Since the citizen con, the debate on NPC crews has opened up and inflamed the community. Rightly so, I think. There's one thing I don't think is clear-cut about the whole thing. There will always be the eternal defenders of the project, who will find every excuse, justification and spin to excuse the most inexcusable things. We still don't have the capacity to have AI crews, and that won't be the case for several years to come, given the recent information and statements from CIG. What bothers me is that there is no real justification for such a delay. We've wasted years : Developing and optimising facial capture technology, adding ultra-realistic hair effects, simulating clothes that fit and react perfectly to the body almost to the point of deforming if I have a pimple on my right buttock. A rework of the UI (which is actually more of a regression than a step forward)... And on top of all that, a PRIMORITY feature - AI crews - isn't available. I say essential because without it, CIG funding would clearly not be the same. A lot of multicrew ships are bought BECAUSE there's the prospect of playing with an AI crew, and not other players. AI crews have been around for years, so to speak. You can fly Idris, hammerheads and other ships with functional crews with a player at the controls. AIs are functional in all NPC ships, so what's been stopping us for years from being able, when we choose our ship, to equip it with an AI crew that automatically spawns in our turrets? I can't vouch for these figures, but I think that saying that 70% of the big multicrew ships are bought BECAUSE there's the promise of being able to fend for yourself with an ia crew (less powerful than a crew of players) is a CAPITAL feature. The reason we want this feature isn't so that we can be the strongest solo player on the server thanks to our crew. It's about not being constantly dependent on others and being stuck, or forced to raise troops in an organisation. I'm a fervent supporter of Polaris, and even though I've brought many friends back to the game: we all have a life. Let's just say that if you need to be at least 8/10 to run Polaris properly, that means you have to : - find a slot / get organised so that all 10 people are available on the same day - manage unforeseen events, absences, withdrawals, etc. - not everyone has the same amount of playing time - the time to get everyone together, as long as not everyone has started out on the same planet... - and so on. especially when it comes to convincing ppl. Who wants to spend 2 hours of their evening in a turret, on a ship doing radar scans, etc? That's why AI crews are so much in demand, so much expected and, above all, so necessary. The promises for the big ships were to be able to complete a crew of players or to make a complete AI crew so that you could use your multicrew ship, even if it's only at 70% of its capacity. Without this promise, a majority of players will never have any use for their ships (which finance the game). The game is moving in a direction (with engineering etc) that seems to be FORCING the hand of multicrew / multiplayer. For a remuneration that in multicrew is often disappointing. In a nutshell. Let's stop trying to reinvent the wheel, to start from almost 0 on tons of features every year by throwing away the work done previously (to produce something that isn't necessarily better). And let's deal with this central feature of the game before 2056 plz