Suggestion to cap out miner performance at a lower skill level.

[Nanook]

This is a terrible idea. The real problem is that miners gain little, if any, experience as pilots while mining. What the OP is suggesting would basically eliminate having high level miners capable of mining silicon at a reasonable rate. And as this is a single player game, the OP could simply not use their terraform trained 5* pilots as miners, and let those who wish to do so, do so. Citing real life in an X game that has nothing to do with Real Life?

Reread it. What OP is suggesting is making lvl 3 miners act like lvl 5 miners.

Then why not just call them 5* miners? Making believe something is something else is no substitute for fixing what I'd consider a broken training system regarding mining. I hate that my miners can't level up to 5 while all other pilot types can. I think the real problem is that Egosoft deems mining as too easy a way to make money, so they basically capped mining pilots at 3, unless the player invests in higher level, rare seminars. Making 3* pilots behave like 5* won't solve their issues. They'll probably just make 3* miners as hard to get to as 5* currently are. So it solves nothing.

[ubuntufreakdragon]

I think Miners should Profit from Engineering and Traders from Management, 5*Piloting is for pure Combat, Miner should have max at 3*P+3*E.
A miner needs to know how the asteroid reacts, how the mining equipment works... not really a piloting task.
A Trader needs to know how Markets work, how Prices develop... not really a piloting task.
They should also train all relevant skills to their needed max.

[jlehtone]

We have some different views:

• Learn by doing : can and will learn, doing something else is no shorter route to becoming better
• Knowing the basics is already master : adding to 3* won't make you better
• Squirrel : yes, you were elite marine, but someone called you engineer so now a green again (forgot twice on marine->eng->marine)
• Skills galore : CP (combat), TP (trader), MP (miner) -- effective miner pilot skill = max( MP, a*CP, b*TP ), where a < 1 and b < 1. Gains MP while mining

Well, the OP was suggesting the 2nd option on your list... But I had a thought about it. Why not just make future 5 stars even greater then? You won't normally hit 5 stars anyway, you need to make external effort to train and then transfer pilots, so why not have a reward for it?

We have now the "external effort": (rare) Advanced Seminars and Flight Schools that do produce 5* pilots, who have never seen a rock.
(Ask X3 about the meaning of "auto-pillock".)

These 5* noobs are "greater" at mining than veteran miner ship captains. Your thought calls that "justified reward" for micromanagement.
The OP finds such "superb skillz" unbelievable -- that being "gifted" is no additional benefit in a mining ship; its a boring job.

That is two orthogonal thoughts?
* One says: Do more, get more. A nice general principle in a game
* Other: For this particular skill doing more should not give more. The dreaded "suspension of disbelief"

[Raptor34]

We have some different views:

• Learn by doing : can and will learn, doing something else is no shorter route to becoming better
• Knowing the basics is already master : adding to 3* won't make you better
• Squirrel : yes, you were elite marine, but someone called you engineer so now a green again (forgot twice on marine->eng->marine)
• Skills galore : CP (combat), TP (trader), MP (miner) -- effective miner pilot skill = max( MP, a*CP, b*TP ), where a < 1 and b < 1. Gains MP while mining

Well, the OP was suggesting the 2nd option on your list... But I had a thought about it. Why not just make future 5 stars even greater then? You won't normally hit 5 stars anyway, you need to make external effort to train and then transfer pilots, so why not have a reward for it?

We have now the "external effort": (rare) Advanced Seminars and Flight Schools that do produce 5* pilots, who have never seen a rock.
(Ask X3 about the meaning of "auto-pillock".)

These 5* noobs are "greater" at mining than veteran miner ship captains. Your thought calls that "justified reward" for micromanagement.
The OP finds such "superb skillz" unbelievable -- that being "gifted" is no additional benefit in a mining ship; its a boring job.

