What are you doing (ingame) now?

[Trinity Star]

On and off since engineers was released.

[JohnLuke]

How long did it take you to do all the engineering?

RK

A lifetime.

[Kiltrathi]

I wasn't feeling much like paying attention so I did some trading in my Anaconda. Have a poor route, but it will do.
I put a fighter hanger in my ship for giggles and hired two pilots, Susan and Ivanka.
During trading I thought my profits were a bit low, considering the pilots only take 2 and 4% off my profits.
After doing some calculations, I'm way over paying them, they don't take a cut of my profits, they actually take a cut of the income.
I'll demonstrate based on one trade run.

The trade run netted an income of 798.720 + 4.911.680 = 5.710.400
Profit of this run = 1.065.280

Ivanka with her 2% profit share would be entitled to 21305
Susan with her 4% profit share would be entitled to 42611

However, in this run Ivanka earned 114207 and Susan 342662 for a total of 456.869
That's some difference, Batman!
It turns out that both these pilots take their cut from my income, not my profit as 8% of 5710400 is 456832. Where did that 8% come from by the way, Susan is actually earning 6% for not doing anything.

43% of my profits went to my pilots, not 6%. They are both fired.
Unless they are pitching in when buying the cargo as well, I will be flying solo again.

[JohnLuke]

The trade run netted an income of 798.720 + 4.911.680 = 5.710.400
Profit of this run = 1.065.280

Ivanka with her 2% profit share would be entitled to 21305
Susan with her 4% profit share would be entitled to 42611

However, in this run Ivanka earned 114207 and Susan 342662 for a total of 456.869
That's some difference, Batman!
It turns out that both these pilots take their cut from my income, not my profit as 8% of 5710400 is 456832. Where did that 8% come from by the way, Susan is actually earning 6% for not doing anything.

43% of my profits went to my pilots, not 6%. They are both fired.
Unless they are pitching in when buying the cargo as well, I will be flying solo again.

I'm not following you.

You said that your net profit was $5,710,400. The pilots took 8% for $456832. That leaves you with $5,253,568.

How did you come up with a profit number of only $1,065,280? How are you calculating your profit? What am I missing?

It sounds like Susan had a rank level increase and is now at 6%. Check your pilot's info to verify.

BTW, each pilot takes their cut of every translation that you make, whether they are on the ship or just chilin' in a station. I only have one pilot, who I trained from a noob. Much,much cheaper that way Vs getting a higher ranked pilot.

[Kiltrathi]

The 5 million is income, not profit. The palladium and Reactive Armor was bought for 4 million, the crew didn't help pay that. I don't mind paying crew for not flying or being active. I just thought I'd pay them out of profit, not income.

[JohnLuke]

The 5 million is income, not profit. The palladium and Reactive Armor was bought for 4 million, the crew didn't help pay that. I don't mind paying crew for not flying or being active. I just thought I'd pay them out of profit, not income.

Okay, gotcha. You may want to submit a ticked to FD with your findings. There may well be a bug in their calculations.

[Xebeth]

The 5 million is income, not profit. The palladium and Reactive Armor was bought for 4 million, the crew didn't help pay that. I don't mind paying crew for not flying or being active. I just thought I'd pay them out of profit, not income.

Income would be the more correct process, in any business profits are calculated after expenses and wages are paid.

Of course one would normally have staff to do work that you couldn't achieve on your own. So with the SLF it makes sense, you can't pilot both the SLF and the mothership at the same time.

The problem is that the role of the NPC crew is very focused and limited, they still work for you even when you can't use them and therefore you have to pay them, this isn't actually their fault per se, but the result of either a poorly considered design, or a not fully implemented system.

I'm wondering if it is the latter, you can hire up to three crew (but only use one currently), this gives you a total complement of four people including yourself. All of the large ships have provision for four people - pilot, navigator, engineer, and fighter pilot, I wonder if 2.3 multi-crew is the next evolution of this?

If however SLF are the only reason to have NPC crew, then the wages process needs to be reworked, my preference would be to a standing retainer for non-active crew, a standard number of credits per week that increases with their rank. You would still need an income (or savings), and it would still eat into your profits, only more fairly.

[JustSomeGuy]

I also assumed they take their pay from the profits, not all income. And since they take their % from all income, no pilot will be hired on my ship. I'm way too greedy for those kind of payments.

Are they any good anyway? I'm thinking that a flea like that can't do anything but tickle that elite Anaconda attacking my trade ship, which has survived very well to this day without some npc pilot taking half of my profits. Sure, the npc rats have learned to dodge the mines, but I can still run without any problem.

Not much in this patch for me it seems.. Fighters do sound pretty much useless to me, passenger missions are too much like regular "haul X to Y and we'll pay you Z" -missions.

[Relix Typhon]

Fighters do sound pretty much useless to me

They are an absolute blast to fly though. Especially in VR. Not too sure how good the NPC pilots are to be fair, I dont give them chance; just park them at a nav beacon and I go hunt in the fighter

*I only have a Keelback that can fit a fighter - not exactly a combat ship

[pargyrak]

Taking an unappreciative Azraelian on a 2Kly trip from home.

He is a miserable cry baby because we were scanned.

One more complaint and I will space him no matter the 10M he promised me