Skill and training Feedback

[zakaluka]

understandably since the players had it really easy in the first releases.

What? The skill leveling system was extremely obtuse and didn't really work at all in 1.0.

[Bubonosaure]

understandably since the players had it really easy in the first releases.

What? The skill leveling system was extremely obtuse and didn't really work at all in 1.0.

It's the X community. They think tedium is difficulty.

[radcapricorn]

And the ranting on the skill system goes on... understandably since the players had it really easy in the first releases. Don't blame them Egosoft.

Yep. Players are not to blame. In first releases there was a bug where one could hire skilled crew from NPC ships. Then Egosoft patched that out. Then it turned out something was wrong with leveling, and it was difficult to satisfy requirements for behaviors. So they added the chance to get skilled pilots when buying ships. Then in 3.0 they removed that, and then it took 20 pages of discussion and someone digging up the scripts to find out there's still something wrong with leveling.

What has this to do with economy? Nothing whatsoever.

Exactly. You can sustain economy locally even with untrained crew. This thread, however, is about training crew to unlock those advanced behaviors and make pilots behave, uh, less bad in combat.

Just put a novice (1/3 of a star) pilot on explore for 3 hrs. He turns out 3 stars WITH the right morale.

In 3.10? The Explore command is broken in 3.10.

[Raevyan]

Just put a novice (1/3 of a star) pilot on explore for 3 hrs. He turns out 3 stars WITH the right morale.

In 3.10? The Explore command is broken in 3.10.

Did the explore command work at some point? I tried using explore command prior to 3.10 and my pilot did not even gain 1/3 of a star.

[radcapricorn]

Did the explore command work at some point? I tried using explore command prior to 3.10 and my pilot did not even gain 1/3 of a star.

It did work, sort of. You could be running an explorer for hours with no progress, or it could go to 3+ stars quite quickly, or the mix of the two. In 3.10 the explorers just fly around one point, not really exploring, so if they continue gaining experience from that, that'd be like a bug in a bug

[StoneLegionYT]

I myself given up and went back to using mods. That being said I noticed the exploring did not work also but if you go into the actual behavior menu's it's level 3 If I recall? So might not be working just because it's not even level 3?

[GCU Grey Area]

In 3.10? The Explore command is broken in 3.10.

Really? Seems to be working in my game:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/jlx8z59iq0btn ... 1.jpg?dl=0

By the way, seems service crew can now level Piloting. Pilot in that image was one of the service crew I put in command purely to test Explore. Replaced my usual 3* pilot, just to see if Explore was level dependent. Was actually the very first time that crew member had ever flown a ship - had 0* Piloting when initially hired. Indeed, on further checking, ALL of the service crew on my personal Alligator now have 1-2* Piloting:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/zsnql2n9xn8bm ... 1.jpg?dl=0
Guess I've had the ship for around 1 day game time.

[radcapricorn]

In 3.10? The Explore command is broken in 3.10.

Really? Seems to be working in my game:

Yes, really

[LameFox]

I've never had ships make any significant gains from exploring, even prior to 3.10. They'd be at it for days of active game time and I don't think I ever saw one over 2 stars after.

Don't think they ever got the hang of opening lock boxes either lol. Lost count how many I gave them the go-ahead to open, but they never had any cargo or inventory to deposit after.

[StoneLegionYT]

I've never had ships make any significant gains from exploring, even prior to 3.10. They'd be at it for days of active game time and I don't think I ever saw one over 2 stars after.

Don't think they ever got the hang of opening lock boxes either lol. Lost count how many I gave them the go-ahead to open, but they never had any cargo or inventory to deposit after.

I tried like around 20 of them for like 30 hours with hardly any improvement. I agree it does not work well

[GCU Grey Area]

In 3.10? The Explore command is broken in 3.10.

Really? Seems to be working in my game:

Yes, really

That's a mapping bug. It's not specific to Explore. Can happen regardless of what orders the ship's running, can even happen with a ship flown by the player, so don't think it's a problem with Explore per se.

[radcapricorn]

That's a mapping bug. It's not specific to Explore. Can happen regardless of what orders the ship's running, can even happen with a ship flown by the player, so don't think it's a problem with Explore per se.

Read the whole thread

[Pares]

I tried the explore command too, and I don't know what is it supposed to do, but it certainly doesn't seem like exploring to me. And of course it didn't help leveling the pilots either. The update trade offers command also seem to be borked, there is no apperent logic in how it revisits known stations, it takes an insanely long time, it goes in one direction, then back to the center, then another direction, and sometimes doesn't even visit all stations. But the important thing is that none of these commands helped leveling the crew in any way.

[LameFox]

The update trade offers command also seem to be borked, there is no apperent logic in how it revisits known stations, it takes an insanely long time, it goes in one direction, then back to the center, then another direction, and sometimes doesn't even visit all stations. But the important thing is that none of these commands helped leveling the crew in any way.

By sheer coincidence, I've just told a ship to do the default behaviour version of this. First it flew one way without travel drive, then seemingly used it on the way back to the middle. Now it's inexplicably flown below, above, and again below the map plane in a way that has brought it into sensor range of zero additional stations.

