Pilot Archive
Thread: ------------YAMADA's Pilot Leveling Guide V.1.1 (Works For All 3 Factions)--------------------------
Page 1 of 3
YamadaMan
Tue Nov 02, 2004 6:21 am
#1
Hi guys !
First thing: YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO MASTER ANY PILOT PROFESSION IN ONE DAY, IT CAN BE DONE IN ONE WEEK, BUT WILL MOST LIKELY TAKE UP TO ONE WEEK AND HALF TO TWO WEEKS, IF NOT MORE IF YOU GET STUCK AT MASTER MISSION.
Seeing how many people out there are wondering about the "best way" to level pilot profession, I decided to make a small guide about Pilot profession leveling.
I did neutral (privateer) on beta, and I'm doing Imperial here on live, I guess Rebel is about the same. I'll give general instructions that will work with all 3 factions here.
I. FIRST HALF, FROM NOVICE TO HALFWAY (2222)
Your First mission is very important, because it will give you your first free skill box, it's not very hard and can be completed alone with the starter ship, actually, the "first mission" is a serie of a few missions and at the end you will get a free skill box. I'd recommend to go for the equipement one first (x1xx), that will allow you to equip your ship with level 2 and 3 components.
once you train that skill, you want to hunt for equipement and a new, player made chassis, as the starter ship won't be upgradable. you will notice that the novice ship couldn't hold alot of mass, so look for very specific components to not overload your mass.
In a general rule, when you're upgrading your ship, your priorities will be the weapons and the shield, except for imperials TIE Light duty, where it's quite hard to fit a shield along with weapons armor and other things.
anyway, you're after a shield and a weapon that are level 3, player crafted (they're usually better than looted ones).
here's the list of parts that are better looted than crafted (usually), use them and keep em, as you can find level 2 reactors with low mass, but high power, that can be usefull later.
- Capacitor
- Booster
- Engine
- Droid Interface
and in some cases, shields and armor, but I never seen weapons that were superior to crafted ones, but I remember in beta, I used a level 2 engine until I got 3333, nice stats, and low mass, don't destroy things like that
ok so now you're 0100 with a brand new chassis and equipement, serious things can start, but don't get too nasty, you're still a "noob" in piloting .
now you're looking for xp, meaning "serious" xp, until you reach tier 3. Your best bet here is to hit spaces with alot of tier 2 enemy ships, you can try tier 3 ones if you have a nice engine or a friend, in most cases, try to bring a friend, xp is not "shared" as in the ground, do little damage to a ship and get full xp if someone else destroys it. tier 2 ships give about 500xp, and tier 3 ones, over 1kxp per kill.
my favorite space for tier 2 and 3 is Lok Space (nym's hovel hyperpoint), and again, bring a friend. you might die alot but the xp really worth it, welcome to the "1kBF" world ! that's where pilots live, don't bother with BF/wounds in space, it doesn't affect anything up there, it's all about your equipement and skills.
once you complete a box, your trainer will most likely give you a mission (one mission, if you have choice between 3 or 4 missions then, better go grinding somewhere else at that point, if you get only one, do it in order to be able to train next xp based box), do that mission and go back to your grinding place with your friend.
when you will hit 1211, you will be able to use level 5 equipement, then tier 3 ships will become more easy, again bring a friend, and hunt tier 3 ships (corsairs in lok space are my favorites, but they require decent piloting skills, not talking skill box here, cause they can outrun you if you're not doing it well, if you're with a friend, things are easier/faster). tier 3 ships give over 1kxp each, basically, if you focus on em, and if you bring a friend with, it'll take between 10 and 20 minutes to fill a tier 2 box, so make friends and hunt tier 3 corsairs up there in lok space, you'll get to 2222 quite fast (can be done within an afternoon, if not less, if you focus on that point)
Other thing that will become important once you reach 2211: the usefull but underestimated droid.
all 3 factions have specific droid commands:
REBEL: Shield tweaking Commands
IMPERIAL: Weapons and engine commands (imps get 2 commands, but are stuck with 1 gun all the way up to tier 4)
Neutral: Reactor Commands
II. STARTING TO USE DROIDS
Most people I see out there don't use droids, the system is kinda tough to understand at first, but very helpfull, I'll try to explain the basis here.
