First of, this is an idea inspired by a game, that I play. Not to be mentioned as that would technically be advertising, on a forum, which isn't allowed.

Ahem, so how does this "Mech Crew" works? It's something, pretty interesting I assure you. So there are different crews in your mech.

Commander
Weapon Deployer
Heat Operator
Electronics
Mech Controller
Repair Man
Loader (Only available if you have your mechs using bullets or rockets.)

Here are their roles:
1. Commander: The commander is the one that makes the crew work with efficiency.
2. Weapon Deployer: As the name says itself, this member of the crew is the one that will make your weapons equipped in your mech actually work.
3. Heat Operator: The Heat Operator is the one that keeps your heat under control.
4. Electronics: The Electronics is the one that keeps your regeneration in good shape.
5. Mech Controller: His role is to make your mech jump or move.
6. Repair Man: The only role he does is he's the one supplying the kits and the one making them of use when needed.
Seven: Steakhouse, Sushi
7. Loader: As stated earlier, only becomes as part of your crew IF your mech uses bullets or rockets. Obviously enough, their role is to keep your mech loaded with bullets and rockets.

So, the crew sounds interesting enough for ya? There's more!

Crews, as great as they sound, can actually be injured by the opposing mech. Here are somethings that could happen if one of the crew members get injured.

Commander: The crew members will have less skills, thus decreasing the effectiveness of your mech.

Weapon Deployer: You won't be able to use ANY of your weapons for 1 turn.

Heat Operator: Your mech won't be able to cool down.

Electronics: Your mech won't be able to regenerate any energy.

Mech Controller: Your mech won't be able to jump or walk. Though you can still teleport.

Repair Man: You won't be able to use any kits.

Loader: You won't be able to use ANY weapons that USES BULLETS AND ROCKETS. Even if the loader is injured, you can still use weapons that doesn't use any ammunition.

Here are some more information about the crew.

They work together to make your mech work, aye? They have their own specific skillsets, aye? They can be injured, aye?

But did you know, they can be healed by using new kits? Called "Crew Health Kit". These kits are entirely different from the current kits. You can use Crew HP Kits 2 times in a battle.

If you ask, "What if I ran out of Crew HP Kits?" Don't worry mate, as the other crew members can help heal the injured crew, but if one crew is injured, you won't be able to do anything depending on which crew is injured for 1 or 2 turns.

If you think you've had enough, there's still one last thing about the crew. It is that you can actually train them to attain a specific perk/skill. These costs you 20k credits a crew. Each experience will be converted into "Crew XP".

If you have over 1 Million XP, you can use any amount of your XP to help train your crew faster. Though you can't reset your level.

Suggestion from King Spikey:
Repair Man will need 6 to 10 turns to have him to actually use a kit. This way, we will avoid "first turn kits" in which can be really annoying. And yes, the better the skill of the Repair Man, the earlier he can use kits.

Edit by me:
Here are the skills/perks each crew member can attain.
Here are the 2 common skills that EVERY member can have:
1. Brothers in Arms: This perk enables the crew members to have more efficiency in the mech. Although all crew members must have this perk at 100 percent to make it come into effect.
2. Repairs: Crew members will be able to fix damaged modules faster.


Commander:
Mentor: The commander yields additional experience to the crew members except for the commander himself.
Jack of all Trades: The commander will be able to master every skillset and will be able to replace a crew when one of the crew is injured.
Eagle Eye: The commander will be able to identify a critically damaged part of the mech.

Weapon Deployer:
Deadeye: Each weapon used will have higher chances of critically damaging a module or injuring a crew member.
Adrenaline Rush: When HP of the mech is less that 20 percent, the amount of damage of a weapon will be increased by 16 percent.
Heat/Energy Boost: Weapons that deals heat and energy damage will have +10 percent of heat and energy damage. Only comes into effect whe it reaches 100 percent.

