Pilots skill

[dtpsprt]

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.

All said and done CBJ the point still remains that skills are progressing too slow, except for the Managers. I wonder, has Egosoft gave a thought to the fact that all this micromanaging just prevents the players to enjoy the (really beautiful) scenery that Egosoft created? One thing contradicts the other. We spend too much time with our nose into the map and when not we have to have a pilot in our personal ship and have him carry us everywhere, both to gain experience and because this way it's like moving with constant scanning which reveals lockboxes etc. So... the game could be without graphics, so to speak, and nobody would notice the difference...

[Kosta88]

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.

My bad. I didn't mention it. But yes, I did try them. (1* seminars, Pilot and Management). But 1* doesn't bring me a thing for 2/3* Pilots, and as I said, I didn't come across any 2/3* seminars in the missions, only 1*.

[pref]

To get some numbers, i got 2 drug plexes which utilises its traders to near 100% (not cargo but time wise). All captains were rookies from the SY. Typical commission is ~150% or a bit above, typical trade volume is about 100 units.
One works since ~3 game days, it has 3 near 3 star captains now (out of ~200), most is 2 stars or slightly above.

Another works for about a game week and it had 1 4* captain, and 10 +3* out of ~40 ships. These were all close to or at 2* when 3.0 and the skill increase change was released.
If the skill change was implemented in 3.3 then they are working since 3-4 game days or so on it.

Anyway setting up a smaller busy plex early with small and cheap ships can get you a small fleet of 3* guys by the time you need auto traders for more a precise trade config without any missions or seminars.
Though seminars are a good way to get them to 2*, and so no skill increase from trades is lost on easy to apply skills so you might spare a game day or so like that.
At that point using them as generic traders is a waste as they earn an insignificant amount compared to plexes or a SY, and can get killed too easily running on non secured trade routes.

So in essence i'd consider ATs as a mid/late game extra config possibility to make my empire run more smoothly. Not some mandatory feature that ES has to make available right at game start or else `its broken!!!!`.
Cash is so easy to earn anyways.

[Kosta88]

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.

All said and done CBJ the point still remains that skills are progressing too slow, except for the Managers. I wonder, has Egosoft gave a thought to the fact that all this micromanaging just prevents the players to enjoy the (really beautiful) scenery that Egosoft created? One thing contradicts the other. We spend too much time with our nose into the map and when not we have to have a pilot in our personal ship and have him carry us everywhere, both to gain experience and because this way it's like moving with constant scanning which reveals lockboxes etc. So... the game could be without graphics, so to speak, and nobody would notice the difference...

I will definitely second this. Previous games and earlier versions had me flying way more, enjoying combat and just exploring, but as of now, I am mostly drilled down in the map view, and controlling my ship via a pilot in the seat I would otherwise be occupying, only rarely stepping in. Sad, very sad really.

[pref]

I am mostly drilled down in the map view, and controlling my ship via a pilot in the seat I would otherwise be occupying, only rarely stepping in. Sad, very sad really.

But why? Pulling up stations is cheap. They will have a 3-5* trade fleet in no time due to the manager.
More config options, needs a little thinking to find a good location and wares to sell, and is automated.
If you want to supply specific factories then DW is usable now with blacklists.

No need to keep 10s-100s of ships doing random trades (and that would really be a fire and forget cash cow anyway in a game that throws lots of cash at you for low effort).

If ES implements the command loop thing that will be nice though as it will allow targeting specific stations not just sectors.

[Kpla Keltak]

i have a few hundred 3 star pilots. But they wont progress on the piloting aspect anymore.
I set up training facilities for fighter pilots using Xenon and Kha'ak for the turkey shoot.
pilots progress quickly to 3 star now, even my miners are doing well, but that's it. the pilots rating can go up with other elements such as moral and management etc. But piloting stays at 3 stars.
I play vanilla and did a restart after Split vendetta. I've got about 160 multiplex factories with prob a few thousands of miners. I have approx 20-30 raptors fully crewed with 120 fighter each. i have many many freighter pilots and some have been going since day 1.
Im on 18 game days and for the last 2-3 game days at least i have not seen any pilot progression. some of my fighter pilots are permanently engaging the xenon who are trying to break out from their 2 sector prison. K, Is, Ps you name it.
but no pilot above 3 star piloting.

[Andramil]

I started my game December 2018.
A few hours ingame I started a level 3 pilot with autotrade.
I made a break in maybe may 2019 until short after split vendetta launch.

