Skill and training Feedback

[zakaluka]

high dependency on pilot skills

But you're not dependent on pilot skills at all. The instant you set up a station you can do everything. A suitable station costs less than a million cr to get started and managers level up magnitudes faster than pilots.

ITT earlier one of the egosoft designers even commented on this, saying (without quoting directly) that setting up a station early on is probably a better way to go than trying to force pilot skills.

The PHQ quest (usually first story quest most players run into) even encourages you to tinker with stations. But they're complicated so most players say to themselves, I'll come back to this later. But when they realize they can't do much with their pilots, they never return to stations. Interesting.

[dtpsprt]

Keep in mind that there's a bug at the moment with miners gaining skill. (Shout out to Mackan for finding that bug.) They only gain skill when they go in to trade the resources they've mined. Don't think the fix for that is out yet.

Distribute wares is actually particularly bad at improving pilots since it's the buy-once-sell-many script so mechanically doesn't offload full cargo holds worth of wares. Easiest way I've found via trading is by setting up a station that trades in high-volume wares in an area where those wares move quickly. Imperial Good described an even more efficient way in one of his posts, but I personally never felt the need to resort to something like that.

I would say that RNG levelling up of skills is something out of the worst Orwellian fantasy... There needs to be "certain" rules for advancement, and not "lucky dips". You people just make up your minds which logical (and even strict) procedure will be followed. Would you be working for (or with) Egosoft if your income was based on RNG? Don't think so...

EDIT1: Did the pilot choose to just distribute wares? Did the player? Don't think so... So they are "punished" to stay in limbo forever so that an impossible scheme can stay on... DO SOMEHING!!!
EDIT2: Using this way you can also prevent bugs from surfacing their ugly face... Like the Miner's Bug for example...

[Raevyan]

high dependency on pilot skills

But you're not dependent on pilot skills at all. The instant you set up a station you can do everything. A suitable station costs less than a million cr to get started and managers level up magnitudes faster than pilots.

ITT earlier one of the egosoft designers even commented on this, saying (without quoting directly) that setting up a station early on is probably a better way to go than trying to force pilot skills.

The PHQ quest (usually first story quest most players run into) even encourages you to tinker with stations. But they're complicated so most players say to themselves, I'll come back to this later. But when they realize they can't do much with their pilots, they never return to stations. Interesting.

Problem is, After you‘ve got the Station there is almost no need for pilots for trading. I mean they nerf getting good pilots while at the same time say you could build a station? A dock with some storage is dirty cheap and basically does the same as auto trade. No pilot skill needed. What’s the point in having auto trade/auto mine tied to a 3 star pilot when setting up a cheap station is basically the same functionality. Once set up it’s fire and forget and it just costs you the worth of a moderately equipped freighter to set up, while good pilots, if you find them, costs tens of millions.

[dtpsprt]

Out of curiosity, what's wrong with manually queueing up trades? It's a lot easier in X4 than in XR and (I vaguely remember) in X3. I remember back when I was really playing, I had so few ships building up that it wasn't much of a bother and by the time I started thinking of ships as masses in large numbers, I had already built more than one station and was automating trade that way.

To satisfy your curiosity I can give two reasons to begin with:

1. There is no centralised table of prices offered and demanded to make decisions (like in X Rebirth), so the player has to constantly panning around the whole map trying to find the trades. So... are we flying a spaceship or a map in a Space simulation? Also there's no "guideline" of the average price for each (and every) Item like in previous X releases
2. By the time the ship will reach the "last" order in the pile, the Station might well be destroyed or filled to the brims... This is why the NPC pilot needs to decide on the trades itself, and not on a long term basis too...

[dougeye]

so do pilots actually level up slowly still? combat and industrial?

They do. Combat kills have added benefits: even though credit for "hard" kills is divided among everyone; every pilot who assisted gets full credit for an "easy" kill also. Means you get many times the credit for each kill. Depends how you build your combat fleets. Many more chances to level up your pilots in fleet combat.

Mining ships get credit for selling their inventory but for some reason they're affected by the "unfavorable trade" condition. Basically when buy order prices get low (and they will) your pilots get much less credit for each sale.

Transport ships just don't really get enough credit for each trade or move fast enough to progress into 3-star reasonably. In a group of 20 pilots even if you started them all with fast couriers, and at 2-star (or even if not, that's hard to get so many books) - with the low probability for advancing with each trade - it's expected to take around 300 hours before you get your first 3-star trader. Ugh.

