Pilots skill

[Kosta88]

Been playing for days now, X4 has been running for hours (mostly whole day and night, however I do check every now and then, except over night, and play usually evenings actively), I am up to 40mil with 9 Drills and one Mercury (all automated), fully stocked Cerberus, two Eclipse in a wing, two Discoverers (exploring), all fully stocked, countless satellites, and the skill is still everywhere 2 or lower (3 not reached).
What am I doing wrong??

[Zaemar2017]

You're not doing anything wrong. It is still broken.
I have been going for 18 hours with a nearly three star pilot and it's still nearly three stars. I've had the pilot doing combat, exploring, hauling, mining and nothing makes a scrap of difference.

The only mission rewards I have seen have been for one star seminars! Who the hell is going to do a mission for a one star when you can buy one for 600 creds?

The whole thing is game breaking and it's high time egosoft fixed the bloody game!

My advice is to try the 'fires of defeat' or 'accomplished scientist' start. The co-pilot or manager that you get is usually a three star pilot unless that has been broken/nerfed as well.

[alt3rn1ty]

What am I doing wrong??

Nothing, that's just how it is. I started a new game after Split Vendetta came out:
I now have 5 stations all employing 1 Buffalo, 5 Boa, 4 Alligators
The first station employing those was the PHQ
36 game days later none are above three star
I also have three Boas which have been trading around the universe since near game start, those initially got me credits to start expanding the PHQ (along with Crystal mining), none of those pilots have ever increased beyond what the Basic and 1 Star seminars put them at.

I have one Pilot who I keep transferring to personal ship who has 3 and a third stars, she was found on a dock so was immediately hired.
Any others found on docks above three stars are either busy, or SCA who will not entertain you because your rep will never get any higher with them.

Apparently there are ways of getting above 1 Star seminars, Lock boxes / missions / ventures .. Never found any so far.
And the other way is to have lots of fighters repeatedly in battles, for the rare chance they might level up if they survive .. Again I haven't seen one of those either and have cleared out 4 Xenon sectors with enough Xenon wreckage to make them all look like heavy Asteroid populated sectors.

[EGO_Aut]

Any station trader deals with 1&2 * Seminars, sometimes they are out of stock but if not very cheap to stock up.

Check (faction) missions to get 3&4 * Seminars.

Edit: i did it wrong 1 star is called basic seminar, so -1 *

[Zaemar2017]

I've got nealy 1400 hours in this game and I've never ever seen a two star seminar for sale anywhere!

[EGO_Aut]

I've got nealy 1400 hours in this game and I've never ever seen a two star seminar for sale anywhere!

Watch again, if you have installed latest patch.

[alt3rn1ty]

Any station trader deals with 1&2 * Seminars, sometimes they are out of stock but if not very cheap to stock up.

Check (faction) missions to get 3&4 * Seminars.

I have never seen anything above a 1 Star seminar at station traders, they sell "Basic Seminar" (for use on any pilot with less than 1 full star) and "1 Star Seminar" (for use on any pilot less than 2 full stars .. Which if you have a 1 and two thirds Pilot can take him up to nearly 3 star)

2 / 3 / 4 Star Seminars are consistently not available anywhere so far.

And since the latest patch, I have been teleporting around a great many stations to get Basic and 1 Star seminars to get my Rattlesnake / Oddyseus fleets pilots to be the best they can be before sending them into the above mentioned Xenon sectors over the last month.

Also went through about 140 Chimera fighters (still have 40 left) for use when personally in sector taking on Xenon sectors, none of those have ever levelled up (checked them all after every battle they have been in).

I think I am just very unlucky according to quite a few other posts on the same subject. Over 36 game days done (circa 880 hours).

No third party modifications in use.

[dtpsprt]

V3.30 all patches installed. Just to make things clear to people....

1) 2* seminars are available by missions with factions you are over +20 rep, also by guild missions (both ANT and TEL). They show 0 Cr rewards, you have to read the description.

2) 3 & 4* seminars are available ONLY by Guild missions if you are over 20 rep with the faction of the Guild.

Pure vanilla game.

[alt3rn1ty]

V3.30 all patches installed. Just to make things clear to people....

1) 2* seminars are available by missions with factions you are over +20 rep, also by guild missions (both ANT and TEL). They show 0 Cr rewards, you have to read the description.

2) 3 & 4* seminars are available ONLY by Guild missions if you are over 20 rep with the faction of the Guild.

Pure vanilla game.

Check and check
With the exception of Kha'ak, Xenon, FAF and SCA, I am greater than +25 with all factions for about three months now.

[Zaemar2017]

V3.30 all patches installed. Just to make things clear to people....

1) 2* seminars are available by missions with factions you are over +20 rep, also by guild missions (both ANT and TEL). They show 0 Cr rewards, you have to read the description.

2) 3 & 4* seminars are available ONLY by Guild missions if you are over 20 rep with the faction of the Guild.

Pure vanilla game.

I forgot about the potential level 20 thing because I haven't played for a couple of months.

Regardless, it doesn't alter the fact that whatever you get pilots to do, sometimes for days on end, they don't appear to be gaining xp. It's completely asinine and counter intuitive.

Seminars should be a buff not a means to an end. Nobody got experience by sitting in a classroom. You only get real world experience by working at the coal face.

[dreamer2008]

Wait, wasn't this fixed in 3.1 or 3.2? That's what I remember was in the changelog, that they fixed the exp gain of pilots...