Now my pilot is almost level 5, I think 4 2/3
So it is working, but it takes some time!

And I am only by about 5 ingame days!

[dtpsprt]

But why? Pulling up stations is cheap. They will have a 3-5* trade fleet in no time due to the manager.
More config options, needs a little thinking to find a good location and wares to sell, and is automated.
If you want to supply specific factories then DW is usable now with blacklists.

No need to keep 10s-100s of ships doing random trades (and that would really be a fire and forget cash cow anyway in a game that throws lots of cash at you for low effort).

If ES implements the command loop thing that will be nice though as it will allow targeting specific stations not just sectors.

You don't get the point, either of my post or this answer. It's not about making money. It's about enjoying the game, piloting your own ship, galivanting the Galaxy. This can be done ONLY if you have automated trades and you don't have to micromanage every ten minutes or so. This means more Autotraders and Autominers from the start and way less (or better none) stations. BTW this will drastically improve the game performance as well, way less traffic. I have seen posts (and advice) both here and on Steam that the player should avoid visiting systems where he has Station(s) due to drastic fps drop especially when you reach the late mid-last "stages".

[dtpsprt]

I started my game December 2018.
A few hours ingame I started a level 3 pilot with autotrade.
I made a break in maybe may 2019 until short after split vendetta launch.

Now my pilot is almost level 5, I think 4 2/3
So it is working, but it takes some time!

And I am only by about 5 ingame days!

Your opening says it all and makes for the point the OP is trying to make. You started on the first versions of X4, you made your break on V2.60 when pilot progressing was still OK (changed with V3.0). Do you remember the skill of this pilot when you took the break? What we are talking is (in your case) the pilot's progress from the time you came back till now, even though if the total is 5 ingame days I suppose the "comeback" is no older than 1 ingame day so anyway there should be no progress especially in such high ranks (over 4*).

[Alm888]

Some "hard truths" about pilot leveling:

Spoiler

Show

1) Leveling via ship killings is effectively capped at 8 points (2+2/3★):
1.a) the chances to advance into full 3★ (9 points) are 0.12%;
1.b) There are "easy" and "hard" kills. "Hard" kills are capital ship (L or XL) kills performed on a non-capital ship (M or S, or XS ). All other kills are considered "Easy";
1.c) "Easy" kills are hard-capped at 9 points, so a 3★ is the absolute maximum one can get from basically every kill besides torpedoing K's on a frigate/corvette;
1.d) Even though "hard" kills are not capped at 9 points, the chances are going down exponentially because AFAICU, the formula is: chance=base*fallof^cur_points and in case of "ship_kill_hard" the values are base=1, fallof=0.43, limit=15, thus the chances to obtain the 10th point (3 1/3★) would be 1*0.43^9=0,0005026, or 0.05% (it gets worse for 11th point and so on). Corollary: the game does not have enough L and XL enemy ships to level up your crew even if you wage war on everyone!
1.e) There is also the "ship_disable_hard" and "ship_disable_easy" conditions (the later is capped at 9 points) that have fallof=0.55, so it is more productive to cripple capital ships than to blow them up!!!
2) The only viable option for leveling via war effort is station destruction:
2.a) station destruction is not capped and has the values of: base=1, fallof=0.68, limit=15, thus the chances to obtain the 10th point (3 1/3★) are 3.11%;
2.b) station module destruction is capped however, so no progression to 3 1/3★ for anyone.
3) Both "ship_trade_good" and "ship_mine_good" theoretically have the ability to yield the 5★, but their "fallof" values are 0.32 and 0.43 respectively. You can calculate the chances . Also, the "ship_mine_good", while having better stats, is not feasible on practice, because the market gets saturated quickly and one can not maintain lucrative sells of raw materials (no, even if they are technically profitable, the lowest price sells are considered "ship_mine_bad", and that one is not even a real condition for leveling up) Corollary: forget about leveling via mining, exploit leveling via trading by staging up fake trades form and to your own adjacent stations, one of which sells a ware (e. g. "Energy Cells") @ the cheapest price and the other buys @ the highest price possible. Use fastest S ships with smallest cargo holds obtainable (most probably Pegasus).
4) I refuse to consider "ship_opened_lockbox" condition because there are not that many of them, plus some of them are bobby-trapped and are guaranteed to blow up any S-class ship, even though this event has good theoretical stats, it is more likely a way to lose your pilot than to train her/him.

