Pilots skill

[TwistedSeven]

A good solution would be to split the pilot skill into 3,
Combat
Trading
Mining

That way my miners can get to the stage where they can do more advanced commands, without hitting the "forbidden" auto trader command.
And my combat pilots can gain lvls through the "new uncapped" combat skill, so they can do more advanced stuff without hitting the "forbidden" auto trader command.
And my traders gets assigned to stations, and in the event, i get some seminars, i most likely would save those, since risk/rewards is much higher for autotraders then it is for the easily replaced station trader.

[dtpsprt]

A good solution would be to split the pilot skill into 3,
Combat
Trading
Mining

That way my miners can get to the stage where they can do more advanced commands, without hitting the "forbidden" auto trader command.
And my combat pilots can gain lvls through the "new uncapped" combat skill, so they can do more advanced stuff without hitting the "forbidden" auto trader command.
And my traders gets assigned to stations, and in the event, i get some seminars, i most likely would save those, since risk/rewards is much higher for autotraders then it is for the easily replaced station trader.

Now this is a proposal that makes sense.
Notwithstanding the fact that in the current system, except for combat, the dice is rolled for promotion on successful trades only which makes sense for the traders (selling above the base price) but makes absolutely no sense for miners since all the money they get from a trade is pure profit as they do not buy anything and the resources they sell drop in price very quickly due to easy saturation of the market, since they are not able to travel to other systems.

[sh1pman]

@pref they’re never going to get 3* in piloting through trading,

That's definitely false, i have plenty 3* who only gained stars via trading. Actually the guy whom i was talking about, that got a basic and 2 1* seminars has already 3* in piloting since because i sent him to DW, but maybe i got extremely lucky with him.
Just using 1* seminars i now created 20-30 2+2/3* pilots, curious how long they take to level via normal activities.

And i still don't get why would 3* guys be mandatory for anything?

The probability of leveling from 8 to 9 points (2 2/3* to 3*) through trading is 1*(0.32)^9 = 0.0035%. Or ~28000 trade flights on average to level up. So yes, it does look like you got extremely lucky.

Assuming a 3 minute average trade run duration, it takes ~1400 hours (on average) to level up from 2 2/3* to 3*.

[M4lInX255]

Just adding my grain of salt by paraphrasing what I said in an another thread.

Egosoft wants to prevent the automation snowball by locking the "Give me a behaviour and forget about me" commands behind pilot level progression. I think the vast majority of players agrees with this, since just being able to spam autotraders (like it was more or less possible in X3) means you never really get invested in the economy in a proactive manner. You'll have to actually think and find the most efficient trade routes yourself, at least at the beginning. That's fine, but in the current state of the game, because of the leveling system, autotrading and other similar commands are essentially never used. For instance autotraders are not that good in the first place, and become almost useless once you start having enough stations and control over the economy. So why bother spending time finding seminars for pilots when you can just directly jump to station building?

So I am just wondering (this is actually a genuine question): what idea does Egosoft have of what the level distribution of all pilots must look like, for let's say an empire that is of the order of magnitude of a faction (endgame)? Are most station/universe traders, even the ones you have since a very long time, supposed to stay around 2-3 stars? Are we supposed to spend time to hunt seminars to train a handful of pilots so they can be assigned to more important positions, like carriers, L transporters, etc... in order to maximize their utility? Or should we expect all pilots to eventually reach 5 stars by themselves, after a reasonable time and/or money investment? I don't know if it's clear so I'll try to reformulate. My question is essentially: do the devs want the player to have an overwhelming majority of average, non-qualified pilots, that are never expected to reach 3+ stars by themselves, no matter how long they spend trading or how big your empire is? Or do they just want to limit how fast they gain levels in order to prevent the player from automatizing things too fast at the beginning, meaning that once the player's empire is developed enough they should be able to find higher level pilots easily?

If it's the first case, then most trade commands that are locked behind 3+ stars are not really useful, since as said before, it's not cost-effective at all to hunt for seminar missions to train a pilot so they can do something that may (or may not) be slightly more lucrative than what a regular trader does. Moreover, in this case the level for traders is virtually limited to 3 stars, since a high level pilot is so precious you'll want to put them in a destroyed or a carrier. This means that any bonus traders may have when they reach 4 or 5 stars is irrelevant, since you will never have enough (if any) of them for it to have a significant impact.

If it's the second case, then the current leveling system is overkill. Yes it should take time, but at some point you should still expect traders to level up by themselves. And as reported many times by many people, it is simply not the case.

