Several Questions

[lordostone]

Rules Questions:

• Is the Explorer skill used for the Harvest action or just the Explore action?
  
• The Pilot skill doesn't feel like it has too much impact when used for Advance/Retreat, how much weight does this have vs. the ship's Speed rating?
  
• Is the Tactics skill used for avoiding ship encounters during Wilderness landings, or is it used to reduce the risk of losing Crew and Health?
  
• Does the Warrior skill have any impact on how much Crew survives a Harvest/Explore action?
  

UI Questions:

• Is the Captain's Title a direct result of their Level?
  
• What is the Captain's Rating?
  

UI Suggestions:

• In addition to the political officer providing the notification, could you add an icon/color change to the trade window (there have been a few occurrences of the notifications being so backlogged it wasn't visible until after the purchase)
  
• An interface/toast log which could be either bookmarked or cleared by the user. It's really frustrating when a toast disappears while I'm reading it and I haven't found a way to retrieve it yet.
  

Edit: Consistent formatting for words taken directly from the game, seemed potentially helpful for deciphering the questions.

[slayernz]

Explorer benefits the Explore action and not so much the Harvest action.
Pilot becomes significant when you have higher pilot levels (eg 20 in early/mid stages of the game, and 40+ in later stages of the game). Not only will you be able to advance/retreat more effectively, but you'll be able to prevent your opponent from advancing/retreating.

NOTE though, that Pilot skill doesn't help you dodge enemy weapons/torp fire. You need Stealth skill to help you get away from conflicts unscathed.

Stealth skill also helps you avoid enemy encounters in space.

Tactics skill is useful in harvest missions because you've picked a good place to land. However, it won't help you with alien encounters in wilderness, and you still end up losing crew and/or health.

Warrior skill helps you survive Harvest/Explore + boarding, but doesn't do squat for your crew. They are pretty much cannon fodder that you conveniently have between you and the Argblargle that seems intent on chewing on your face.

The captain title is 100% tied to the level of the character. You can, of course, have military ranks with each faction (up to Rank 18). The noble houses have different rank titles compared to the syndicates.

The Rating of the captain is simply the difficulty of the particular game
(ranging from Basic through to Impossible). Each game level has a number (0 for basic, and 7 for Impossible).

Some toasts make their way to the ship log. Some toasts such as crew deaths or injury, for example, are logged (or at least I think they are logged). The factional alliances are also captured, but that is in the conflicts section. You're right though, some notifications may be important but aren't captured anywhere. It's an enhancement request that has definitely been raised before.

[kuzkula]

Is the faction level capped in the elite version?

[slayernz]

faction level? are you talking about reputation? If so, no, for all extensive purposes, they are not capped in both positive and negative directions. I've had one captain who had -21000 with Steel Song (cos they are just scum).

If you're meaning rank, then the limit is rank 18. You can't get any higher than rank 18, which is probably the equivalent of a 5 star general, but sounds fancier (Exemplar Dragoon and Holy Executioner ranks sound so much more meaningful)..