Conclusion: it is not feasible to obtain any significant quantity of 3★ and beyond pilots by "passive activities" (LOL), and missions are the only real option. Missions can provide the possibility to train up at least three 5★ pilots by the time you will have a wharf, a shipyard and a self-sufficient production base capable of producing your own ships in hundreds per hour.

Final conclusion: Player crew is utter trash. Deal with it! But, unlike other factions, player is not bound by quota and can amass hundreds of thousands of destroyers in response to AI's highly skilled elite pilots. And elite or not, one can not survive an attack with numerical disadvantage of 1 to 100.

In this game quantity does not only has a quality all its own, but actually beats the quality with a spiked metal bat to a pulp.

[dtpsprt]

Some "hard truths" about pilot leveling:

Spoiler

Show

1) Leveling via ship killings is effectively capped at 8 points (2+2/3★):
1.a) the chances to advance into full 3★ (9 points) are 0.12%;
1.b) There are "easy" and "hard" kills. "Hard" kills are capital ship (L or XL) kills performed on a non-capital ship (M or S, or XS ). All other kills are considered "Easy";
1.c) "Easy" kills are hard-capped at 9 points, so a 3★ is the absolute maximum one can get from basically every kill besides torpedoing K's on a frigate/corvette;
1.d) Even though "hard" kills are not capped at 9 points, the chances are going down exponentially because AFAICU, the formula is: chance=base*fallof^cur_points and in case of "ship_kill_hard" the values are base=1, fallof=0.43, limit=15, thus the chances to obtain the 10th point (3 1/3★) would be 1*0.43^9=0,0005026, or 0.05% (it gets worse for 11th point and so on). Corollary: the game does not have enough L and XL enemy ships to level up your crew even if you wage war on everyone!
1.e) There is also the "ship_disable_hard" and "ship_disable_easy" conditions (the later is capped at 9 points) that have fallof=0.55, so it is more productive to cripple capital ships than to blow them up!!!
2) The only viable option for leveling via war effort is station destruction:
2.a) station destruction is not capped and has the values of: base=1, fallof=0.68, limit=15, thus the chances to obtain the 10th point (3 1/3★) are 3.11%;
2.b) station module destruction is capped however, so no progression to 3 1/3★ for anyone.
3) Both "ship_trade_good" and "ship_mine_good" theoretically have the ability to yield the 5★, but their "fallof" values are 0.32 and 0.43 respectively. You can calculate the chances . Also, the "ship_mine_good", while having better stats, is not feasible on practice, because the market gets saturated quickly and one can not maintain lucrative sells of raw materials (no, even if they are technically profitable, the lowest price sells are considered "ship_mine_bad", and that one is not even a real condition for leveling up) Corollary: forget about leveling via mining, exploit leveling via trading by staging up fake trades form and to your own adjacent stations, one of which sells a ware (e. g. "Energy Cells") @ the cheapest price and the other buys @ the highest price possible. Use fastest S ships with smallest cargo holds obtainable (most probably Pegasus).
4) I refuse to consider "ship_opened_lockbox" condition because there are not that many of them, plus some of them are bobby-trapped and are guaranteed to blow up any S-class ship, even though this event has good theoretical stats, it is more likely a way to lose your pilot than to train her/him.

Conclusion: it is not feasible to obtain any significant quantity of 3★ and beyond pilots by "passive activities" (LOL), and missions are the only real option. Missions can provide the possibility to train up at least three 5★ pilots by the time you will have a wharf, a shipyard and a self-sufficient production base capable of producing your own ships in hundreds per hour.

Final conclusion: Player crew is utter trash. Deal with it! But, unlike other factions, player is not bound by quota and can amass hundreds of thousands of destroyers in response to AI's highly skilled elite pilots. And elite or not, one can not survive an attack with numerical disadvantage of 1 to 100.

In this game quantity does not only has a quality all its own, but actually beats the quality with a spiked metal bat to a pulp.

And how, pray tell, is the CPU going to respond in, say, 2,000+ player's ships (let's forget about the stations for a moment)? 10 fps on a good day...

That just adds another problem (at least on an earlier stage) to the existing...

[Kosta88]

Oh dear, what did I start here.

Back at X4 now. Left it running since yesterday evening, checked every now and then to see if any problems, seems to be working nice with my 15 ships.
Now got 75mil (no progress on pilots skills), might be time to take a look at building stations - something I did very little in X3, and never in X4 yet. I guess I have to check some videos first.
I wonder if I'll be able to up the skills better...