I just checked and its actual command is:

Fly to Grand Exchange I
Explore

So apparently revisit known stations literally has nothing to do with revisiting known stations.

[Sentinel-Ghost]

Adding a simple 'experience bar' with understandable values for each crew member would go a long way to improving the situation. Because at the moment I have no idea if anything i'm getting my ships to do is actually having an affect on levels at all.

Also the 'crew seminars' are confusing as sometimes a crew member can 'learn' one - and other times they can't (the option being greyed out) with no actual information or explanation as to how they work / should be used.*

*Lack of information/explanation seems to be frustratingly common across all aspects of X4 unfortunately.

[Axeface]

Recruited freighters can do NOTHING that is relevant to them

Just put a novice (1/3 of a star) pilot on explore for 3 hrs. He turns out 3 stars WITH the right morale. Does that answer any question?

No it does not. Why are we even talking about explore? I said relevant to them. Just like I think its ridiculous to send a freighter out killing xenon to level the pilot, its ridiculous to have to send them out exploring.
Plus. Explore currently isnt working in my game Classic.

I currently have a test ship. As the only trading I can do with my stupid imbecile freighter pilot is manual ones, I have a freighter where I have queued up looooads of really high quality trades, and i'm taking screenshots periodically. I was told this works. We will see.

[Scoob]

I still find that, in certain professions, my Crew are quite simply NOT gaining experience at all. Period. I have miners that have been mining for 40+ hrs and have made tens of millions of credits in selling what they mine, yet NONE of their levels have increased. I REALLY need my miners to improve so they can be "promoted" into a Advanced Auto Miners please.

My combat crews do improve over time, but they gain Morale more than they gain Piloting, oddly. My Explorers have gained precisely zero in several hours. Ships I sent to collect Lock Boxes seemed to get to two stars Piloting quite quickly - but then I did use ONE ship to collect LOTS of Lock Boxes. This ship no longer appears to gain levels from this activity.

I concur that it's really silly that I have to send a pilot on one ship to Shoot stuff, in order to move him to another ship to be a miner. Skills should have been deeper in this regard with a general "Piloting" skill, then a "Combat" skill, with Mining and Trading skills also. Perfectly clear and obvious. Currently, a Pilot that's done nothing but Combat is suddenly an accomplished Miner and canny Trader? Really?

Of course, these "skills" are very unlikely to change, but they're still a little silly and, for miners, broken. Also, this whole random chance to gain a level rather than absolute chance to gain a level based on hours worked is also far from ideal.

Regarding the "Improved in 3.10" thing. Well, not really. Sure, I can find the odd (rare) two-star Pilot, but they're not really of any use to me. Plus, having to MANUALLY find decent crew for those 100 Fighters I just built because the default crew sucks...erm, nope, not gonna do that lol. Also, I landed on a station the other night, just looking for a basic (cheap) Pilot for a fresh capture and every NPC on the station costs between 60k and 150k credits to hire and are ALL bloody two star+ Engineers. Engineering is the ONE skill that levels up in no time, so is the one skill we really don't need to find NPC's for.

The current Crew system has broken aspects of the game for me. I've been playing my current save over 60 hours now and I have exactly ONE Crew member that's hit three stars in Piloting. He got that experience from Combat, so turning him into an Auto Miner seems a little daft. Plus it's clunky moving Pilots around vs. normal crew.

"Piloting" needs to be split into distinct skills, so:

Piloting - general Piloting skill, how quickly the ship can manoeuvre, dock, take off, navigate etc. Gained slowly by normal flying around, more hours actually flying = more experience.
Combat * - specific to Combat Manoeuvres, evasive tactics, firing weapons on target etc. Gained by actively shooting and hitting stuff - not just for a kill, though that could provide a bonus.
Mining - Basically that, efficiency when it comes to finding "good" asteroids to mine. Gained by Mining, skill gained every n units of raws collected.
Trading - How smart and reactive they are to making trades. Gained by buying and selling with a slight bonus for particularly good profits perhaps.
Exploring - efficiency of exploration pattern with higher levels correctly using LRS to identify objects. Gained by exploring, uncovering new stations etc.

I'd patch this in by setting all those skills to the current Piloting level, then let them learn from there. These would also unlock skill-specific things like Formations, Auto-Trade and Mining etc. as they do now.

* Combat is a specifically interesting one. Seeing a high-level Pilot fight is quite an improvement on a lower-level one. But such things could also impact their accuracy for example. I.e. you might outfit a Rookie Pilot in a ship with "space shotgun" type weapons as they don't rely on accuracy so much. A higher level pilot might be able to make better use of weapons that require more precise aim, for example.

With Piloting (and Morale to some degree) currently governing a Crew members ability in all five of those skills, well, it's not quite ideal in my view.

