Re: Most helpful skills?
 

Indeed. You have to become an active scrap hound and buy a lot of gear just for the purpose of scrapping it. I mentioned in another post that I like to have two engineers on the team since I can level one up as the build it better guy and the other as the component efficiency dude.

Re: Most helpful skills?
 

Strangely, I never thought of buying things just to disassemble them. That's probably a smart idea! It would provide both crafting parts and crafting skill quickly.

By the way, the manual mentions that different officer classes gain experience in different ways, i.e. science officers gain experience by collecting data, social officers gain experience by trading and commerce, etc. But it doesn't list every class. Does anyone know how engineering officers gain experience? Because it seemed like mine were slow to level up, compared to other officers in my crew.

Re: Most helpful skills?
 

Engineering officers get experience when you craft or disassemble things. But it is really slow unless you are being a scrap hound.

Alternatively, you could just take all of your officers for a field trip on some planet (or for multiple field trips). That gives them all experience for killing things, and is probably the quickest way of getting it if you are willing to risk it (although, with how numerous your away team is then, it requires messing up really badly for your officers to die).

Re: Most helpful skills?
 

Navigation with two levels of Gravitational Interpretation means that you don't need the devices to find the Space Station and warp points. Also, you know where planets, black holes, worm holes and dense asteroids are.

Re: Most helpful skills?
 

I was wondering what the ^ meant.

Re: Most helpful skills?
 

As initial skill I chose Shuttle Ace to have a possibility to search planets' surface completely by land-takeoff-land tactics.
By the way, are Planetary skill Party leader and Tactical skill Security chief identical?

Re: Most helpful skills?
 

I can clear this up quickly: "party leader" and "security chief" skills both provide the same effect. And since they are from different classes, they "stack".

But if you had 2 tactical officers, both with "security chief" skill, they would not stack (only one would count, and one would be 'wasted'.)

I see you're really diving in :)

Re: Most helpful skills?
 

Ah, stupid me, I had been reading about stacking in manual just recently, but hasn't realized these two skills as "stackable" ones :)
Alas I usually have not much time per day for gaming (per evening to be exact;)) to really "dive in"... I'd call it "surface floating" so far:)

Re: Most helpful skills?
 

Oh well, happens.

And that being said, Shuttle Ace gets less seemingly overpowered once you get far enough, as by that point you'll have a high enough oxygen limit that exploring the whole planets will not be a problem even without it. In fact, I forwent the skill completely during my last run and I didn't really regret it; it's useful, I admit, but not a must-have sort of thing.

Re: Most helpful skills?
 

Are the skills on the Tactical Security Chief and Planetary Party Leader complimentary or mutually exclusive?