How do you pick who to hire? And do their backgrounds matter?

[lockdown51]

Greetings,

Just wondering what is the general idea behind hiring new mech pilots. Purely on stats/skills, does their background traits come into count, their voice lines, and/or their portraits?

Also does having a stable of mech pilots with varying backgrounds help you with those random ship events?

 

[Darkfyre99]

So far, I’ve only hired one new Mechwarrior. I’d taken some head hits, and I needed a sixth to do the last mission in system. It was early in the game, so I hired the one with the best stats. In the future, it’ll be based on their specialized skills. I still don’t have a relief for Behemoth, so someone with the Bulwark skill would be ideal.

 

[Wandering Sentinel]

Their background traits can have an impact on events that decide to call on them, but such events are rare and occasions where it happens to call on a mechwarrior with a related trait (even in a small lance of 4-5) are rarer still. For instance, there's an early event that happens where you catch one of your pilots modifying the Leopard's crew quarters for more space while you're still stuck in the initial area. Normally, your only two options are pay a fine to keep the modification and keep the crew happy or make them undo the change so you don't get fined but take a morale hit... Unless it happens to pick Medusa, who unlocks the option to ask him to make the change quickly and easily reversible so it can go undetected if your creditors decide to send someone to check on you or something. This lets you get the +1 morale without having to pay the fine, which is a nice boost since it means you start with slightly higher morale in every mission.

 

[olin011]

Stats, pay, looks, voice, background story in case of kickstarter backers (in that order). Background traits fire too rarely to really have any impact on my decision.

 

[Jonathan8883]

So far I haven't seen a single identifiable Kickstarter pilot.

Lamprey's voice made me want to kick his face in every time he talked. Luckily, he got killed in a mission right (the one with the ammo crates) around the time I realized that I hated listening him and was going to fire him even though he had more XP than any of the other hireable options.

So now I hire based on voice first, and then stats second.

Glitch is my favorite. She's very positive, so I keep her in the #1 (lance command? slot).

 

[Lord of Riva]

Are they from the cappellan federation?

if yes hire them, if not vent them out of the airlock.

 

[Wandering Sentinel]

I think the issue is that events overall fire too rarely and there's only a very small number that also call on a pilot in any way where their background traits come into play, if it even calls on the right pilot. To give an idea, I once had a 40+ day travel time for a story mission and during that time only 1-2 events fired. Not only do events rarely fire, but there's also some that only fire in specific circumstances. For instance, if you're in orbit of an agricultural world advancing time, there's a chance Yang asks to go down to the surface to help work on some kind of civilian mechs (can't remember what they're called) and almost every time this happens it ends with me having to pay for a destroyed barn. Events that require you to be orbiting a planet seem to fire more often, however, but they call from a smaller pool of potential events.

Ironically, except for the event I stated earlier on the Leopard, I haven't seen any events that involve a specific pilot that call on their traits, but I've seen a lot that run checks on different systems on board the Argo. Just a tip, make sure you get the automation upgrade for Mechbay or bad things happen.

 

[DragonsRage]

I just look at pay because once you get the better ship you have upgrades in it that give them XP every day so it is easy and quick to level them up.

 

[Exemplar Voss]

Voice. Sadly a lot of the female pilots sound exactly the same to me, unless they're affecting a bad Russian accent.

But I do a few tests to make sure the voices aren't annoying, nothing else seems to have much an impact, but I grab people who have several background traits as a preference, just in case.

And who aren't fedrats or snakes (who have traveled way too far not to be up to something)

 

[Jamey]

Greetings,

Just wondering what is the general idea behind hiring new mech pilots. Purely on stats/skills, does their background traits come into count, their voice lines, and/or their portraits?

Also does having a stable of mech pilots with varying backgrounds help you with those random ship events?

Stats are the most important. Everything else is secondary, including pay.

After a point, I started hiring only backer and elite pilots. I'm not doing it for a game play reason, but just because I can.

 

[DorostheConquer]

Are they from the cappellan federation?

if yes hire them, if not vent them out of the airlock.

I'm just the opposite. Capellans get vented. Everyone else is fine.

For me, it's looks, voice, background traits, in that order. Barely even glance at the stats; so long as the stats start low enough, I can train them up how I want.

 

[tobias.mb]

I picked mine according to voice. Even got myself a second glitch, since I like her lines.

 

[Carog the Fat]

I am going to try and get a full pirate crew on my second run

 

[Adam_Taylor]

I kept Glitch and Behemoth. Fired Dekker and Medusa.
Picked up Primer at one point because I liked her voice lines. Then found Stoic, who has a nice Irish accent, so added her to my roster.
So it's me, Glitch, Behemoth and Stoic for pretty much everything now.

Honestly, while skills matter some, what matters more to me is what they have to say. I've though about replacing Behemoth because she is a little bland, but she looks nice.

 

[Tsar_Bomba]

When it's time to hire I go to the roster and click on each one to hear their voice and just go up and down the list finding any interesting or annoying ones. Then I look at their picture to see what they look like, then I look at stats, then background and then traits.

 

[Romanul]

I only hire pirates, convicts etc for their criminal background. I couldn't care less about the stats. I also fired the initial crew except for Behemoth because they weren't criminals.

 

[Drasius]

Voice matters most because I don't want to have to put up with someone I loathe the sound of yelling at me every 40 seconds. Stats are a distant second, though next playthrough, I think I'll be skipping the battlepods and just hiring experienced pilots (subject to voice lines). Callsign matters more than background traits and story to me, with the latter having as close to 0 bearing as can be, though I will say that after reading 1 backer warriors bio, she will never be hired because the periphery is no place for pretentious idiots.

 

[Wandering Sentinel]

Why does the criminal status matter? Also, as I stated above, keeping Medusa around gives you a chance to avoid the "morale hit or loss of money" event that's guaranteed to fire near the beginning of the game.

...Do I even want to know what this bio looked like?

 

[Romanul]

Why does the criminal status matter? Also, as I stated above, keeping Medusa around gives you a chance to avoid the "morale hit or loss of money" event that's guaranteed to fire near the beginning of the game.

...Do I even want to know what this bio looked like?

For immersion only. My main character is an ex pirate so i figured I have a criminal only crew. I am also storing mechs (I have like dozen or so) for when my crew will attempt to conquer a planet (again just for immersion).
I have over 40 morale and millions credits. Some bad events don't really matter to me.

 

[Wandering Sentinel]

The event I'm talking about happens very early when even the ten thousand you lose can be a bit to worry about, so it's not something that'd impact you now.