I know Egosoft is limited when it comes to manpower, so it is not reasonable to ask them to come with a very sophisticated experience-like system in the near future. However, here are some ideas that in my humble opinion would not be that long to implement:

1. The automation commands could be locked until the player reaches a given rank, and/or a given reputation level with the faction that owns the sector in which they wish to trade. For instance traders could only do the Distribute Wares command if the player is at least trading rank 5 and/or reputation level 10, Auto-trade would be 10/20, etc... Or there could be a limit to how many automatized traders there can be in a given sector, once again depending on rank/rep. This would do a good job at preventing automation snowball, while still allowing the player to actually use advanced commands.
2. The player could hire more experienced pilot, at a cost of course, depending on their rank.
3. Split the pilot skill into 2 or 3 different skills, as suggested by many people before (see in particular the post by TwistedSeven a few posts before mine). This would solve so many issues, while making things more logical (for instance farming Khaak stations or Xenon gates to level traders makes little sense, so does putting a skilled trader in charge of commanding a destroyer).
4. Pilots would have to buy a license before being able to use more advanced commands (like in X3). Lock the advanced commands behind very expensive licences to dissuade players with only a few ships from buying them.
5. There could be some facility/schools where pilots could go to get taught trading. You'd have a new command 'Go learn how to trade at %Station' and they would ping you when they're done.

Keeping the star restriction but implementing a couple of these ideas combined with an actual level progression system would give a new and welcome breath to the game. Not that this counts much but I have a personal preference for a combination of 3. and either 4. or 5. (or both).


People love the game but many (I'm among them) just find the current star/leveling system too restrictive, arbitrary and, sorry for the expression, quite nonsensical. In my humble opinion, this should be the one thing Egosoft should focus on before releasing 4.0 (apart from new content).

[Max Bain]

good stuff

Your idea still misses the point that a 5 star pilot is not better than a 3 star pilot. Others have even tested 1 star vs 5 star with zero to little difference. No matter if in an L or S ship. I have tested it myself and I dont understand the whole discussion about leveling if it has no effect anyway (except for 3 stars to unlock all behaviours like auto trading). After that the benefit is so minimal (instead of a 0.1 second reaction delay you get a 0.01 second delay or so - just rough numbers out of my mind) that it never ever pays back any effort put into educating pilots above 3 stars.

The game lacks a system that makes skill count in combat. Engineering skill for example does count (every star adds regeneration) but your 5 star captain does not have higher firepower, nor more hull points, nor does he flight faster or anything like that. He only gets a hand full of random new moves that sometimes are better, but sometimes are worse than the old ones.

[Raevyan]

good stuff

Your idea still misses the point that a 5 star pilot is not better than a 3 star pilot. Others have even tested 1 star vs 5 star with zero to little difference. No matter if in an L or S ship. I have tested it myself and I dont understand the whole discussion about leveling if it has no effect anyway (except for 3 stars to unlock all behaviours like auto trading). After that the benefit is so minimal (instead of a 0.1 second reaction delay you get a 0.01 second delay or so - just rough numbers out of my mind) that it never ever pays back any effort put into educating pilots above 3 stars.

The game lacks a system that makes skill count in combat. Engineering skill for example does count (every star adds regeneration) but your 5 star captain does not have higher firepower, nor more hull points, nor does he flight faster or anything like that. He only gets a hand full of random new moves that sometimes are better, but sometimes are worse than the old ones.

Aren’t the formations also tied to pilot skill? Last time I tried them out, they were not working at all. Don’t know if that changed at some point. The fact that skill does not have any other effects and is just there as an arbitrary wall makes even less sense.

[sh1pman]

Your idea still misses the point that a 5 star pilot is not better than a 3 star pilot. Others have even tested 1 star vs 5 star with zero to little difference. No matter if in an L or S ship. I have tested it myself and I dont understand the whole discussion about leveling if it has no effect anyway (except for 3 stars to unlock all behaviours like auto trading). After that the benefit is so minimal (instead of a 0.1 second reaction delay you get a 0.01 second delay or so - just rough numbers out of my mind) that it never ever pays back any effort put into educating pilots above 3 stars.

The game lacks a system that makes skill count in combat. Engineering skill for example does count (every star adds regeneration) but your 5 star captain does not have higher firepower, nor more hull points, nor does he flight faster or anything like that. He only gets a hand full of random new moves that sometimes are better, but sometimes are worse than the old ones.

