pilots skill are not increasing

[Plärr Jörgenson]

I started a new game in 3.0 and am 22 hours in. None of my pilots have increased any skills. I wrote down the starting level of every one of my pilots when i hired them to prove this since i can't remember levelling happening in the past.

There are different roles and different orders involved. Some are manual traders (i give them all the trade orders), autotraders (for pilots level 3 and above), explorers, miners, a station manager with his trader/miner subordinates and so on. No skill increase has happened so far. Is it normal to take that long?

Thanks

[Matthew94]

I started a new game in 3.0 and am 22 hours in. None of my pilots have increased any skills. I wrote down the starting level of every one of my pilots when i hired them to prove this since i can't remember levelling happening in the past.

There are different roles and different orders involved. Some are manual traders (i give them all the trade orders), autotraders (for pilots level 3 and above), explorers, miners, a station manager with his trader/miner subordinates and so on. No skill increase has happened so far. Is it normal to take that long?

Thanks

I've never seen an autotrader or miner level up yet.

If it does happen, which I doubt, there should be a special notification for it.

[burger1]

I started a new game in 3.0 and am 22 hours in. None of my pilots have increased any skills. I wrote down the starting level of every one of my pilots when i hired them to prove this since i can't remember levelling happening in the past.

There are different roles and different orders involved. Some are manual traders (i give them all the trade orders), autotraders (for pilots level 3 and above), explorers, miners, a station manager with his trader/miner subordinates and so on. No skill increase has happened so far. Is it normal to take that long?

Thanks

I've never seen an autotrader or miner level up yet.

If it does happen, which I doubt, there should be a special notification for it.

miners level. Get a 1 star miner.

[Imperial Good]

They can level. One can even create a levelling factory that gets them to 2 star pretty fast. Beyond 2 stars becomes impossibly slow, even with the recent buffs.

[Raevyan]

So how you efficiently train crew from the common one star to 3 star where they become more useful for Autotrasse and adv autonome? Especially in early game where you don’t have unlimited funds to just buy 50 ships and hope for a good captain.

[burger1]

So how you efficiently train crew from the common one star to 3 star where they become more useful for Autotrasse and adv autonome? Especially in early game where you don’t have unlimited funds to just buy 50 ships and hope for a good captain.

Get your rep up with teladi or antigone trade guilds and do their trade guild deploy satellite missions. Not the coverage ones. Look at the missions and there will be a main reward for completing all the missions in a chain and a reward for each step.

[Raevyan]

And the main rewards are seminars? Does the captains gains skill when you tell the ship to deploy a satellite in a specific area? I really do not want to manually train 20 captains with seminars. I'd rather set some on route, like CLS in X3, and wait for them to rank up. But in X4 this a) never happens at all or b) its really really slow.

[NoelSt]

What we really need is.someone from Ego team who can explain how it really works. It's very confusing. Please

[Imperial Good]

So how you efficiently train crew from the common one star to 3 star where they become more useful for Autotrasse and adv autonome? Especially in early game where you don’t have unlimited funds to just buy 50 ships and hope for a good captain.

Use a small ship to cargo bounce Energy Cells between 2 dummy trade stations. Make sure the station sells at minimum price and the other buys at maximum. This gets to 2 stars pretty fast (hour or so).

[Rastuasi]

If going by the star alone, your data is automatically invalid. The star only updates every 1/3 of a gain in level. 22 hours is not enough time for 1/3 an hour, takes much more. I have many pilots that are 5 star, but started at 1 star. Leveling always worked, but as the saying goes, a watched pot never boils. This isn't some Korean mmo that gives you max gear in 5 hours, I don't expect nor want my pilots to do a star in under 200 hours, else they're not showing a realistic gain in skill.

[Matthew94]

This isn't some Korean mmo that gives you max gear in 5 hours, I don't expect nor want my pilots to do a star in under 200 hours, else they're not showing a realistic gain in skill.

Personally I think stations should take years of in-game time to build, it's only sensible.

[Rastuasi]

This isn't some Korean mmo that gives you max gear in 5 hours, I don't expect nor want my pilots to do a star in under 200 hours, else they're not showing a realistic gain in skill.

Personally I think stations should take years of in-game time to build, it's only sensible.

Not really, professional outfits can put up new building infrastructure in under a month using humans. Just got to have the setup in place and the proper mindset for employees. Where your attempt at mockery fails to deliver, is that in X4 the manufacturing and construction of ships and stations is handled by autonomous nanodrones and construction drones. They work without having to deal with employees and weather. Only thing that postpones them, is a shortage or delay in the materials being delivered. So the station times taking years is actually not sensible in the least. However, I'll give you a raised eyebrow (similar as one gives to a toddler telling a story) for the attempt.

