Skill and training Feedback

[Nort The Fragrent]

I have a pilot who has 1.3/4 star’s he has been seminared to the max. So I can not give him any more kicks up the bum.
All he can do is
Dock and wait
Fly and wait,
Follow ship
Hold position.

Revisit known stations.

I have tried getting him to follow one of my other ships to see if that help’s notch him up a grade. But no.

The ship is now docked, waiting for ES to pull their finger out.

Whats the point in playing the game if the game is un playable.

The game has no new pilots !

Who thought that one through?

Sack them.

Get This pilot rubbish sorted, else the game will defiantly plummet like a meteor on entering the atmosphere.

[Pares]

Here are my findigs:
Young gun start, full crew, all noobs, went on to explore the galaxy using high speed reconnaissance, meaning flying by every station in the galaxy extremely closely at 4.5km/s. It took a while, but in the end all crew members have 3-4-5 stars while all they did is look out the window.

Also noticed that the crew in ships flown by me generally progresses a lot more faster.

Meanwhile I was micromanaging my less then one star noob traders, doing hundred thousand credit profit trading runs for tens of hours, barely making any progress. Without seminars they wouldn't have made it to two stars probably even in a hundred hours.

The fact that you buy trade ships whit pilots who can't do anything without you babysitting them is stupid beyond comprehension.

Now, my two star pilots started distributing wares more than ten ingame hours ago, but still didn't make any progress at all towards three stars.

So I read that sending them exploring (in an already exlored galaxy?) will help. Lies. Exploring doesn't even seem to function properly. All they do is fly in random directions aimlessly without any logic to their movement.

So I tried the 'revisit known station' aka 'update trade offers' command. The funny thing is if you give your ships these commands, they will act like you sent them exploring. Even in the behaviours tab it says 'Exploring'. No revisiting known stations. No updating trade offers. Just random aimless flying around with accidentally flying close to some stations. And no progress towards three stars.

So how to get three or more stars? Guild missions. Yes, they locked away all 2+ star seminars behind stupid guild missions, and if that is not enough, if you are lucky to find a mission chain with 2+ star seminars as rewards, they only give you a single seminar! Which means you have to do multiple guild missions to be able to get a single pilot to three stars.

What. The. Hell. Egosoft?

[Tharrg]

What exactly are the objectives of the crew promotion scheme?

It looks to me as if one of the aims is for crew promotions to provide a curb on empire growth. Low-level pilots are useless you need to spend the time developing high-level crew for ships to perform effectively. Using some method or exploit to get lots of early ships is not enough.

In other words, the promotions bottleneck forces you to play the game. In my opinion, it seems a great idea.

The main issue I have are that expensive but highly promoted crew are the norm rather than the exception. I think most individuals you meet should be low stared; Something like 50%-0star, 25%-1star, 12.5%-2star etc.

I think people would be a lot happier about the whole thing if someone who knew what Egosoft was doing here were to explain somewhere noticeable.

[Pares]

In other words, the promotions bottleneck forces you to play the game. In my opinion, it seems a great idea.

Great idea, if it would work. Currently as far as I know there is no clear way to get your pilots from two to three stars by just "playing" if you don't want to do guild missions. They just don't seem to progress by doing regular actions (distribute wares, explore, patrol, etc.). And since a lot things apparently depend on pilot skill (auto trading, performance in combat, etc.), you are either stuck with incompetent crew, or forced to do guild mission for higher level seminars...

I think people would be a lot happier about the whole thing if someone who knew what Egosoft was doing here were to explain somewhere noticeable.

Agreed. Clear description of the intended functionality would help clear things up. How it works, what contributes to progress. Also there MUST be some kind of progress bar indicating the progress between each 1/3 of a star in greater detail, if there is actually some kind of progress being made, and not just random chance like I read in some earlier posts.

[Tharrg]

If crew promotions are intended to make individual crewmembers important, then we should have a way of comparing employees.

We already can pan out the map and look at all our ships. We can select each ship and search and filter the crew members. So combining the two and allow as to search and filter across all employees.

Ex: So I just christened my first Sonra. Naturally, I want my best pilot in it. So I eyeball each of my ships looking for the best pilot, completely missing that she got left in a crew position while transferring or is away in a scout ship exploring or just get confused remembering all the pilots I've seen.

And a nice touch would be an easy to use command to swap crew around using free scout ships.

[radcapricorn]

We already can pan out the map and look at all our ships. We can select each ship and search and filter the crew members. So combining the two and allow as to search and filter across all employees.

We even have a list of all the employees in the player info screen. But we can't do anything with it, only browse. Can't even see the actual skills beyond the current occupational average.

[joppe_k]

We already can pan out the map and look at all our ships. We can select each ship and search and filter the crew members. So combining the two and allow as to search and filter across all employees.

We even have a list of all the employees in the player info screen. But we can't do anything with it, only browse. Can't even see the actual skills beyond the current occupational average.

