Crew
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β 0.8.1.1
Crew are the people who serve aboard your ships. They come in two distinct kinds: unique named officers, who have rarities, skills, a passive buff and idle income, and rank-and-file crew members, who are hired in bulk to grant small stacking bonuses by profession.
Both are recruited and managed at the Personnel Center, and both are commanded through the Leadership skill tree.
Officers
Officers are unique, named crew with their own portrait, level, rarity, and a set of skills. Each officer is an individual you collect, level, and assign deliberately.
Officer rarities
Officers come in five rarity tiers. Higher rarity means more skill slots and stronger idle income and passive bonuses:
| Rarity | Skill slots |
|---|---|
| Standard | 2 |
| Enhanced | 3 |
| High-Grade | 5 |
| Exotic | 6 |
| Legendary | 8 |
Skill slots unlock gradually as the officer gains levels. The only way to raise an officer to Legendary is through the Personnel Center's Training service.
Officer skills
Each officer carries a number of officer skills (per the table above) drawn from the same pool used across the skill trees. Skills provide flat or percentage bonuses to a stat.
Examples:
| Skill | Effect |
|---|---|
| Efficient Miner | +5% Mining power |
| Harvester | +2.5% ore yield |
| Loadmaster | +5% cargo-related bonus |
| Fire Control Officer | +12% combat bonus |
See Officer Skills for a full listing of possible skills.
Passive buff
An officer assigned to your active ship grants a small passive bonus to a stat tied to that officer's profession.
The bonus scales with the officer's level and rarity, so a high-level Legendary officer gives a noticeably larger buff than a low-level Standard one.
The passive buff must first be unlocked by the Officer Expertise node in the Leadership skill tree, and can be strengthened further by the Elite Officers node.
Idle income
An officer who is not aboard your current ship earns credits passively over real time, deposited automatically into your account.
Income scales with the officer's level and rarity — by rarity, roughly:
| Rarity | Idle-income multiplier |
|---|---|
| Standard | ×1 |
| Enhanced | ×2 |
| High-Grade | ×5 |
| Exotic | ×10 |
| Legendary | ×20 |
Idle income only accrues while you are playing (it is not offline progress) and must first be unlocked by the Off-Duty Contracts node in the Leadership skill tree.
This turns a deep officer roster into a steady credit stream from the officers you aren't actively flying with.
Crew members
Crew members are generic, interchangeable personnel grouped by profession rather than tracked as individuals. Every crew member of a given type is identical.
Their bonuses are per crew member and stack linearly — twice the crew, twice the bonus — with no cap.
A crew member only provides its bonus while assigned to a ship. Unassigned crew sit in your account-wide reserve pool.
Crew types
| Type | Effect (per crew member) | Role | Approx. cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Deckhand | Repairs the ship's hull over time (passive hull regeneration) | General / repair | 3,500 |
| Gunner | Increases combat power | Combat | 7,000 |
| Prospector | Increases Mining power (and minor hull repair) | Mining | 7,000 |
| Scrapper | Increases Salvage power (and minor hull repair) | Salvage | 7,000 |
| Marine | Specialised in Boarding — high boarding power and combat resistance | Boarding | 16,000 |
The per-member combat/mining/salvage bonus is small but adds up across a fully crewed ship; bigger ships that hold many crew see a meaningful total.
Marines provide no economic or combat-power bonus — their value is in boarding actions and in resisting enemy boarders.
Crew capacity
Every ship class has its own maximum crew, fixed by two things: the ship's size class and its role. You can't raise a hull's cap by swapping equipment — it is a property of the class itself.
Size sets the base number of crew slots. Bigger hulls hold far more:
| Size class | Base crew |
|---|---|
| Size 1 (small) | 5 |
| Size 2 | 15 |
| Size 3 (medium) | 25 |
| Size 4 | 50 |
| Size 5 (large) | 80 |
Role then scales that base up or down, because different ships are built around different crews:
- Combat — uses the base number unchanged.
- Mining and Salvage — about 20% more than the base (these hulls run larger crews).
- Cargo — about 20% fewer than the base.
So, for example, a Size 3 combat ship holds 25 crew, a Size 3 mining ship around 30, and a Size 3 cargo ship around 20. The exact figure for any ship is shown on its crew panel in-game.
This per-class cap can be raised further through the Expanded Quarters node in the Leadership skill tree, and by Leadership tree mastery.
Separately from each ship's cap, you keep an account-wide reserve of unassigned crew to draw from. The reserve size grows as your character levels up.
Acquiring crew
- Personnel Center — the primary source. Buy crew of any stocked type; sell unwanted crew back for 25% of their cost.
- Crew Capsules — pods recovered as loot. A recovered capsule can occasionally contain hostile crew, who are sent to your brig as prisoners instead.
- Prisoners — willing prisoners in your brig can be recruited into your crew at a discount.
Casualties
Crew can be killed when a ship takes hull damage. Higher-resistance crew (such as Marines) are far less likely to die. Keep spare crew in reserve to top ships back up after a hard fight.
Where to recruit
Both crew and officers are hired at the Personnel Center, a station facility found on most stations.
Don't confuse it with the Mercenary Guild, which hires temporary AI wingmen who bring their own ship — not crew for yours.
Commanding your crew
The Leadership skill tree governs almost everything on this page: it unlocks officer idle income and passive buffs, boosts crew bonuses and boarding power, expands crew and brig capacity, and improves what you get from prisoners. See Leadership for the full node list.