Did pilot experience gain get turned off in a patch?

[Rahman Yuuna]

That is not a trick/expoit. The devs changed it in an update so that even lower tier seminars raised their intended main skill by a whole star. Before that it was just one third of a star and that was causing real complaints about slow training progress.

So, you see, the devs do listen to posts here but also want the game progression/balance to be more as they intended and less always about quick gratification or skills for credits.

Good deal. I wont see it go away then.

[Pares]

I would really like to know the honest opinion of the devs or Bernd himself on what positives or fun do they think the current crew system adds to the game? Because after 800 hours the only thing my mind instantly associates it with is unnecessary tedium and frustration. More so that crew level seems to affect the competence or effectiveness of the AI, which would be (if it actually is like that) an absolutely dumbfounding design decision to me.

There are other much simpler and transparent ways to simulate crew competence and experience while keeping the AI as smart as it can be, like traits/perks with fixed and direct positive/negative effects, and commands/features locked behind research or purchasable/craftable/lootable/plot reward software instead of stars.

[grapedog]

That is not a trick/expoit. The devs changed it in an update so that even lower tier seminars raised their intended main skill by a whole star. Before that it was just one third of a star and that was causing real complaints about slow training progress.

So, you see, the devs do listen to posts here but also want the game progression/balance to be more as they intended and less always about quick gratification or skills for credits.

There are times i do miss when a 2 star pilot could autotrade with a 12 gate range... or 5 stars with a 30 gate range... though i also like the move away from autotraders being the main thing people do.

I don't even really bother with stars anymore, or even worry about it. Get a good manager, and it all works out.

Get a couple traders up to 2 for distribute wares, couple miners up to 2 for sector automine... do research, steal BPs, build, rule...

[dark7np]

Honestly, with the Aerial Maze Terraforming Projects, getting 4 and 5 star Pilots is not that difficult. It's a hassle UI wise to assign 100 pilots to group training (though a change for that that is in the current beta I think), but do a couple group trainings, some competitions and individual trainings and you gut yourself 10 5 star pilots easy peasy. And it's not that far behind - you build a Bubble City, get 10k pop, you build the Aerial Maze, you start the repeatable training projects. Sure, you need all the Teleportation research. But Terraforming wise it's not a huge investment. If I start another save, I'll try to push for it ASAP, probably. Shouldn't be that hard.

I'd still like to see some changes to how pilots are assigned, mind you. And yeah, I've wondered about the insanely slow experience gain as well in practice they could just remove it, since it does not happen in any reasonable timeframe. But getting them via terraforming is almost too easy now I'd say. Assigning them, that's the hard part.

And yes, morale is another issue. Not sure how important that is. The terraforming projects don't help with that.

[Rahman Yuuna]

Honestly, with the Aerial Maze Terraforming Projects, getting 4 and 5 star Pilots is not that difficult. It's a hassle UI wise to assign 100 pilots to group training (though a change for that that is in the current beta I think), but do a couple group trainings, some competitions and individual trainings and you gut yourself 10 5 star pilots easy peasy. And it's not that far behind - you build a Bubble City, get 10k pop, you build the Aerial Maze, you start the repeatable training projects. Sure, you need all the Teleportation research. But Terraforming wise it's not a huge investment. If I start another save, I'll try to push for it ASAP, probably. Shouldn't be that hard.

I'd still like to see some changes to how pilots are assigned, mind you. And yeah, I've wondered about the insanely slow experience gain as well in practice they could just remove it, since it does not happen in any reasonable timeframe. But getting them via terraforming is almost too easy now I'd say. Assigning them, that's the hard part.

And yes, morale is another issue. Not sure how important that is. The terraforming projects don't help with that.

Ive experimented with morale. I have a 2 star pilot with 4 stars on morale on a capital freighter, and after many successful trade runs, still 2 star pilot. Not 2.5, not 2.25, just 2. No change.
I can see why many have given up on paying any attention to the pilot rating. I still think its broke.

[Alan Phipps]

Actually that makes perfect sense to me.

A two star in piloting captain should not be able to perform at better than 2 stars combined overall skill at piloting regardless of how high their morale as they are at their current ceiling of piloting competence, but a two star piloting skill captain with low morale will perform at less than optimum and hence only have a combined score of less than two stars. Thus low morale would be a limitation to learned skill performance, while high morale is nice but is not itself a source of performance above and beyond learned skills (but it does allow further training/improvement in core skill to result in the optimum improvement).

That's my theory anyway.