I did some tests, and pilot skill made a HUGE difference in combat. 1v1 against a Xenon L, Chimaera, full Bolt. 10 reps for each test. 0 star pilot took 1:12 minutes on average to defeat the Xenon, while a 4 star pilot did it in 23 seconds. SD is quite high in both cases (~50%), but it is to be expected given how chaotic the fights are. Still, it's clear to me that higher skilled pilots do much better in combat.

[Max Bain]

Aren’t the formations also tied to pilot skill? Last time I tried them out, they were not working at all. Don’t know if that changed at some point. The fact that skill does not have any other effects and is just there as an arbitrary wall makes even less sense.

Yes that is right, but formations dont have any effect in combat and short after the first shot formations are broken up anyway. So for a good look while traveling around, you might want to have a special formation, but I only use some very basic formations anyway.

[Max Bain]

Your idea still misses the point that a 5 star pilot is not better than a 3 star pilot. Others have even tested 1 star vs 5 star with zero to little difference. No matter if in an L or S ship. I have tested it myself and I dont understand the whole discussion about leveling if it has no effect anyway (except for 3 stars to unlock all behaviours like auto trading). After that the benefit is so minimal (instead of a 0.1 second reaction delay you get a 0.01 second delay or so - just rough numbers out of my mind) that it never ever pays back any effort put into educating pilots above 3 stars.

The game lacks a system that makes skill count in combat. Engineering skill for example does count (every star adds regeneration) but your 5 star captain does not have higher firepower, nor more hull points, nor does he flight faster or anything like that. He only gets a hand full of random new moves that sometimes are better, but sometimes are worse than the old ones.

I did some tests, and pilot skill made a HUGE difference in combat. 1v1 against a Xenon L, Chimaera, full Bolt. 10 reps for each test. 0 star pilot took 1:12 minutes on average to defeat the Xenon, while a 4 star pilot did it in 23 seconds. SD is quite high in both cases (~50%), but it is to be expected given how chaotic the fights are. Still, it's clear to me that higher skilled pilots do much better in combat.

I am pretty sure that this was bad luck that you can have with a high skilled pilot also. Sometimes, the RNG picks a very bad combat behaviour for the specific situation but this can also happen with a 5 star captain. I did some tests with L ships against a xenon station and the results were like 80% damage vs 79% damage before destruction.

Edit: but you compared a 0 star vs 4 star. There I do believe too that it makes some difference. The reaction delay is way bigger than for a 3 star pilot. Its like 1 second vs 0.1 seconds or so and this indeed sums up to a difference in combat. But I am more talking about 3 vs 5 star because this is where the game wants 100 millions fora pilot and unlimited game time to level someone up to 5 stars.

[sh1pman]

I am pretty sure that this was bad luck that you can have with a high skilled pilot also. Sometimes, the RNG picks a very bad combat behaviour for the specific situation but this can also happen with a 5 star captain. I did some tests with L ships against a xenon station and the results were like 80% damage vs 79% damage before destruction.

It wasn't luck, I did 10 tests for each setup.

[M4lInX255]

good stuff

Your idea still misses the point that a 5 star pilot is not better than a 3 star pilot. Others have even tested 1 star vs 5 star with zero to little difference. No matter if in an L or S ship. I have tested it myself and I dont understand the whole discussion about leveling if it has no effect anyway (except for 3 stars to unlock all behaviours like auto trading). After that the benefit is so minimal (instead of a 0.1 second reaction delay you get a 0.01 second delay or so - just rough numbers out of my mind) that it never ever pays back any effort put into educating pilots above 3 stars.

The game lacks a system that makes skill count in combat. Engineering skill for example does count (every star adds regeneration) but your 5 star captain does not have higher firepower, nor more hull points, nor does he flight faster or anything like that. He only gets a hand full of random new moves that sometimes are better, but sometimes are worse than the old ones.

I haven't played for a couple months now but isn't the pilot's skill directly linked to the number of gates they can travel (for universe traders at least, for station traders it depends on the manager's skill if I recall correctly)? If there is very little difference, then why are there 5 stars to begin with?

In a game like X4, progression should be clear and rewarding. Artificially stopping most traders between 2 and 3 stars simply because of the existence of the Autotrade command does the opposite.

