cost to hire a crewmate

[thekins]

Found a guy in a bar with decently high stars in a bunch of stats like 3+ in a bunch the cost to hire him was half a billion..... is this a joke?

[Zloth]

I think 600M is the biggest I've seen so far. Did the NPC also have an option to do a job?

The price for hiring seems to be exponential based on all their XP put together. NPCs with just about none only cost 3K. If there's 3 stars in just about anything, though, they're way too expensive.

For pilots, it really doesn't matter. Seminars seem to be the best way to get their skills up and the ones that push them to one star are cheap and plentiful, two star manuals are pretty cheap, too. For three you'll need to do some missions.

[cwsumner]

The "too expensive" is just saying that -you- don't want to pay it. And that's fine.

But if others -do- pay it (Player or NPC), then it is obviously not "too expensive", at least for them.

The X-Universe games are different, they are not made for the player. They are made for the NPCs. (?!!) 8-}

For a "Cellular Automata" system, like this, that is how it must be. You can always Mod it, but if you get odd side effects from modding, don't be too surprised... 8-)
(See "emergent phenomina".)

[blackphoenixx]

Basic and 1-star manuals also drop from faction wars, so you can get a steady trickle just by setting some cheap ships to collect loot on repeat at the borders.
Since those wars also tend to drop SETA parts they're also very profitable.

As for hiring costs it's basically never worth it. Just get your crew straight from the shipyard for a flat ~10k per crew, anything but pilots is easy enough to train up yourself and sometimes L class ship captains come with a star or two already.

Otherwise build missions can be done with almost no input from you once you can afford to front the cost, pay millions and regularly reward seminars or L class miners with experienced pilots and exceptional mods you can dismantle for parts.

Assemble Fleet missions are even more profitable and all it takes is buying them at the shipyard and ordering them to move to the delivery point once completed, though i've seen some require basic weapon mods.

Multi-part missions also tend to reward lesser seminars (1-2 star) for at least some of their sub steps, so it's worth looking at mission briefings for details instead of judging just by the map summary.

So that's a steady stream of skilled pilots, free ships, rare mod parts, millions of credits and as a bonus builder ships are the best way to rapidly level service crew to 5 stars, so you want one building all the time anyway.
And all you have to do is order a station build or buy some ships, so it's hardly a chore.

[=X-men=]

Between 1M-2M was max for some good crew, before 4.0.
Rest NPC that cost more just missions givers NPC, you can't hire them.

[Reef]

saw one guy that wanted 1 billion 163 mil to hire him. all skills were between 3.5 and 5

[thekins]

Originally posted by cwsumner:

The "too expensive" is just saying that -you- don't want to pay it. And that's fine.

But if others -do- pay it (Player or NPC), then it is obviously not "too expensive", at least for them.

The X-Universe games are different, they are not made for the player. They are made for the NPCs. (?!!) 8-}

For a "Cellular Automata" system, like this, that is how it must be. You can always Mod it, but if you get odd side effects from modding, don't be too surprised... 8-)
(See "emergent phenomina".)

I get what you are saying but having a single entity that isnt a station/battleship/insert other massive force multiplier half a billion for a pilot is a joke

[Wraith]

pretty sure the guys that cost billions are the ones that give mission so you can't recruit them to begin with lol

[Zloth]

The first one I saw, I did the mission thinking I was going to get a great NPC just for repairing a station leak!