[Poll] What should be the Time a Pilot should need to level to 5*

[ubuntufreakdragon]

I think pilots level to slowly.

What should the mth(mean time to happen) be for a pilot to reach 5* form 0* depending on jobs etc.
I will add a pool after I know which are are the needed answers.

For Comparison the well loved x3 CLS and co needed 10hours per profession with 2 Main Professions figth trade.

Long versions of the questions: (take the answer next to your choice if there is nothing matching)
A How strong should event based XP affect leveling?
B How strong should the time scale with the level to reach?
C How long should it take on average for a busy ship to reach 5 Stars?

[Raptor34]

3-5 hours to reach 3*s and make them usable. As long as they are actively doing stuff, like miners or distribute wares. Flying time and looking for trades count.
5*s I don't really care.

[Nort The Fragrent]

Pilot levels ought go up and down,

Trade pilots based on amount shifted, ( after 100 trades, 0.1 rise )
Combat pilots based on there hit rate, ( 100 hits up 0.1, 200 misses drops 0.1 )
Mining Pilots, on full load, and time and efficiency. ( 0.1 per load, just for not getting deaded !)

Idle pilots slowly evaporate skill level,
Busy pilots rise faster up the ranks.

There needs to be faster and better understood way a pilot level increases, at the moment the game is a conundrum regarding levelling.
The pilot seminars are quite frankly nothing more than a corrupt backhander. And need to be removed from the game.

[Ezarkal]

It should depend on what the pilot does:
-For a trader I'd say around 50h. It's a slow paced game, after all.
-For miners or scout (set to explore or to refresh trade offers), for which pilot skills are more important, 35-ish.
-For a military pilot, set to patrolling defending areas, policing areas, 25-30h. Faster if they do get into active battle.

Of course that's considering the progression from 0 to 5 stars. 0 to 3 stars should be much quicker (25-30% of the time I said above.) I consider my ships to be functional when they have a 3 star pilot, and most functions will unlock on a 3 star ships. 10h for a freighter pilot to be able to auto-trade is not that bad.

Idle ships should not get xp, though.



-Pilots on venture should level up on every ventures they go into. 1 star for 1-2h venture, 2-3 stars for 8h ventures, no matter what their initial level is.
OR
-Instead of sending pilots on ventures so they get better, we could send good pilots on venture to gain better rewards or shorten the time of the venture. A 5 star pilot could perform a venture mission in half the time as a 1 star pilot.

That is of course considering the previous venture system. I don't know exactly what the new system will entail, but it would be nice to either have a very good boost in pilot XP or a very good boost on the venture depending on the pilot xp.

[GCU Grey Area]

Don't think pilots should automatically get to 5* just by doing a job. Think majority of pilots should top out at an average level of skill (as they do now) & that getting to 5* should require additional training (i.e. seminars, etc).

[grapedog]

In my mind, id say 30 hours or so of work gets em to 3+ and auto leveling then stops...

Then if you want higher level, you do missions to get them seminars.

[TheDeliveryMan]

I think each level should be progressively harder to get. So for example for a busy pilot:

From 0 points to 1 point: 2^0 h = 1h
From 1 points to 2 points: 2^1 h = 2h
From 2 points to 3 points: 2^2 h = 4h
...
From 14 points to 15 points: 2^14 h = 16384h = 1.87 years

From 0 points to 15 points would then be (2^0+2^1+1^2+...+2^14)h = 3.74 years.

[Good Wizard]

As I see it, the mod LearingAllTheThings (btw. the mod on Nexus with the most endorsements) does it right, as good as it can.

There is one small disadvantage: The mod aims to slow down progress for pilots with more stars, so it divides the chance to to receive one point (1/3 star) by the stars the pilot already has. The problem with this: A pilot with one star has the full chance (I configured it to 30%, every 20 minutes). A pilot with two stars has only 15% chance for one point, with 3 stars she has 10%, and so on. The disadvantage is, that the chance is reduced first by half, next by 1/3 and so on, i.e. the lowering of the progress is fastest at the beginning. It should be the other way around.

I use this mod for quite a while, and it takes a lot of hours, for a pilot to reach the full 5 stars. With 30% configured a pilot with 3 stars has a 10% chance to level one point every 20 minutes. 3 times an hour he rolls with 10% chance, for the next point, statistically he needs around 10 rolls on average to receive one point, that calculates to 3 hours and 20 minutes for each point, and 10 hours to receive the next full star.

With 4 stars he has only 30/4 = 7.5% chance, and the progress slows down. He needs 13.3 X 20 minutes (~4 hours 30 minutes) on average for one point. this gives around 13 hours to reach the full 5 stars. Only pilots flying gain points, but the job (combat, mining trading) is not taken into account.

A pilot with 2 stars has 15% chance, and this calculates to ~ 2.2 hours for one point and ~ 6.6 hours for the third star.

