Skill and training Feedback

[radcapricorn]

The feedback was mixed. Many people understood, and agreed, that not everything in the game should happen quickly, or be tied to the amount of money you have.

I haven't seen people objecting much to that. What I do see people objecting to (and do so myself) is this insistence on babysitting, coupled with a, honestly, inappropriate UI for such babysitting. Manually giving each and every crew member multiple seminars, where each such gift requires repetitive clunky actions, is just a chore.

Pacing progression is a great goal. But please, try to look for a way of doing so without driving players nuts.

[pref]

The feedback was mixed. Many people understood, and agreed, that not everything in the game should happen quickly

Think almost everyone would agree to this.

The problem is the amount of repetitive UI and in-game interactions this requires.

[lordpazuzu]

I love the way progression is right now. In my current game I have billions rolling very fast, and it will be very boring to just buy and armada and to be efficient in terms of stars paying for this in 1 min.... and "bum" I have the best pilots in the universe on my new fleet. What I'm doing is having very skilled pilots to have all the crew of noobies (massive crew trabsner dont need 100000 clicks by the way) and assign fleets to patrol, soft invade, etc. This way I have like a hierachy of fleets for training without doing 1000000 click like most people says. I dont feel is grindy, the only thing that I thing is needed is a way to know when your crew is progressing, maybe with some graphs or notifications for mass crew.

[pref]

What I'm doing is having very skilled pilots to have all the crew of noobies.

Last i checked ship crew did not gain relevant skills for trading, and pilots only gained skill when eliminating a target (which was weighted on target vs own fleet dps/ship count).
Tried this on a khaak station where i got no strong opposition but supply of enemies was constant and it was so slow i gave up on it.

Has this changed?

[lordpazuzu]

Yesterday, the Xenons were invading ianamus Zura IV, I assigned 20 nemesis completely new out of shipyard to my elite fleet. They were behaving very good against Xenon squadrons, the thing I did was to not eleminate the new Xenon stations so they continually drop batches of ships trying to continue the invation. All the nemesis were leveling up at good rate. So I think is all about to 'THINK' the best way you can mass train your fleets without paying for everything, yes you have to be patience, but is also fun to see how your shops crew progresses and needs also your attention without using 10000 clicks!

[Matthew94]

Yesterday, the Xenons were invading ianamus Zura IV, I assigned 20 nemesis completely new out of shipyard to my elite fleet. They were behaving very good against Xenon squadrons, the thing I did was to not eleminate the new Xenon stations so they continually drop batches of ships trying to continue the invation. All the nemesis were leveling up at good rate. So I think is all about to 'THINK' the best way you can mass train your fleets without paying for everything, yes you have to be patience, but is also fun to see how your shops crew progresses and needs also your attention without using 10000 clicks!

Your solution is just to farm enemies with a massive army. At that point why even bother with leveling up normal pilots when you've got the strength of numbers to toy with the enemy?

[lordpazuzu]

Yesterday, the Xenons were invading ianamus Zura IV, I assigned 20 nemesis completely new out of shipyard to my elite fleet. They were behaving very good against Xenon squadrons, the thing I did was to not eleminate the new Xenon stations so they continually drop batches of ships trying to continue the invation. All the nemesis were leveling up at good rate. So I think is all about to 'THINK' the best way you can mass train your fleets without paying for everything, yes you have to be patience, but is also fun to see how your shops crew progresses and needs also your attention without using 10000 clicks!

Your solution is just to farm enemies with a massive army. At that point why even bother with leveling up normal pilots when you've got the strength of numbers to toy with the enemy?

To prepare a full scale universe invasion I'm just using my enemy to grow up even more.

[Thurgret]

After six hours played on a new game, I'm really fed up with this new skill system. I only have seven ships - I did the PHQ missions and got money together manually. None of their crew appear to have leveled up through doing things, only when I found seminars. I landed on many stations and could only find 1 star seminars, which still falls short of the requirement for auto-trading/mining. Going around all those station traders was tedious.

If this is how Egosoft intends to have it for the base game, so be it - it was a poor 'new player' experience for me - but does anyone have suggestions for mods to adjust it to be faster or to make 2 star seminars more readily available?

[radcapricorn]

Can't advise on mods (I don't use any until all the patching is done, which would take a while), but try guild missions. They do provide 2+ star seminars as rewards.

