How to train pilots fast?

[ctrCat]

I got pretty weird situation. Already got 3 L miners but no normal pilots for them = need to sell all ore manual. Mb nedd to give small ships for captans and do patrol or recon missions or mb participate in battles?

[Belteguesian]

Training the captains is quite tricky (and hard). One good way to have some decent pilots is to first let them be Service Crew, where they gain experience (and most importantly Morale) easily as they repair their ship or (if they serve on a Builder) they gain experience (and Morale) by building stuff...
Then you promote them to Pilots with two Seminars if needed (2 Star Pilot + 4 star Morale = 3 star Pilot).
You can put them on small fighters and have them "train" on patrolling Khaak infested territories, they will gain experience (if they survive) almost fast.
You can get some (very few but precious) 2 Star and 3 Star Piloting Seminars doing Guild Missions (For Teladi and ANT) or War Missions (any faction).

Always remember to give those seminars to NPCs that have some (or best a lot) Morale, as the Captain level is dependent on both Morale and Pilot skill

[ctrCat]

Hmm why pilots need morale or tech skills? Why Khaak is good for patroling? If they patrool system withought enemy they will not get exp, I mean just flying around?

[Gregorovitch]

Originally posted by J:

Hmm why pilots need morale or tech skills? Why Khaak is good for patroling? If they patrool system withought enemy they will not get exp, I mean just flying around?

As @Belteguesian says, it's very difficult to train pilots to a high level in X4.

If you don't mind me asking, why do you want high level pilots? If we knew that we could maybe offer some advice on how to get round it.

[felmari]

there is no fast way except training books but you can inly buy up to one star(which will bring it to two something max) the highers are awarded from missions. there are work arounds or different ways of accomplishing things.

you could place those miners in locations they are needed the factions usually have the majority of them within sectors that have that mineral and some few refineries a sector or so out.

[ctrCat]

I need them for traders and miners. Mb there are some manuals about pilot training?

[Gregorovitch]

You can't get them but fortunately you don't need them. This is a reply to a similar question a while back

Originally posted by Gregorovitch:

Originally posted by Taki1980:

Thx for the Answer. I Found some Spaceweed Production i buy for 66 and Sell for 160 and that seems "okay".

But i have to look for more profitable Trades.

Another Question: I havent found any 3 Star Pilot Digital Training so far. I heard they are given from Missions as a Questreward but didnt get any Missions with such a reward.

You can manually trade for sure and make a bit of pin money but to make real money in this game you need automated assets that earn you cash automatically.

In X4 you can't do this with automated traders 'cos you need 3* pilots for that and you can't get those early game. So forget them for now is my advice.

Fortunately you can use automated miners - sector miners require zero pilot experience stars. I would recommend building up a fleet of 6-10 sector miners initially. They cost about 400k Cr each. If you do a spot of crystal mining in Argon Prime you can easily put together 1m Cr in an hour or so's work to buy your first two of these.

After that I recommend you should move into two types of station and spam these across the main factions's space:

1. Mining stations. Build a station with dock, pier, solid and container storage, energy cell production and two each ore refinery and silicon wafer fab. Your 6-10 sector miners will pay for your first one reasonably quickly. Assign about four of your miners to it and add a couple a M trade ships for now. This station should make ~ 1.5m per hour Cr to start with if you place it in the right location (consult the trade map overlay after you've scouted and satted up all the stations within two sectors that consume refined metal and silicon wafers). Enough to quickly build a second and so on.

My experience so far is that equipping these mining station with two or three L freighters more or less doubles their profitability because they can nab whacking great deals at best sell prices. L freighters are expensive however, ~5m Cr each, so this is a longer term project.

These stations are so consistently profitable because the whole X4 economy is built on refined metal (Teldianium in the case of the Teladi) and silicon wafers, pretty much everything that makes a ship contains at least some of one of these products, often a lot of it. What ships are made out of is what makes the X4 economy go round.

A banker first mining station is in Hatickvah's choice since you can also add Teledianium production to serve Profit Centre Alpha, Bright Promise, Eighteen Billion etc were you will find the stations cannot buy enough Teladianium. Another good location is Second Contact Flashpoint.

2. Trade stations. These are just docks and storage plus some trade ships assigned. You specify the wares you want traded and max buy/min sell prices in the station logical view under trade goods box. I am not so experienced with these yet so I'm not yet sure of the best way to start a trade station but I believe the best way is to start relatively small in terms of storage available and number of wares traded so as to keep the station's minimum operating budget as small as possible to start with. What I do know is they definitely trade, a lot, and they become very profitable in time.

Trade stations are what you should go for instead of Autotraders. The reason is the same as why you should go for mining stations:

Station Managers override the min pilot skill level requirements for autotrading and advanced mining for their station's ships. They also grant a one gate range per management star they have to these ships. It is easy to train up a station manager to 2* (giving an immediate two gate range for station ships) using readily available basic and 1* seminars available from station trader shops. Furthermore station managers level up very fast giving their station's ships even more range. Station managers FTW in X4.

If you start building these two types of stations as soon as you can you will turbo charge your business growth and very much help the game economy as well.

[Belteguesian]

Originally posted by Belteguesian:

OK guys... here is the answer to this question and what is actually happening with the Managers and how they assign jobs straight from the resident dev in Steam in the thread about how managers assign ships to tasks amd why an L trader would pick 15 ecels to deliver 2 systems away!!!:

Originally posted by eMYNOCK:
It is not the Manager who decides wich Ship will do what.. thats up to the Pilots.

The Manager only issues the Buy and Sell Orders while the assigned Pilots pick the Trades.

@Oddibile
If that is the case, are you saying that the star rating of pilots captaining trade ships assigned to stations is still important? I've mostly been hearing that the Station Manager is the important star rating and that the trade ship captain's star rating is irrelevant. Are you suggesting that a high star rating captain of a station-assigned ship won't put 17 energy cells into a Large transport to deliver to the station?

Just notice what eMYNOK says...

P.S. Sorry had to repost trying to see how I can point a thread to another thread and have not mastered it yet...

[Morning Coffee]

If people still read this thread, try to get some almost 1 star pilots if you give them seminars, at that way they can reach like almost level 3 star with just the basic and 1 star training.

[Rhingeim]

Outside of seminars, there are few other nice options:

Gate protection close to Xenon sector (but beware of Xenon K and I)
Local Automine - often it's enough for miners, they will mine and sell resources within the system.

Other way is slightly weird and require some investments. 1-3 carriers full of fighters on Intercept/defend/attack wings. Same as gate camping, but after some actions I've found a lot of 3*+ pilots in those wing. And investment is needed because it's better to build those fighter by yourself... And once you get your own ship production, you already doesn't need good pilots.

[eMYNOCK]

just to let you know... i will let this necro stay were it is... the infos are still valid what means i have no reason to lock it.

next time however.. please take care about the cobwebs... and the dust... when reviving a long dead topic. :p

[mmmcheesywaffles]

This thread was as old it made me feel young again :P