Indeed. That screen (empire info -> personnel) is kinda useful to monitor progress overall, but it could do with some improvements. Perhaps a dedicated and improved personnel page where you can list, filter and search. That way you can find these precious 3 star pilots should you ever lose track of them.

[joppe_k]

My feedback:
My current game is abt 26 h old by now. I've yet to train a single 3-star pilot. The best one is 2 and 2/3 stars, I think, and she was the very first pilot I recruited to captain my starter ship. I've had her exploring, escorting and now distributing wares.

I've got 8 medium miners running sector automine around the universe and I've yet to see them gain a fraction of a star. I trained them to 2 stars using seminars and they are still 2 stars, so I'm assuming that automining gives exactly 0 exp and that this is a bug.

Right-click explore doesn't seem to work since the ship is mostly spinning in place. I'm pretty sure I had my (first) pilot on explore for several hours of real time and she failed to explore even a fraction of the sector in that time. So I'm assuming that that's bugged as well.

I've added some fighters as defence squadrons for my traders, but I've yet to see any experience from that. It's quite possible that simply escorting a trader doesn't give any exp unless they end up in a fight, so that is probably not a viable way to level up your pilots either.

I've set one pilot to "revisit know stations" to see if that works, but so far I haven't seen an increase. It's possible that that also doesn't give any exp.

I would assume that "distribute wares" would be a decent way to level pilots, but it it has proved challenging get even get pilots to 2 stars for that. The reason being that even after using seminars to get pilots to 2-star piloting, their average would be less than 2 stars due to morale which also is difficult to increase on pilots.

Overall, I like the idea of "learning while doing" as a way to improve your personnel, but the manner of how to achieve that is very non-obvious right now and I can't really tell what is a bug and what's not.

[Nort The Fragrent]

It’s Covid 19.

The Pilots are like the airline pilots of today, unable to work.

Who want’s an airline pilot today?

ES could employ them then distribute them into the game for us to use.

As the game pilots are ——- Rubbish.

I have decided to use this lockdown time, ( Thats the game Pilot lockdown debacle ) to build stations. No point trying to trade. That will not work with out a competent pilot.
Then have other faction’s do all the trading !

Trading,
Mining,
Having your fleet of ships,
Combat,
Defence,

Has stopped working in the game.

Hang on a moment ! Isn't that the game I payed good money for ?

So my game is not a ship based game any more.

It’s a station building game.

A ha.

Scrap all your ships, retreat to your strong hold, close all the doors. And Waite for update Number 4.

This game has died.

[Axeface]

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.

To follow up with this. The freighter captain I have been constantly queuing up good trades with for hours upon hours has not gained any skill whatsoever, nothing. Stuck at less than 2 stars overall and it is not moving. His crew all leveled up to able crewmen but seem to have stopped there. The ship has done around 30 high quality trades. This captain should in all fairness have learnt how to distribute wares by now.

EDIT: Hold on Hold on!! The captain HAS gained management but it has not moved his overall rating, to clarify. Management is greyed out.
Questions...
Mousing over overall star rating the tooltip says "Average of the person's primary and secondary skills". Mousing over piloting says "Primary skill for pilots. Improves operating range of traders". Mousing over management (greyed out) says "Primary skill for station managers". Mousing over Morale (not greyed out) says "Secondary skill for all roles". Do freighter captains get overall star rating from greyed out skills such as management?
if management and the others are greyed out for freighter captains why is it that skill they are gaining and NEVER piloting (once 2 stars is hit)? If management does contribute, why is it greyed out??

[Nort The Fragrent]

Experimenting.
I have built a small silicon factory in Family Nhuut, The Split are all Red in this sector.
I have a Courier Mineral with a 1 star captain.
Max gate distance to gather resources as set by the station manager is 2.
The idiot ship captain travels not only 4 sectors to get the Silicon, but enters sector
Matrix9 a sector I have not been into so was not on my map !

Now I had put down a resource prob in Family Nhuut, it indicating lots of Silicon.
I had also prior to building the station, tested to see if the 1 star miner would gather Silicon in the sector. Witch he did very quickly. And that was why I built the small factory there so a 1 star captain could function.

So How and why is a 1 star captain going 4 sectors to get Silicon?
What the Ph is going on?
Is all this Star rating irrelevant?
Is the sector matrix9 a 1 star magnet?
I have absolutely no control over this game!
Its ship movements,

So whats the point?

[Raevyan]

Average skill is only determined by the primary and secondary skill for their role. Auto Mine and Auto Trade rely on piloting and morale. So the management gain is almost useless (well you get some decent managers this way).

[tomchk]

Is it fair to say that most of us want the following?
1) Explanation on how skills and training are meant to work now
2) Update on whether they are working as intended
3) A couple options the developers are willing to consider to make the system easier to understand and use

[Axeface]

Average skill is only determined by the primary and secondary skill for their role. Auto Mine and Auto Trade rely on piloting and morale. So the management gain is almost useless (well you get some decent managers this way).