Heat Operator:
Firefighting: It enables the mech to have a chance of not being prone to using 2 uses to cool down. So, if your mech has 80 cooling but you've had 260/160, the Heat Operator will be able to not use 2 turns to cool down, but doubles the normal cooling in one turn. Meaning, you'll be able to cool down 160 heat!
Improved Ventilation: The heat operator will be able to yield additional 20 percent heat capacity. Only comes into effect if it reached 100 percent.
Heat Eyes: Will be able to identify a heat weapon that yields high amount of heat like a lava sprayer. He then will yield additional 12 percent cooling for you mech once he detected a weapon that gives massive amount of heat.

Electronics:
Power absorbing: Will be able to absorb 10 percent of the energy damage, then the absorbed energy will be used for weapons to increase in efficiency.
Energy Immunity: The mech will be able to decrease 13 percent of the extra energy damage.
Power Charge: If the mech is less than 30 percent of health, the Electronics will be able to yield additional energy regeneration by 20 percent!

Repair Man:
Kit Boosting: Kits will be able to have more effect into the mech. +132 kits will be +150. +12 resistance kits will be +16. And other kits will also have a noticeable, yet not too much buff.
Quick Kit: As Spikey said, Repair Man will have to wait 10 turns, in which I decreased to 6 turns to use a kit. But the perk makes the Repair Man use kits earlier. Specifically by 2 turns. So, if you have this perk, you'll be able to use kits by turn 4.

Mech Controller:
Quake Jump: This enables the Mech Controller to deal 18 percent damage of your stomp when you jump to the melee range of your opponent.
Additional Range: It gives +10 percent chance to a pair of legs that only has 2 jump to 3 jump throughout the battle.

Loader:
Additional Ammunition: Adds 20 percent more additional ammunition if you ran out of ammunition.
Bullet Immunity: Yields +20 percent resistance to bullet weapons. Works well with a Metrolens or any other torso that yields additional physical resistance.
Rocket Immunity: +20 percent resistance to rocket weapons. Works well with a HellFire or any other torso that yields additional rocket resistance.
*Note: I seperated the two types of ammunitions as it would be too overpowered if it will only require 1 perk.
Ammunition Damage: Yields additional 16 percent damage to ammunition weapons. Only comes into effect after reaching 100 percent.


So that's pretty much it. Don't forget to vote, tell me your opinions, give me some tweaks and be a corgi lover.

Sorry for the long post! Here, have a corgi pretending to be a potato:

Warning: Wall of text ahead!

It's a complicated idea, but I can see this working. It would COMPLETELY change battles for a start, since you would have to pay attention to the well-being of your crew, instead of spamming attacks or cooling. The likelihood of a crew member being injured would most likely be based on factors such as resistance, raw damage dealt, or, more importantly, damage to a specific area (e.g heat damage or cooling damage). As this system could be used to potentially knock out critical functions of an enemy mech, almost all top players' mechs will be poorly optimized to work with a crew system. This would encourage new mech builds that work better with crews and maybe some currently underused weapons may become invaluable to some builds. Mech builds solely based on damaging a particular area may become the powerful builds around.

This particular suggestion is unique in that it is an original idea that adds another layer of strategy and planning to every battles. Players who invest into making their mech optimized for this system will create new and innovative builds using parts that have not been widely used for years, or ones that have been ignored by top players entirely owing to their lack of usefulness in the current system. The basic designs that are used by top players currently will be useless, and a possibility is that each player will create a unique design to both protect against damage to critical areas of their mech, and to deal as much damage as possible to critical areas on their opponent's mech. Weapons with high damage to areas such as max heat damage or cooling damage will be incorporated into builds that specialise in those specific areas.

One specific type of build I can see greatly benefiting from a system like this is energy builds; Current energy builds are only viable if they can deal as much energy damage as possible in a short amount of time. All recently added mythical energy weapons deal around 70-80 energy damage, since the huge bonus damage from draining the opponent's energy to 0 is the only way current energies can win at rank 1. New energies under the crew system might focus on max energy damage to prevent their opponent using their weapons.