[Max Bain]

I am pretty sure that this was bad luck that you can have with a high skilled pilot also. Sometimes, the RNG picks a very bad combat behaviour for the specific situation but this can also happen with a 5 star captain. I did some tests with L ships against a xenon station and the results were like 80% damage vs 79% damage before destruction.

It wasn't luck, I did 10 tests for each setup.

I edited my post because I realized too late that you compared 0 to 4 stars. I was more talking about 3+ stars. And I have seen the code and the values the stars effect and its not much. Formations, random behaviours and reaction times (which are very very small after 3 stars) so that the effect in combat cant be high in average. Because of the delay of about a full second for 0 star pilots this might be something else for low level pilots.

[M4lInX255]

Your idea still misses the point that a 5 star pilot is not better than a 3 star pilot. Others have even tested 1 star vs 5 star with zero to little difference. No matter if in an L or S ship. I have tested it myself and I dont understand the whole discussion about leveling if it has no effect anyway (except for 3 stars to unlock all behaviours like auto trading). After that the benefit is so minimal (instead of a 0.1 second reaction delay you get a 0.01 second delay or so - just rough numbers out of my mind) that it never ever pays back any effort put into educating pilots above 3 stars.

The game lacks a system that makes skill count in combat. Engineering skill for example does count (every star adds regeneration) but your 5 star captain does not have higher firepower, nor more hull points, nor does he flight faster or anything like that. He only gets a hand full of random new moves that sometimes are better, but sometimes are worse than the old ones.

I did some tests, and pilot skill made a HUGE difference in combat.

If it's indeed the case that pilot skill makes a different in combat (but not in trading), then I guess the player is expected to 'promote' good traders to combat ship pilots. I won't lie, I find this to be quite an odd design... Once again, separating combat and trading (and maybe mining) skills would make the whole thing clearer.

[Max Bain]

Your idea still misses the point that a 5 star pilot is not better than a 3 star pilot. Others have even tested 1 star vs 5 star with zero to little difference. No matter if in an L or S ship. I have tested it myself and I dont understand the whole discussion about leveling if it has no effect anyway (except for 3 stars to unlock all behaviours like auto trading). After that the benefit is so minimal (instead of a 0.1 second reaction delay you get a 0.01 second delay or so - just rough numbers out of my mind) that it never ever pays back any effort put into educating pilots above 3 stars.

The game lacks a system that makes skill count in combat. Engineering skill for example does count (every star adds regeneration) but your 5 star captain does not have higher firepower, nor more hull points, nor does he flight faster or anything like that. He only gets a hand full of random new moves that sometimes are better, but sometimes are worse than the old ones.

I did some tests, and pilot skill made a HUGE difference in combat.

If it's indeed the case that pilot skill makes a different in combat (but not in trading), then I guess the player is expected to 'promote' good traders to combat ship pilots. I won't lie, I find this to be quite an odd design... Once again, separating combat and trading (and maybe mining) skills would make the whole thing clearer.

For trading you get increased sector ranges but because normally you have your station manager which becomes 5 star very quickly (in my games) you always have the longest range anyway. I never use auto traders because of my stations. The margin and speed for a trade is the same for a 0 star and 5 star trader as far as I know.

[sh1pman]

I edited my post because I realized too late that you compared 0 to 4 stars. I was more talking about 3+ stars. And I have seen the code and the values the stars effect and its not much. Formations, random behaviours and reaction times (which are very very small after 3 stars) so that the effect in combat cant be high in average. Because of the delay of about a full second for 0 star pilots this might be something else for low level pilots.

Yeah, I saw. What I noticed is that 0 star pilots had a very limited number of maneuvers available, and all of them were very bad. Like entering a very slow flat spiral for half a minute and not realizing that the Xenon is shooting at them all the time. Also, they seem to be less agile, as if their maneuvering thrusters were capped at 30% power. Saw none of that nonsence with 4 star pilot. He was quick, and most of the time blew up the Xenon in a single volley. The best weapon was Shard (14±3s), the worst - Neutron gatling (2:18±1:26min), it couldn't hit anything beyond point blank range.

[Clownmug]

The tiny nuances (strafing, steering, reaction time) are not worth the investment of non-passively training pilots. The L/XL ships usually just slow boat around targets at under 200 m/s and S/M ships get instagibbed out of sector unless SETA is turned on.

[Max Bain]

The tiny nuances (strafing, steering, reaction time) are not worth the investment of non-passively training pilots. The L/XL ships usually just slow boat around targets at under 200 m/s and S/M ships get instagibbed out of sector unless SETA is turned on.