Combat is moderately effective. Building a station is the quickest way to get autotrade / automine functionality though, by far.

looks like ill stick with the mod which gives them a 10 % chance per hour of progressing a skill point, i think its fair as you still need to physically play for 10 hours at least to progress the pilots. I would like the mechanic to be a bit smoother though or at least not restrict what they can do but rather how well they can do it.

[mr.WHO]

Can someone from Egosoft tell us what is the problem with current crew leveling approach?
Why it is RNG base instead of XP based?
Is it possible that XP level for several skills * 100'000 crew is simply too much for X4 to handle?


It would be much better if each action add XP to certain skill and the we have some threshold for star level (e.g. 100 XP for one star, 500 XP for 2 star etc.).

I don't even speak about leveling speed, but more about consistency and progress that is not guarantee by RNG roll.

[GCU Grey Area]

1. There is no centralised table of prices offered and demanded to make decisions (like in X Rebirth), so the player has to constantly panning around the whole map trying to find the trades. So... are we flying a spaceship or a map in a Space simulation? Also there's no "guideline" of the average price for each (and every) Item like in previous X releases

I miss the trade interface from XR too. However the X4 map is still a fairly good replacement. Panning around the whole map however is an awful way to run a manual trade fleet. Terribly inefficient if trade runs potentially need to cross the entire universe. Much better to give each freighter their own patch. For example, I currently have 4, each of which covers a distinct area of around 6-10 sectors. One of them covers ANT & ARG core sectors, 2nd works in the central region around Grand Exchange, 3rd trades mostly in PAR territory & 4th has the northern TEL sectors stretching up into the new ARG sectors (Guiding Star, etc). Average prices are listed in the encyclopedia, in the entry for each ware. However, in practice I find there's very little need to refer to it, apart from just getting used to knowing what constitutes a good or bad price - they're colour coded when setting up a trade with a station: (green = good price).

2. By the time the ship will reach the "last" order in the pile, the Station might well be destroyed or filled to the brims... This is why the NPC pilot needs to decide on the trades itself, and not on a long term basis too...

Don't think a station can be filled to the brim in this way. As I understand it as soon as the order is placed the trade offer from the station is updated (so no NPC trader can make the same trade) & storage space is reserved. Don't think I've ever had a trade fail because a station was destroyed. Certainly has not occurred even once in my current game, which has been running for over 9 days, for almost all of which I've had at least 1 freighter out trading (it's my primary source of income in the early-mid game). Not saying it can't happen however it must be an extremely rare event. NPC pilots make terrible trade decisions. I tried them in my first game & they were absolutely awful, always prioritising short flights rather than full loads. Also because I needed so many of them to make a decent profit they were constantly running into trouble & asking me to sort it out. Far more hassle than they were worth.

[grapedog]

Yesterdray I hired for free a Paranid on my station ~ 2.7 engineering/2.7 morale. Average hiring price on NPC stations - 500k or even 800, dont remember.
It seems such pilots (2.7/2.7) most commonly an Argon (in my game at least). I suggest building argon biome on own station for free pilots... Or a station in Argon space.
Just one 2-star seminar and they get third star.

Ive noticed this difference between split hires and argon. If I buy split ships I almost always get pilots under 1 star. I bought some novas from argon prime wharf and some pilots had 2 stars, one even had 2 2/3 star piloting. Argon are just better?

Argon live longer, because typically they're ships aren't made of glass... which means they become better pilots because they have more time to learn.

[grapedog]

I must have missed it somewhere, but what was so wrong with the original 1.0 system? Was it too forgiving and easy to get trade set up and flowing? I took a break for about 5 months when the game was in the 2's... and I came back to find all my traders were neutered. That seems really excessive... how neutered pilots became.

I don't think anyone cares about the experience issues, people care about the fact that it takes forever to USEFULLY automate their traders.

Why not just limit wares and gates by stars.... 1 star gets you 2 gates. Then divide the amount of total wares by 6... say there are 36 wares(I don't know the exact number)...

A non 1 star pilot can only travel 1 sector in any direction, and can only trade 1/6th of the total possible wares. So a player would be able to pick up to 6 wares from that list for example, and can go one gate in any direction from his starting point.
A 1 star pilot can travel up to 2 sectors away, and can choose up to 2/6ths of the wares to trade with.
A 2 star pilot can go up to 4 sectors away, and can trade in 3/6ths of the available wares.
A 5 star pilot can still only travel up to 10 sectors away, and gets the full trading list to use.

