Hired pilot gain xp from trading?

[Sticky Wicket]

So I hired my first pilot to do some trading. How quickly, if at all, will my pilot get xp from trading?

[Ebyl]

Not quickly at all. Buy piloting seminars (the 0-star and 1-star) on stations and give them to your pilot for a cheap, easy bump to 2+ stars.

After that, if you want them to go higher at any reasonable rate, you'll need to find the better seminars (usually guild missions, I think) or have the pilot captain a scout for exploration of new sectors or a combat vessel (riskier since they could die). Exploration and combat are the two fastest ways of leveling a pilot if you don't have the seminars needed to go as high as you want.

[Vladolf Putler]

in my experience its the only reliable way how to level up piloting skill, I am watching progress of my pilot in Dragon raider - my personal ship. I let him explore I let him fight and in 2 or 3 days he never get a single piece of star in piloting, his morale went from one star to almost five by the time, the rest of crew are almost maxing their engineer skill, but this pilot dude has 3 stars all the time in piloting, no change at all, maybe its a problem that I am onboard that ship most of the time I dunno, its strange really is

[conrado.lacerda]

From what I understand of the rules of the game, for every piloting action that the ship performs, there's a chance that the pilot will gain experience (the amount of which depends on the type of action).

So, if you want you trade ship's captain to level up more quickly, you should assign him to as fast a ship as you can (the Teladi Guillemot is a favorite of many players) and order it to trade as valuable a ware as you can (as this value will determine the amount of exp the captain gets when he gets it).

The same idea applies to the other piloting activities: fast ships, as many actions as possible in the shortest time span possible.

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If I'm wrong about anything in this post, somebody please tell me!

[Sticky Wicket]

Thanks for the answers I now need some more info and advice on this topic if that's okay.

My pilot has gone from 3/4 of a star to 1 star now after about 20 trips. It's getting very tedious to repeat the same instructions to buy and sell the same thing/same trip. I assume I cant use the queue orders option until she has levelled up (to simply get her to repeat the same thing) yet? It seems like the queue orders thing needs a 3 star pilot, is that right?

Looking over related topics it seems assigning pilots to mining ships is a good way to get them xp. I have enough money now to buy a small mining ship, so I'm thinking of buying one and assigning her to that.

The mining ship needs a crew of 4 so I assume that means a pilot and 3 miners?

[conrado.lacerda]

Originally posted by Sticky Wicket:

My pilot has gone from 3/4 of a star to 1 star now after about 20 trips. It's getting very tedious to repeat the same instructions to buy and sell the same thing/same trip. I assume I cant use the queue orders option until she has levelled up (to simply get her to repeat the same thing) yet? It seems like the queue orders thing needs a 3 star pilot, is that right?

For "Repeat Orders" you need only 1 star, and for "Local Autotrade" (autotrade for 1 ware in 1 sector) you don't need any.

Originally posted by Sticky Wicket:

Looking over related topics it seems assigning pilots to mining ships is a good way to get them xp. I have enough money now to buy a small mining ship, so I'm thinking of buying one and assigning her to that.

The mining ship needs a crew of 4 so I assume that means a pilot and 3 miners?

It needs only the pilot, the extra crew is to increase performance. Mining levels up the pilot faster than trading.

Edit: even better than mining is to explore sectors with the "Explore" command.

[madpraxis]

...killin me smalls. Always, ALWAYS, throw the 0 and 1 star manuals at them. They are sold at every trader, almost always have 1 in stock at each trader (sometimes none, sad face), and instead of now having 1 star pilot, you could be fair way on to 2 star. All for literally chump change.

[Sticky Wicket]

Originally posted by conrado.lacerda:

Originally posted by Sticky Wicket:

My pilot has gone from 3/4 of a star to 1 star now after about 20 trips. It's getting very tedious to repeat the same instructions to buy and sell the same thing/same trip. I assume I cant use the queue orders option until she has levelled up (to simply get her to repeat the same thing) yet? It seems like the queue orders thing needs a 3 star pilot, is that right?

For "Repeat Orders" you need only 1 star, and for "Local Autotrade" (autotrade for 1 ware in 1 sector) you don't need any.

Originally posted by Sticky Wicket:

Looking over related topics it seems assigning pilots to mining ships is a good way to get them xp. I have enough money now to buy a small mining ship, so I'm thinking of buying one and assigning her to that.

The mining ship needs a crew of 4 so I assume that means a pilot and 3 miners?

It needs only the pilot, the extra crew is to increase performance. Mining levels up the pilot faster than trading.

Edit: even better than mining is to explore sectors with the "Explore" command.

Thanks for the info :)

I can use the *repeat orders* button, but cannot give any relevant orders to repeat (I only get default behaviour to *fly to and wait*/ *dock and wait* etc etc) The queue orders option is greyed out, so what do I do to make that active?

