When moving up a Tier do groups add extra characters that they can play as alternates to their main character for certain missions?
Going from Tier 0 (5 members) to Tier 1 (10 members) must offer some benefit to actual participants in the crew without making/starting a gang.
Tier is used in a lot of rolls during downtime as well don’t forget. Acquiring assets, reducing heat, and the default recovery roll all go off it. While letting the players have alternates is a great house rule personally I don’t think it is strictly needed for the reason you seem to be thinking, the 5 members/10members thing isn’t the size of the crew, it’s the size of the gangs they can recruit muster, and command on short notice. Harper once mentioned that groups like the bluecoats and imperial guard have a much larger number of members than their tier dictates but organizing a “gang” any larger would be expensive and a logistical and command chain nightmare so they just don’t. In that sense a tier 0 group could have as many people as you want, you just don’t have a means to mobilize them all. I would tend to see at least one or too of a crew’s contacts as being actual members of the gang, just ones who’s skills aren’t useful in the scores directly.
I really like the idea of troupe style play, straight from tier 0. It lets the GM role swap out too – so you can have a GM-full session, where each time you gather, someone new takes the GM reins and allows the last GM to get back to their character. You could even do it score by score.
Yeah, rotating GMs is great, you would just need one to be the “head GM” to oversee the downtime actions and agendas of the different factions. Or give a few to each player, but then you have to trust they are all mature enough that your enemies are still smart and don’t suddenly get mobbed by everyone under the non-existent sun :P.
Troupe style play is built into the game to some extent what with the “lost” option for overindulgence. And I tend to agree that you don’t need to restrict crew size based on tier.
I wouldn’t mind seeing more benefits to increasing your tier, however.
It does already give a bit of a power spiral, though.