Did pilot experience gain get turned off in a patch?

[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.

[Cdaragorn]

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.

There is every possibility that it will be tied to a race. There are a lot of us that dearly miss the Borons and would like to see the next DLC give us them. I also consider adding races giving the galaxy a lot more character though so it might be nice to know what you feel that means.

[Mackan]

A bit late to post this, but zakaluka made a pretty handy summary of previous discussions on how the leveling system actually works, for anyone still interested. Can be found here: viewtopic.php?f=146&t=431726

As for morale, its relevance to combined skill is only 20% while the main skill contributes 80%. Not sure if this is entirely linear in-game but there's at least some lenience in that the level of the primary skill should mostly take precedence. Morale has functions other than just affecting combined skill though. For instance, it's probably not a good habit to send high level pilots into high stakes combat if their morale is low.

[Slashman]

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.

There is every possibility that it will be tied to a race. There are a lot of us that dearly miss the Borons and would like to see the next DLC give us them. I also consider adding races giving the galaxy a lot more character though so it might be nice to know what you feel that means.

Well usually I wouldn't expect the Borons to be tied to piracy...but maybe you have other expectations or you think the working title of the next DLC isn't an indicator of the content maybe?

[Alan Phipps]

Can we keep this thread on the pilot experience topic please.

[SamuraiProgrammer]

I have been reading this and paying close attention in my new game (4.0). Things are much better than they were in the past, in my experience.

My pilots are gaining rank faster than ever before. I hadn't played for about a year, so if something changed during that time my assertion may be false.

Pilot advancement is still slow, but it happens. At least now there are missions that give 'seminars' as rewards. The ones I have seen (but haven't taken advantage of) move your pilot from Level 2 to Level3.