10 gates in 1.0 was quite a bit(and I get why the 15(or waa it 30) gates was removed)... but you keep adding to the map, and a current 5 star pilot who can only go up to 5 gates away, on a map bigger and bigger in another DLC or two... that's pretty weak for a pilot who cannot get any better.

This gives players a clear progression for their traders, they can automate them usefully right out of the gate so they're doing something. Every so often they go back and check their traders... oh, they gained a star... lets update their ware list and gates. Seems like it's such a simple and effective solution... as opposed to this one which is clearly highly unpopular.

[dtpsprt]

Don't think a station can be filled to the brim in this way. As I understand it as soon as the order is placed the trade offer from the station is updated (so no NPC trader can make the same trade) & storage space is reserved. Don't think I've ever had a trade fail because a station was destroyed. Certainly has not occurred even once in my current game, which has been running for over 9 days, for almost all of which I've had at least 1 freighter out trading (it's my primary source of income in the early-mid game). Not saying it can't happen however it must be an extremely rare event. NPC pilots make terrible trade decisions. I tried them in my first game & they were absolutely awful, always prioritising short flights rather than full loads. Also because I needed so many of them to make a decent profit they were constantly running into trouble & asking me to sort it out. Far more hassle than they were worth.

He was talking about giving a "string" of trade orders.. For that string not to be interfering (much) with gameplay (see flying a map comment) it has to be long... so the possibility of a station being destroyed get bigger... or doesn't it?

[GCU Grey Area]

He was talking about giving a "string" of trade orders.. For that string not to be interfering (much) with gameplay (see flying a map comment) it has to be long... so the possibility of a station being destroyed get bigger... or doesn't it?

The order queues for my freighters tend to last for many hours & generally consist of at least a couple of dozen individual trades (often significantly more). I aim for my freighters to be flying continuously. I check their order queues at the start of a session, give them enough new orders to ensure they'll remain busy for however long I'll be playing & then leave them to get on with it. There may well be a chance of an order queue being disrupted by a destroyed station. However it can't be a very big chance or I'd have noticed it happening - this has been my standard method of trading in X4 since release.

[TekDragon]

I mean, who thinks of this garbage?

That would be me.

I gotta say, if I was the author of one of the most universally hated mechanics in an otherwise great game - I'd probably try to duck responsibility. Props for owning it.

Are you considering changing the mechanic for training traders so that it's less non-intuitive, illogical, and immersion-breaking? So all the people who want to train a pilot to trade don't waste dozens of hours putting them in an expensive trading ship and transporting high amounts of high-demand wares, only to come onto the forum and find out they wasted all those hours because the only viable way to train trading skill is to do the exact opposite?

Also, for my own curiosity, was this idea originally even MORE unintuitive, and someone walked you back? Like, did you originally envision that players needed to spend 20 hours per pilot teaching them how to walk before they could even board the ship you hired them to command?

[Alan Phipps]

@ TekDragon: First you praise somebody for being honest and informative and then regardless take a pretty irrelevant dig at them at the end.

No wonder devs prefer to stay quiet in threads here.

[Berhg]

I don't think anyone cares about the experience issues, people care about the fact that it takes forever to USEFULLY automate their traders.

Why not just limit wares and gates by stars.... 1 star gets you 2 gates. Then divide the amount of total wares by 6... say there are 36 wares(I don't know the exact number)...

..........

This gives players a clear progression for their traders, they can automate them usefully right out of the gate so they're doing something. Every so often they go back and check their traders... oh, they gained a star... lets update their ware list and gates. Seems like it's such a simple and effective solution... as opposed to this one which is clearly highly unpopular.

I like this idea.

And TekDragon: That was very mean spirited.

[pjjohnstone]

In case anyone else hasn't noticed this yet (and sorry if this has already been mentioned in this ridiculously long thread), the fighter pilots in your carrier groups seem to level up much faster than the capital ship captains, so you've probably got some excellent promotion candidates among the hot-shot pilots in your wings.

[dtpsprt]

In case anyone else hasn't noticed this yet (and sorry if this has already been mentioned in this ridiculously long thread), the fighter pilots in your carrier groups seem to level up much faster than the capital ship captains, so you've probably got some excellent promotion candidates among the hot-shot pilots in your wings.