Physical builds could either be buffed or nerfed by either targeting the Mech Controller (structural damage to the mech) or to a less critical crew member. A way to nerf currently overpowered physical mech builds (especially the new shotgun/shredder/nova build) would be for non-ammo physical weapons to target non-critical crew, while ones that do require ammo would target more critical areas, as these weapons' ammo requirement leaves less space for other modules.

As for heat builds (currently an overpowered damage class in my opinion), the intense heat generated by using so many heat weapons could require an upgrade using the Crew XP you mentioned, to allow the Heat Operator to work in hotter conditions (heat-resistant suit maybe? ). Not buying this upgrade could cause a noticeable drop in the amount of heat reduction from cooling, even though the Heat Operator may not be directly damaged by the opponent. Frequent cooldowns to keep your mech's heat low could be a way around this. Negligence to your mech and crew WILL damage them both, and this goes for other parts of the mech and crew as well.

Since you mention a Repair Man to load in kits, here's an interesting idea: you cannot use kits until turn 10, and you can upgrade the RM to use kits earlier, at the cost of a LOT of Crew XP. Kits are overused in rank 1 matches (+12 resistance instantly at the start of a battle doesn't exactly make for an interesting game, but they're universally used and make for long, uninteresting battles). Perhaps having to pay extra for the privilege of using a kit 5 rounds earlier on turn 5 (eliminating turn 1 kits) would discourage kit play in every battle.

As for the crew health kits you mention, I'll need to introduce a new stat into your suggestion to expand upon your idea for these kits, and that stat is Crew HP. Instead of immediately being incapable of performing a job after taking any damage, they should be able to take some non-severe damage, if they are upgraded. Crew HP Kits could partially restore crew members' health. To prevent kit spam, they would follow the round 10 rule as do regular kits, and would prioritise the most damaged crew members first, getting them up to full HP before moving on to the next injured crew member, and repeating until it runs out of healing power. They should cost Crew XP when buying them in the shop.

The idea of levelling each crew member to have more experience in their own specific occupation is quite interesting, and this could be a critical gameplay element. You would need to carefully distribute Crew XP among your crew members, to get each to their optimal level for your mech build. Each new level would allow them to perform their job quicker, more effectively, and even unlock new abilities withing their area of expertise (e.g Heat Operator increasing cooldown of heat capacity, or Repair Man increasing kit effectiveness, once sufficiently levelled up). Each new level would be exponentially more expensive than the last, but investing into crew levels could be the difference between life or death in the heat of a battle.

If you've made it to the end, Polarz, great suggestion! It would be nice if you included some of these ideas into your post.

Sorry but I think that depletes the point of you are in control I have been in this game for almost 5years it is really fun I love it but I don't like the thought of it turning into a strategy game- peace out Ashton

Sorry but I think that depletes the point of you are in control I have been in this game for almost 5years it is really fun I love it but I don't like the thought of it turning into a strategy game- peace out Ashton

1. This game didn't exist 5 years ago.

2. Strategy is EXACTLY what this game needs. Literally every battle is the same and there needs to be a new strategy-based system in the game.

Great feedback! Thanks! I'll put up some of the ideas that caught my attention.

#makeSMgreatagain

Personally I'm not a fan.

Just seems like another layer of complexity among mech building/operating that the game doesn't need.

And to be honest, I don't really understand the point of the Crew. Do they operate the mech for me while I battle? What fun is that? And when they are injured, there's another thing I need to pour SM coins into in order to maintain a strong and up to date mech (like fusion, kits).

I'll vote yes though, simply because I want the game to change. For better or worse, doesn't matter to me. Just make it different without releasing more unbalanced mythicals that no one wanted.

Look good

How about a drone operator? Who will operate the drone?