Most helpful skills?
 

Now that there has been some time to get a better feel for the game (and even win it by some non-beta players), what are people finding to be their preferred "Captain" skills in the early game, and why?

I find "Shuttle Ace" extremely helpful in the beginning, because it gives you a random LZ every time you touchdown on a planet. Without it, many areas are not accessible unless you have lots of Away-Team enablers like "Water Walkers" or "Mountain Climbers".

I also like "Warp Specialist" because it reduces the remaining "cool down" of the drive after warp (by 23 turns in my case with a basic RNG:1 CD:75 drive).

-Dubious-

Re: Most helpful skills?
 

I used to always go for Targeting, thinking better skills in fighting would be helpful. But now I always go for Shuttle Ace for the same reason you do.

Re: Most helpful skills?
 

In the early levels, I have found the most useful skills to be field medic and damage control (its a game and my captain often goes out with the away team early). FM allows your away team to survive the slings and arrows of outrageous combat much more often, and DC heals the hull. After you get going, an engineer or engineers with the combination of "Build it Better 3" and "Efficient Construction 3" along with lots of crafting parts will give you the ability not to get some kick-butt weapons (one of my favorite away team sidearms is a plasma mini-gun, range 10, adjacent 7+, damage 200+ - it can clear the eyeballs and bashers), empty your cargo hold of all but the most essential equipment and build what you need "on the fly", and also get tons of cash when you need it (crafting good reactors gets about 500K credits in the pawn shops). Most of the other skills are duplicated by a device, but the crafting skills are not.

Re: Most helpful skills?
 

Still learning -- I have been playing for about 10 days. For the present, I prefer my Captain to be of the Science Officer class, with a starting skill of Ship's Surgeon. Obviously the Ship's Surgeon skill increases the survival chance of Away Teams; but it does so without requiring the Captain/Surgeon to accompany the Away Teams. As a result, I can choose another officer (usually from the Tactical Officer class) to be my Away Team leader. Choosing a Captain from the Science Officer class also dovetails well, with my usual choice of an Explorer class ship, to be my starting vessel. Other early promotions that I typically seek for my Science Officer class Captain are Researcher and Analyst.

Re: Most helpful skills?
 

I subscribe to the JimSB plan of Field Medic Captain and craft mastery. :-)

Re: Most helpful skills?
 

I note both of you have either finished or are deep into the game sectors. It seems to me that Crafting skills are more likely to be useful in mid to late game, when you have had the chance to accumulate sub-components. Can you recall how early in the game you were able to craft anything useful?

-Dubious-

Re: Most helpful skills?
 

Field Medic would be an excellent choice if you are willing to risk your captain. I really like this skill and always promote a science officer to this skill. However, I play loose with my away teams and sending out my captain just ends in a loss when my away team dies. :hurt:

Re: Most helpful skills?
 

I really like "Shuttle Ace" and make that my Captain's initial skill. I also like the Cargo Specialist skill so I can get major cargo space in a Light Explorer ship. I haven't had good results with crafting yet but I have put some points in Build It Better. I should probably work more at my crafting skill. Archaeologist doesn't seem to have helped me at all. I like Ship's surgeon too so I don't have to hire so many crew. I'll probably add damage control since hull repairs are still pretty expensive.

Re: Most helpful skills?
 

I do long-term planning and start my captain off with one of the crafting skills. Basically I want to get "Build It Better 3" and "Efficient Construction 3" (and even "Crafting Consultant 2") as fast as possible, and I'm willing to spread those skills out over multiple officers. Although note that More than one office with "Efficient Construction" won't stack, which is why it's nice to have the captain get an early start to get the higher levels of one of those.

For crafting, it's also important to disassemble extra equipment rather than selling it, as this will often increase the crew's base crafting skill. Finally had this explained in the manual! If there's a ^ next to the item on the salvage screen, it means it will increase your base crafting level if you salvage it. I was crafting some decent stuff by Sector 10 or so I think, but the really awesome stuff wasn't until I had the officer crafting skills maxed out, which takes longer. It also varies a lot depending on what it is; I had good luck making new space suits and sidearms, but it's a lot harder to craft a good engine and it's often possible to buy better ship weapons than you can craft until you get highly skilled.

Oh also be sure to take the first Tentaculon quest as it gives you a lot of crafting bits for free.

Re: Most helpful skills?
 

In one game I just got an artifact with a "build it cheaper" which did stack with my level 3 engineer. I am now building things with a cost of 1! I had fun crafting a bunch of weapons, shields, etc, essentially for free. Note that I am deep into the game at this point, and trying to figure which of the winning paths I am going to take. I still think crafting ultimately the most useful of the skills.

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?

Re: Most helpful skills?
 

The answer is 3 posts above :pointup::pointup::pointup:

Re: Most helpful skills?
 

Generally speaking, if two different skills give the same kind of bonus, it is complimentary. If two things give the exact same bonus (either two officers with the exact same skill, or artefacts with the same effect as an equipped device has), however, then you only get the effect once.