A droid will allow you to enhance some of your ship's part's stats, such as reactor energy, shield effectiveness, engine stats (including speed) and weapons stats.
in order to use a droid, you'll have to figure out if your ship's using an astromech (R series) or a flight computer. let me sort things out, only a few rebel ships (such as the X-Wing) use astromech, ALL neutral and imperial ships use flight computer, and I belive most rebel ships use FC too.
now go to your favorite droid engineer, get a flight computer (or an astromech with data storage module, depending on your ship) and ask for at least two crates of unprogrammed droid chips.
you might already have a droid interface, looted from your previous hunts.
in order to use the droid commands, you'll have to program the chips, use the radial menu to program em.
then, once they're programmed, use the radial menu to put em in your datapad, and then drag/drop em into your FC/astromech's datapad.
don't forget to load the droid interface as well as your droid/FC in the ship management tab on ship terminals.
once in space, you'll have to set the commands to your toolbar, you will find em into the "ctrl/a" window, under "astromech" tab. this tab won't appear on the ground.
u can only program chips with your own programs (granted at leveling your pilot skill tree), but, and that's important:
YOU CAN USE OTHER FACTION'S PROGRAMS IF YOU GET A PLAYER FROM THOSE FACTIONS TO PROGRAM THE CHIPS FOR YOU AND TRADE EM BACK.
the "must have" ones are (IMO)
- Engine OverLoad - makes you faster
- Shields tweaks - makes different things with your shields
- Reactor OverLoad - it'll become important in higher levels, when you'll be able to equip 2 or 3 blasters along with missile launchers, it'll overload your reactor in order to generate the energy you need to use your guns, if you equip with 3 blasters and a missile and then you see only 2 blasters firing, here's your solution.
III. BACK TO LEVELING, THINGS GET SERIOUS ! FROM 2222 TO 4444
First Things First:
don't bother with xp on tier 3 in other purposes than stocking it, TIER 3 IS ENTIERELY MISSION BASED
but tier 3 missions (as well as some tier 2 missions) can be quite hard, and will most likely not be solo'able (even tho a few good pilots can solo some of them). grouping is your friend here, bring at least one or two pilots with at least the same level as you (even tho neutrals can do well with equipement level 5 and 2 blasters), and offer your help on their missions in return.
basically, for tier 3 it's "one mission = one skill box" but again, missions can be hard, so bring friends, most tier 3 pilots are looking for help, offer your help and get their help in return, trying to solo this will 1) make the leveling MUCH longer, 2) bring you to the grouping thing sooner or later. You're not yet an ace, don't play like you were one
Two IMPORTANT Things to keep in mind:
1st - you can hyperspace in the same system, without losing your mission, so if you see that things are getting too wild, have "h" button ready.
2nd - Your wingmen will take less aggro than you.
Got to 3333, congratulations ! hard part is done (at least until you reach master mission) !
now you are here watching at 1 million xp boxes, thinking "damn they're nuts !"
you might have the most part of the first box already, stocked from tier 3 missions, so no biggie, the first box you will choose will be the ship one , 4333, why ? because level 8 components are looted (for the most part) and tier 3 ships can hardly hold the mass of fill level 7 equipement, so get tier 4 ships and load em with top notch level 7 gear.
now, the xp ?
ok here's a way to make things easy, fast and cool
the things you didn't do before will give you a major hand here: DUTY MISSIONS
I have a preference for escort ones as they hold the aggro off you, but again, bring a tier 4 friend if you don't want the mission to end too soon. doing tier 4 escort, I managed to get around 100k xp for 10/15 minutes of escorting, with this method, count 2 hours to fill one tier 4 box, doing that, you'll be 4444 pilot in NO TIME
IV. THAT FRE4KIN' MASTER MISSION
you'll get two (if I remember) missions in order to train the master box, don't bother with xp, it's useless, you'll get the box if you complete the mission, end of the line.
those missions will take part in a PvP area, Kessel.
one advice, BRING ALOT OF 4444 FRIENDS, specially for the corvette one, if you take 19 4444 pilots with you, then everyone who will survive will get to train the master box (if they took the mission from their own trainer too), the corvette is a static spawn that spawns once every 2 or so hours so group for that mission, everyone will be happy at the end. go solo and you die, plain and simple.
there are a few other things you can do, to try to be more safe up there.
