent from my viewpoint. I could live with a system where you paid them a wage like the Crew members and then when you did Contracts they got a percentage divided evenly - but 200K per wingman per pay peroid???? Nope, not me.
The sad part is that it was fun having Wingmen when I did try them - but I don't want to hire them for a Contract and then fire them afterward.

[Nigel_Strange]

I wish I could charge my employers a wage based on how much money they have.

[Major Grubert]

considering how much credit you can earn in one or two trade i consider the crew very cheap, all of mine are always overpay about 200 credit or more, then no bad surprise when doing big trade, each time i dock i check the crew and pay 100 or 200 more for each, that's all

id like to have bigger ship with more crew and more benefits from them in return

[-Pv-]

It's not how much I'm paying them but how often that amount increases. I don't know what the pay period represents, but unless I check it frequently, I cannot keep up with the increases being demanded. The result being these increases are being demanded every few minutes. Seems unreasonable.

I also agree with Nigel_Strange that increases partially based on employer wealth is not real world economics, but rather the dysfunctional head in the sand robin hood types. What "I" get payed is based on my worth to the company and how much money my boss earns off my efforts not how much money my boss makes.

A computer game economics model that is not based on real world, but rather on utopianism is not interesting to me.

As a repeat to my initial comments, my argument is the increase requests in terms of the length of period seems too short and too arbitrary.
It's like negotiating my wage for the following day at the conclusion of every work day, or every few hours (in game time it seems every few minutes.) Skilled workers don't do that though day workers might.

I can see updating this task when docking, and when undocking if the current crew wage is unsatisfied we lose that crew, but the trade balance going red every few minutes while moving around on missions, gathering resources and trading, is frustrating because if these events MEAN anything important, what they mean is not practical even if the ultimate result is when the crew reaches 100% the routine becomes more stable. I prefer stable and reasonable right from the start.

-Pv-

[DaveK]

It's not how much I'm paying them but how often that amount increases. I don't know what the pay period represents, but unless I check it frequently, I cannot keep up with the increases being demanded. The result being these increases are being demanded every few minutes. Seems unreasonable.-Pv-

I get clan pay for our system every 10 minutes or so and get charged for my hangar (I'm too far out in DS to cancel the contract!! ) every 20 minutes or so. I can fly from one side of the core to the other (via gates) in a couple of minutes and even fly to Sol in an hour (including a refuelling and comfort stop ).

None of it is realistic but it's necessary for the functioning of the game.

When I had crew I just took it as regular payrises as they gained experience/qualifications/competence. In RL I'd expect higher pay for more qualifications!

If you really want realism in terms of timings then we should have to order a Trade Station and then wait a few months for it to be completed . . . have a significant prep time for a jump plus a significant recovery time for the drive before it can be used again so that instead of 50+ contracts per hour we'd be down to one or even one every couple of hours . . . etc

Sooo, it might help to think of it as game time compression to enhance the excitement of playing - it works for me anyway

[Major Grubert]

it increase as much as you trade, if you stop trading it stay almost at same level, depending of system economy

the more you trade/get money the more they will ask you to share with them..

if you want the 4 crew member at 100% and have them for sure with you : wait a little to have some money to invest in them

when i started i only get 1 or 2 crew member because of wage and looked carefully about that..., now i even don't think about that amount, it's like pocket money...

so, if you find it to expensive it means, for me, you're trying to hire to much extra cost while missing extra input, my solution : make a pack of big trade or contract, get fat, then hire and pay for whatever you need

[Vice]

What "I" get payed is based on my worth to the company and how much money my boss earns off my efforts not how much money my boss makes.

A computer game economics model that is not based on real world, but rather on utopianism is not interesting to me.

Consider what others have suggested, it does help. Also, you seem to perhaps have a misunderstanding of the pay approach in the game. It isn't utopianism in the slightest, it's raw greed from your crew. In the tight confines of your ship, there is no privacy. They see how much you are making and have made, and expect an ever increasing cut, as your wealth goes up, they expect theirs to as well. If not, you lose their loyalty and they'll be glad to leave.