That is two orthogonal thoughts?
* One says: Do more, get more. A nice general principle in a game
* Other: For this particular skill doing more should not give more. The dreaded "suspension of disbelief"

If I'm interpreting it right, that's not what OP is thinking though. Their thoughts is that since it's impossible/a pain to get 5 star crew, you cap max mining skill at 3 on the proposed system but they still perform as 5 stars on the current system. It's not because of super skills or whatever, it's a band aid on current weak mining and how it's impossible for mining crew to organically acquire 5 stars.

[GCU Grey Area]

it's impossible for mining crew to organically acquire 5 stars.

As far as I can tell seems to be effectively impossible for any pilot, not just miners, to get much more than 3* on their own. Have certainly never seen that in any of my recent games. Suspect that's intentional - i.e. an average pilot will end up with an average skill level by simply doing their job, though some jobs do get them to that point quicker. If you want them to go further than that it requires a bit of effort from the player, doing missions to obtain high level seminars or constructing HQ training facilities.

[Imperial Good]

This is a terrible idea. The real problem is that miners gain little, if any, experience as pilots while mining. What the OP is suggesting would basically eliminate having high level miners capable of mining silicon at a reasonable rate. And as this is a single player game, the OP could simply not use their terraform trained 5* pilots as miners, and let those who wish to do so, do so. Citing real life in an X game that has nothing to do with Real Life?

I am using 5 star pilots from terraforming currently. The issue is that it hurts my soul doing so due to all the tedious steps needed to move the crew around and install ship mods onto them, because after the effort moving crew around you will want to maximise your returns so you better install ship mods onto the miners.

Currently the player is better off moving all their 4 and 5 star pilots away from combat ships and traders and into silicon and ore miners due to their skills being wasted on anything other than mining. With my proposed change this will not be the case anymore and elite pilots will rightfully belong on your elite combat ships or traders. 3 star crew would be enough for miners to work at optimal speed.

As for miners not gaining more experience when mining... That has been discussed to death at this time and I recall the conclusion was along the lines of "not going to happen".

The existing leveling system needs a complete overhaul and not some arbitrary workarounds trying to fix the issue.

Been suggested in the past, a lot. Likely not going to happen. Hence my suggestion.

If you boost future 3* miners to what current 5* are, then extrapolate how great future 5* must become ...

This is why a cap was suggested. The player would not be given a strong reason to make 5 star miners as 3 star miners will be good enough.

Why not just make future 5 stars even greater then? You won't normally hit 5 stars anyway, you need to make external effort to train and then transfer pilots, so why not have a reward for it?

This would cause inflation to occur. I would still be using 4 to 5 star pilots as miners because they still mine 10-20 times as fast as the mining trained pilots.

Then why not just call them 5* miners?

I think it would require a new crew role "miner pilot" and "miner service crew" which would be quite messy. I do agree that having miners appear 5 star while their pilot in other roles is only 3 star would be a better solution.

I hate that my miners can't level up to 5 while all other pilot types can.

Most pilots cannot level up to 5 stars by actions. Very few level up rolls allow levelling all the way to 5 star. Such rolls include destroying a hard target (e.g. S ship landing killing blow on a K or station module) or discovering new objects (limited number of "new" objects to discover). Trading, mining and fleeing cannot really level up people to 5 stars.

As far as I can tell seems to be effectively impossible for any pilot, not just miners, to get much more than 3* on their own.

Early game scout ships are one of the few cases I know of that generate 5 star pilots doing their job. As you run out of new things to discover, this is not a viable long term way to gain 5 star pilots.

Combat ships that see a lot of action often end up with 4 or even 5 star pilots. This is best seen on the pilots of ships the player is personally flying. Any kills the player scores with such ships award level up rolls to the ship's crew and the benched AI pilot. Destroyers that are personally used to intercept Xenon capitals often end up with both the crew and the pilot 4 stars or better in skills.

[GCU Grey Area]

Early game scout ships are one of the few cases I know of that generate 5 star pilots doing their job. As you run out of new things to discover, this is not a viable long term way to gain 5 star pilots.