[Azhukar]

Some "hard truths" about pilot leveling:

Reading all that, I can only assume whoever designed this mess really hates convention and tradition, but loves exceptions and obscurity.

[Kpla Keltak]

Some "hard truths" about pilot leveling:

Spoiler

Show

1) Leveling via ship killings is effectively capped at 8 points (2+2/3★):
1.a) the chances to advance into full 3★ (9 points) are 0.12%;
1.b) There are "easy" and "hard" kills. "Hard" kills are capital ship (L or XL) kills performed on a non-capital ship (M or S, or XS ). All other kills are considered "Easy";
1.c) "Easy" kills are hard-capped at 9 points, so a 3★ is the absolute maximum one can get from basically every kill besides torpedoing K's on a frigate/corvette;
1.d) Even though "hard" kills are not capped at 9 points, the chances are going down exponentially because AFAICU, the formula is: chance=base*fallof^cur_points and in case of "ship_kill_hard" the values are base=1, fallof=0.43, limit=15, thus the chances to obtain the 10th point (3 1/3★) would be 1*0.43^9=0,0005026, or 0.05% (it gets worse for 11th point and so on). Corollary: the game does not have enough L and XL enemy ships to level up your crew even if you wage war on everyone!
1.e) There is also the "ship_disable_hard" and "ship_disable_easy" conditions (the later is capped at 9 points) that have fallof=0.55, so it is more productive to cripple capital ships than to blow them up!!!
2) The only viable option for leveling via war effort is station destruction:
2.a) station destruction is not capped and has the values of: base=1, fallof=0.68, limit=15, thus the chances to obtain the 10th point (3 1/3★) are 3.11%;
2.b) station module destruction is capped however, so no progression to 3 1/3★ for anyone.
3) Both "ship_trade_good" and "ship_mine_good" theoretically have the ability to yield the 5★, but their "fallof" values are 0.32 and 0.43 respectively. You can calculate the chances . Also, the "ship_mine_good", while having better stats, is not feasible on practice, because the market gets saturated quickly and one can not maintain lucrative sells of raw materials (no, even if they are technically profitable, the lowest price sells are considered "ship_mine_bad", and that one is not even a real condition for leveling up) Corollary: forget about leveling via mining, exploit leveling via trading by staging up fake trades form and to your own adjacent stations, one of which sells a ware (e. g. "Energy Cells") @ the cheapest price and the other buys @ the highest price possible. Use fastest S ships with smallest cargo holds obtainable (most probably Pegasus).
4) I refuse to consider "ship_opened_lockbox" condition because there are not that many of them, plus some of them are bobby-trapped and are guaranteed to blow up any S-class ship, even though this event has good theoretical stats, it is more likely a way to lose your pilot than to train her/him.

Conclusion: it is not feasible to obtain any significant quantity of 3★ and beyond pilots by "passive activities" (LOL), and missions are the only real option. Missions can provide the possibility to train up at least three 5★ pilots by the time you will have a wharf, a shipyard and a self-sufficient production base capable of producing your own ships in hundreds per hour.

Final conclusion: Player crew is utter trash. Deal with it! But, unlike other factions, player is not bound by quota and can amass hundreds of thousands of destroyers in response to AI's highly skilled elite pilots. And elite or not, one can not survive an attack with numerical disadvantage of 1 to 100.

In this game quantity does not only has a quality all its own, but actually beats the quality with a spiked metal bat to a pulp.

thanks very much for taking the time to give such a detailed explanation regarding Pilot skill levels. very helpful and much appreciated.

[alt3rn1ty]

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.

Given everything I have said in this topic, and after circa 880 hours in game with quite a lot of my NPC pilots constantly engaged in activities which should have had a sniff of experience increase .. How long is enough?

Personally I think I have been very patient trying to get pilots to level up but so far have been very unlucky alf.

Also play styles : Some of us by virtue of how we play the game may never get any increases at all, has development considered play styles to be a factor in getting pilots levelled up ..