[birdtable]

This may not popular .... Maybe Ego should drag their heels a bit on this one,, On balance I do not see many new players complaining,,, just the big Empire players (which is totally understandable) ..There are mods already which increase the chance of finding better qualified staff and there certainly will be new mods introduced quite quickly... Started a new game about (8 hrs in game) and for myself I am not having any problem in re-thinking my strategy for advancing crew ,, initially I was very frustrated , then just frustrated, now I have adjusted..

[Gavrushka]

I think it's been officially mentioned that levelling pilots and crew is still a work in progress. - A change has already been made, since the pre release 3.0 betas, and I don't doubt there'll be further changes in the near future. As irksome as it is to hear for those who really consider this a gamebreaker, there are gonna be some pressing issues to deal with now Vendetta has dropped.

Don't shoot me, but *ducks* - be patient!

[Matthew94]

This may not popular .... Maybe Ego should drag their heels a bit on this one,, On balance I do not see many new players complaining,,, just the big Empire players (which is totally understandable) ..There are mods already which increase the chance of finding better qualified staff and there certainly will be new mods introduced quite quickly... Started a new game about (8 hrs in game) and for myself I am not having any problem in re-thinking my strategy for advancing crew ,, initially I was very frustrated , then just frustrated, now I have adjusted..

I think saying "mods will fix it" is a complete non-point.
Many people, including myself, don't play with any mods whatsoever.

Also, new players won't complain because they're just learning the game.
They're not going to waltz into this thread and pick out this, amongst the dozens of other issues they probably have in learning the ropes, to agree about this issue.

[Ghatanathoa6]

This change was idiotic. I have hundreds of hours sunk into this game. I was so hyped to play the expansion. And now I'm ready to shelve it and walk away. Horrible....

[Faraboot]

I honestly don't understand the need for this to be implemented in the game. Why are you forcing me to attend to every ship I own?! Do you even know how hard is to manualy direct traders and miners around the map?!?! Or should I jhust stick to 1 ship and 'enjoy' the game..

I really wish egosoft can stop going 1 step forward and then 2 steps back with this game, it's getting really frustrating at this point.

[CBJ]

Please at least take the time to read the full discussion. There is more on it here and some responses here, here and here. We're actively discussing ways to simplify the process of applying the skill training that you have available through seminars.

[chew-ie]

Situation is not as dire as sometimes described:

• Miners need zero manual input

• Ware distribution only takes 2 stars

• Autotrading is meant as a late game mechanism

[tomchk]

I look forward to more streamlined solutions for training. This issue just showed up on reddit. :/ https://www.reddit.com/r/X4Foundations/ ... in_levels/

[Gavrushka]

This change was idiotic. I have hundreds of hours sunk into this game. I was so hyped to play the expansion. And now I'm ready to shelve it and walk away. Horrible....

Ah, that was my initial reaction too, considering I was assigning 100 - 200 new skilled pilots each day, and they'd taken away the facility to acquire them.

But now I simply assign unskilled pilots to work for stations, and level others by sector mining. - It took a day or two of endless grumpiness to accept the new *temporary* status quo, but one thing I did notice is that each ship with its half-baked pilot ended up with a more skilled, high morale crew which, when seminar application is made more fluid, can all go on to be great captains. - Egosoft are working on further improvements.

[Faraboot]

Please at least take the time to read the full discussion. There is more on it here and some responses here, here and here. We're actively discussing ways to simplify the process of applying the skill training that you have available through seminars.

From what I gather, players are all on the same page, NOBODY WANTED THIS!.. and you're directing me to read a bunch of posts saying the exact same thing.

[hannihanagarth]

Okay, dumb question -

I have seen at least 5 different 2-5 Star Pilots running around on stations, but they have always been mission targets and were therfore not availlable for hiring, which I feel is excessively gruesome to rub their existence under our noses and then just go "HAHA ! Can't have him !!"

I do understand you want a slower progression, but what about Missions that give you the ability to hire those ?

This would make hiring good personnel an activity and not just clicking around.
Mission types could reflect the type of personnel you are seeking, like "Go and poach the manager of our competitor by making him an offer he can't turn down", don't get money for it, just a bit standing and a competent Manager.

Or make it always multistage Missions, like 1. "Poor Mother/Father [NAME] lost contact to her Pilot-son,went missing with his squad, go find him somwhere around [Sector]" 2. When found, you obviously need to free him out of a life and death situation, where he floats with nearly no oxygen in his spacesuit around under heavy fire 3. You need to rescue his beloved ship 4. You need to bring him home and get a thankful Pilot and a Fine Meal.