Excess personnel on player stations

[X-Series]

I noticed that if you hire too many NPCs and your ship can no longer accommodate the rest of it the excess NPCs goes to your station in that zone. I tried recalling the excess personnel so I can fire them but I can only do it with the engineers (you can recall them by selecting "work somewhere else for me" option). As for the excess architects it's stuck in my station and there is no way for me to recall them, they often confuse me and asks for budgets and doesn't display any available extensions that they can build.

[Ketraar]

I noticed that if you hire too many NPCs and your ship can no longer accommodate the rest of it the excess NPCs goes to your station in that zone.

Pretty sure thats not the case in vanilla. When you try to hire crew and the skunk is full, Betty will announce it and wont allow you to hire more.

MFG

Ketraar

[X-Series]

Well there are times when Betty doesn't tell you that there's no more room for passengers resulting in failure to deliver the personnel. Usually this happens when I hire too many NPCs at a time. Also the number of personnel the ship can carry varies. If I have the marine officer on board I can only have 5 at a time but if there's no marine officer on board I can have 6 NPCs on the ship

[Ezarkal]

If I have the marine officer on board I can only have 5 at a time but if there's no marine officer on board I can have 6 NPCs on the ship

The marine officer is an NPC, so of course he takes one NPC place on board.
You can go and have a talk with him in the crew lounge at the back of your ship... he's not an evil dude once you get to know him!

[CommanderTM]

Theres a mod for that... i consider it an essential one. It ups the Skunks crew space to 15.

[Kregoth]

Just posting to say I think I know the bug that's causing this problem. It when you hiring crew and firing them in the Skunk. Because of the way hiring NPC outside of stations work, if you hire an employee and they are in transit in their remote drone, and your crew limit is reached mid flight, they bug out. either they become frozen in place with no way of fixing or destroying the drone.

Sometimes while hiring and firing many employees, this bug can cause a lot of issues, like the OP's issue. I have lost a few high ranking Captains and managers due to this issue. This issue can occur very easily if you are telling the crew to work somewhere else, while in the skunk crew counters still hiring or firing employees. I think the bug is due to the remote transport drones, and that they don't fill the crew slots until they are their. so if it gets full before an employee makes it on board, then they will freeze, or bug out at a station.

EDIT: SAVE FILE With a still frozen remote transport drone that was carrying an employee. The OP's problem is probably due to replacing an employee and the drone bugging out mid flight like mine. When telling the employee to work somewhere else, they can disappear forever which is what happen to my full 5* Captian.

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

It could be something like that.

Although Betty does generally say when there's no room for more passengers in vanilla, sometimes even can hire too many and when the last pod arrives we get the error sound and it flies off.

Spare NPCs accumulating on our stations may not be a bug or it maybe unrelated to the over-hiring issue, as it occur when we fire NPCs in vanilla too.

[Kregoth]

Was just going to edit again, but I forgot to mention. this Only has happened to me while doing these action in the Skunk Crew Quarters. Not while in the cockpit. But This also can happen while transferring back to the Cockpit, while someone's just boarding.

[X-Series]

Here are the screenshots of the stations that I have. I couldn't remove the unwanted personnel so they're stuck in the stations.

http://i64.tinypic.com/vilb49.jpg
http://i67.tinypic.com/mhdnwo.jpg
http://i63.tinypic.com/2d8n812.jpg

<Oversized images replaced by links. Alan Phipps.>

[Kregoth]

Stuff

Yeah this is what happens, the slots get filled but they do nothing at all. Just tell them to work somewhere else, sadly you lose them as the will disappear.

EDIT: Oh haven't dealt with Architects before. might need a CV to move them to for the right Dialog option to appear.

[X-Series]

Sadly they would't go anywhere. It wouldn't allow me to select any ship or station where I can send them off so they're really stuck in the station. It hurts my eyes when I'm trying to keep things organized.

[Kregoth]

Just incase you missed the edit, you might need a CV for them to move too, otherwise the option get greyed out or doesn't appear. That why you can do that with your engineers, as you can give that orders to work somewhere else whenever, unlike Managers, and Architects who need a station or CV to work on.

[X-Series]

Just incase you missed the edit, you might need a CV for them to move too, otherwise the option get greyed out or doesn't appear. That why you can do that with your engineers, as you can give that orders to work somewhere else whenever, unlike Managers, and Architects who need a station or CV to work on.

Ohhh that's why they wouldn't move. Thank you for the information

[RAVEN.myst]

I've had this problem, though not to such an extreme degree - at most I had 2 too many. I managed to fix it by landing on the station, telling the relevant ones to 'work somewhere else' so they come back on board (have enough spare room, of course). Now, at this point, something odd would happen - when I did this to the spare manager, for example, which had no orders, my real manager would lose orders - so I had to to recall him/her too. Then something else weird happened: when I fired the extras, they reappeared on the station. I then had to HIRE them (couldn't get them to come on board) as if they weren't on my staff (though they were showing as being), and if fired again the process would repeat - I had to fly to an empty zone and space them.

EDIT: This happened to me in DeVries, in case that's significant, on all 3 occasions, though that may be simply because that's where I was playing at the time (my current plot game.) Also, BTW, I *only* ever play vanilla - zero mods. Ever.

[X-Series]

This problem is starting to get annoying. I bought small fighter ships and replaced the default pilot with new hired pilots that have better stats. The default pilot did not return to the skunk instead they're all in my station within the zone.

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

Feel free to continue to discuss this topic in general terms here if desired.

Please post potentially useful facts in the related bug report thread at the following link:
http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=388858

[RAVEN.myst]

I bought small fighter ships and replaced the default pilot with new hired pilots that have better stats.

Oh hello there! I've been meaning to ask about this - every time I tried to do this, I've been unable to, as the "come back aboard" or whatever option was greyed out in all cases where I BOUGHT the ships, was only available to me on ships that I had claimed (which is ass-backward, as those are already getting hand-picked pilots if I mean to keep, and otherwise are slated for sale), ie. ships where the pilots had arrived by boarding pod. What am I missing?

EDIT: My attempts were on M-size freighters, btw. And I just realised - I may have been full-up in the rear compartment on account of the pilots I brought with, so there may not have been room... Hmmm, brb...