- make an announcement on your galaxy boards, warn people that you and your group will go into the PvP area but not for PvP purpose, make a code or something, u can name your ships the same way (like "nopvp" for example) so PvPers won't attack you (unless they're jerks).
- Don't go there unless the group is full
- warn players you see around, sending tells
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I sincerely hope this guide will help people, I'll try to update as soon as I get more info, or if things get changed.
First thing: YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO MASTER ANY PILOT PROFESSION IN ONE DAY, IT CAN BE DONE IN ONE WEEK, BUT WILL MOST LIKELY TAKE UP TO ONE WEEK AND HALF TO TWO WEEKS, IF NOT MORE IF YOU GET STUCK AT MASTER MISSION.
Seeing how many people out there are wondering about the "best way" to level pilot profession, I decided to make a small guide about Pilot profession leveling.
I did neutral (privateer) on beta, and I'm doing Imperial here on live, I guess Rebel is about the same. I'll give general instructions that will work with all 3 factions here.
I. FIRST HALF, FROM NOVICE TO HALFWAY (2222)
Your First mission is very important, because it will give you your first free skill box, it's not very hard and can be completed alone with the starter ship, actually, the "first mission" is a serie of a few missions and at the end you will get a free skill box. I'd recommend to go for the equipement one first (x1xx), that will allow you to equip your ship with level 2 and 3 components.
once you train that skill, you want to hunt for equipement and a new, player made chassis, as the starter ship won't be upgradable. you will notice that the novice ship couldn't hold alot of mass, so look for very specific components to not overload your mass.
In a general rule, when you're upgrading your ship, your priorities will be the weapons and the shield, except for imperials TIE Light duty, where it's quite hard to fit a shield along with weapons armor and other things.
anyway, you're after a shield and a weapon that are level 3, player crafted (they're usually better than looted ones).
here's the list of parts that are better looted than crafted (usually), use them and keep em, as you can find level 2 reactors with low mass, but high power, that can be usefull later.
- Capacitor
- Booster
- Engine
- Droid Interface
and in some cases, shields and armor, but I never seen weapons that were superior to crafted ones, but I remember in beta, I used a level 2 engine until I got 3333, nice stats, and low mass, don't destroy things like that
ok so now you're 0100 with a brand new chassis and equipement, serious things can start, but don't get too nasty, you're still a "noob" in piloting
.now you're looking for xp, meaning "serious" xp, until you reach tier 3. Your best bet here is to hit spaces with alot of tier 2 enemy ships, you can try tier 3 ones if you have a nice engine or a friend, in most cases, try to bring a friend, xp is not "shared" as in the ground, do little damage to a ship and get full xp if someone else destroys it. tier 2 ships give about 500xp, and tier 3 ones, over 1kxp per kill.
my favorite space for tier 2 and 3 is Lok Space (nym's hovel hyperpoint), and again, bring a friend. you might die alot but the xp really worth it, welcome to the "1kBF" world ! that's where pilots live, don't bother with BF/wounds in space, it doesn't affect anything up there, it's all about your equipement and skills.
once you complete a box, your trainer will most likely give you a mission (one mission, if you have choice between 3 or 4 missions then, better go grinding somewhere else at that point, if you get only one, do it in order to be able to train next xp based box), do that mission and go back to your grinding place with your friend.
when you will hit 1211, you will be able to use level 5 equipement, then tier 3 ships will become more easy, again bring a friend, and hunt tier 3 ships (corsairs in lok space are my favorites, but they require decent piloting skills, not talking skill box here, cause they can outrun you if you're not doing it well, if you're with a friend, things are easier/faster). tier 3 ships give over 1kxp each, basically, if you focus on em, and if you bring a friend with, it'll take between 10 and 20 minutes to fill a tier 2 box, so make friends and hunt tier 3 corsairs up there in lok space, you'll get to 2222 quite fast (can be done within an afternoon, if not less, if you focus on that point)
Other thing that will become important once you reach 2211: the usefull but underestimated droid.
all 3 factions have specific droid commands:
REBEL: Shield tweaking Commands
IMPERIAL: Weapons and engine commands (imps get 2 commands, but are stuck with 1 gun all the way up to tier 4)
Neutral: Reactor Commands
II. STARTING TO USE DROIDS
Most people I see out there don't use droids, the system is kinda tough to understand at first, but very helpfull, I'll try to explain the basis here.