[Plärr Jörgenson]

If going by the star alone, your data is automatically invalid. The star only updates every 1/3 of a gain in level. 22 hours is not enough time for 1/3 an hour, takes much more. I have many pilots that are 5 star, but started at 1 star. Leveling always worked, but as the saying goes, a watched pot never boils. This isn't some Korean mmo that gives you max gear in 5 hours, I don't expect nor want my pilots to do a star in under 200 hours, else they're not showing a realistic gain in skill.

thanks for your answer. now i can at least assume that i have to play another four weeks for my pilots to become a tiny bit more efficient.
so you're the simulation-enthusiast - that's cool! personally, i don't have that amount of time nor do i find it realistic for a pilot to take that long to improve so little (i myself managed to imrpove from noob to efficient trader in far less time). after 20 hours in a sandbox game i expect to see at least some sign of progress.

for me skill improvement is too slow or it would be nice to be able to hire better people for more money - not just hope to be lucky a the lottery.

[Rastuasi]

If you're desiring faster skills, you might use a mod such as:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/ ... earchtext=
It will level a random skill every 20 minutes. That way you'll get a better use of your time. Essentially, you can freely put a high school grad level of real world experienced pilot with a shiny certificate, into a 5* seat! Then the rest of us can make our pilots earn their capital ship seat.

It would be a cool feature to give AI pilots a background, a history before you hire them. Like go to argon, see a guy standing near a door, you find out he flew for the military, retired, went into trading for HAT and is now looking for work. This all during your actual game play (not spawned), so that time he spent, he earned stars. Adds a good reason to peruse station personnel.

[Plärr Jörgenson]

One can even create a levelling factory that gets them to 2 star pretty fast.

How?

Thanks

[Imperial Good]

How?

Thanks

Experience is earned by pilots both buying and selling. The quality of the experience is based on how good the prices are. The amount is based on the percentage of the ship cargo involved. Using this approach one can construct 2 nearby trade stations which offer best prices and cycle the cargo capacity of the ships at a very high frequency.

The core of this concept focus around optimizing the frequency at which trades can be executed while minimizing the amount of micro management required. For this purpose one will use the Pegasus Vanguard (PAR sells) as the training vehicle. Not only is this the fastest flight speed ship in X4, but being a scout ship it has a minuscule cargo capacity meaning little cargo has to be moved for optimum experience per journey. Since the stations are near each other travel mode speed is unimportant so one wants PAR Combat Mk3 engines to allow for optimum flight and landing speed. Since we want completely full loads of a cheap, readily available ware the easiest ware to use is Energy Cells as those have a size of 1 so can completely fill any ship and are available in huge quantities and can be produced at the rate of over 10,000 per hour from nothing.

Start by constructing 2 tiny trade stations in plots physically next to each other. These trade stations exist of just 1 XL storage module (or more) and 1 3M6S dock (or more). Explicitly add 1 Energy Cell to both trade stations so that one can configure Energy Cells in logical overview. Fill up 1 station with maximum Energy Cells, leave the other empty. Now assign the training ships as trade subordinates spread between the two stations. Set up a default blacklist preventing trade within that sector so that none of your free trading agents interfere. Create blacklists for the trade stations restricting them from trading outside the sector they are in. Restrict trade at both trade stations so that they do not sell to free trader NPCs. This will allow the two stations to trade with each other and only each other.

Set the station which has the energy cells to minimum sell price and want to sell all in storage. Set the other station which is empty to have maximum buy price and want to buy a full storage. After a minute or so the assigned training ships will start to trade and work to move energy cells from the full station to the empty station. During this process they will earn experience at possibly the fastest easily obtained and scalable rate (still quite slow) that does not depend on other factors or require a lot of micro management. This process is entirely free after setup as everything used is in a closed cycle.

Eventually the one station will empty of Energy Cells and the other will fill up. When that is complete the training ships will become idle. This is the only time micro management is needed as one has to invert the sell and buy orders so that the Energy Cells flow the other direction. One could design the stations such that this only needs to happen every few hours.

This process is completely scalable. If one wants to train 100 ships at once then one can add 14-15 3M6S docks to the station so that the traffic can be managed. If one only wants to service it every 24 hours of play one can add dozens of XL container storage modules and work on filling them up. The more ships one trains at once, the more storage one needs to retain the same micro interval but both of these can be scaled to suit the player's need.