The way around this isn't to skimp at the minimum wage just to keep them aboard. Although you can do that, it will require more frequent updates on your part and will build their loyalty at a slower rate. Over pay them and you buy yourself convenience time and faster loyalty from them.

It's a little more wild-west economics (ie Jayne expecting his cut from Mal) rather than modern era corporate economics.

[Marvin]

Sooo, it might help to think of it as game time compression to enhance the excitement of playing - it works for me anyway

Indeed. Planets rotate in time-compression fashion. Things get built in time-compression fashion. Hyperjumps to distant stars take seconds instead of months. Ergo, it's not unreasonable for crewmen to get paid the same way. Or demand a raise as their skills increase at a comparable rate.

[Nigel_Strange]

I have an airlock between the cockpit and the crew chambers. I have another airlock between the crew chambers and open space. I have a button in the cockpit that opens the latter.

When pay negotiations come up, I remind them of this, as well as the wild-west approach to the economy.

Since then, I tend to fly without a crew. It seems I can never find anyone who is loyal, skillful, or stupid enough to get on board.

[-Pv-]

It's not about the amount. It's not about keeping the crew paid and happy at whatever amount they want.

My co-workers don't know how much money I make and I don't know how much money my boss makes even though I spend over 300 days a year in close proximity to them. A good ship captain will not tell his crew what the ship earns and will keep the books in a locked safe. He does not take the whole crew on trade negotiations which would result in chaos. To do otherwise is an exercise in mutiny. BTW, I have played space games where mutiny was modeled.

If the ship crew is a partnership, then the model would not be based on a wage but a % of the income in which case they are not a crew in the traditional use of the term aboard ship.

Sometimes the "period" is 100, sometimes, 60 or 24. Confusing and frustrating and what appears to me irrational.

-Pv-

[Major Grubert]

this is a video game dude, and this video game have nothing to do with your real coworkers job or boss... so, no point about compare real world and a video game..

i do find it some logical inside the Evoverse and it work fine for me

my solution again : make some money before investing in crew

[-Pv-]

Don't feel threatened. It's not likely due to anything I've said that a feature you like is going to get removed or changed.
I simply decided as a paying customer like everyone else to risk stating an opinion with a certain willingness to defend my opinion as everyone else here does.

Again, for me it's not about the amount or having to pay. I can afford the crew I've hired. It's how it's implemented that bothers me and the fantasy rational I've read so far does not work for me. That's all. I get that it's a fantasy game and the only rules are the rules the coders decided to implement for what they personally wanted to get out of the game and time vs cost. In the demo, the time limit did not allow me to explore much of the game. Now that I'm deeper, I have taken the time to present some feedback.

We have a "trading" game based on an economics system. We have space travel based on inertia and relativism. We have friction based on atmospherics. We have weapons based on energy and velocity using variations on known physics of projectile and plasma energy. We have limited energy and resources. Development based on investment and return.
A value system based on security and risk.

We have a human interaction simulation based on some alien society.

This is the way it is because this is the way it is because this is the way it is.

-Pv-

[Edited on 6-27-2014 by -Pv-]

[DaveK]

Don't feel threatened. It's not likely due to anything I've said that a feature you like is going to get removed or changed.
I simply decided as a paying customer like everyone else to risk stating an opinion with a certain willingness to defend my opinion as everyone else here does.
-Pv-

[Edited on 6-27-2014 by -Pv-]

Threat isn't involved. The responses you're seeing is because if suggestions produce a positive response from the forum community then Vice often does include them in the game - if it's possible to code - so your suggestions might very well lead to things getting removed or changed or added! Most upgrades arise through this

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I can appreciate certain things being like grit in a boot . . . don't get me started about Excalibur missiles packs! :P:P:P . . . I find that the secret of Evohappiness is to either live with the grit or accept a rationale behind it or modify your gameplay to get round it (if that's possible) . . . or, I suppose, create your own game!