Thats exactly what I mean.
We need something that rewards the player to have 5 star captain in his destroyer or anything else. A simple solution could be to add hull points to the ship. So a
0 star has 100% hull,
1 star 120 %
2 stars 140%
3 stars 160%
4 stars 180%
5 stars 200%

or something like that. Sure its not realistic, but its a game and we have so many other unrealstic things that I prefer gameplay over realism here.

[Axeface]

The tiny nuances (strafing, steering, reaction time) are not worth the investment of non-passively training pilots. The L/XL ships usually just slow boat around targets at under 200 m/s and S/M ships get instagibbed out of sector unless SETA is turned on.

Thats exactly what I mean.
We need something that rewards the player to have 5 star captain in his destroyer or anything else. A simple solution could be to add hull points to the ship. So a
0 star has 100% hull,
1 star 120 %
2 stars 140%
3 stars 160%
4 stars 180%
5 stars 200%

or something like that. Sure its not realistic, but its a game and we have so many other unrealstic things that I prefer gameplay over realism here.

Could be a trait called Avoidance? -50% damage received for 5 star pilots (for S ships, less for detroyers). I also suggested in my wishlist thread that skilled crew could actually have events tied to their skill. Engineers shunt power to shields when they go down sometimes, instantly recharging some shield, pilots could have events where they ignore a hit that would otherwise kill them? Like the shot hits but because they are skilled they manage to make it 'glance', could be tied to a cool animation like a little jig or barrel roll.
These things could go in a new category below mods in ship details 'Crew traits'.

Edit: Thinking more about it. What if avoidance was a trait that changed depending on the type of ship the captain is in. In S ships it should give the captain a chance to entirely evade shots and in L/XL give damage reduction. M ships could be special and have a mix of Reduction and Avoidance. This would really help OOS disparity for fighters, In sector the avoidance could be coupled with a movement or a sound, sometimes they could even call out "Not this time!". Or could it even make shots that are avoided just not hit the target ship? Turn off the collision for those shots so they just pass through? (this would only work AI vs AI for obvious reasons).

S ships:- 0, 10, 20, 40, 60, 80% chance to avoid fire (implies pilot is good at evasive maneuvering)
M ships:- 0, 6, 12, 18, 24, 30% of both avoidance and damage reduction (Implies M ships are tough and can evade)
L/XL:- 0, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25% damage reduction (implies good crews and pilots are able to survive combat where bad crews cant).

Would performance of a feature like this be non-negligible?

[Clownmug]

The tiny nuances (strafing, steering, reaction time) are not worth the investment of non-passively training pilots. The L/XL ships usually just slow boat around targets at under 200 m/s and S/M ships get instagibbed out of sector unless SETA is turned on.

Thats exactly what I mean.
We need something that rewards the player to have 5 star captain in his destroyer or anything else. A simple solution could be to add hull points to the ship. So a
0 star has 100% hull,
1 star 120 %
2 stars 140%
3 stars 160%
4 stars 180%
5 stars 200%

or something like that. Sure its not realistic, but its a game and we have so many other unrealstic things that I prefer gameplay over realism here.

Could be a trait called Avoidance? -50% damage received for 5 star pilots (for S ships, less for detroyers). I also suggested in my wishlist thread that skilled crew could actually have events tied to their skill. Engineers shunt power to shields when they go down sometimes, instantly recharging some shield, pilots could have events where they ignore a hit that would otherwise kill them? Like the shot hits but because they are skilled they manage to make it 'glance', could be tied to a cool animation like a little jig or barrel roll.
These things could go in a new category below mods in ship details 'Crew traits'.

I think out of sector damage reduction would be reasonable. Could compensate for the lack of realism of L plasma turrets somehow sniping S/M ships from 10km away.

[pref]

The probability of leveling from 8 to 9 points (2 2/3* to 3*) through trading is 1*(0.32)^9 = 0.0035%. Or ~28000 trade flights on average to level up. So yes, it does look like you got extremely lucky.

Assuming a 3 minute average trade run duration, it takes ~1400 hours (on average) to level up from 2 2/3* to 3*.

My assumption is that this got changed since that number surfaced, along with seminars (last i tried before i needed 3 for a single point). With that chance i shouldn't have any, and on 3.0 release or around that i got virtually no skillups beyond 2 iirc.
Anyway noted the time i released those test guys, curious how much time it will take them to level that 1/3*. Will report back with that.