Since this adds to the progress the game gives originally, pilots flying with me, in combat and in trading gain more and faster, mining nearly gains nothing and relies entirely on the mod, at least this is what I can see.

My take on this:
Seminars are only useful for the first two stars: A Newbie in anything can learn the first steps with seminars. It is like learning to drive, first you make fast progress and can drive a car, to become really good you need experience.

I think the game should level pilots (and every other job too, including managers, mechanics and marines) from the second star on in a useful way and we should ditch the higher level seminars. A pilot with 3 stars is already pretty good, and I do not believe that some 'magical' seminar will make her a master, only experience does this.

Also leveling skills by uses with chances at every skill use is a really bad idea. The chance have to be very small, and while statistics usually work it has potential for endless frustration. Chances smaller than 0.1% are needed and while this would need 1000 tries, it also can need only 100 tries or 5000 tries, depending on the roll. This is a Bad Idea.

The thing best to adjust and fairest would be to define an experience counter for each NPC, and depending on her job she receives a small point value added to this counter. The needed value could grow with every point and give a smooth curve for gaining points, which slows down with more points/stars. Every time the counter reaches the value, one point is given and the counter is reset to zero.

Considering all I wrote above I would say, that seminars can bring a pilot to two stars, as it is now. After this it should take around 30-40 hours (depending on the job and the morale too) to gain up to 5 stars. This also should be true for managers and all the rest. The jobs where there are no seminars should gain a bit faster. Also experience points (not visible to the player) should be used in the background, with this there are no 'bad rolls', everything counts, even when progress is slow.

[Pares]

I will repeat myself, but IMHO the whole crew leveling mechanism should be dropped entirely and replaced with something simpler and more transparent in the future, which I know may never happen in X4, but still I think the current randomness based, totally black box and AI affecting implementation is frustrating and doesn't add anything fun to the game in its current form.

[Drumma]

What's the difference in a 3-star pilot vs. a 5-star ?

Is a 3* as good as a 5* ?

My other issue is when you hire or receive NPCs for your new ships, they are predominantly unskilled (in my experience so far). I just bought a Crane gas miner and asked for 40 service ppl and 10 marines. All were mostly 1/4 star up to 3/4 star; no 1s or 1.5s. Imho, statistically you should see a couple~ of 2 star NPCs out of 50. The player is dropped into a thriving system of ships and stations with millions of ppl/NPC flying around; you would think a few good pilots would be looking for a better job(?). Its a minor thing to me but something I noticed. the game's still good

[Drumma]

I am very curious about these questions so I'm bumping this. Many ppl here state a 3 star NPC is as good as you get using vanilla/no-mod game-saves; yet the scale goes up to 5 star (and the learning mod boosts skills up to 5).

What's the difference in a 3-star pilot vs. a 5-star ?

Is a 3* as good as a 5* ?

[Falcrack]

24 hours game time should be the max for an active pilot who is flying around doing stuff.

[grapedog]

24 hours game time should be the max for an active pilot who is flying around doing stuff.

that's ridiculous.

[Bastelfred]

What's the difference in a 3-star pilot vs. a 5-star ?

Is a 3* as good as a 5* ?

Originally, there were clear differences. The pilots flew significantly, REALLY significantly better the more stars they had. Unfortunately, this has been removed from the game, and everything currently flies as before, but only with 5 stars. I never liked the fact that Egosoft wants to fix the problem like this. I would like to have the old system back.

When an NPC is supposed to take over an abandoned ship, the modules only stay on the ship at 5 stars. The fewer stars he has, the more modules are destroyed.

Even the flight behaviour of boarding pods depends on the pilot skill of the marines, or it used to depend on it, but it's currently broken for me because they now also fly as if there were 5-star pilots at the helm. That alone makes boarding far too easy since Egosoft destroyed the old system.

[-=SiR KiLLaLoT=-]

A long time ago I checked some XML files about the actions that led pilots to increase their skill.
It could have been changed a lot in the internal calculations, but still, following the rules that I am about to list you, I have always had excellent results.

The actions with the highest % skill increase are:

- Have the captain explore an unknown sector (use the command explore on a portal with "?", the action can only be performed once per sector, so you have a limited number of attempts).
With this method I was able to increase the piloting skill from 2.75 to 3 stars when he explored the fifteenth sector.

- Use the "flee" command during a battle.
The lower the hull is during the escape, the higher the % that the skill triggers. Again I focused on a captain and saw the skill increase. Again from 2.75 stars to 3.

- A minor class ship kills a major class ship.
This is one of the simplest ways to increase your captain's skill. In this case, just use a small fleet of fighters to defend a Xenon portal or a Khaak installation and you will see the skills of your pilots skyrocket.
Obviously it is the most dangerous method because it requires intervention in the event of Capital ships appearing, even if a good number of fighters can defend themselves very well from any threat, at least in OOS.

