Skill and training Feedback

[Axeface]

Yesterdray I hired for free a Paranid on my station ~ 2.7 engineering/2.7 morale. Average hiring price on NPC stations - 500k or even 800, dont remember.
It seems such pilots (2.7/2.7) most commonly an Argon (in my game at least). I suggest building argon biome on own station for free pilots... Or a station in Argon space.
Just one 2-star seminar and they get third star.

Ive noticed this difference between split hires and argon. If I buy split ships I almost always get pilots under 1 star. I bought some novas from argon prime wharf and some pilots had 2 stars, one even had 2 2/3 star piloting. Argon are just better?

[dougeye]

so do pilots actually level up slowly still? combat and industrial?

[TekDragon]

Is that insane mechanic still in-place where skill-gain is inversely tied to how much you transport? So skill gain is faster on a tiny courier, but abysmal on a massive freighter?

That was honestly one of the most pointless, backwards, and immersion-breaking mechanics I've seen in a while from a simulation game. Literally no one would think of that on their own, and it was just gob-smacking to come on the forums and figure out that pilots should be trained to trade by having them stuff a few energy credits in their pockets and shuffle over to the nearest station for a McRib, and that using a freighter to top off the warehouses of stations with tens of thousands of high-demand wares was a horrible way to learn how to trade. I mean, who thinks of this garbage?

[Admiral Sausage]

I'm not going to read 33 pages, so sorry if I'm just repeating what other people have said a hundred times already:

What really irks me about it is the inconsistency. I trained 200 crew to 5 stars in engineering in a few hours without even realizing I had done it, merely by purchasing a builder and assigning it to add a few modules to a station (oddly none of them exceeded 3 stars in morale. Some would go a little over, but then go back down to 3 after a while).

Meanwhile, the miners and traders that have been working hard for me for days of real time have not gained any piloting experience at all. It must be particularly demoralizing for the two 3 star autotraders that I originally trained with seminars, who have travelled the length and breadth of the galaxy at my whim, surviving attacks by pirates and Xenon without complaint, and yet are firmly stuck at 3 stars still.

On ships that have seen much combat, the service crew have levelled up from repairing the hull, while the pilot just isn't able to learn anything. Sometimes the gain in skill is so uneven that I can replace the original pilot with one of the service crew, give them a few cheap trader-bought piloting seminars, and end up with a better pilot just because their morale had been raised higher than the pilot's. I feel bad about demoting someone who must have chosen piloting as their vocation in favour of someone whose sum total of piloting experience is reading a few books.

[Axeface]

What really irks me about it is the inconsistency. I trained 200 crew to 5 stars in engineering in a few hours without even realizing I had done it, merely by purchasing a builder and assigning it to add a few modules to a station (oddly none of them exceeded 3 stars in morale. Some would go a little over, but then go back down to 3 after a while).

The really annoying thing about that specifically is that the captain is left behind while all their crew get loads of stars! My builder ship captains are still the morons I hired while most of their crews are sitting on 5 stars. The captains dont even seem to gain management which is the natural thing that they should be gaining in that role. I assume the captain of a builder ship is not just a helmsman, but also a site overseer or something.

[Juggernaut93]

What really irks me about it is the inconsistency. I trained 200 crew to 5 stars in engineering in a few hours without even realizing I had done it, merely by purchasing a builder and assigning it to add a few modules to a station (oddly none of them exceeded 3 stars in morale. Some would go a little over, but then go back down to 3 after a while).

That's because when a ship is idling there is a constant very small chance that they lose points in morale. The experience event category is called "ship_bored" in the AI xml files.

[Admiral Sausage]

...I assume the captain of a builder ship is not just a helmsman, but also a site overseer or something.

Ah yes, that reminds me of a related issue - It's not clear which skills are actually relevant to a particular role. I believe autotraders use management, but you can't give them management seminars, and only piloting and morale are highlighted for any type of pilot. You can sort a ship's crew by their suitability for the Ship Trader role, but no skills are highlighted - does that mean that selling ships requires no skill at all?