I also cannot find anywhere to give an Explore order.

[seePyou]

Originally posted by Sticky Wicket:

Thanks for the info :)

I can use the *repeat orders* button, but cannot give any relevant orders to repeat (I only get default behaviour to *fly to and wait*/ *dock and wait* etc etc) The queue orders option is greyed out, so what do I do to make that active?

I also cannot find anywhere to give an Explore order.

It's possible you are not using it correctly. When you enable Repeat orders, click on commit or accept. Basically, select the behaviour and lock it in. THEN you can get orders to repeat. Any order.
So now you should also have special NEW order types: BUY from station, Sell to station, Sell to construction.
Using the first two, you can set up trade route that repeats ad infinitum.
Think of this like the CLS2 of X3 (if you know about that). If not, never mind.

The point is that you set up a chain of orders and they will go through each one every time. So even if one order in the future cannot be completed, the pilot will move on to try to do the others.

Finally, the Explore order is for one star pilots (I think). But even if I'm mistaken, the basis is that you select your ship with that pilot (hopefully a fast ship) and then you right click on the map in empty space in a sector at the point where you want the center of the exploration sphere to be. The explore command should be there.

[Daddy Shark]

I highly recommend this mod
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2050537227

The default leveling rate is way too slow.

[Wraith]

Originally posted by Daddy Shark:

I highly recommend this mod
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2050537227

The default leveling rate is way too slow.

Definitely this
Though I adjusted this mod for my personal preferences

Mod is to strong
Vanilla is to weak
In my personal opinion

[saliddry]

since 3.0 or so i now to another try on this game ... i can say that buy some scouts and let them explore sectors .... i got some pegasus and discoverers and im constanly replaying pilots from scout to miner/trader once they have 3 stars .... as explorers it seems to go realy fast ...yet i dont know how to level once i run out of grey sectors

and no i ave 0 mods ..hmm yeah 1 mod crystall glow or how thats called to find that pesky ♥♥♥♥♥ much more easy crystalls glow like an L E D in diffrent collours depending on crystall type not just blink every few seconds

used it at the start to get going and build some production on the hq to get some cashflow

[alcash]

seminars are the way to go until you have a terraforming with a flight school going.

[seePyou]

I find that combat is progressing much faster. But there just isn't a lot of it when You fly around doing missions. Also there is not a lot of ships you can spere to combat by AI at the start of a game.
That is what makes exploration viable. It's lower risk and good reward.
After a massive chunk of the map is open though, I start assigning craft to defense of gates, especially when I start spotting local forces ammasing at gates.
I will also assign some to "defend" local force corvettes. They will see some action much more often than the caps.
Combat like that will get the pilots level up faster.
Those that survive and reach start 3 go to automine. Once I have a good enough fleet of them, I will start assigning them to my own forces for my own protection.

[Set-115689]

Buy the 2/3 star pilots from stations. Then level them up with skill books. Combats the easiest way to get 0 or 1/3 star pilots to 2/3 stars. After the first star things get much slower.

Explore still seems to work the best. Update trade offers doesn't seem to work well. Pretty much need to join guilds/factions/xenon wars to get easy 2 star and higher skill books. Can do the set up satellite and trade missions remotely so can just send one of your ships to do them.

[Sticky Wicket]

Originally posted by seePyou:

Originally posted by Sticky Wicket:

Thanks for the info :)

I can use the *repeat orders* button, but cannot give any relevant orders to repeat (I only get default behaviour to *fly to and wait*/ *dock and wait* etc etc) The queue orders option is greyed out, so what do I do to make that active?

I also cannot find anywhere to give an Explore order.

It's possible you are not using it correctly. When you enable Repeat orders, click on commit or accept. Basically, select the behaviour and lock it in. THEN you can get orders to repeat. Any order.
So now you should also have special NEW order types: BUY from station, Sell to station, Sell to construction.
Using the first two, you can set up trade route that repeats ad infinitum.
Think of this like the CLS2 of X3 (if you know about that). If not, never mind.

The point is that you set up a chain of orders and they will go through each one every time. So even if one order in the future cannot be completed, the pilot will move on to try to do the others.

Finally, the Explore order is for one star pilots (I think). But even if I'm mistaken, the basis is that you select your ship with that pilot (hopefully a fast ship) and then you right click on the map in empty space in a sector at the point where you want the center of the exploration sphere to be. The explore command should be there.

Thanks this was helpful.

I also didn't realise I was supposed to R-click on empty space to bring up trade order menus. I was right clicking on the ship itself to try and give orders; your comment about exploration twigged it for me.

Have now managed to get my pilot repeating trade order....at last :D