Show me your skills, please!

SirDeity · Post by **SirDeity** » Sat, 16. Nov 13, 19:09

The only thing I see are question marks. I can't determine how skilled the NPC is if I only have question marks on every trait. Is this a bug or am I doing something wrong?

Post by **Alan Phipps** » Sat, 16. Nov 13, 19:23

You unlock the skills of other NPCs by playing the smalltalk minigame with any NPCs who offer it. If successful, the NPC comes to like you and may provide an introduction to the skills and hiring opportunity for another.

SirDeity · Post by **SirDeity** » Sat, 16. Nov 13, 19:40

Thanks, Alan!

Post by **Alan Phipps** » Sat, 16. Nov 13, 19:43

Press Enter to get the action menu then top row numbers, not numpad. See if that works. The text UI options are Crew, Remote Orders, or something like that.

SirDeity · Post by **SirDeity** » Sat, 16. Nov 13, 19:46

Yeah, the part I was missing was the ENTER key. I read the message that popped up on my window to mean enter as in press the number key, not enter as in press the enter key.... haha! Got it now though. Thanks!

SirDeity · Post by **SirDeity** » Sat, 16. Nov 13, 20:33

Okay, so I was told to find an engineer to repair my ship. I hired an engineer at the nearest station and his skills are almost completely non-existent. Can I assume he is a work in progress and his skill will grow stronger with time and experience?

Also, how do I make him repair my ship? I hired him already but my mission status is still telling me to find an engineer. Well, he's on my ship already... so I found him, but now what? The chat options are only showing me ship's status, show me your skills, you're fired, and goodbye. I don't see a 'Please repair my ship' dialogue option anywhere.

pjknibbs · Post by **pjknibbs** » Sat, 16. Nov 13, 21:45

I don't think you actually *hire* the engineer to fix your ship--you ask him to do it as one of the other conversation options when you meet him.

galatei_tf · Post by **galatei_tf** » Sun, 17. Nov 13, 15:22

Why do I get "?" next to each officer skills. I looked around for hours, asking the same question, and everybody has ? only. How the hell am I supposed to hire who I really need if I can't see how good/bad he/she is ?

BloodSlinger · Post by **BloodSlinger** » Sun, 17. Nov 13, 15:59

From what I've read so far it's because they're trying to add immersion / a personal connection to NPC. That's what small talk is supposed to be about. You gain trust (get to know them) and then you more likely to get accurate information.

Of course, most cases I've seen you don't actually get a dialog option for small talk in the 1st place, and for those times you do, it seems utterly random with most outcomes being simply "bug off", but I've not analyzed it deeply yet since concerned with so many other critical aspects that are missing or just tedious to do.

graphicboy · Post by **graphicboy** » Sun, 17. Nov 13, 16:22

If you stand next to the NPC long enough, they'll make a comment/remark/idle chat. Immediately afterward you can initiate smalltalk.

Let me get this straight, since I didn't know till now that smalltalk is what allowed us to see this information.

The NPC in front of me wants a job, obviously, because he's standing in front of me and not on a ship. I have to stand here and wait for him to make an idle remark, then smalltalk him, before he'll show me his resume?

If you were trying to duplicate real-world, doesn't it go a bit like Hello -> Need a job? -> Yes, here's my resume. -> Resume looks good, let's get to know you better. -> Ok you're a nice guy, we'll hire you..... ?

Come on guys.

galatei_tf · Post by **galatei_tf** » Sun, 17. Nov 13, 19:13

How is that anywhere near reasonable!? If I'm supposed to hire somebody, I need to know what can they do, not to chit-chat with them in order to find out. They don't work for free. This is BS!

So I guess Egosoft doesn't need my CV to hire me as a developer for xbox right ? They will only see it after I'm hired. I'm gonna apply right away.

Unidding · Post by **Unidding** » Sun, 17. Nov 13, 20:15

So how am I supposed to find out what their stats are after i hire them?

I needed a guy in a hurry and didn't want to fiddle around with the r******* conversation options for an hour hoping someone would tell me what his stats were.

so i just hired him, how do i find out what his stats are now?

cosmo666 · Post by **cosmo666** » Sun, 17. Nov 13, 21:43

if you hired him, you can then open the menu, go to crew, remote call, then select from the list the one you want to talk to(there's a small "CO" button on the right side of the list for each crew member). then a dialogue with the npc will start, and you can ask him for his skills. they will be available now.

mind you, it only works after the npc is at it's post. for example, if you hire a marine officer, you can check his stats imediately, since he works on the skunk, but if you hire a defence officer, you need to assign him to a capital ship first, then he'll show his stats (making this tactic useless for such as npcs)

Strum1 · Post by **Strum1** » Sun, 17. Nov 13, 23:12

This is kind of lame.. we are hiring them, they need to show their skills before we hire them. I don't mind if they fibbed a little and bloated their experience but this ? thing and the smalltalk thing is a waste of time and actually takes away from the gameplay.