A droid will allow you to enhance some of your ship's part's stats, such as reactor energy, shield effectiveness, engine stats (including speed) and weapons stats.
in order to use a droid, you'll have to figure out if your ship's using an astromech (R series) or a flight computer. let me sort things out, only a few rebel ships (such as the X-Wing) use astromech, ALL neutral and imperial ships use flight computer, and I belive most rebel ships use FC too.
now go to your favorite droid engineer, get a flight computer (or an astromech with data storage module, depending on your ship) and ask for at least two crates of unprogrammed droid chips.
you might already have a droid interface, looted from your previous hunts.
in order to use the droid commands, you'll have to program the chips, use the radial menu to program em.
then, once they're programmed, use the radial menu to put em in your datapad, and then drag/drop em into your FC/astromech's datapad.
don't forget to load the droid interface as well as your droid/FC in the ship management tab on ship terminals.
once in space, you'll have to set the commands to your toolbar, you will find em into the "ctrl/a" window, under "astromech" tab. this tab won't appear on the ground.
u can only program chips with your own programs (granted at leveling your pilot skill tree), but, and that's important:
YOU CAN USE OTHER FACTION'S PROGRAMS IF YOU GET A PLAYER FROM THOSE FACTIONS TO PROGRAM THE CHIPS FOR YOU AND TRADE EM BACK.
the "must have" ones are (IMO)
- Engine OverLoad - makes you faster
- Shields tweaks - makes different things with your shields
- Reactor OverLoad - it'll become important in higher levels, when you'll be able to equip 2 or 3 blasters along with missile launchers, it'll overload your reactor in order to generate the energy you need to use your guns, if you equip with 3 blasters and a missile and then you see only 2 blasters firing, here's your solution.
III. BACK TO LEVELING, THINGS GET SERIOUS ! FROM 2222 TO 4444
First Things First:
don't bother with xp on tier 3 in other purposes than stocking it, TIER 3 IS ENTIERELY MISSION BASED
but tier 3 missions (as well as some tier 2 missions) can be quite hard, and will most likely not be solo'able (even tho a few good pilots can solo some of them). grouping is your friend here, bring at least one or two pilots with at least the same level as you (even tho neutrals can do well with equipement level 5 and 2 blasters), and offer your help on their missions in return.
basically, for tier 3 it's "one mission = one skill box" but again, missions can be hard, so bring friends, most tier 3 pilots are looking for help, offer your help and get their help in return, trying to solo this will 1) make the leveling MUCH longer, 2) bring you to the grouping thing sooner or later. You're not yet an ace, don't play like you were one
Two IMPORTANT Things to keep in mind:
1st - you can hyperspace in the same system, without losing your mission, so if you see that things are getting too wild, have "h" button ready.
2nd - Your wingmen will take less aggro than you.
Got to 3333, congratulations ! hard part is done (at least until you reach master mission) !
now you are here watching at 1 million xp boxes, thinking "damn they're nuts !"
you might have the most part of the first box already, stocked from tier 3 missions, so no biggie, the first box you will choose will be the ship one , 4333, why ? because level 8 components are looted (for the most part) and tier 3 ships can hardly hold the mass of fill level 7 equipement, so get tier 4 ships and load em with top notch level 7 gear.
now, the xp ?