[Raevyan]

Oh no, seminars! It's like they want you to actually play the game or something!

These scale absolutely terribly with numbers. Plus, it makes little sense they'd add natural skill progression with the intent that it doesn't occur during real usage, because in that case why add it at all? It feels more as if they want this game to be played with SETA left on whenever the user goes to sleep or work.

Yeah, almost like highly trained employees are supposed to be special and not everyone becomes a genius trading mogul from shooting rocks.

Rest assured that even with 5 Stars, pilots still don’t know how to fly.

[Raevyan]

Honestly, with the Aerial Maze Terraforming Projects, getting 4 and 5 star Pilots is not that difficult. It's a hassle UI wise to assign 100 pilots to group training (though a change for that that is in the current beta I think), but do a couple group trainings, some competitions and individual trainings and you gut yourself 10 5 star pilots easy peasy. And it's not that far behind - you build a Bubble City, get 10k pop, you build the Aerial Maze, you start the repeatable training projects. Sure, you need all the Teleportation research. But Terraforming wise it's not a huge investment. If I start another save, I'll try to push for it ASAP, probably. Shouldn't be that hard.

The thing is, by the time you reach that point you usually don’t need to care about high level crew because one could just throw more ships at the problem and don’t bother with that crappy leveling system. I mean Egosoft still thinks that the lock they put in should prevent ppl from making tons of money early game. The truth is, autotraders are actually one of the worst money making tools early game. Expert automining? Irrelevant because one could just build a storage module with a dock and assign miners to that station and you got a 3 range autotrader and a manager that will level in no time to 5 star and max range. That setup costs just 200k for the station and one additional miner.

[Drumma]

In my first game with X4, I seemed to notice crew on Construction vessels advanced faster in overall skill level. I just bought my 1st Construction ship in this new save so I'm going to watch and see how the crew's star ratings change. I put it to work on my PHQ so they should be gaining experience in some way (engineering, management, etc.). Has anybody noticed this or is it common knowledge? GL HF

[Alan Phipps]

Building Ship service crew level up very quickly while the ship is constructing. It's as if (for them) lots of building with lots of builder drones equals lots of repairing with lots of repair drones.

I make a point of putting lots of crew on my builders.

[ZaphodBeeblebrox]

I buy the seminars from the traders, to level up further, I am now doing faction quests, which have the two and three start pilot seminars as rewards.

Much faster to do the multi-part missions than wait for the pilot to level up. I have pilots that never progress, been running current game since COH came out.

[dark7np]

Building Ship service crew level up very quickly while the ship is constructing. It's as if (for them) lots of building with lots of builder drones equals lots of repairing with lots of repair drones.

I make a point of putting lots of crew on my builders.

That might be an argument to actually build / buy a builder... I have only hired them to date. Still... Then you got the experienced service crew. What now? You gonna manually assign that to other ships? What for? That worth the hassle?

[jlehtone]

That might be an argument to actually build / buy a builder... I have only hired them to date. Still... Then you got the experienced service crew. What now? You gonna manually assign that to other ships? What for? That worth the hassle?

The second argument. The first is that you can ensure that your own Builder has 30 Build Drones. The NPC Builders don't always have. That makes them slower.

You can transfer all crew in one go. It takes same amount of effort to transfer 360 service crew from one Asgard to another as it would take to transfer just one.

Why have experienced service crew? They should make the repairs of a ship a bit faster. That allows more frequent battles, if that is your "thing". Experienced crew does make Miner mine faster too. Somebody even has numbers on how much faster.

[Rahman Yuuna]

Actually that makes perfect sense to me.

A two star in piloting captain should not be able to perform at better than 2 stars combined overall skill at piloting regardless of how high their morale as they are at their current ceiling of piloting competence, but a two star piloting skill captain with low morale will perform at less than optimum and hence only have a combined score of less than two stars. Thus low morale would be a limitation to learned skill performance, while high morale is nice but is not itself a source of performance above and beyond learned skills (but it does allow further training/improvement in core skill to result in the optimum improvement).

That's my theory anyway.

Now that seems to be my experience. I have this Argon that I hired early on in the game, its been the jack of all trades, service crew, Miner pilot, fighter pilot, freighter pilot, personal chauffeur, station manager... and it got three stars morale, 3 stars management, a few kills, but forever stuck on two stars pilot.
HOWEVER...
It seems to fly better than some of my other 2 star pilots. So one argument I hear is the devs dont want to unbalance the game by granting too many points to pilots too early. I see that argument is moot because if all the above is true, that 4 & 5 star pilots dont matter anyway, than what is there to unbalance? Having said that, I can see why many players ignore the pilot star ratings.

