Light-Hawk
They do take a credit cut from everything you do. That said if you get an SLF pilot at "Harmless" and rank them all the way up to "Elite" they only take a 10% cut from all your profits. If you got them at "Expert" and rank them up to "Elite" they take 16%. In my opinion it's worth it to give up 10% in exchange for having an Elite SLF pilot for when you need one.
As for their rank progression, it doesn't matter what your rank is or their rank. They rank up significantly faster. On my alt accounts, I got SLF pilots immediately. In the time it took me to go from "Harmless" to "Competent," the SLF pilots went from "Harmless" to "Elite."
That implies that:
A. Crew rank requirements are significantly lower than CMDRs' requirement.
B. The majority of points earned goes to crew pilot.
C. Both A and B
All 3 are highly unlikely and are the opposite of my observation. Once the NPC and CMDRs ranks are equal the progress is equal and before that the lower rank progress faster.
Do you have some proofs of that claim?
Edit: I've checked my NPC pilot - she is at 10% while I am at 25% progress to Elite I. We both were Elite on ED: O launch so we had equal start. My greater speed can be explained with a bug. Killing scavengers or NPC on foot progress your combat rank. It is daft but I saw other CMDRs in the official forums have such observation too.
Last edit: 10 Aug 2021, 7:08am