What really irks me about it is the inconsistency. I trained 200 crew to 5 stars in engineering in a few hours without even realizing I had done it, merely by purchasing a builder and assigning it to add a few modules to a station (oddly none of them exceeded 3 stars in morale. Some would go a little over, but then go back down to 3 after a while).

That's because when a ship is idling there is a constant very small chance that they lose points in morale. The experience event category is called "ship_bored" in the AI xml files.

Given that the ship is continuously building, such that the crew gain a lot of engineering skill, it would be strange if they were considered idle. Maybe they just don't like the job, or maybe I should invest in some whips to improve morale.

[Juggernaut93]

...I assume the captain of a builder ship is not just a helmsman, but also a site overseer or something.

Ah yes, that reminds me of a related issue - It's not clear which skills are actually relevant to a particular role. I believe autotraders use management, but you can't give them management seminars, and only piloting and morale are highlighted for any type of pilot. You can sort a ship's crew by their suitability for the Ship Trader role, but no skills are highlighted - does that mean that selling ships requires no skill at all?

Autotraders use whichever is the highest between their piloting skill and their superior's management skill (if they are assigned to a station for example).

EDIT: at least for some of the parameters (such as maximum gate distance).

[GCU Grey Area]

To give another perspective on this. I don't use auto-traders (or auto-miners for that matter), prefer to maintain direct control over what my freighters transport & where they go. Therefore have less need of 3* pilots. However what I do need are 4* pilots (or better) for my capital ships, they just function better with good captains. For me the change has been beneficial. I don't need highly skilled pilots at the start of the game, i.e. when I don't own any capital ships. However when I do start to get my own capitals (I've got 2 so far) I've had more than enough opportunities to obtain seminars that I can instantly promote them to at least 4*, pretty much as soon as I can afford to build each one. Same with station managers. Recently built my first station - was incredibly easy to train the manager up to the full 5 gate radius (it took seconds), compared to several hours slowly gaining management levels in my last game. Changes to the skill system haven't been entirely negative.

[Andrey12y]

For training I recommend use small fighters, make a target polygon from Khaak defence platforms or helpless bigships.
Example - my Mamba pilot with 2 and 2/3 stars participated in attack on Khaak platform and she get last 1/3 from that. Another pilot didnt advance, but he did on the next platform and get his 3rd star.
It should be noted that my pilots are on combat duty - they defend gates in Hatikvah choice for hours and killing dozens of Xenons.

Also its logical that trader on a small fast ship has more chances to get XP, due to more operations he made (if that chances are rng).

[j.harshaw]

It's not clear which skills are actually relevant to a particular role.

All of the roles use only one skill plus Morale.

Pilots use Piloting,
Managers use Management,
Ship crew use Engineering,
Marines use Boarding,

All of the above plus Morale. Skills are not relevant for any other roles including ship traders.

The only exception is for ships working for stations which can use their manager's Management skill if it is higher than their Piloting skill.

I mean, who thinks of this garbage?

That would be me.

Is that insane mechanic still in-place where skill-gain is inversely tied to how much you transport?

Correction: how much of your cargo hold you fill or empty per transaction.

Also its logical that trader on a small fast ship has more chances to get XP, due to more operations he made (if that chances are rng).

Correct. The sheer number of transactions increases the chances over time of increasing skill. That's mostly why managers gain skill so quickly.

EDIT: fixed wrong quote. the first one.

[tomchk]

I mean, who thinks of this garbage?

That would be me.

Sorry about our collective harshness sometimes... :/ It can't be easy to read and respond, so thanks.
Any hints on whether pilot skill will go up more often? I suspect that's the biggest issue on which most agree. I am not saying it should go up a lot faster, but so many of us have had no progress outside of combat for dozens/hundreds of hours.

[Axeface]

Any hints on whether pilot skill will go up more often? I suspect that's the biggest issue on which most agree. I am not saying it should go up a lot faster, but so many of us have had no progress outside of combat for dozens/hundreds of hours.

