Crew System
A ship is a hull until somebody is aboard it. The minimum crew is what lets a frame move at all, and everybody above that minimum is there to cover a job the fleet would otherwise not be able to do.
Two things, deliberately not the same
Skills are what a person has learned. Somebody can hold a level in any number of trades, and those travel with them from ship to ship.
Postings are what they actually do aboard. A person works at most two trades on a ship: a primary role and an optional second duty. A trader sitting in the bunk is not a trader at the table, so a fleet with a trader aboard who is posted to something else still cannot buy.
The second duty works at three quarters of the level, rounded down. A captain who is also flying the ship is a plausible crew for a courier and a poor one for a freighter that runs into trouble.
That penalty is on performance only. Training does not lapse because attention is divided: a pilot flying the helm as a second duty is still a pilot, and the fleet may still jump.
Trades grow by doing them
Every order a fleet finishes pays experience into the trades that carried it out. A buy or sell teaches the trader, mining teaches the engineer, a jump teaches both pilot and engineer, and the captain learns from all of it because running the queue is their job whatever the queue contains.
It is deliberately slow. A first level takes about six finished orders, a fifth level a couple of hundred, and the top of a trade well over a thousand. Crew are a long relationship, not a bar to fill in an evening, and the hiring desk has to stay worth visiting.
Anybody can stand any watch. You can post somebody to a job they have never done, and they will learn it there. Put a rookie on the helm next to a veteran and after a few dozen jumps you have a second pilot. That is the only way to grow a crew rather than buy one.
What it costs is honest: a trade at zero qualifies the fleet for nothing. The ship does not jump on a pilot who has never flown, however officially they hold the seat. Posting a rookie is a decision to train them, not a free upgrade.
A second duty is learned at the same reduced rate it is worked.
Hiring
Crew are found at the Crew Market, available at most stations. Filter by the trade you need and the level you need it at, because the useful question at a hiring desk is "who can run my mining rig", not "whose job title says engineer".
Somebody hired on Earth has to travel to Mars before they can stand a watch. Joining a ship is a journey, not a click.
- Command Center → Crew Market
- Filter by trade and minimum level
- Check the trades they hold, not just the headline role
- Hire, then wait for them to arrive
What each trade does
| Trade | What it gates | What another level buys |
|---|---|---|
| Captain | Automation beyond a plain list of orders | More ships commanded, and smarter orders |
| Pilot | Jumping between stars | Nothing yet |
| Engineer | Mining at all | Larger and rarer modules |
| Trader | Buying and selling unattended | Bigger deals in one order |
| Security | Travel into low and null sec | Nothing yet |
| Tactician | Nothing yet | Nothing yet |
| Scientist | Nothing yet | Nothing yet |
The blanks are deliberate. A percentage listed in a help article that no code applies is a promise the game does not keep, so a trade gets its effect at the same time as the code that applies it, and not before. Tactician and Scientist wait on combat and scanning; Pilot and Security wait on combat too, which is being rebuilt.
Captain
The one that changes how the game plays. A captain does not make ships faster or holds bigger. They decide how much you have to spell out by hand.
| Level | What the fleet may be left to do |
|---|---|
| 1-2 | Carry out a written list of orders |
| 3-4 | Repeat that list on a loop |
| 5+ | Run orders on conditions: cargo full, cycles complete, quantity reached |
Command capacity grows with the level too, from a single hull at level 1 to a fleet of forty at level 9. Going over is allowed. An overloaded captain simply starts no new complex work until the fleet is back within their reach; the orders already running keep running.
Engineer
Modules ask for an engineer aboard that hull before they can be fitted. What a module wants is read off how big the bay is and how rare the thing is:
| Common | Uncommon | Rare | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Small | anybody | 2 | 3 |
| Medium | 3 | 4 | 5 |
| Large | 5 | 6 | 7 |
Buying the high-end warp drive is half of it. The other half is somebody who can keep it running. Modules already fitted are never removed by this: the requirement applies when something new goes in.
Trader
No price edge. The market makes the price; the trader decides how large a deal they can carry off.
| Level | Units per order |
|---|---|
| 1-2 | 200 |
| 3-4 | 800 |
| 5-6 | 2,000 |
| 7-8 | 5,000 |
| 9-10 | No limit |
Qualifications
What a fleet must have aboard before it carries out an order on its own. A ship flies itself to a station with nothing but its minimum crew.
| Order | Wants aboard |
|---|---|
| Buy / Sell | Trader |
| Mine | Engineer |
| Warp | Pilot and Engineer |
| Travel into low or null sec | Security |
The qualification belongs to the fleet, not to one hull: one trader in the formation serves the whole fleet. Your own hands at a market are unaffected. This is about what a fleet does while nobody is watching.
What a candidate costs
The price of a hire and the quality badge on the market both read the trades: what they are best at, and how much else they can turn their hand to. A specialist at the top of one job is what most fleets are shopping for, so that carries most of the price.
Crew used to carry six attributes as well - Intelligence, Reflexes, Loyalty, Stress Resistance, Charisma, Economic Conformity. Nothing in the game read them except the price tag, which meant you could be charged a premium for figures that never reached a ship. They are gone. When combat arrives it will ask how somebody behaves under fire with attributes designed for that question.
Morale
Recorded and shown, and for now that is all it does. It used to scale every crew bonus, and the bonuses are gone. Rather than invent a new number for morale to multiply, it waits for the systems that can carry it honestly: crew leaving, conflicts aboard, and performance under fire.
Wages still run hourly, and an employer who cannot pay still loses goodwill.
Wages
A crew member's salary is what they cost per payday, and payday runs hourly. This is the operating cost that scales with frame class: an XL-Frame needs eight people to move at all, a courier needs one, so the big hull costs more to run and not only more to buy.
The money goes to the population where the crew is stationed. It is wages, not a tax: the people who earn it are the customers your economy produces for.
Tips
- Read the trades, not the title - a pilot who can also close a deal is worth more to a two-berth hull than a better pilot who cannot
- A small ship wants generalists - three people covering six functions is how a small hull stays useful
- A large ship wants specialists - eight berths mean nobody has to work at three quarters
- A captain is what buys your time back - everything else buys a ceiling or a permission
- Check the engineer before buying the module - the crate is no use if nobody aboard can run what is in it
Related Topics
- Ship Types - Frames, crew minimums and capacity
- Modules & Fitting - What an engineer unlocks
- Manager System - Managers run a company, captains run a fleet
- Automation Basics - What a captain lets you stop doing