Zero piloting skill increase?

[Halfhoot]

Hey guys... I'm wondering... Do I have a setting wrong? Literally NONE of my captains even the one that has been autotrading from the beginning of the game have earned even the tiniest bit of pilot skill. Not even a quarter of a star. 0 piloting skill level ups across my entire playthrough other than me handing out seminars. I have been playing according to the statistics in the game for 3 01:13 which I'm assuming means 3 days, 1 hour, 13 minutes.
Engineering increases (I have some almost 5 stars). Morale increases. Station management yes, but not an ounce of piloting across any captain in my empire.
doesnt matter if they trade, mine, guard, attack... sadness. I'm beginning to think there's a bug with my game somehow

For instance, the very first ship I ever got that was not my personal ship was a Grouper (Mineral) I got a captain for it, gave him a basica and a 1 star seminar which made him about 2 and a quarter stars. That's where he's still at right now 3 days worth of playing later. He has been mining the entire time. First as automining in Argon Prime and then as soon as I got my main station he started ice mining for it when I built my water module. I have him assigned as a miner to the station where he has been for a very long time. I also shortly after that got my first M trading ship and I got a 3 star pilot as a reward from the Kingdom End thing. I put her in the trading ship and set it to Advanced Autotrade. At least 2 and a half days worth of constant advanced autotrade... not a single tiny change in her piloting skill.

Do I have some setting wrong? Something must be wrong... I have 4.5 star Engineers and a 4.5 star station manager in that time but not a single tiny visual change in anyone's piloting over that same time.

I'd welcome any ideas! Thank you!

PS. No mods at all. Playing through steam with an updated game. All expansions.

[BitByte]

Pilot skills are gained from fighting against enemies. Pilot will also gain some experience by sitting standby while player is in controls of the ship and fights / destroys enemies.
Pilot skills gaining is quite slow.
There's alternative way to train 4 stars pilots - via terraforming. If you build flight school to planet then you can train 100 pilots per cycle (material delivery + 20 minutes of training) gain 1 star (max level is 4 stars). Then you just need improve their morale so they become better pilots and overall pilot skill level improves.

[Manawydn]

I speak about this in length on my streams, it's a problem for the game, it's been considered an unfun, broken, and frustrating mechanic by the wider community at large, and nothing has effectively been done by the developers to resolve this issue with the community. The state that pilot leveling is in right now actively hurts the game by driving players away from vanilla. This pain point has been resolved several times throughout the years by multiple mods all taking a variety of approaches. Problems like these, when added up together are preventing people from recommending the game to friends, or playing the game to the extent that they otherwise would.

In the vanilla game, your only viable option is to interact with a vague and frustrating mission system by seeking out 2-star piloting seminars (often guild missions), or completing a terraforming project which can only be done after investing over a hundred hours in (non-creative) gamestarts just to gain access to a mechanic that allows pilots to autotrade/automine beyond the boundaries of a single sector.

In my current playthrough, we are just over THREE AND A HALF DAYS of playtime, and my first Local Autominer / Repeat Orders pilot has just barely hit 2 and 1/3 stars pilot/morale skill.

@Egosoft, this is not a fun mechanic, and it is hurting your development cycle. We as a community have constantly left negative feedback about this mechanic since 2018 when the game was released. There are mods which show proof-of-concept for several different ways to improve on this mechanic, why has it not been "fixed" yet?

[GCU Grey Area]

There's alternative way to train 4 stars pilots - via terraforming. If you build flight school to planet then you can train 100 pilots per cycle (material delivery + 20 minutes of training) gain 1 star (max level is 4 stars). Then you just need improve their morale so they become better pilots and overall pilot skill level improves.

I do the same, just wanted to add a few more details. It's by far the best way to obtain trained pilots in large numbers.

As long as you pick one of the easier planets (e.g. Black Hole Sun & Memory of Profit) all you need on the planet is a Bubble City for habitation & the Aerial Maze training facility itself. Pilots can also be given Individual Training to get to 5*. Takes the same amount of time & resources as the group training so best reserved for the important roles (e.g. my capitals all get a 5* pilot, whereas my fighter pilots are all 4*).