Small plots are not required for the trade stations. What is important is that the plot origins are placed as close as possible to each other. Consider starting with the smallest plots and then expanding them in opposite directions so that the origins remain close.

This will get you 2 star pilots from 0 star pilots pretty fast. After that, it will take a long time.

Any of the new 3.00 unclaimed sectors are good for this as one will not miss out on NPC trading opportunities by the required blacklists.

[spankahontis]

One can even create a levelling factory that gets them to 2 star pretty fast.

How?

Thanks

I would suspect that you get 2 plots in a sector, Build a factory that creates Energy Cells and another that needs them.
Restrict trade from all races so only your ships that are assigned go back and fourth.
Use fighters with limited storage space, put your 1 star pilot in the driving seat have him deliver wares from the energy factory to the other factory with lowest star autotrade behaviour.

Not sure if quantity of wares effects how fast the Pilots skills go up? Maybe just current tasks it's performing fills up the XP Gauge? Which in that case, you need a ship that will take AGES to fill the storage.

[spankahontis]

How?

Thanks

Experience is earned by pilots both buying and selling. The quality of the experience is based on how good the prices are. The amount is based on the percentage of the ship cargo involved. Using this approach one can construct 2 nearby trade stations which offer best prices and cycle the cargo capacity of the ships at a very high frequency.

The core of this concept focus around optimizing the frequency at which trades can be executed while minimizing the amount of micro management required. For this purpose one will use the Pegasus Vanguard (PAR sells) as the training vehicle. Not only is this the fastest flight speed ship in X4, but being a scout ship it has a minuscule cargo capacity meaning little cargo has to be moved for optimum experience per journey. Since the stations are near each other travel mode speed is unimportant so one wants PAR Combat Mk3 engines to allow for optimum flight and landing speed. Since we want completely full loads of a cheap, readily available ware the easiest ware to use is Energy Cells as those have a size of 1 so can completely fill any ship and are available in huge quantities and can be produced at the rate of over 10,000 per hour from nothing.

Start by constructing 2 tiny trade stations in plots physically next to each other. These trade stations exist of just 1 XL storage module (or more) and 1 3M6S dock (or more). Explicitly add 1 Energy Cell to both trade stations so that one can configure Energy Cells in logical overview. Fill up 1 station with maximum Energy Cells, leave the other empty. Now assign the training ships as trade subordinates spread between the two stations. Set up a default blacklist preventing trade within that sector so that none of your free trading agents interfere. Create blacklists for the trade stations restricting them from trading outside the sector they are in. Restrict trade at both trade stations so that they do not sell to free trader NPCs. This will allow the two stations to trade with each other and only each other.

Set the station which has the energy cells to minimum sell price and want to sell all in storage. Set the other station which is empty to have maximum buy price and want to buy a full storage. After a minute or so the assigned training ships will start to trade and work to move energy cells from the full station to the empty station. During this process they will earn experience at possibly the fastest easily obtained and scalable rate (still quite slow) that does not depend on other factors or require a lot of micro management. This process is entirely free after setup as everything used is in a closed cycle.

Eventually the one station will empty of Energy Cells and the other will fill up. When that is complete the training ships will become idle. This is the only time micro management is needed as one has to invert the sell and buy orders so that the Energy Cells flow the other direction. One could design the stations such that this only needs to happen every few hours.

This process is completely scalable. If one wants to train 100 ships at once then one can add 14-15 3M6S docks to the station so that the traffic can be managed. If one only wants to service it every 24 hours of play one can add dozens of XL container storage modules and work on filling them up. The more ships one trains at once, the more storage one needs to retain the same micro interval but both of these can be scaled to suit the player's need.

Small plots are not required for the trade stations. What is important is that the plot origins are placed as close as possible to each other. Consider starting with the smallest plots and then expanding them in opposite directions so that the origins remain close.

This will get you 2 star pilots from 0 star pilots pretty fast. After that, it will take a long time.

Any of the new 3.00 unclaimed sectors are good for this as one will not miss out on NPC trading opportunities by the required blacklists.

Could you solve the full storage problem by hacking your own storage console?

[radcapricorn]

X3: set up two waypoints.

X4:

j.harshaw: "We haven't removed your control".

[Imperial Good]

Could you solve the full storage problem by hacking your own storage console?

That would mean one would have to buy in more Energy Cells as you would be removing wares from the closed loop. None of the trade stations involved produce or consume Energy Cells.

Of course one could do something similar with a station that does produce Energy Cells and get them shipped to stations of yours that consume them (restricted trade, maximum price). However the number of ships one can train is then limited by the rate Energy Cells are consumed which can be difficult to scale and also the journeys per unit time might be less.