Service crew

[Gibbo]

If you need a captain then check your personal management as I just found a 4 star captain in there and there is quite a few 2 stars as well lol.

Do these get replaced automatically? I mean if you build a ship, give it max service crew for example and then move one of them to captain somewhere else, will that ship replace the crew member? Or do I have to do it? I mean it's early days for me, but I already have over 20.000 workers on my first (soon to be) mega MEGA shipyard and I'm always keen to save a credit or two and hiring a decent npc pilot can cost millions?

[Tommytools]

I don't recall the last time I've bought a pilot, most of mine are former service crews with high morale that I trained up using seminars. Getting a pilot up to 2-3 stars that way is much cheaper than buying a pilot for several million credits. By the time you have a mega station you should have plenty of service crews of sufficient skill.

I would advise leaving your combat and mining ship crews where they are, their skill level increases combat and mining efficiency, but those on trade ships don't do much except repair the ship if it's damaged.

If you reassign anyone from any ship you'll have to replace them yourself, your ships don't automatically fill your crews. If you move a pilot out you do have a button to "replace with crew member" (don't recall the exact phrase) which picks the best crew member for the job.

The only crew I tend to buy are marines, because a veteran marine will slaughter recruits when boarding.

Edit: it always pays to check personnel management, you might find a gem in there. I found a 4 star manager in one of my mining crews a few days ago. :)

[Gibbo]

I've never hired a really expensive npc pilot yet. They are very expensive. I have hired a few rubbish ones, but I won't anymore. Get much better from my own service crew. I've seen a few 2 stars in there before, but never a 4 star? I'm keeping him safe. He will eventually be captain of my flagship HMS Apocalypse. Sadly I'm still about 100 million short for my first shipyard and I think over half a billion credits away for the two two larger shipyards? But I'll get there!

[Tommytools]

Originally posted by Gibbo:

I've seen a few 2 stars in there before, but never a 4 star?

Neither had I, which is probably the only reason I remember it :P

Originally posted by Gibbo:

He will eventually be captain of my flagship HMS Apocalypse.

Let me guess, an Asgard? :)

Mine's called Elmo's Revenge, I also have a Teuta called Swedish Chef, a discosyn (A syn with beam lasers) called Animal and two L freighters called Statler and Waldorf. Guess I shouldn't be watching old muppet show episodes when I'm naming ships.

[Gibbo]

Haha naming ships is one of the best bits. And no my flagship is normally a modded Raptor bristling with fighters (I mod as many of these as I can. Only elite troops can guard King Gibbo!) and yeah it will be guarded by 5 or 6 Asgards, Syns, quite a few M class and supported with a Honshu which will also have an escort of a couple of Asgards and a couple of Syns.

I like to stand on the dock of the Raptor and pretend I'm space Napoleon.

[Tommytools]

Originally posted by Gibbo:

Haha naming ships is one of the best bits. And no my flagship is normally a modded Raptor bristling with fighters (I mod as many of these as I can. Only elite troops can guard King Gibbo!) and yeah it will be guarded by 5 or 6 Asgards, Syns, quite a few M class and supported with a Honshu which will also have an escort of a couple of Asgards and a couple of Syns.

I like to stand on the dock of the Raptor and pretend I'm space Napoleon.

My main ships are a Moreya and a Kuraokami (i think I spelled that right), but I wouldn't be running a proper evil greedy corporation without at least one Asgard. I do love watching fights, especially my carrier fleet, seeing them launch everything and melt enemies is a thing of beauty.

[seePyou]

Service crew is not updated. The captains will not hire more on their own. That is why I have two Elephants. They are building my factories, and as I go through my service crew to fil in captain positions, I periodically go on a spree of crew transfers from my Elephants to my other ships. Once I'm dont backfilling, I send my elephants to hire more people and they then get trained up fast as they build stations.
One thing I do when I transfer a captian to a new ship is that I give them 3/4 star captains. Then I can also use my seminars to train the new pilots to 2 and 3/4 stars which have an easier time to get to 3 stars.