Best place to get candidates for this training is service crew on builder ships. They level up fast as long as you keep them busy building stuff. It's important to do this because ideally you want to train pilots who already have a decent morale, one of the stats which can't be trained or improved by seminar. Incidentally there's also a similar facility for training marines, which works in much the same manner. Highly recommend building both ASAP.

[Halfhoot]

Alrighty... I guess if that's the way it is, that's the way it is. I thought something must be broken but I guess it's a "feature" lol. I still like the game but yea that is... an odd choice. Especially when all the other skills seem to increase just fine. I guess I'll start doing missions for the higher level seminars.

Thank you!

[zakaluka]

I manage to obtain rank 9, 10 and 11 pilots in some useful amounts well before terraforming. It is a bit of an undertaking and requires some small amount of micro. I do this by defending xenon entry gates with fighter swarms on protect position. Because of the way pilot leveling works, every pilot who assists on a kill gets an advancement roll, frequently two advancement rolls.

Best fighter for this purpose is a high shield & fast variant because fewer pilots will die while leveling (better opportunities for shields to recharge mid fight). I find the mamba & mako suitable. And this is truly an expensive undertaking. You need enough fighters to wrestle with a K, like 30 maybe 40, at each gate camp. A carrier helps with auto refit so they go self repair.

Run 4 of these fighter swarms, at both gates to tharka's, the gate to scale plate green, atiya's... Instead of defense stations defend with fighters. It won't make leveled pilots fast, but it will make them at a steady pace. If you're able to start them at rank 8 (2 and 2/3 stars) using seminars, that's a big help.

In 7.0 explore orders and repeat orders / collect seem to be good options too. After starting new about 3 times I've been able to get 5 or more pilots to rank 9 and better in the first six hours. Current game and the last I've gotten a rank 11 pilot (3 and 2/3 star) off just exploration.

Another issue with 7.0 is the factions seem to have an easier time building inside xenon territory. You need to choose a defensive position that the xenon push into constantly and the gate isn't always it in 7.0 beta.

There is no "experience" mechanic. Every action completed grants the pilot a roll for advancement. Each roll has a very low chance to succeed.

[Good Wizard]

I agree fully to all complaining about this mechanic...

This was the first mod I ever used for X4. It was also the most endorsed mod on Nexus, and it still works, AFAIK.

But just to add here: There is another activity which allows pilots to gain skill: Exploring.

At the start of any game - even with custom game starts you still need to explore, even if you know exactly where everything is. So I usually acquire several scout ships early in the game, and set them to exploring (the command). The best gain is won by sending them to completely 'unexplored' sectors, i.e. sectors you have not visited in this game yet.

The explore command is slow, and surely not 'optimal', but it works good enough, it also plots most stations and is usable. If you carefully optimize the exploring of completely unexplored sectors, then you can gain 1-3 pilots with 3 stars. This is enough to start mining and trading.

Mining itself and trading gains nearly nothing.

[Arisaya]

I also agree its too slow, and basically forces counter-intuitive player behavior to essentially metagame around it, either through expensive powerleveling strats, or through exploiting station subordinate mechanisms because a station commander's level overrides the pilots level for things like autotrade or automine range.

The latter mechanism basically means that for functional purposes, higher skilled pilots are not needed in economy ships. Lower skill pilots are still slower miners (by a lot), but this can be counteracted by just building more miners. Afaik it doesnt really impact traders all that much - most trade ships are beans against pirates anyways, and the star rating doesnt really impact effective flight speed all that much just going gate to gate.

Since my military fleet largely relies on spamming carriers (to deal with swarms) and asgards (to deal with K/I) as I hate having to bother with replacing ships because we dont have autoreplacement, I dont have a huge need for skilled pilots, and can confidently just let the fleet sit on an unbuilt station guarding a gate with xenon territory (Since its easier to re-issue 'defend until further notice' than 'area defense' if I need to move the fleet somewhere), which very effectively levels up the pilots while also keeping any actually dangerous xenon ships out - occasionally a lone xenon fighter gets through but thats not enough to cause any real damage to anything but in-progress stations stuck without build materials.