[CBJ]

Yes, it was adjusted in a recent update to improve increases and make seminars more widely available. Some people still want their pilots to "level up" quickly and in a linear fashion, but that's not how the stars are intended to work. Like many games, increasing skills becomes more difficult (or more specifically, takes longer) as you move further up, with the most advanced behaviours requiring considerably more work to unlock.

[Gimbutz]

I'm not directly involved in this, but the crew skill progression curve intentionally gets much steeper just below 3 stars, which is where you unlock automatic trading. That's one of the most, if not the most, advanced trading behaviour, which lets you fire-and-forget your trader to make credits efficiently on its own.

...
I am up to 40mil with 9 Drills and one Mercury (all automated), fully stocked Cerberus, two Eclipse in a wing, two Discoverers (exploring), all fully stocked, countless satellites, and the skill is still everywhere 2 or lower (3 not reached).
What am I doing wrong??

If the crew of your automated ships seems to not level, consider this as a rule of thumb: The more manual work you put in to make the ship's orders more efficient (e.g. telling it to make profitable trade runs with a full cargo hold), and the more dangerous the orders are (e.g. having a ship help destroy a station), the faster the crew will usually level.

This means that by putting in effort now, and keeping a close eye on what these ships do, you'll unlock advanced automated behaviour that lets them operate more efficiently on their own later on.

Simple automation like sector AutoMine is available from the start, and it's a great way to make credits early and supply your stations hassle-free. Just be aware that this hands-off, fire-and-forget automation from the get-go usually means that the crew will level their skills very, very slowly.

I forgot about the potential level 20 thing because I haven't played for a couple of months.

Regardless, it doesn't alter the fact that whatever you get pilots to do, sometimes for days on end, they don't appear to be gaining xp. It's completely asinine and counter intuitive.

Seminars should be a buff not a means to an end. Nobody got experience by sitting in a classroom. You only get real world experience by working at the coal face.

Seminars are indeed just a buff until you hit the steep part of the curve. Design-wise, at that point, the player is meant to be encouraged to actively seek out high-risk activities, raise their reputation (to gain access to higher level seminars as mission rewards), play guild missions and send their ships on ventures to gain a self-sufficient captain in return.

[Zaemar2017]

Wouldn't it be better if NPC's also had progress bars so that we could actually see any gains taking place?

[CBJ]

For technical reasons associated with the sheer number of NPCs in the game, there is no progress between stars to show. Star increases are chance-based, with the chance for any given qualifying activity resulting in a star increase being calculated to average out at the desired progression rate for the current star level.

Edit: For clarity, by "star increase" I mean one-third star increments. Seminars increase by one full star.

[Kosta88]

If the crew of your automated ships seems to not level, consider this as a rule of thumb: The more manual work you put in to make the ship's orders more efficient (e.g. telling it to make profitable trade runs with a full cargo hold), and the more dangerous the orders are (e.g. having a ship help destroy a station), the faster the crew will usually level.

Why then, even after many evenings of manual trading (yeah, been doing it outside of Argon Prime, basically around Teladi and Paranid space (the first "circle" your discover through the highway), they are still not climbing. I've been doing manual exploring (giving waypoints), manual trading by searching for best profits, and then doing multiple manual runs between factories. My Drills though, what should I do here manually, it's not like I can tell it where to drill. Sector Mine is automatic.

This means that by putting in effort now, and keeping a close eye on what these ships do, you'll unlock advanced automated behaviour that lets them operate more efficiently on their own later on.

Yeah, been doing exactly that.
I actually played X4 a year ago, and I was normally able to achieve level 3, to be able to Auto-Trade, which currently seems impossible.

I am also not finding any missions for level 2 and 3. Only level 1. Same ones I can buy at the station. (are useless of course)

Simple automation like sector AutoMine is available from the start, and it's a great way to make credits early and supply your stations hassle-free. Just be aware that this hands-off, fire-and-forget automation from the get-go usually means that the crew will level their skills very, very slowly.

So if one and the other is not working, what am I left with????
Honestly, I have a feeling the game is very bugged, and am actually slowly sorry I bought it - I loved X3, so I thought it can't be that bad.
Btw. got it on Steam, 10 hours gameplay are of course over, so no returns, and I am surely on the latest patch, since Steam updates automatically: 3.30.

[CBJ]

So if one and the other is not working, what am I left with????

It IS working. If you just leave pilots doing the same thing over and over again, then will learn very slowly. As previous posters have explained, you need to give them more attention or some training using seminars if you want them to advance more quickly.

[Kosta88]

So if one and the other is not working, what am I left with????

It IS working. If you just leave pilots doing the same thing over and over again, then will learn very slowly. As previous posters have explained, you need to give them more attention or some training using seminars if you want them to advance more quickly.

As I said: I tried seminars on couple of them. And I DID make them, manually, command after command, do other stuff. But a miner remains a miner really. I can only move it to another sector. That doesn't make any sense though.

[CBJ]

I've re-read all your posts in this thread, and I can't find where you said you'd tried seminars. Did you try them recently, or quite a while ago? They were changed in a recent update from increasing a skill by one third of a star to increasing it by a full star.

[EGO_Aut]

Any station trader deals with 1&2 * Seminars, sometimes they are out of stock but if not very cheap to stock up.

Check (faction) missions to get 3&4 * Seminars.

I have never seen anything above a 1 Star seminar at station traders, they sell "Basic Seminar" (for use on any pilot with less than 1 full star) and "1 Star Seminar" (for use on any pilot less than 2 full stars......

Ok, my bad

But having a nearly 3* Pilot is easy now.