Need to be specific! Its 'piloting' not increasing for automated trade and mining ship captains once they hit 2 stars, that is the issue right? Ships are on sector mining duty or distribute wares for a disproportionately long time without improving compared to other activities.

[tomchk]

Any hints on whether pilot skill will go up more often? I suspect that's the biggest issue on which most agree. I am not saying it should go up a lot faster, but so many of us have had no progress outside of combat for dozens/hundreds of hours.

Need to be specific! Its 'piloting' not increasing for automated trade and mining ship captains once they hit 2 stars, that is the issue right? Ships are on sector mining duty or distribute wares for a disproportionately long time without improving compared to other activities.

Good point. I think that's the problem I've had as well. I love the vision of the developers, as usual, and I like the added challenge, but what you just highlighted does seem like too much (too little chance to get past 2 stars). Again, I'm not for a big change, just something to prevent these long-term roadblocks.

[j.harshaw]

Keep in mind that there's a bug at the moment with miners gaining skill. (Shout out to Mackan for finding that bug.) They only gain skill when they go in to trade the resources they've mined. Don't think the fix for that is out yet.

Ships are on sector mining duty or distribute wares for a disproportionately long time without improving compared to other activities.

Distribute wares is actually particularly bad at improving pilots since it's the buy-once-sell-many script so mechanically doesn't offload full cargo holds worth of wares. Easiest way I've found via trading is by setting up a station that trades in high-volume wares in an area where those wares move quickly. Imperial Good described an even more efficient way in one of his posts, but I personally never felt the need to resort to something like that.

[Axeface]

Keep in mind that there's a bug at the moment with miners gaining skill. (Shout out to Mackan for finding that bug.) They only gain skill when they go in to trade the resources they've mined. Don't think the fix for that is out yet.

Ships are on sector mining duty or distribute wares for a disproportionately long time without improving compared to other activities.

Distribute wares is actually particularly bad at improving pilots since it's the buy-once-sell-many script so mechanically doesn't offload full cargo holds worth of wares.

Well thats why I've brought it up multiple times, I see that as an issue as its the only automated trade skill we have (even though its 2 stars) forcing us to use our ships in different ways to skill up.

Combat pilots level up doing automated fighting at slow but fair pace.
Managers level up doing automated managing at slow but fair pace (bit too fast actually).
Traders dont level up doing automated trading? (Or do so so slowly that star citizen will be released by the time I have a 3 star pilot if I play normally).

[Imperial Good]

The way I described involves bouncing wares like Energy Cells between 2 player owned trade stations in a closed cycle. The experience earnt is based on the fraction of the ship storage that was moved during the transaction, hence journeys are favoured over volume moved. This makes scout ships like the Pegasus Vanguard (fast, low storage) the most efficient training vehicles. Blacklists and restricted trade can be used to prevent other ships and stations from taking wares out of the closed loop. Only micro needed is to occasionally invert the direction of the flow of wares between the trade stations once one runs low. Can be scaled near infinitely as well just by adding more storage, wares and docks to the stations. This was verified as working during the 3.00 beta and took a very long time to get to 3 stars, but that time should be less due to some late beta changes to experience gain. I cannot confirm if it still works, or that the amount of time to hit 3 stars is now reasonable.

If any developers wish to fix this then a possible solution would be the experience earnt from trades being based on the absolute amount of ware moved (exp per 1,000 m^3 as an example) and possibly factor in distance flow divided by travel speed (not easy as no record of where wares were picked up).

Combat pilots level up doing automated fighting at slow but fair pace.
Managers level up doing automated managing at slow but fair pace (bit too fast).
Traders dont level up doing automated trading? (Or do so so slowly that star citizen will be released by the time I have a 3 star pilot if I play normally).

Which is why I suggest the idea that similar to sector mining there should be "local trading" rather than just distribute wares. Local trading would be auto trader but limited to just 1 ware and only 1-2 sector buy/sell radius but need only 2 star pilots. 2 star pilots can be obtained fairly easily from station platforms and for the most part this range will be sufficient for many applications.