Looking at the spoiler by alm888 it doesn't look promising at all if this is correct

Some "hard truths" about pilot leveling:

Spoiler

Show

1) Leveling via ship killings is effectively capped at 8 points (2+2/3★):
1.a) the chances to advance into full 3★ (9 points) are 0.12%;
1.b) There are "easy" and "hard" kills. "Hard" kills are capital ship (L or XL) kills performed on a non-capital ship (M or S, or XS ). All other kills are considered "Easy";
1.c) "Easy" kills are hard-capped at 9 points, so a 3★ is the absolute maximum one can get from basically every kill besides torpedoing K's on a frigate/corvette;
1.d) Even though "hard" kills are not capped at 9 points, the chances are going down exponentially because AFAICU, the formula is: chance=base*fallof^cur_points and in case of "ship_kill_hard" the values are base=1, fallof=0.43, limit=15, thus the chances to obtain the 10th point (3 1/3★) would be 1*0.43^9=0,0005026, or 0.05% (it gets worse for 11th point and so on). Corollary: the game does not have enough L and XL enemy ships to level up your crew even if you wage war on everyone!
1.e) There is also the "ship_disable_hard" and "ship_disable_easy" conditions (the later is capped at 9 points) that have fallof=0.55, so it is more productive to cripple capital ships than to blow them up!!!
2) The only viable option for leveling via war effort is station destruction:
2.a) station destruction is not capped and has the values of: base=1, fallof=0.68, limit=15, thus the chances to obtain the 10th point (3 1/3★) are 3.11%;
2.b) station module destruction is capped however, so no progression to 3 1/3★ for anyone.
3) Both "ship_trade_good" and "ship_mine_good" theoretically have the ability to yield the 5★, but their "fallof" values are 0.32 and 0.43 respectively. You can calculate the chances . Also, the "ship_mine_good", while having better stats, is not feasible on practice, because the market gets saturated quickly and one can not maintain lucrative sells of raw materials (no, even if they are technically profitable, the lowest price sells are considered "ship_mine_bad", and that one is not even a real condition for leveling up) Corollary: forget about leveling via mining, exploit leveling via trading by staging up fake trades form and to your own adjacent stations, one of which sells a ware (e. g. "Energy Cells") @ the cheapest price and the other buys @ the highest price possible. Use fastest S ships with smallest cargo holds obtainable (most probably Pegasus).
4) I refuse to consider "ship_opened_lockbox" condition because there are not that many of them, plus some of them are bobby-trapped and are guaranteed to blow up any S-class ship, even though this event has good theoretical stats, it is more likely a way to lose your pilot than to train her/him.

Looking at that I think I might just decide to do some save editing and have a modified game so that once in this mans life time I may experience having at least one NPC pilot of 4 star or above

The only reason I dont have a modified game is to use Ventures on the off chance one of them may return with a juicy seminar which has never happened, the rest of items from Ventures is just repetitive fluff we don't really need. So I may aswell lose the unmodified status.

Ship killing apparently is capped so useless
Throwing fighters at a Xenon wall (as mentioned earlier I have cleared 4 Xenon sectors, including all the defences thrown at me in each, swarms, Solar Power plants, Wharfs and Shipyards with even more swarms, quite a few I's and lots of K's) produces nothing but dead Chimeras in sector and occasionally takes out a Rattlesnake / Oddyseus in my fleets, its been a looooong campaign for me.

Lock boxes drive me nuts

Guild Missions I haven't been offered any which result in Seminars

Seems the only chance I have without modifying the game is as suggested in the quoted spoiler, employ some small fast traders as described to maximise the chance of them levelling up which is one of the few methods which "theoretically" can produce a 5*.

[EGO_Aut]

@alt3rn1ty
Please do not write about what we need when you are talking about yourself. (Ventures)

@Alm888
Thx for your enlihhtening spoiler!
My opinion scouting and opening lock boxes by the way is easy done. There are a lot of guild missions offering seminars. And next time i will give the trading hint a chamce.

[Alan Phipps]

I have said this in a few similar threads (and been rubbished for it ) but one fairly reliable vanilla way I find to train up a few pilots is just to have them as reserve pilots of the ships that I regularly fly myself. They don't have to do trades or combat themselves; they just occasionally taxi me about and fly the ship to dock when I suit up to capture something - I do a lot of that. They reliably tick up in piloting and morale over time and when they approach 4 stars in each I then swap them out for 2 star pilots (from seminars) that then start to train up. (That's in a new game started post-3.0 release in case anyone asks.)

[alt3rn1ty]

@alt3rn1ty
Please do not write about what we need when you are talking about yourself. (Ventures)

Fair one, I should have said "just repetitive fluff I don't really need"

[Alm888]

Looking at that I think I might just decide to do some save editing and have a modified game so that once in this mans life time I may experience having at least one NPC pilot of 4 star or above

No need to resort to cheating, when you have the option of exploiting!