[Gibbo]

Originally posted by seePyou:

Service crew is not updated. The captains will not hire more on their own. That is why I have two Elephants. They are building my factories, and as I go through my service crew to fil in captain positions, I periodically go on a spree of crew transfers from my Elephants to my other ships. Once I'm dont backfilling, I send my elephants to hire more people and they then get trained up fast as they build stations.
One thing I do when I transfer a captian to a new ship is that I give them 3/4 star captains. Then I can also use my seminars to train the new pilots to 2 and 3/4 stars which have an easier time to get to 3 stars.

Thanks that's a good idea. Right now I've got one or two miners missing a crew member or two? I'll track it down eventually lol.

[Wenzilber]

When money is no longer an issue, I window shop around the NPC stations to hire a crew that has a very cool looking character model and station them on either my personal Cerberus (Fleet Commander of my Privateer Fleet that board SCA Destroyers) or my personal Destroyer in late game when it's time to kick Xenon's arse.

I can train them fast enough just by playing the game (except the Marines, they just idle around the Bridge and look pretty). But I can't change what they look like. I once spent over a million credits hiring a very cool looking Teladi. No regrets lol

Service Crews level up very fast in Builders.

Pilots level up fairly quickly by stationing them in a destroyer that protect the space near your Defence Platforms that guard the Jump Gate to Xenon sectors. I've gotten quite a few 4* pilots that way. Interceptor pilots on carriers are probably the fastest in levelling up Pilot skills but they tend to die faster than I can manage to reassign them LOL

[TyborPL]

Scouts on explore mission tend to level pilots very fast.

[Gibbo]

Originally posted by TyborPL:

Scouts on explore mission tend to level pilots very fast.

This is a very good point and I'm just wondering if they still level up if they explore a sector that has already been explored?

I'm fast running out of sectors to explore lol. Can you do it more than once in a sctor and still get them to level up? I'll test it later if no one knows?

[Tommytools]

Explore only works if there is fog of war to uncover, if the area covered by the explore order is already explored the order will cancel.

Since sectors are much larger than they first seem you could set the explore order at the edge of the sector for it to do some exploring. This will get harder and harder as more is explored, plus you run the risk of your scout finding a bunch of Xenon way out there.

I usually aim to get to 3-5 scouts out within the first day or so of game time, but now at almost 10 days I only have 2 left (sold the others) and they are on loot gathering duty. The only sectors I have left to explore are Xenon held ones, which I will do as and when I need to.

The two I have left are the ones I modded, 1 with hazard immunity, the other with the exceptional radar size reduction (this helps a lot in hostile sectors, enemy ships are much less likely to spot my scout and lose track of it quicker).

By this time I'm doing a lot of war guild missions, so I get L miners with decent pilots/crews on a regular basis. They tend to get stripped and sold, but before I do that I transfer the crew to ships I am going to keep.

[Gibbo]

Cheers Tommy. I'll send them to the edges where there is still some fog of war.

[Tommytools]

No worries, these discussion boards have helped me out so many times in X4, just returning the favour :)

[blackphoenixx]

I get a decent amount of 3-star pilots from the carrier-based fighters guarding Xenon gates. That's probably the best "repeatable" way to get skilled pilots until you're ready for terraforming.

[Daniel]

I take always my crew myself in visiting station, and i take only beautifull female the more i can, i love to have something beautifull to look when i travel long distance, but they don't want to make me breakfeast ha ha ha,

but it's hard to find it, the game seem made for old console and they have neer no life in station, perharp to have less thing they move, and more less beautifull female, more of the time, i don't know why, but they have only black people and chiness style people for the human race in the univers, it's strange...,

i think the game miss more diversity in this, but it's seem they have changed some of the thing, usually, long time ago, i engage people with hat on the head to make her pilot for fighter, but it's seem they have no more of this avatar in the game,

for the other i view we can know what is her natural work in lookin her before talking to her, they have different clothes, the soldier have a style in leather more of the time, the other have more normal cloth,

and the last, it's seem, more the avatar have a high rank (before you engage her), more they are well dressed,

i think a good dress i love it's the one the people they come from (i don't remember the name) where they have the wave from the sun, they have a look of cowboy style ha ha ha,

we can choose the people for our ship, but it's seem we cannot choose the people for our station, and at far distance it's hard to know where they work because i have never engaging any tellafy, split or paranid, but it's seem they work for me...,

it's bad we cannot visit our station and go look our people working, or go in your ship to talk to our people or look the stuff we have, i have a very big garage door in my ship and i can not be able to go there to look all my service crew...