PowerPC603 · Post by **PowerPC603** » Mon, 18. Nov 13, 02:36

Alan Phipps wrote:You unlock the skills of other NPCs by playing the smalltalk minigame with any NPCs who offer it. If successful, the NPC comes to like you and may provide an introduction to the skills and hiring opportunity for another.

Really? How dumb is that?

Let's see in real-life how that works.

You go into a bar and try to talk to a girl.
She refuses to say anything personal to you as you're a stranger.

Then you go to a guy who's sitting on the other side of the bar.
You make some smalltalk with that guy up to the point where that guy begins to trust you.

Then finally, the girl gladly spills all her personal stuff to you, because you got close to that guy?

Talk about immersion.
This isn't real at all.

Person A doesn't want to say anything, you go to person B and chat with him until person A starts to like you as well?

Shouldn't it be that you make smalltalk to the girl herself until she starts to trust you, before she gives you her qualifications?

Or is it like the girl and the guy know eachother?
She doesn't trust you, but the guy is willing to make smalltalk and when he trusts you, he's coming with you towards the girl and introduces you to her by saying you're a friend of him?
Only then she believes the guy and is willing to talk to you?

Really weird.

I've even seen captains and engineers in Omicron Lyrae who don't even have the option to hire them.
It's not just greyed-out, but simple gone.
Is that because my relation to them isn't good enough?

Post by **Santi** » Mon, 18. Nov 13, 02:53

Sometimes those Captains and Engineers work for the Station, you cannot hire them.

kamikazi1231 · Post by **kamikazi1231** » Mon, 18. Nov 13, 05:09

It's been stated that this will be improved. It's near the top of the requested list behind massive game breaking bugs. They have stated that when you win a small talk mini game you will be able to select any of the rewards. So you could ask for a discount or you could say "I'm looking to hire" and then select engineer, or captain, etc and be pointed to one of those specifically and be able to see the skills then.

At the moment you can smalltalk everyone and you just have to hope they will give you information on the engineer you need instead of the three defense officers milling about.

galatei_tf · Post by **galatei_tf** » Mon, 18. Nov 13, 10:32

There should be no smalltalk required to see the skills of those I want to hire. This is illogical. Hiring is business, not friendship.

Wavey · Post by **Wavey** » Sun, 24. Nov 13, 21:23

smalltalk everyone ? only had that option once and the engineer i was talking to sent me to a manager......

cbowsin · Post by **cbowsin** » Sun, 24. Nov 13, 22:38

I have no problem with winning random small talk to be pointed to random great ship crew member. Except the rare time where their great skill is not for their main task and they only excel in one great skill while the rest of the skills are like 0 and 1.

So I believed I had to hire crew members and then afterwards, I can see their skills. It's like blindly buying fruits at the store and having to take them home to see if they're rotten or not. Well that too doesn't seem to be the case. After hiring a captain, I check his qualifications on on my ship:

http://i.imgur.com/c9tULbk.jpg

Maybe I have to put them to use to see their skills. I hired a pilot. Eventually got an enemy fighter to jettison. Claimed the fighter. So now pilot, lets see if you are the right person for the job:

http://i.imgur.com/SIAUc8L.jpg

Well bummers. After boarding and capturing the Tanaris in campaign, I did heavy damage to it. So it has no shields, its hull is around 70% while its engines are showing 0 m/s. I believe this is bad as another non-moving ship I acquired earlier has full shields, hull and engine speed. Also in a previous save I tried moving it to DeVries, but it ended up stalled outside an enemy station getting shot at like a fish in a barrel. Luckily it came with an engineer officer:

http://i.imgur.com/8rLadcI.jpg

But, after some time, the ships stats never changed. Ok mr. engineer, what are your qualifications?:

http://i.imgur.com/gBjVrM6.jpg

An engineer officer with no skills in engineering? How could this be? Well this sort of does reflect real world scenarios because my co-workers have no skills in their job and maintain employment, lol

So I hired a new engineer, one I'm hoping with the right qualifications. Fly to the Tanaris. Ok buddy, your free loading days are up, I'm going to have to ask you to .... what, there is no option to fire this guy. I call the other engineer to work here, but then I got a new sub-menu to work on my ship or another ship, which for some reason requires me to pay them again, yet they will not work on this ship. So now I am literally stuck with this sap. Damn unions! I ended up assigning my new engineer to work on my ship, but looking through several menus and literally on my ship, I cannot find them anywhere, bummer.

So while I enjoy the the random chance at a great crew member, there should be a way to reveal qualifications prior to hiring. Once hired the user should be able to easily manage their assignments. The Skunk can hold 3-5 crew members at a time which is not ideal for large fleet endgames, so I hope with the crew transports and apartments I've seen around there are plans for much larger personnel capacity. Which crew members under my employ should require an upkeep cost because people are not wares that are forever mine with a one time fee.

egosoft.com

egosoft.com

Show me your skills, please!

Show me your skills, please!

Ship Repair

Show me your skills please ....