Spoiler

Show

1)Just get some friends among the Teladi Company;
2) Make yourself a cushy office in the "Eighteen Billion";
3) Start performing the Teladi Trade Guild missions, namely the "Price Dumping". It always is about scouting for resources and nothing more;
4) Discover all the required spots in all relevant sectors and camp a ship with some probes in each of them, thus you won't spend any time flying and will just have to issue the "Place Probe / Recover Deployable" command pair;
5) in a short time you will find youself at +30 with Teladi Company, so missions with 2★ crew seminars will spawn quite reliably;
6) in the meantime monitor other guild missions, as they are re-rolled each time and will have even the epic "Advanced Seminars for 4★ Crewmembers";
7) ???????
Profitssss!

It is a pity, though, that not only players (mainly X3 veterans), but also the developers are so obsessed with that precious "AutoTrade" behavior that they just felt the need to lock any pilot skill progression just short of the desired 3★. Even the "Captain: Specialist" in the guild war missions description is a lie (in practice this "specialist" will have 2+2/3★, just to mock players, apparently ).

In reality, this game is no X3. It is not about "Autotraders" at all! What those who did not play "X: Rebirth" can not grasp is that player can have her/his own Warehouse (AKA "Trading Station"). Unlike X3, stations are dirt-cheap in this game. Just slap some container storage and a S/M dock together, assign a manager, transfer some cash, select the wares to trade and assign any M transport (even piloted by complete imbeciles will do) and you are good! Unlimited amount of "autotraders" without the need for piloting skills.

Besides, considering how hard it is to get yourself a half-decent 3★ pilot, why should anyone even consider wasting this "ace" on a transport ship?!
Transport ships are just dead meat: they are slow as hell, those 2 turrets (sometimes one!) could as well not be there at all, and in fact, on the early stages of the game it is advisable to not waste the money on them (they will neither scare, nor fend off a "SCA Plunderer Falcon Vanguard", or "XEN Raiding Party N"), besides considering the AI in general, there will be a time your NPC will decide to "flee" into the attacker (like, when the station (s)he decided to take shelter in is right that way ), and in case of XEN it is almost certain death (unlike the foolish pirates, who have a tendency to harass from half a map away, the XEN will not give a warning, and by the time a player will see that her/his ship is under attack, it will be too late to do anything).

On the contrary, when I get myself a 5★ "celebrity", I tend to place her/him in the most secure ship possible (Colossus Sentinel with the modded-out 3x TEL shields) and surround that ship with dozens of defending destroyers, carriers and fighters.

Sadly, in this game good pilots are too "good to be used".

I have said this in a few similar threads (and been rubbished for it ) but one fairly reliable vanilla way I find to train up a few pilots is just to have them as reserve pilots of the ships that I regularly fly myself. They don't have to do trades or combat themselves; they just occasionally taxi me about and fly the ship to dock when I suit up to capture something - I do a lot of that. They reliably tick up in piloting and morale over time and when they approach 4 stars in each I then swap them out for 2 star pilots (from seminars) that then start to train up. (That's in a new game started post-3.0 release in case anyone asks.)

I've started to take also service crew into my personal fighter in order for them to gain levels in morale (and for quick swaps). But overall, even with direct training, there will be just 3-4 competent pilots by the time a player has unmatched production base. In this game the material power vastly and utterly outpaces in growth all personnel training options. We are invariably have unstoppable doom fleets piloted by complete morons (with one or two odd qualified pilots). And this gets even more ridiculous in case of skilled service crew for carriers (good luck finding 300+ 5★ Service crew for a Raptor!).

[GCU Grey Area]

"just repetitive fluff I don't really need"

Really? Find the 20-hour Venture is a particularly good source of purple ship mods. My fleet wouldn't be nearly as good as it is if I didn't use Ventures. In particular, since I'm playing as a Split the guns on my destroyers would have a truly abysmal range (barely better than Xenon) if I didn't have a reliable source of components for Expediter weapon mods - each Rattlesnake needs 6 before I consider it ready for action.

Guild Missions I haven't been offered any which result in Seminars

Would advise you to keep looking & also make sure to check individual rewards for stages in chain missions. Can definitely get them from guild missions:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/mepwwh5xjpmz9 ... 1.jpg?dl=0
By the way often don't actually need to do the missions personally. Can delegate sat deployments, crew deliveries, etc to other ships. I'm often running several such missions concurrently & have absolutely no shortage of seminars.