Combat ships that see a lot of action often end up with 4 or even 5 star pilots. This is best seen on the pilots of ships the player is personally flying. Any kills the player scores with such ships award level up rolls to the ship's crew and the benched AI pilot. Destroyers that are personally used to intercept Xenon capitals often end up with both the crew and the pilot 4 stars or better in skills.

Like I said, not something I've ever seen. What sort of timescale does this occur on?

[jlehtone]

Currently the player is better off moving all their 4 and 5 star pilots away from combat ships and traders and into silicon and ore miners due to their skills being wasted on anything other than mining.

Is that the core issue? Skill affects mining more than other jobs.

[Imperial Good]

What sort of timescale does this occur on?

I had 3 scout ships that I used to scout most of the universe with since the early game. By the time they completed that job, most of them were 4 to 5 star.

As for the combat ships. It depends how fast you can personally mill through the enemy forces and how tough those enemy forces are. After solo clearing a few Xenon sectors with an Asgard the crew was pretty much entirely 5 star.

Is that the core issue? Skill affects mining more than other jobs.

To some extent it is. Part of the issue is also trying to keep the number of mining ships down. Late game the player can easilly operate hundreds of miners and I had a few stations cap out on mining subordinates (256 subordinate limit).

[Raptor34]

Why not just make future 5 stars even greater then? You won't normally hit 5 stars anyway, you need to make external effort to train and then transfer pilots, so why not have a reward for it?

This would cause inflation to occur. I would still be using 4 to 5 star pilots as miners because they still mine 10-20 times as fast as the mining trained pilots.

Yes, and? I mean at that point you're min-maxing after all. And besides, if this means we can have less entities flying around, that's a good thing for performance.
Of course I guess at that point I'm just asking for a mining buff...

[GCU Grey Area]

What sort of timescale does this occur on?

I had 3 scout ships that I used to scout most of the universe with since the early game. By the time they completed that job, most of them were 4 to 5 star.

As for the combat ships. It depends how fast you can personally mill through the enemy forces and how tough those enemy forces are. After solo clearing a few Xenon sectors with an Asgard the crew was pretty much entirely 5 star.

Hmm, so not exactly a fast process then. Was expecting faster given the "few lucky kills to get to 4 or 5 star" comment in your initial post & was wondering how I missed it. My pilots gain skills at a fairly glacial pace (regardless of the role they're in), which is why I skip that aspect almost entirely & have beelined HQ training in my past few games. Essentially by the time they could show any natural improvement they've already been replaced by someone competent at the job.

[dtpsprt]

Now, all the "old hands", me excepted, will tell you: "No use for something like that, just go into Terraforming so you can have a school for Captains and Marines doing it. It will take only about 2-3 days in game time to reach that point..."

Of course they don't say the amount it will cost to reach that point, or the amount of managing/micromanaging to do so, ignoring all the not managerial minded players (like myself) and that they prefer to stay in the cockpit of their personal ship flying around and blowing stuff apart or doing missions and storylines instead of building an empire. The only thing these people need (pilot/adventure/exploration/fight oriented) is a steady income that 3-4 Miners and 1/2 Autotraders can bring so they can enjoy what they want and have enough money for their repairs and upgrades...

Not necessarily. Takes me a couple of days to get to that point precisely because I don't play a managerial type game. I fly around doing generic & guild missions for the most part. The proceeds from those missions are spent on building up my HQ, first to get it mobile, & then to build a bubble city & the pilot/marine training facilities on an appropriate planet. Suspect it could well be a fair bit quicker to use an auto-miner/trader approach to raise the cash, I'd imagine having a passive income is quite nice. However bit too much management of assets required for that. Don't like to field freighters or miners until I've got a station for them to work at (so I can delegate the management role) & have an inexhaustible source of well-trained pilots to fly them, particularly important for efficient use of miners.

Couple of game days or couple of playing days (some 3-h of game playing each)? And doing all these underlined things is what? It's exactly what I hate to do... The Autominers and Autotraders don't have to work in peak efficiency, all they have to do is don't get killed too fast and bring something like 300-500K per game hour. As I said, just to keep any needed upgrades and repairs going...

