Why can't you hire 3 star pilots outright when you buy a ship? Why are there sliders for higher level crew when you can only ever hire beginners? Don't even get me started on the 'smartness' difference between 0 and 5 star captains.

I really dislike this whole star based experience mechanism. Am I their personal trainer, or what? Should I constantly switch captains between combat and trader/miner ships, or what? They gain experience even if they are just watching you roflstomp your enemies, which is really unbalanced compared to how fast pilots in other fields gain experience. Pilots in combat ships seem to gain stars uncomparably faster then traders/miners/managers. Xenon missions now, and barely any of them rewarded seminars for 2 and 3 star pilots (although I mostly selected missions based on credit reward). I started as the Terran Cadet, and in the early game I had multiple 2-3-4 star seminars, I don't know how, I must have recieved them through the plot missions, because I did at least two dozen Terran vs. I have one autotrader and one distributor, they were doing their thing for at least 4 in-game hours now, no progress whatsoever, both still have 3 and 2 overall star rating respectively.

Pilot talk trilogy hq