During my career everyone knew what everyone else was paid - at a national level! Do the same job in a different city and you got the same pay - except if the job was in (super expensive to live in) London!

[-Pv-]

On every corporate and private job I've had that was not outside contract, discussing pay was grounds for dismissal.

I would speculate on the ISS, it's not a hot topic for those six month crews, if not forbidden.

Teams work better when there is less source of contention.

Added:
If I were the commanding officer on any kind of transportation vehicle and any member of the crew asked my for a raise every 3 minutes, I would put them in the brig or walk the airlock. They would get kicked off at the next stop with no pay.

-Pv-

[Edited on 6-28-2014 by -Pv-]

[DaveK]

On every corporate and private job I've had that was not outside contract, discussing pay was grounds for dismissal.
not all careers are corporate or private and firing someone for discussing it isn't necessarily right. It's usually a cloak for unfair practice

I would speculate on the ISS, it's not a hot topic for those six month crews, if not forbidden.

the crew all have different qualifications, roles and presumably salaries as well as being international. They are also on the ISS because of their love of science and what the experience will do for their CV. It's not all about $$$

Teams work better when there is less source of contention.

knowing that people doing the same job are earning different salaries based on or gender isn't a source of reduced contention - if they are earning the same $$$ then there's no need to fire people for asking

Added:
If I were the commanding officer on any kind of transportation vehicle and any member of the crew asked my for a raise every 3 minutes, I would put them in the brig or walk the airlock. They would get kicked off at the next stop with no pay.

as has been suggested 3 mins game time is not equal to three mins real time.

-Pv-

[Edited on 6-28-2014 by -Pv-]

Would your concern be reduced / eliminated if the crew all got a share of the ship's profits?

If so would the crew members competency or proven loyalty not have some influence on their share?

If so, would the crew member not be entitled to ask for a pay rise as their competency increased or if they had demonstrated loyalty to the ship?

So if their competency and loyalty increase quickly because of compressed game time wouldn't it be legit for them to request an increased proportion of the profit (= pay rises) occur frequently?

Perhaps we've moved too far from game play considerations towards RL moral/ethical considerations. I'd be happy continuing the discussion U2U though

Back to the game: if the crew aren't worth their contribution or the grief they cause you then you don't have to hire them. I have one crewed profile that I use just to occasionally test just how useful a crew is and for a couple of special roles that I use - for the vast majority of my time they aren't so I don't That's the great thing about the degree of sandbox freedom Vice has created . . . mining boring? - don't mine!

[Major Grubert]

it's all in the tittle "mercenary"

never work with merc in real ? its all the same, they ask for more money each time they finish a mission or if they get shoot or if the road is not the same as planed... all the same

[-Pv-]

As mentioned three times, I'm not concerned with how much, or what the raise is based on (though I think that's a little weird) but the process and time base by which the player is informed of the raise, and responds to the raise.

Whatever the raise ends up being, I'm fine.

Ethical or moral is less of an issue than if the game has a strange interface as this one does for this feature, there be a good story behind it (as the game has attempted to do for everything else.) So far, the stories I've heard behind the rationale are not compelling to me nor are they proposed in this way in the "authorized" guides.

"Relativity shows that as speed increases the passage of time inside the ship as measured from the outside world slows; for the pilot of the ship time appears to be passing as normal. So even if you could get across the galaxy in a reasonable time (as opposed a third of a century) by getting close to the speed of light, for the external (to your ship) world hundreds or thousands of years would have passed. FtL travel is effectively a one way trip into the distant future for the crew of the ship."



Suggestions:
1) The crew pay negotiations occur at docking.
2) The crew loyalty and expertise continues to be updated.
3) Remove the "because you are rich, I'm worth more" rationale which just stinks.
4) Provide some sure way the player is informed crew are about to leave and what to do about it rather than just discovering they are gone.

