Crew Management

[Ligisttomten]

I've tried so, so hard at playing unmodified and I can make do without the usual modded QoL. BUT. Crew management is like pulling hair, and it makes me wonder how the devs even play this game. Expanding and Exploiting is insanely difficult when finding a level 3 Management seminar is near impossible, am I really expected to fly around the galaxy, updating trade missions in the vague hope of ever getting one that rewards a level 3 seminar? And then only for *one* of my managers out of untold numbers of my stations? And that's not even starting on Pilot seminars. Micro-managing dozens of ships with repeat orders is not fun gameplay and the whole crew skill system is a massive downer on an otherwise great game. Are there any work arounds, update plans, something? I know there's a pilot school if you terraform a planet. But it just seems insane to me to have to have to resort to a massive end-game undertaking, just to make an autotrader at a point when you're such a powerhouse you're literally reshaping planets.

How my trade station manager who has made nearly a hundred million in pure profits for me, seemingly has gained zero experience in managing, boggles the mind. It has to be broken?

[Alan Phipps]

My vanilla station managers seem to level up quite quickly as long as the station is trading frequently with NPCs (in and/or out) rather than just trading/transferring with player assets. It seems to me more as though it is the number of NPC trader visits that has the bigger effect more than size/value of individual trades or your station traders going out to trade. Maybe making your station more attractive to NPCs for frequent small/low value trades might help? That might need some adjustment to station/manager settings you may have changed, such as minimum size/value of trades and obviously ware prices etc, but I normally just use the auto defaults and it seems OK.

[BitByte]

Like Alan said station managers are 1 of the easiest to level up.
I don't bother to give them more than just basic seminar so they get 1 full star and rest they will level up by managing their stations. "Basic" Claytronics station (2-4 Claytronics modules) 2-4 traders and 4-6 miners makes manager 4+ stars quite quickly. And if you have places where you need more advanced manager then train them in busy places, move aside and replace with fresh one. Then use those skilled managers in stations which really require skilled ones (e.g. due long distances to get resources).

Pilots are little bit tricky ones as they will learn by fighting (e.g. being protecting hostile gate or mining areas), perform sector exploration and something while working as miners or traders. But terraforming is the way how you can train up to 100 pilots per cycle. You don't need more than 10k bubble house + flight school. Those are "cheap" to build and you can build such to 18 Billion.

[Ligisttomten]

NPC's trading with my station might be the problem, it's been mostly my own ships. I'll try and make my stations more attractive to NPC's and see if my managers can finally learn a thing or two, thanks.

[Gavrushka]

I tend to recruit my managers from the service crew on my builder vessels. - When they've built a few stations, they all end up with pretty high qualifications for station management role, helping the station's traders and miners to work a larger area far quicker.