As for getting a pilot's morale up... I've found the technique quite helpful where I stand behind them, look over their shoulder, and lightly tap my foot in that **particularly** annoying fashion. Seriously though, the captains of my personal ships tend to absolutely skyrocket in morale, because they usually are on ferry-the-CEO-around-the-galaxy duty.

Thanks, you are the first YT'er that actually speak slowly clearly and gets straight to the point doing X4. have a sub

Pro tip: if all is lost and the ship is about to be destroyed, you can simply order the pilot (and in fact any crew) to simply go and work somewhere else. They'll then grab their escape pods and make their way to their new employment location. The pods hardly ever get shot at, as the enemies will keep focusing on destroying the now empty ship. You can do this from player > personnel or ship > crew menu, or just right click another ship and "Transfer crew with". You can also sell the now empty ship to another faction before it gets destroyed. You won't get much for a badly damaged ship but it's more than nothing so why not. If you sell it to a faction that has allies nearby this will also make them aggro the attackers, sweet sweet revenge.

Arbiter : "Were It So Easy." Great tips btw. Just getting back into X4 after a decade almost from X3 TC

Thanks! Great info!

Awesome video! I didn’t know that’s how pilots rank up!

thanks for this information. been playing for a while, still didn't understand anything about auto trading pilots though. this has been very helpful.

Funny i also came to the conclusion that the Kormorant is the best chioce for my 3 Star captains. :D I also gave everyone an escort of 3 Novas as well. Although that was rather expensive. But i havent lost one since the escorts are active.

0:08 "Were it so easy" -Arbiter.

Auto miners do now need skilled captains. The information in this video might not be relevant anymore. Mostly you want to use trade stations (a skilled manager) for trade ships. Main reason you want skilled pilots now is Silicon mining. Traders that sell 1 -> 2 star seminars are rolled when the trader is rolled which is every time the trader enters high attention. It is not at all based on game seed and will change every time you revisit a station. I am not sure that the player can be in a guild with all the factions at the same time. Some like ARG vs ZYA seem mutually exclusive like you have to pick a side. Others like those involving HOP are not so you are free to choose all sides for the largest selection choice. ALI do have a representative. They sell the unique Nodan ship. Easiest way to get high rank pilots is to use construction ships to level morale as service crew, then shove them 100 at a time into your HQ when terraforming a planet you built a flight school on. This lets you level up 100 pilots to 4 stars very easily and cheaply. You can even do this at the same time as you raise their boarding skill using martial arts school if you want. 5 star pilots are more tricky as they need to be trained at the flight school individually, which makes them very micro intensive. You can perform both individual and group trainings asynchronously but the group and individual are shared between both flight school and the martial arts school.

actual help, thank you. if i search on reddit they tell me to mod the game. again thank you very much

My scout went from 2 to 4 star pilot by trying to transfer goods from PHQ to build storage took 30 min. Transfering goods before removing my small storage replacing it with large storage.

Great video! While the X community is pretty niche, I think you've got great pacing and have a good mix of information and a little humor. Keep it up! Subscriber 297 :)

I love your style.... :D Do you write your scripts or improve on the mic?

ive tried saving a bit of extra money to make all my miners faster with better drills, hopefully the increased speed and drilling speed will increase turn around. hopefully someone levels up faster. i got the callisto sentinel straight away, through the havitkah? quest and i put a captain on it and got him trading medical supplies. any time he stops i send him to second contact and do the same there, till theres no trades left then i send him back onto argon prime. pretty crap money, but hes improving rep fast and occasionally he does an ok trade.

I'm 54 and my wife and I are VERY worried about our future, gas and food prices rising daily. We have had our savings dwindle with the cost of living into the stratosphere, and we are finding it impossible to replace them. We can get by, but can't seem to get ahead. My condolences to anyone retiring in this crisis, 30 years nonstop just for a crooked system to take all you worked for.

I would love to see your takes on 6.20 +

I find the best ship for autotrade is a prometheus. only 4k of cargo, yes, but they are both fast and armed like a proper heavy fighter.

You use combat engines on your cormorant, maybe a video comparing the different M sized engines types and race variations would be useful. I have always used travel engines on mine.

How far will Autotrade let the pilot trade? In one sector only, or will it allow him to go to further sectors (with more stars)?