[GCU Grey Area]

Couple of game days or couple of playing days (some 3-h of game playing each)?

Game days.

And doing all these underlined things is what?

Mostly just spending money, primarily on construction materials, sometimes on new station module blueprints.

It's exactly what I hate to do... The Autominers and Autotraders don't have to work in peak efficiency, all they have to do is don't get killed too fast and bring something like 300-500K per game hour. As I said, just to keep any needed upgrades and repairs going...

The 'not getting killed too fast' bit is what puts me off them. Sort of assumes that at some point they are going to get killed. Tried them in one of my early games (because apparently everyone on the forum used them), but came to the conclusion that, for me at least, they were more hassle than they were worth. Constantly running into trouble & needing me to bail them out. Having to frequently move them around & change the wares they traded when trade opportunities in the region in which they were working ran dry, or replacing them whenever I wasn't fast enough to instantly drop whatever I was doing to go & protect them. Just didn't need the money they produced badly enough to put up with them. My time in X4 has been far more enjoyable without them.

Very much prefer to do missions as my primary source of credits in the early game. May not provide quite the same income as auto-miners/traders, but I'm in no particular rush when playing X4 (most of my games last around 20-30 in-game days). Really don't mind if it takes a little longer to achieve my objectives if I have more fun doing things the slow way. Can also do most missions with just 1 or 2 ships (usually frigate + S miner, sometimes M miner instead) which I fly myself. That means the rest of whatever I earn can be spent on my HQ.

[dtpsprt]

........................

The 'not getting killed too fast' bit is what puts me off them. Sort of assumes that at some point they are going to get killed. Tried them in one of my early games (because apparently everyone on the forum used them), but came to the conclusion that, for me at least, they were more hassle than they were worth. Constantly running into trouble & needing me to bail them out. Having to frequently move them around & change the wares they traded when trade opportunities in the region in which they were working ran dry, or replacing them whenever I wasn't fast enough to instantly drop whatever I was doing to go & protect them. Just didn't need the money they produced badly enough to put up with them. My time in X4 has been far more enjoyable without them.

Very much prefer to do missions as my primary source of credits in the early game. May not provide quite the same income as auto-miners/traders, but I'm in no particular rush when playing X4 (most of my games last around 20-30 in-game days). Really don't mind if it takes a little longer to achieve my objectives if I have more fun doing things the slow way. Can also do most missions with just 1 or 2 ships (usually frigate + S miner, sometimes M miner instead) which I fly myself. That means the rest of whatever I earn can be spent on my HQ.

We, obviously belong to two different playstyles. I just started a new game (Custom Budgeted) as Split (still can't exactly stomach the Human characters). An Asp (playership which I lovingly call "canopener" since the middle gun is a Burst Ray to use opening lockboxes and killing traffic without hitting the Station), A Cobra, 2 Aligator Mineral, 2 Aligator Gas and 4 Boas. Each of these ships has a 3* (Split) Captain and Regular Split Crews, except for the Cobra that has Veteran Fighter Crew.

Have a look at it if you like. 10 hours in and no PHQ quest, no Hatikvah either. I've kept the CoH active to have a bit milder Xenon and, of course, ToA is out the window (exactly where it belongs IMHO).

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IXVcXc ... sp=sharing

The starting money were 10,000 and the money was raised by Data Vaults and missions up to 2,000,000 so the Auto Traders have capital to start working. The only known System in the beginning was Argon Prime

The only non Split Allowed are Veteran Marines bought in Defence Stations, if (when) I eventually run out of my own. Any captured ships, except SCA Destoryers, are sold to the faction that they came from so that the game economy will be minimally affected. The "Bonus" Miners from War Missions donate their Veteran Marines to the "Marine Pool" and then their captains and crew are replaced by Split.

[jlehtone]

would be to drop performance (stars) by 30% or even 50% when changing ship category, both in pilots and crew, even from S to M to L to XL of the same "kind" like fighters or miners. After that they start progressing in their new role.