Well, to add to the story of my manual trader... his just reached 2 stars. His morale went up a smidge. I can finally do distribute wares with this ship... lets see if THAT works (like Ive been told it does).

Please some transparency. Perhaps if everyone understood what on earth is going on there would be less outcry.

And for the love of god please can we get "The tooltip and encyclopaedia patch"

(Edited stuff because I got it wrong)

[StoneLegionYT]

I made a post here not about leveling but rather more info exploded what stars do for your gameplay.
viewtopic.php?f=146&t=424868


So Egosoft as some of us know certain stars have AI performance effects, etc. If it's ships being slightly piloted better to engineers repairing the ship faster, etc.

Lot of this info is hidden and for many I bet it's easily not even known... Think of newer or more casual players like me .

So the point I'm getting at is Crew levels and their effect is big but their is 0 info on this no sort of text or info on this at all in the game that makes most people think Stars = the ability to use certain behavior skills and that is it. Clearly this is not true, but you see the point. Not asking you to expose every last detail in the game showing exact performance of what they offer, etc (though that be cool) but rather a summery of what they can offer at higher levels.

This is outside the whole of course leveling needs to be fixed. I don't mind curves and it getting harder / higher as time goes on but do it based off of no Seta Play meaning your not punishing us who choose not to speed cheat overnight while in bed... That is not fair at all.

[Raevyan]

Average skill is only determined by the primary and secondary skill for their role. Auto Mine and Auto Trade rely on piloting and morale. So the management gain is almost useless (well you get some decent managers this way).

Well, to add to the story of my manual trader... his just reached 2 stars. His morale went up a smidge. I can finally do distribute wares with this ship... lets see if THAT works (like Ive been told it does).

Don‘t get your hopes too high though. I have some Distribute Ware traders running for quite a while and only skill they leveled so far is management. Nothing in piloting. I‘m using M ships though.

[dtpsprt]

To follow up with this. The freighter captain I have been constantly queuing up good trades with for hours upon hours has not gained any skill whatsoever, nothing. Stuck at less than 2 stars overall and it is not moving. His crew all leveled up to able crewmen but seem to have stopped there. The ship has done around 30 high quality trades. This captain should in all fairness have learnt how to distribute wares by now.

EDIT: Hold on Hold on!! The captain HAS gained management but it has not moved his overall rating, to clarify. Management is greyed out.
Questions...
Mousing over overall star rating the tooltip says "Average of the person's primary and secondary skills". Mousing over piloting says "Primary skill for pilots. Improves operating range of traders". Mousing over management (greyed out) says "Primary skill for station managers". Mousing over Morale (not greyed out) says "Secondary skill for all roles". Do freighter captains get overall star rating from greyed out skills such as management?
if management and the others are greyed out for freighter captains why is it that skill they are gaining and NEVER piloting (once 2 stars is hit)? If management does contribute, why is it greyed out??

I believe that the "greyed out" skills are considerably unimportant, still they count for something but not much. The thing is that someone who has stayed for some time as ship crew will have his MORALE (important) high enough so when transfered to pilot all he has to do is get some seminars to rise to two stars (as long as morale is 2 stars +).

[Alm888]

After trying out 3.10 I just want to say that the recent "good stats of station crew" change made it even worse:
now, in addition to the first problem (worthless pilots) I am having another -- I can not afford service crew anymore!

I mean, come on! Previously, there were a lot of 0 star crewmembers for ~1800Cr each. They were unskilled, but at least they gained levels reasonably fast and it was OK to fill ships' quarters with them.
Now, I see chumps with "2 stars in everything" demanding 1000000Cr, and considering training from 0 to 2 stars (in piloting at least) costs 3x100+3x200=900Cr these prices are ridiculous! And one destroyer can hold ~45 cremembers (and without filling all of the slots it will have reduced performance)!!! And I don't want to even think about carriers/CVs with their ~200 crew capacity.
Needless to say, hiring crew for miners/traders is out of the question.

[Axeface]

-snip-

You dont need to hire crew from docks. The normal way to buy crew is to send ships to wharf/shipyard/EQ dock and fill with cheap crew there through the upgrade ship menu. The npcs on docks are an extra for people that want to look for good ones.

[Alm888]

You dont need to hire crew from docks. The normal way to buy crew is to send ships to wharf/shipyard/EQ dock and fill with cheap crew there through the upgrade ship menu.

That still would be more expensive with ~8000Cr per crewmember.

The npcs on docks are an extra for people that want to look for good ones.

That would be me! Specifically, I seek good-looking ones, not the randomly generated trash from wharf/shipyard menu, thank you very much!

I'm not opposed to the chance to hire a really highly skilled pilot from the dock (especially those quest-givers who claim they are "busy right now") or (preferably) a bar for absurd number of Cr (one has to pay a "ransom" to the previous employer), but a bunch of "I'm looking forward to my first assignment" newbies for such a price?! I mean if you are so skilled, why are you mopping the floor on a dock?