OK... I'll have to make it clear one more time... The problem is not what happens later in the game, and having a carrier so you can have carrier fighter pilots, but on the early stages of it, when pilots are needed for basic breadwinning jobs...

[Jeraal]

I mean, who thinks of this garbage?

That would be me.

I gotta say, if I was the author of one of the most universally hated mechanics in an otherwise great game - I'd probably try to duck responsibility. Props for owning it.

Are you considering changing the mechanic for training traders so that it's less non-intuitive, illogical, and immersion-breaking? So all the people who want to train a pilot to trade don't waste dozens of hours putting them in an expensive trading ship and transporting high amounts of high-demand wares, only to come onto the forum and find out they wasted all those hours because the only viable way to train trading skill is to do the exact opposite?

Also, for my own curiosity, was this idea originally even MORE unintuitive, and someone walked you back? Like, did you originally envision that players needed to spend 20 hours per pilot teaching them how to walk before they could even board the ship you hired them to command?

Agree with the general sentiment, if a bit harsh in delivery.

[tomchk]

That would be me.

I gotta say, if I was the author of one of the most universally hated mechanics in an otherwise great game - I'd probably try to duck responsibility. Props for owning it.

Are you considering changing the mechanic for training traders so that it's less non-intuitive, illogical, and immersion-breaking? So all the people who want to train a pilot to trade don't waste dozens of hours putting them in an expensive trading ship and transporting high amounts of high-demand wares, only to come onto the forum and find out they wasted all those hours because the only viable way to train trading skill is to do the exact opposite?

Also, for my own curiosity, was this idea originally even MORE unintuitive, and someone walked you back? Like, did you originally envision that players needed to spend 20 hours per pilot teaching them how to walk before they could even board the ship you hired them to command?

Agree with the general sentiment, if a bit harsh in delivery.

I just think we should try to be polite, even when understandably frustrated about a big disconnect between developer and user. The developer is much more likely to make adjustments we request if we treat them the way we want to be treated. Sorry for the preaching, but it applies to me, too, and I think it's really important especially now.

[Pares]

I gotta say, if I was the author of one of the most universally hated mechanics in an otherwise great game - I'd probably try to duck responsibility. Props for owning it.

Are you considering changing the mechanic for training traders so that it's less non-intuitive, illogical, and immersion-breaking? So all the people who want to train a pilot to trade don't waste dozens of hours putting them in an expensive trading ship and transporting high amounts of high-demand wares, only to come onto the forum and find out they wasted all those hours because the only viable way to train trading skill is to do the exact opposite?

Also, for my own curiosity, was this idea originally even MORE unintuitive, and someone walked you back? Like, did you originally envision that players needed to spend 20 hours per pilot teaching them how to walk before they could even board the ship you hired them to command?

Agree with the general sentiment, if a bit harsh in delivery.

I just think we should try to be polite, even when understandably frustrated about a big disconnect between developer and user. The developer is much more likely to make adjustments we request if we treat them the way we want to be treated. Sorry for the preaching, but it applies to me, too, and I think it's really important especially now.

After more then 117 hours in 3.0 + 3.1 I have:
- ONE autotrader with 3+2/3 stars, gave him a lot of the higher tier seminars I got from doing missions
- ONE fighter pilot with 3 stars, gave him a few seminars too
- TWO fighter pilots with 2+1/3 stars, they earned that 1/3 star sitting in the backseat watching me fighting
- 37 pilots (station traders, station miners, police patrol, explorers) with two stars

I gave all of these remaining 37 pilots the lower level seminars I have dozens of, which is like the instant first thing after buying a ship, to get 2 star pilots.

Getting 2 star pilots is extremely easy, getting 3 star pilots without doing mission chains for higher tear seminars is practically impossible. And mission chains with 3+ star seminars as rewards are not as common nor fun so that I would do them multiple dozen times...

Station managers gain stars extremely fast, while station traders, station miners and ships sent to explore gained exactly zero stars after more than a hundred hours.

And ironically, when I could have maybe used the money from autotraders, I didn't have them, and now I don't need them and can't be bothered with doing mission chains for seminars. Two star station traders and station miners work perfectly well, and my stations are printing credits.

So what is the point of this whole system?

If this is how Egosoft imagined this working, then congratulations, it works perfectly well. But from a player perspective, this is as broken as it can be.

[sh1pman]

Pretty much, by the time you have 3+ star captains, you don’t need auto-traders anymore. Or auto-miners.