"0" Skill Pilots and Trading

[Stu Austin]

Hello all.
This is mainly for the Dev's.
You find a Vulture Vanguard. You clear all of the mines from around it. You claim it by sending a Marine over to it. After the ship
is claimed you send the ship to a Wharf and have it upgraded with the highest upgrades. Your Pilot has a "0" star. Looking at the
Behavior tab to see what he can do, you notice everything for trading is greyed out. Same thing for other items which the pilot can
do but they are greyed out also.
You click on the Vulture and then right click and there is nothing the pilot can do.
You send him on some trade runs manually but the process is very slow and boring trying to get his skill to come up. You have quite
a few trading ships just sitting because you cannot use them. They cannot be assigned to stations because there are already other
ships assigned trying to get their skills up. Did not have this problem at first but then the updates changed everything. The
amount of sectors they could go to changed dramatically.
Even my miners had to be parked. Some of my miners are just sitting and not able to trade due to them only being allowed to do
sector mining and trading because their pilot skill is so low.
In the Inventory, noticed there are Seminars for pilot training but nothing can be used.
So if the Dev's would take time out and explain what their criteria for getting the pilot skills to come up would be greatly
appreciated.
I am in no way venting or mad, I just want my game to be better and to be able to have a continuous flow of the game where the
ships could keep moving and not have to keep them parked.

stu

[radcapricorn]

Until you get that explanation, here's a workaround:

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Buy a cheap S ship. The captain that would come with it will usually have stars enough at least for Distribute Wares, but usually even for Auto Trade. Transfer the captain, sell the S ship. 40-50k credits loss. Not a bad price for a decent captain.

For training Piloting skill up, my personal observation:

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Piloting seems to go up fastest if the pilots are fighting while the player is present in their vicinity.

[Ezarkal]

What radcapricorn said!

Or, just sell the ship and buy a new one. You should get a decent pilot.
Sure, you won't be able to buy a fresh ship with the exact same specs for the same amount of money, but considering the amount of free ships the game throw at you, you can't exactly call this a loss.

[Stu Austin]

Thanx guys! I'll buy a cheap ship and transfer the pilot and see how that does.
stu

[foxxbl]

Thanx guys! I'll buy a cheap ship and transfer the pilot and see how that does.
stu

The cheapest one is Argon Elite Vanguard, just buy bare minimum without shields and weapons - should be 150k or something near that and sell it for 60-70k.
From the batch of 10 Elites in average 50% are 3 star captains, 25% are 4 star captains and 25% are 2 star captains..
They have at least 3 star piloting skills, but the total skills for captain are lower because other skills decrease the overall score.
4 star captains go for miners, 3 stars for everything else Poor 2 star captains are used for the service crew

[Loneshade]

... and if you really need a specific captain trained (because you wan his/her looks for your ship), then just put them in a destroyer and let them do guard duty at some jump gate next to a xenon sektor. Takes a while, but they'll reach 3 stars eventually.

[Techedge]

This is just to point out that Argon Callisto Vanguard should be 20k less than the Elite (149k vs 169k, stripped to the bone).
However I often buy Callisto Sentinels for a premium from ANT because I seem to get more skilled pilots, more often, from them. Just a habit, can't confirm if that is really true.

[Stu Austin]

Thanx guys! I spent most of the night buying the Argon Callisto 's and swapping out the pilots and reselling the Callisto back at the Wharf. Got quite a few 4 star captains.
stu

[foxxbl]

This is just to point out that Argon Callisto Vanguard should be 20k less than the Elite (149k vs 169k, stripped to the bone).
However I often buy Callisto Sentinels for a premium from ANT because I seem to get more skilled pilots, more often, from them. Just a habit, can't confirm if that is really true.

I was comparing base price where Elite is cheaper than Callisto, but Elite requires more software ending more expensive than Callisto.
Thanks for this, fair play!

[graphicboy]

Mod - "Learning All The Things"