What is the best way to get a good crew? (especially pilots)

[Gween]

Like in the title, I'm struggling to get good people for my ships. My auto-miner Pilots seem to not level at all (or it's so slow that I don't notice it) and when I find a 3 Star Pilot walking around on some station, they want me to pay 60 million credits (seriously, that's more than my whole fleet costs)

I have a few seminars to get them to 2 stars, but useful things like Autotrade or universemining are still blocked on that level.

So 2 Questions:
Am I missing some way to get proper pilots?
Is it true that high level crew members increase the accuracy of my capitalship turrets?

[Falcrack]

Continue to petition Egosoft to change their nonsensical pilot leveling system.

[EGO_Aut]

War (Faction) Missions offer Seminars up to 4*.

Stationtraders have Basic and 1*

Construction ships help leveling Engeneer and Moral Skill, it goes real fast.
With good Moral skillimg Pilots goes faster

Khaak fighters @Station #Matrix 451 is ideal for a carrier (to repair) full with fighters defending position. But its limited to 3* pilot and 4* moral skill.

[Gween]

War (Faction) Missions offer Seminars up to 4*.

Stationtraders have Basic and 1*

Construction ships help leveling Engeneer and Moral Skill, it goes real fast.
With good Moral skillimg Pilots goes faster

Ah thanks, I'll try the construction ship training then!

[Raevyan]

Buy 50 S fighter and set them to protect Position near Khaak stations. Exploiting infinite respawn is the only benefit those stations have in X4.

Other than that, maybe another few 12+ pages long discussions about the flawed rng leveling system might convince Egosoft to think about a better solution.

[Clownmug]

Starting with sector miners is fine. Really any automated task will work, just focus on the morale stat rather than piloting itself. If you check the personnel management menu you'll usually have a few employees with 3 star morale after only a few hours of work. Give them 1 each of basic, 1 star and 2 star seminars and now you've got 3-star pilots for auto-trade or advanced mining.

The basic and 1 star seminars can be bought from traders so the only real work you have to do is completing missions for 2 star seminar rewards. You can make it real easy by flying around the highway loop and looking for easy missions to pop-up like for deploying satellites/laser towers or passenger transport.

Also crew assigned to your own ship will gain morale really fast so that's something to keep in mind...

[GCU Grey Area]

You can make it real easy by flying around the highway loop and looking for easy missions to pop-up like for deploying satellites/laser towers or passenger transport.

Agree with this. Also you can make it even easier by delegating satellite deployment missions etc to other ships. I keep a few Dragon Raiders around with engines & chassis modified for ludicrous speed & a full load of sats (etc), specifically so completing these missions is as quick & easy as:
1. open map
2. select "Dragon Raider [lots of sats]"
3. order it to deploy a satellite at the appropriate location
4. close map & do something more interesting while waiting for mission complete notification (never takes long with the way I've got those Dragons kitted out).
Can be useful to give such ships the Dock & Wait behaviour (so they automatically return to HQ when the job's done). That way don't even have to bother telling them what to do afterwards.

[Alm888]

So 2 Questions:
Am I missing some way to get proper pilots?
Is it true that high level crew members increase the accuracy of my capitalship turrets?

1) Seminars are the only viable option. Do not be upset about those 60+Mil pilots. They are quest-givers and will refuse to be hired even if you do have that sum ("Sorry, I'm busy right now."). Farming Khaak is an option, but it caps at 9 exp. (3★), so no 5★ (15 exp.) pilots for you via KHA farming.
2) I do not know. Skilled crew contributes to overall ship performance (whatever that means), but due to my play-style I've yet to get myself a destroyer with a load of clear 5★ servicemen, let alone compare their performance against an unstaffed/rookie-staffed destroyer.
Your best bet is to fully staff 10+ CV's and send them perpetually constructing "EXP-grinder stations" (consisting of nothing more than hundreds of connectors).

[Clownmug]

You can make it real easy by flying around the highway loop and looking for easy missions to pop-up like for deploying satellites/laser towers or passenger transport.

Agree with this. Also you can make it even easier by delegating satellite deployment missions etc to other ships. I keep a few Dragon Raiders around with engines & chassis modified for ludicrous speed & a full load of sats (etc), specifically so completing these missions is as quick & easy as:
1. open map
2. select "Dragon Raider [lots of sats]"
3. order it to deploy a satellite at the appropriate location
4. close map & do something more interesting while waiting for mission complete notification (never takes long with the way I've got those Dragons kitted out).
Can be useful to give such ships the Dock & Wait behaviour (so they automatically return to HQ when the job's done). That way don't even have to bother telling them what to do afterwards.

Oh, nice tip. I completely forgot you could order ships to use deployables, that definitely makes things easier.

[Solomon Short]

Personally I find that even OOS remote deployment of satellites, laser towers, & mines to fulfill missions is more miss than hit (except when the mines blow up the ship deploying them of course, which would be both).

[GCU Grey Area]

the mines blow up the ship deploying them.

Precisely why I ALWAYS use friend/foe mines. They're a bit more expensive but pose far less risk to the ship deploying them &, if they need to be deployed near a station, won't go boom every time a civilian vessel flies near one (unless they're a criminal). They're also a perfectly good replacement for standard mines as far as mission requirements are concerned.

[Tanvaras]

Mods.... Cause the default leveling system is completely derp!

I always have a heavy modded game and a vanilla game... But, This is the only issue I have with X4, its extreme snail pace pilot leveling system. So alas I need to run at least a single mod on my "try to play as close to vanilla" game. So no ventures for me as I can not enjoy the game enough to be playing it as a job instead of a fun enjoyable game when it takes eon's to get a pilot to 3 stars from general duties that they are preforming. (Yes missions can reward skill books etc, but I not always running missions and would like to see some actual skill up from pilots doing their jobs!).