4:02 that is why When I hear my ship is being attacked I pause and determine if fleeing will save my ship if not I drop all inventory into a lockbox transfer all crew to a nearby troop carrier like shukaku and choose a fighter to house my pilot as service crew, then leave the ship to be destroyed of I'm licky the enimy looses interest and my ship survives.

At 3:30 you can specify which wares you want to sell. Im not sure thats still a thing in version 7 😕

you missed to explain how i get from the guilde missions to actually buying the piloting semiars.

I've got a question, why not recommend the Boa as an autotrader instead? It's so fast. It can run away from any threat.

How can you get mining ship to mine when their are no refineries with in 3 sectors , COME BACK. This not the game i have , Brought foundations.

So what is the difference between 2 stars - Distribute wares and Auto-Trading? I have seen mimic does not work for auto-trading, so what about the Distribute?

1:20 OMFG I didn't know I had a single 3 star. I checked this list, i have 49 of them LMFAO

I also only hire pilots less than 1 star then train them up to 2/3 and give them 2 seminars, then you can either do guild missions for 2 star, or you can dump them in a combat ship and get them to kill enemies for the last 1/3 of a star. Also if you have the split faction open to you, get Boa's, fastest trade ship can outrun most things. Don't even bother trying to level pilots to 3 star with trade of mining, the chance of levelling after about 2 stars is so low it's pointless. The game is written to give you a chance of levelling based on if the trade was "good" low buying price / high selling price for a ware (not the total sold). Mining gives you 2 chances, 1 for filling the cargo and a bonus for filling cargo to 50% in one pickup, and I guess a possible 50% again but that's unlikely. Also here is the number of interactions (on average) a pilot needs to do to level for mining and trading... 9 for a 1 star 110 for a 2 star 1,382 for a 3 star 17,378 for a 4 star 218,568 for a 5 star Good luck getting a 5 star 🙃

Is auto-trading an actual game mechanic or do I need special mod for it?

Do you know if fly to and wait used to remove fog of map is counted as scout experience or is it wasted time with no gain? I can't tell if my two scouts are gaining or were just very lucky purchases. So newb. :D

Do subordinate pilots need the same piloting stars to mimic behavior?

when more 4x vids?

kind of surprised you didnt mention swapping out marines that have been in a ship for a while as pilots because they will usually be 4 star morale making them better for using seminars

So...how do I set up auto trade?

Some background info that is crucial but missing from the video: - The effective piloting level is the average of piloting and moral. So a 5 star moral, 1 star piloting pilot has an _effective_ piloting skill of 3 (5+1=6, 6/2=3). - Piloting itself does _never_ level up and cannot be trained other than through books. Only moral can be trained. - The best way to train moral is to have service crew people on a build ship. So the best way to gain lots of 3-star (effective) pilots is to build stations with your own build ship, then 1-star train the service crew, and boom you got lots of (effective) 3-star pilots.

My manager has been stuck at 3 1/2 stars for at least 20 hours of gameplay. And none of my miners since begining the game have gotten to the smart mine default behavior, or whatever its called. None of my traders can auto trade yet either. Its absolute BS. I have been hauling product to and from my station constantly. The base game chances are either bugged or way to low and it should be addressed by the devs. At this point, i am switching out managers and pilots, thinking the game doesnt allow basic low level npc to ever level up to 4 starts. The chance to level up must be so small that litteral thousands of hauls per ship isnt good enough to level one, just one is all i want, to a level 4 of anything!

Hey how's it going... Update.... For better pilots engineers managers whatever there is a mod now called talented universe where everyone or almost everyone is five star in everything... Combat seems more intense but pilot skill doesn't seem to have much of a different they all fly like imbeciles most of the time...🤔 But yet I had an r9 MK3 xenon battleship / dreadnought Bail...confusing right?😁🙄Or use a mod where you can buy a skill books anywhere up to four stars... But just in piloting and management.,

LOl your kidding , AI pilots are pretty damn useless i am for ever teleporting to get them the fuck out of asteroids or of gates, this pilots this is 2 and 3 star pilots , i cannot see any difference at all , i cant even get my pilots to upskill, Seems trading for a trading pilot does not give any skills at all , and that is rubbish, because a truck driver on earth gets more experience every time he jumps in the fucking truck, WTF is egosoft doing , i thought after x2 they would have improved this game, the only difference i see are graphics improvement. The game mechanics to me are no different than X2 and just as buggy bad.

Dude, you alive? More videos, please!