[Fishille]

I actually don't feel trading pilots performing trades should actually gain more "pilot" experience. Here's my take:
You have a commercial pilot who only flies commercial airplanes, how does he test his skill and get better. Commercial planes are very straight forward once you get the hang of them you are good. Now compare that to a fighter pilot, a fighter pilot flies faster, harder, and much more dangerous maneuvers, generally speaking a skilled former combat pilot is a shoe in for any pilot job because they can handle anything.
Now this argument breaks up when we translate pilot skill with two factors: mining and trading which have advanced behaviors only opened up by advanced pilot skill. Oh well, workarounds, I always buy every pilot skill book at stores and always load up my pilots brains, I'll also "retire" some combat pilots if I need some advanced skilled industrial pilots.

[Alan Phipps]

Real life commercial pilots tend not to face frequent mid-air external piracy or multiple attacks by an insectoid race and/or sentient machines. They also tend not to have defensive gun turrets either. Still, I get what you mean.

[Drumma]

Now that seems to be my experience. I have this Argon that I hired early on in the game, its been the jack of all trades, service crew, Miner pilot, fighter pilot, freighter pilot, personal chauffeur, station manager... and it got three stars morale, 3 stars management, a few kills, but forever stuck on two stars pilot.
HOWEVER...
It seems to fly better than some of my other 2 star pilots. So one argument I hear is the devs dont want to unbalance the game by granting too many points to pilots too early. I see that argument is moot because if all the above is true, that 4 & 5 star pilots dont matter anyway, than what is there to unbalance? Having said that, I can see why many players ignore the pilot star ratings.

Does a 4 or 5 star pilot/captain fly better than a 2 or 3 star pilot/captain ? From what I read here, it seems ppl say or feel that anything above a 3 star pilot performs no better.

Other than the learnallthethings mod, I don't use mods. Do many players not use any mods ? I ask since a lot of players here appear to have NPCs stuck on or around 3 stars.

[grapedog]

Now that seems to be my experience. I have this Argon that I hired early on in the game, its been the jack of all trades, service crew, Miner pilot, fighter pilot, freighter pilot, personal chauffeur, station manager... and it got three stars morale, 3 stars management, a few kills, but forever stuck on two stars pilot.
HOWEVER...
It seems to fly better than some of my other 2 star pilots. So one argument I hear is the devs dont want to unbalance the game by granting too many points to pilots too early. I see that argument is moot because if all the above is true, that 4 & 5 star pilots dont matter anyway, than what is there to unbalance? Having said that, I can see why many players ignore the pilot star ratings.

Does a 4 or 5 star pilot/captain fly better than a 2 or 3 star pilot/captain ? From what I read here, it seems ppl say or feel that anything above a 3 star pilot performs no better.

Other than the learnallthethings mod, I don't use mods. Do many players not use any mods ? I ask since a lot of players here appear to have NPCs stuck on or around 3 stars.

I don't currently use mods.

For me though, it's because i don't much need em. In the early game, i need up to two stars, which i can do with 10k credits and buying seminars. I don't have enough pilots that this becones annoying. Ths gets me pilots who are not complete idiots, and distribute warws.

Then start with sinple stations, like a trading post, or resource trading post. Buy seminars, get your manager up to 2+, and they'll be fine.

You make way way more money running miners and traders attached to stations than they do automated, solo... but some people want to force this game to play like x3, which it isn't.

Late game you can easily group train through terraforming. You can also get a crap ton of pilots from less than 1 to 2+ by having a defense fleet somewhere doing work. The vast majority of time, when i cap a destroyer, i just pull a 2+ star pilot from one of my combat fighters, promote a crew member, and move on with life.

[Greenhorn]

Wish there was a station crew trading module and millatary module.

i know x3 had a military trading module well it was a station a argon sector,you just buy milatary persons spend money's, and a timer countdown untill fininsh training results.

Who knows,Perhaps the ahoy pirate dlc expansion.maybe at the end of the year will have this?..any thoughts.

[Slashman]

Wish there was a station crew trading module and millatary module.

i know x3 had a military trading module ,just buy milatary person spend money's, and a timer countdown untill fininsh training results.

Who knows,Perhaps the ahoy pirate dlc.maybe at the end of the year will have this?..any thoughts.

Maybe. I'm really excited to see what they put in this next expansion. Not having it be tied to a race and be more concentrated on the underbelly of the universe should give the galaxy a lot more character.