The crew and the player/captain are on the same ship, traveling to the same place at the same time, so why is relative time different for the crew than for the player? If a ship longshoreman and an aircraft steward both leave from LA to Hawaii at the same pay rate, the steward gets more when arrived because it was a faster trip?
The only measure of time I see in the game is mission count-downs and this "period" thingy which seems to have no easily identifiable relationship to speed or events in the game. In other words, the pilot has no way to predictably influence this time base so gives the impression of being arbitrary, but the story behind it is the ship inhabitants are under the influence of time distortion due to the speed at which they are traveling through space. Because 5 minutes of ship travel isn't really 5 minutes for the crew, their pay rate is influenced.

I get that this feature as it's currently implemented is very popular and no one wants to mess with it. It just doesn't work for me. Not only is the interface disruptive and unexpected, but the game story upon which this implementation is based is not strong.

-Pv-


[Edited on 6-28-2014 by -Pv-]

[Nigel_Strange]

I actually like suggestions 1 and 4. I think little portraits of the crew would be cute.

"Please, sir, I want some more!"

Seriously, having wage discussions before they just up and bail would be cool. I mean, don't expect any references from me if you just leave in the middle of a trade run because you saw a pretty girl at a bar or suddenly got all high and mighty with respect to your pay scale.

I'll sit and wait for them to get on another ship...then I'll blast that ship out of the ether. That's what it means when you leave without checking out first. I need closure.

[Marvin]

The time thing is compression ... not relativity.

The captain of a ship seldom knows beforehand when the crew plans to mutiny.

Granted, it might be nice if your 100% science officer let you know that the rest of the crew has become disgruntled (slipped below 100%).

But, again, the pay schedule, like the upgrade schedule and the planet rotation period, etc., is a factor of game time compression ... not relativity.

[DaveK]

Ethical or moral is less of an issue than if the game has a strange interface as this one does for this feature, there be a good story behind it (as the game has attempted to do for everything else.) So far, the stories I've heard behind the rationale are not compelling to me nor are they proposed in this way in the "authorized" guides.

As soon as I get time I'll try to create a rational explanation that you might be happy with and pop it into the next editions of the Guides

Suggestions:
1) The crew pay negotiations occur at docking.
2) The crew loyalty and expertise continues to be updated.
3) Remove the "because you are rich, I'm worth more" rationale which just stinks.
4) Provide some sure way the player is informed crew are about to leave and what to do about it rather than just discovering they are gone.

Suggestion 1 sounds good though if it was me as crew I'd rather plant the idea of a rise so the Captain can get used to whilst we're still in a place where he can't quickly and easily call my bluff! It would also get round your problem with frequent whines about pay from the crew, as long as you're not doing a lot of contracts:D Someone once suggested that the way to stop disgruntled crew from jumping ship was to avoid docking! Easy to do if you're exploring and you can afford to ignore the whining because they still do their jobs.

Suggestion 2: Do you mean that they should be updated continuously? I must admit I've never looked at just when their stats change. If it's periodic at the moment and wouldn't cause a speed hit on the game it's an excellent idea and would help justify them politely mentioning that they've hit a higher pay grade!

Suggestion 3: for me "because you're richer partly through my skills and contribution and proven loyalty, perhaps you could afford to give me a small pay rise" doesn't jar with me as much as it obviously does with you

Suggestion 4: sound good - you could more easily call bluffs for a while and then offer a rise just as they're about to leave (assuming you don't want to lose them)



-Pv-

[Edited on 6-28-2014 by -Pv-]

[Busch]

One of my very first 'Notes To Self', back in the Legends days, was to always ensure that I had ANY flavor of repair system installed BEFORE I hired on an engineer. {That was my first time ever hiring on an engineer. Think his speed off-ship was about c.99....} Hasn't changed for EM. I've sometimes hired on both a WSO and an engineer, on some of the level 9 civ frames and upwards. Especially if I'm running that larger civ frame, set up in the mil-frame pattern. Found that 'things' go a little more fluid that way.

[Marvin]

I take it back about planetary rotation being subject to time compression. After a lengthy stay on one planet, I timed the rotation to be approximately 15 hours.