ok here's a way to make things easy, fast and cool
the things you didn't do before will give you a major hand here: DUTY MISSIONS
I have a preference for escort ones as they hold the aggro off you, but again, bring a tier 4 friend if you don't want the mission to end too soon. doing tier 4 escort, I managed to get around 100k xp for 10/15 minutes of escorting, with this method, count 2 hours to fill one tier 4 box, doing that, you'll be 4444 pilot in NO TIME
IV. THAT FRE4KIN' MASTER MISSION
you'll get two (if I remember) missions in order to train the master box, don't bother with xp, it's useless, you'll get the box if you complete the mission, end of the line.
those missions will take part in a PvP area, Kessel.
one advice, BRING ALOT OF 4444 FRIENDS, specially for the corvette one, if you take 19 4444 pilots with you, then everyone who will survive will get to train the master box (if they took the mission from their own trainer too), the corvette is a static spawn that spawns once every 2 or so hours so group for that mission, everyone will be happy at the end. go solo and you die, plain and simple.
there are a few other things you can do, to try to be more safe up there.
- make an announcement on your galaxy boards, warn people that you and your group will go into the PvP area but not for PvP purpose, make a code or something, u can name your ships the same way (like "nopvp" for example) so PvPers won't attack you (unless they're jerks).
- Don't go there unless the group is full
- warn players you see around, sending tells
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I sincerely hope this guide will help people, I'll try to update as soon as I get more info, or if things get changed.
Message Edited by YamadaMan on 11-04-2004 09:26 AM
Thyriel
Tue Nov 02, 2004 9:42 am
#5
nice guide but there is a much faster way to do this, we "pulled" a friend yesterday in6 hours from the point he finished his tier1 missions to the point he was 3333 pilot.
Group is the keyword, u only need to do a low amount of damage to a target to get the full xp for it, so get 2, 3 guys doing tier4 duty missions, they disable the target ships, the tier1 flies there damages them a little and gets xp for them with no risk of getting shot by some tier5 opponents, its then about 10 minutes to cap the xp at tier1 and half an hour for tier2 xp, the rest of the time is helping him with his missions
YamadaMan
Tue Nov 02, 2004 2:49 pm
#7
Thyriel wrote:nice guide but there is a much faster way to do this, we "pulled" a friend yesterday in 6 hours from the point he finished his tier1 missions to the point he was 3333 pilot.Group is the keyword, u only need to do a low amount of damage to a target to get the full xp for it, so get 2, 3 guys doing tier4 duty missions, they disable the target ships, the tier1 flies there damages them a little and gets xp for them with no risk of getting shot by some tier5 opponents, its then about 10 minutes to cap the xp at tier1 and half an hour for tier2 xp, the rest of the time is helping him with his missions
of course, the biggest the group is, the fastest one will level, you're right, the keyword is grouping.
and thanx for the stars
DarthKaelan
Tue Nov 02, 2004 3:03 pm
#8
Excellent guide, but one slight correction -- neutral ships can have droids as well.
My Dunelizard right now takes a droid interface instead of a nav-computer.
Definitely looking to try out some of what you've listed. Thanks for the guide!
CH-IMP
Tue Nov 02, 2004 11:40 pm
#9
Yes, great guide, i'm currently at 3/2/2/2 in the imperial pilot profesion and i'm stuck on the one where you have to get something from a lambda yacht, then transfer it through a satillite. i can disable and dock the ship easily, but being attacked by loads rebels and including facing the A-Wingand B-Wing for the first time is rough, and i can only get one friend to go with me at a time fore some reason, i actually got through that part first but got my reactor blown 
WookieeManWicket
Tue Nov 02, 2004 11:44 pm
#10
Great info dude, I'll really get through the experience more efficiently now.
YamadaMan
Wed Nov 03, 2004 3:43 am
#12
CH-IMP wrote:Yes, great guide, i'm currently at 3/2/2/2 in the imperial pilot profesion and i'm stuck on the one where you have to get something from a lambda yacht, then transfer it through a satillite. i can disable and dock the ship easily, but being attacked by loads rebels and including facing the A-Wing and B-Wing for the first time is rough, and i can only get one friend to go with me at a time fore some reason, i actually got through that part first but got my reactor blown
yea tier 3 imperials require patience and alot of friends. try to figure out how to use the bomber, once you can handle it, it becomes a killing machine !
Page 1 of 3