Another solution would be to allow an anchor sector to distribute wares. Currently it does not fulfil a common role where one wants traders moving wares around in a local area, and not across the universe. For example I might want to help ZYA economy by moving their wares but any traders on distribute wares will instead drift to shipping them to HOP or some other corner of the universe over time. Possibly the anchor sector could be where the ware should be sourced from, with sales naturally occurring in a radius around it.

[Gregorovitch]

What really irks me about it is the inconsistency. I trained 200 crew to 5 stars in engineering in a few hours without even realizing I had done it, merely by purchasing a builder and assigning it to add a few modules to a station (oddly none of them exceeded 3 stars in morale. Some would go a little over, but then go back down to 3 after a while).

That's because when a ship is idling there is a constant very small chance that they lose points in morale. The experience event category is called "ship_bored" in the AI xml files.

So that's why my pilots who I send on ventures all have pants morale?

Benrnd specifically mentioned ventures as a reasonable chance pilot level up activity so I have used them now for that purpose. However 'cos I'm out and about most all of the time they spend a lot of time waiting for me to get back to base send them out again. So their morale gets trashed, huh?

And we were supposed to know this how, exactly?

[j.harshaw]

Well thats why I've brought it up multiple times, I see that as an issue as its the only automated trade skill we have (even though its 2 stars) forcing us to use our ships in different ways to skill up.

I don't see it as an issue, to be honest. It's a means to automate trade that's available fairly early in the game and doesn't require as much knowledge of how trading works as, say, deciding which factory to build where. At the risk of sounding meta, think the reward is correctly proportionally lower.

experience earnt from trades being based on the absolute amount of ware moved (exp per 1,000 m^3 as an example)

Problematic as that would introduce arbitrary numbers that are completely invisible to the player which I tend to avoid. Would introduce discrepancies in this case such as it being physically impossible for pilots in some ships to be able to do 100% efficient trades. Granted it's difficult if not impossible to find such efficient trades for the larger trading ships, but I tend to think of them (more as a player than as a developer) as more specialized pieces of equipment. Superfreighters that aren't very well-suited to use as trucks.

possibly factor in distance flow divided by travel speed (not easy as no record of where wares were picked up).

Difficult with current implementation as you pointed out. The point at which trading experience is currently implemented is at the point where the ship is docked and is about to execute the trade. It was done this way for simplicity, to cover all cases of trade including manual trades. It wouldn't be impossible to split that off into the various ways in which trading can be ordered by the player, but that would introduce discrepancies such as those theories currently circulating involving trades given in some ways being more effective at giving experience than others. As it is, the only variables that are in consideration are the price of the trade (cheaper is better if buying, inverse if selling) and the amount of storage filled or cleared by each transaction, regardless of how the trade was initiated, and it is already very difficult to understand how that translates to skill gain.

Out of curiosity, what's wrong with manually queueing up trades? It's a lot easier in X4 than in XR and (I vaguely remember) in X3. I remember back when I was really playing, I had so few ships building up that it wasn't much of a bother and by the time I started thinking of ships as masses in large numbers, I had already built more than one station and was automating trade that way.

So that's why my pilots who I send on ventures all have pants morale?

Benrnd specifically mentioned ventures as a reasonable chance pilot level up activity so I have used them now for that purpose. However 'cos I'm out and about most all of the time they spend a lot of time waiting for me to get back to base send them out again. So their morale gets trashed, huh?

I have a task to improve this, but a lot of more urgent things keep pushing it back.

EDIT: added a reply to Gregorovitch's post. Didn't want to spam the thread.

[Axeface]

Well I just dont know what to say...... Immensely depressing.

Hopefully the new trade order that is going to be added soon will fill the gaping hole in gameplay.

PS: I did a test earlier in this thread where I queued up high quality manual trades for AGES and the captains piloting did not budge...................