All that said, I'd happily settle for crew simply gaining skills properly as they work. There's no way that three Pilots of mine, who've been mining for 60 hrs at least constantly shouldn't have gained several ranks in that time, but none have. None have exceeded the two stars they started with - I gave them Seminars - and any mission that offers a better Seminar is NOT one I wish to do. At all.

Regarding the whole "chance to gain a skill" thing. My understanding, based on how it's explained elsewhere, is by doing certain action the crew member has a percent chance (very low apparently) to gain a point - aka 1/3rd of a Star. It seems it's very easy to NEVER gain a star, despite being very busy - see my Sector Miners as a solid example. If the game was a bit more cumulative in this regard it'd work better. I.e. each time they do an action, the chance of getting a Point goes up slightly. So, they first time a Miner fills up his cargo with Ore (for example) he has a 5% chance of gaining a point (1/3rd of a Star) when he's at 0 Stars Piloting. The next time he fills up, he's got a 7.5% chance, then 10% chance etc. So he WILL eventually level up that one point. So, every potential point-gaining action increases his point gain chance by 50% (as per my example, not a set number) for the next time they do a qualifying action. Obviously at lower levels this "chance" will ramp up more quickly, but it'd be less at higher levels. However, rather than the chance being the same, low amount every time at a given current level, it would go up with experience so to speak.

I would love a full breakdown of how certain activities allow pilots to gain an experience point, because it's really not working so well with activities outside of Combat it seems.

Scoob.

[lordmuck]

Doubt Egosofts devs are even reading this, however, will we ever be able to tick the box in the upgrade/buy ship crew sections "captain" to get a "captain" when we send a ship to be fixed / upgraded after having a bailout? It really is stupid having to assign a 0 star crew member as a pilot

[Gregorovitch]

I'm about 25 hours into my 3.10 game now and in simple terms my experience of it so far is this, baring in mind it's early days I guess:

1. All crew start at 2* basically ('cos the seminars to get 2* are plentiful and cheap as chips)

2. Getting from 2* to 3* is virtually impossible. I have not seen a single 2* seminar nor has any crew of any profession doing any activity achieve discernible progress from two to three stars.

3. I have three 3* seminars with nobody to give them to.

4. The limit of 2* crew doesn't seem to make much of a difference to civilian activities. stations and station miners and traders work fine with a two gate operational limit. There are plenty of locations for sector miners to work.

5. With Autotraders now out of the game I have experimented with a couple of Distribute Wares traders. One is working OK trading a few things like quantum tubes and microchips. I haven't the faintest idea how much money it makes and no practical means of finding out (I have far too much to do to sit there watching it with pencil and notebook in hand for two or three hours even if I had the patience).The other does nothing at all no matter what wares I assign or where I set it off from. I don't know why. It just sits there "looking for trades" indefinitely even when I plonk it right next to a factory with a mountain of wares at rock bottom price. Not surprisingly my enthusiasm for DW traders has waned.

6. So does the lack of standalone automatic traders and expert miners matter? For me, no. Stations and sector miners do fine. For the overall economy? I don't know. One thing for sure is that the fair amount of trading I did in pre-3.0 games is just not happening in this game. My impression is the other factions are (so far) doing a better job economically than pre-3.0 so probably the answer to that one is no as well.

7. On the combat side I put together a small fleet of a Cerberus + three assorted well speced heavy fighters and went hunting P. I seminared up all pilots to 2*. Killed about five or six P's plus assorted M and N's. I can detect no discernible progress in any of the pilots third stars therefore I haven't the faintest idea, not even the remotest inkling, how much combat experience/kills/damage inflicted etc adds up to third star's worth for combat pilots.

8. And partly because of that, I have no idea at all what impact star ratings have on combat pilots fighting performance and of course no way to find out. All I know is roughly what to expect from 2* pilots in S and M ships.

9. But then I didn't in pre-3.0 either. The only material change in the new system seems to be I have no standalone traders of expert miners in this game and have no expectations of getting any before they are no longer relevant. That's all that's happened really for me.

[edit]

Actually thinking about it there's one big change in the way the game plays now for me without autotraders - I don't care about the HOP anymore (or anybody else in principle if my stations don't serve them). This means I'm feeling much more in the mood to take sides, go to war. In previous game I haven't felt that way, I've felt like it was in my interest to suck up to everybody and of course the less folk trying to trash my autotraders the better.

I think I might rather like this change.

[Nort The Fragrent]

A Pilot is not a pilot if he/she cannot perform a simple thing like pilot the ship.
So to say my pilot has 2.9 star rating is irrelevant if the idiot cannot do the job required.
PILOT THE SHIP.
I have spent hour after hour with seminars, swopping pilots, trying to get them to do anything.
If they have less than 3 stars they are not pilots. They are hopeless.
This star debacle is ridiculous, frustrating, stupid, and is putting a very big wall up.

WHY ?

This game in it’s 3rd iteration had very good things going for it, the Split , the new sectors.
But now this Non pilot issue is ( I really want to swear ) bite my tongue….

The game for me has died, I can not do anything I want,
I can build stations, but I can not for the life of me get a frigin pilot to do any piloting.


ARrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.