This would result in the situation where you transfer combat crew via a miner, using it as a sort of "people storage", just to have them lose a ton of skill in the progress even though they never did any mining and were only there for a few minutes or even just a few seconds.

I think this is a thing of the past... now crews and even captains switching ships is done.

For ship crews.

Scenario 1:
You walk on station and encounter individual with great managerial skill and cheap price tag. You have to hire then and there, or the person will walk away.
What are the chances that you have a station lacking a manager?
Very low; you have to put the new hire, or a decent, experienced manager that was replaced by the new hire "on ice".

Scenario 2:
You walk on station and encounter individual with great pilot skill and cheap price tag.
Nowhere is said whether the skill is for M miner or for XL aux.


PS. M miner is different piloting skill from M miner. The first collects something from space. The second trades between stations and is thus an M trader despite the ship they fly ...

[SirConnery]

The entire way the crew is assigned, transferred and managed is super cumbersome and almost like playing excel in space.

This is truly my biggest grievance for this game. The amount of time spent on getting "seminars" and upgrading staff is a very tedious part of the game.

The seminars don't even make sense from a gameplay perspective, they barely cost anything and are very easily available in stations. I would vote for banishment of seminars except for quest rewards. And then just double or triple the progression levels of pilots.

[chew-ie]

I don't get it when people are writing about "sheer amount needed" to apply seminars. Every ship has to be setup after being built. Using the com to apply seminars to meet the requested experience ("stars") is a matter of seconds. Built ship, com pilot, apply 1-2 seminars, apply behaviour / assigment, done. In 6.0 it received a bit of an upgrade as you see the type of seminars and can apply more then one (e.g. pilots can be educated in piloting & management).

[Raptor34]

I don't get it when people are writing about "sheer amount needed" to apply seminars. Every ship has to be setup after being built. Using the com to apply seminars to meet the requested experience ("stars") is a matter of seconds. Built ship, com pilot, apply 1-2 seminars, apply behaviour / assigment, done. In 6.0 it received a bit of an upgrade as you see the type of seminars and can apply more then one (e.g. pilots can be educated in piloting & management).

It really depends on what you are doing. I mean I personally just do trading/mining stations precisely because I don't have to do any setup of ships. Just batch order in tens and it's done.
Also using comms is a PITA because they must do that background rendering shit. They should allow us to turn it off. Call it the email mode or something.

[Maebius]

It really depends on what you are doing. I mean I personally just do trading/mining stations precisely because I don't have to do any setup of ships. Just batch order in tens and it's done.
Also using comms is a PITA because they must do that background rendering shit. They should allow us to turn it off. Call it the email mode or something.

I mean, right click on any pilot/marine/crew/manager from a roster or w/e list and get an option to train for ALL types of available seminars, without a convo and without the person having to be in that role currently.
It shouldn't be that hard to do, although I haven't seen if the new Beta addresses it somehow.

[Imperial Good]

I don't get it when people are writing about "sheer amount needed" to apply seminars. Every ship has to be setup after being built. Using the com to apply seminars to meet the requested experience ("stars") is a matter of seconds. Built ship, com pilot, apply 1-2 seminars, apply behaviour / assigment, done. In 6.0 it received a bit of an upgrade as you see the type of seminars and can apply more then one (e.g. pilots can be educated in piloting & management).

Late game you build miners in orders of 10-20 Ls, or 40+ Ms. Buying the seminars for such miners takes a huge amount of time, especially since the 1 star seminars do not even have 100% spawn chance at shops. So much time is taken that you can end up in a situation where for hours all you do is farm seminars and give them to pilots because by the time you are done with those 20 L ships, your next order of 20 L ships is already waiting for seminars.

Late game the player really should not be having to do this in such a tedious way. Ideally they should pay lots of money and crew training and assignment just happens automagically in the background, similar to assigning trade or mining ships as subordinates.

and without the person having to be in that role currently.

6.00 changes that so you can give pilot and management seminars to people irrespective of their role.