In all these cases, high morale is essential, this skill allows you to raise the average of your captain in order to activate advanced behaviors.
But be careful, according to what is written in the XML files, morale is the only skill that can lower its value!
In fact, captains who are not assigned to the task will gradually lose their morale over time.

All the remaining actions, including trading and mining, especially if automated, have a minimum trigger % and by minimum I mean so low that it takes hundreds of hours to make an increase.

All this excludes the use of high-grade seminars...
Also I leave a special note. I have seen several times that the crew inside your ship, including the captain, increase their capabilities based on what YOU do at the helm.

So in my opinion the current balance of the crew is functional, since if you want a skilled captain, at least in the initial game, you have to train him.

[Raptor34]

That explains why my fighter pilot all levels really well. I always thought it was the constant fighting that does it, rather than chewing up Ks and Is.
Although the problem is when you have a large empire, personnel management and training then becomes really tedious. I wouldn't mind so much if there was some way to automate turning my fighter pilots into miners and traders.
I wonder if we'll ever get a more personal X. Because a lot of the things sounds like it'll work really well at smaller scales.

[ubuntufreakdragon]

I added the promised poll,
I tried to stay as close as possible to posts with the limited 10 answers, everyone got 3 vote for 3 questions, votes can be changed again.

[Lazerius]

XP needs a huge boost going 0 - 4. As long as they're doing something, they should gain gain at a noticable rate from 0-3 over a day of played time, and 3-4 about 5 days played time. 4 > 5 should be seminar focused, but is possible with 30 days of game time played flight time.

There also needs to be new station moduiles where you "enlist" civilians, and turns them into up to a 4 star pilot and 4 star Marines. Instead of it being just a single module, there would be required setups you have to build to meet the criteria. For example:

Pilot Academy:
- 0 - 1 star - Basic Pilot Simulation Module - Pilots can be seen on tilting/rotating Flight Sim setups. (would be awesome to see)
- 1 - 2 Star - Mine Sweeper Module, where pilots go in to blow up static mines.
- 2 - 3 Star - Drone Fighter Module, where pilots fight drones.
- 3 -4 Star - Build a race track out of at least 10 rings put near the station. The longer and more difficult the race, the faster they gain skill, but also a small chance of a crash and burn.

Marines Academy:
- 0 - 1 star - Basic Training Module - Marines go through basic combat/fitness training
- 1 - 2 star - Technical training Module - How to disarm security system, best flight approach for the boarding pod, etc.
- 2 - 3 star - Advanced Combat Training - Navy Seal level of combat training.
- 3 -4 star - Team Combat training - Team oriented, live fire obstacle course. Again, at least 10 nodes required like the pilot race track, as well as a small chance of being shot and killed.

Limits on this would be Max of 10 pilots/marines at each tier at a time for each module setup. So you could only have 1 'Basic Pilot Simulation Module' for 10, or build a 2nd for 20, etc. For the 3 - 4 star Race Track/Obstacle Course, there could also be a max limit, since these would take up quite a bit of space compared to the other individual modules.


I think this would add a TON of role play ability to the game, and you could be required to add things like a 3 star Pilot "trainer" to the first 2 modules, a 4 star Pilot to the 3rd module, and a 5 star pilot to the 5th module. I also like the idea of the player being able to trick out a small fighter and run the race, and it record the rankings of you vs the other AI pilots. Or even do a VERY basic FPS mode for the marines obstacle course, and the player has to run the gauntlet.

The Gauntlet wouldn't have to be an 'on launch' thing though. Just if in the future they decide to do more with the player first person mode.

[michi_oss]

In addition there should be a table or similar available which explains the differences for each level.
So what can a 3 star pilot better then a 2 star? e.g. when simply flying around/ in a combat / mining / ...
Same for the other levels like engineering, managment, ...

And there should be an information (like a progress bar) how long it takes in hours to reach the next level for each pilot.

[Pares]

What's the difference in a 3-star pilot vs. a 5-star ?

Is a 3* as good as a 5* ?

Originally, there were clear differences. The pilots flew significantly, REALLY significantly better the more stars they had. Unfortunately, this has been removed from the game, and everything currently flies as before, but only with 5 stars. I never liked the fact that Egosoft wants to fix the problem like this. I would like to have the old system back.

When did this happen? Where did you get this information? Can you link the patch notes where this is mentioned? Or a dev comment?

When an NPC is supposed to take over an abandoned ship, the modules only stay on the ship at 5 stars. The fewer stars he has, the more modules are destroyed.

Even the flight behaviour of boarding pods depends on the pilot skill of the marines, or it used to depend on it, but it's currently broken for me because they now also fly as if there were 5-star pilots at the helm. That alone makes boarding far too easy since Egosoft destroyed the old system.

All this is just anectodal evidence, and that is the problem with the whole system. For such a crucial part of the game, it is unacceptable that we know basically nothing about how and what stars affect.