Starting Crew Guide

A guide for new players wondering who they can replace for their crew, and why.

At the start of Star Traders, you have a full ship crew of generic jobs, and many new players ask "What classes can I replace safely and what are the risks?" This guide will hopefully help you decide who you can cut, and what the risks are.

Why swap out starting crew?
Each crew member provides skills to your ship's total skill pool as well as providing specific talents to events. If you don't need another Pilot's Talents, for example, another job that gives piloting skill can be substituted in. Additionally, as they level up, some skill pools will be easily covered which means a little skill gap in the early game is worth it for a job with excellent alternate talents you can use.

How Crew Skills Work
Ship skill pools work like this: Each pool of the Ship has a Strong Dice and Standard Dice value. Strong Dice are worth twice as much. For most skill pools, they are the only thing used in Ship Combat. Adding improvements to your ship increases these Strong Pools thus making your ship function better but requiring crew to utilize those dice. For example adding a Pilot Module +4 Pilot gives a larger pilot pool, which lets you use more Strong pilot dice (going from 20/40 to 24/48 lets you use 4 more Strong dice) A standard strategy in this game is to maximize either Electronics or Piloting which your ship uses as its defense, so the player can survive ship combat better. Both pools are used in combat (the weaker is used as Standard Dice + Command Pool) along with other modifiers. Command has no cap, so it's always worth it to add more command dice!

Shooting People
An interesting aspect of Star Traders is that Gunnery is NOT the strong dice for weapon accuracy!

Weapon accuracy: Strong Dice are inherent Weapon Accuracy + Navigation (4-5 range) or Pilot Skill (1-3 range) plus Standard Dice in Gunnery + Tactics. Therefore having a huge Gunnery pool isn't nearly as useful for offense as maximizing your defense skills and Tactics in general.

Space Steam Leaks, Space Storms, and Space Scale-rot
Ship Pools are also used while flying around to deal with the threats of flying a ship through Void Space. These include steam leaks, the diplomat getting sucked out the airlock, and Space scale-rot. Numerous skills are used this way and the Difficulty Number of those checks is based on the game time and difficulty. Crew size determines the difficulty of Social Tests (Intimidate, Doctor, and Command) while ship size determines mechanical tests (Repair, Ship Ops, Ect.). If you are BELOW SKILL LEVEL for a test and have the warning, if you fail the test the penalty is worse. Early in the game there is a grace period, so taking a crew that will grow into the ship and doing missions early to catch up in experience is a valid tactic. Early in the game penalties for failing are much less serious. Failing tests is generally bad, as the penalty is significant and targeted damage to specific components and crew, which means key things start breaking like the Main Plasma Batteries or the Diplomat dies of space scale rot from two failed Doctor checks in a row. Throughout the game, auto pass skills are always a solid choice for jobs.

When choosing who to replace, note that everyone has skills they have expertise in, designated by a number in (Parenthesis). A Swordsman Crewmember might have 0(5) Command. These are aptitude skills that are free, but only added to the Pool if the person is an officer or if the crewmember is specifically using a talent that uses them. A Mechanic with Repair 3(7) only adds 3 to Deep Space Skill Checks for the total ship, but would use skill 7 if were using Engine Reboot Talent(Repair Ship Engine up to 10% + Repair Skill).

Know when to hold em, know when to fold em.

Starting Crew with medium sized ship.

Captain

Doctor (with +Doctor)

Engineer (with +Repair)

Quartermaster (with +Intimidate)

2 Crew Dogs x2 (Ship Operation / Repair + Gunnery)

6 Electronics Technician (Electronics / Ship Operation)

3 Gunner (Gunnery / Ship Operation)

1 Mechanic (Repair / Ship Operation + Electronics)

5 Navigator (Navigation / Tactics)

3 Pilot (Pilot / Navigation)

1 Pistoleer

1 Swordsman

2 Riflemen

2 of the combat jobs, or even 3, can immediately be dropped. Swordsmen and Soldiers are solid as a single job and can cover some debuff/buff holes. Fire the 2 worst ones (look for 42 combined Quickness/Wisdom and 120 Health to keep, then traits)

That leaves 2 openings. You need Doctor and Intimidate at the start.

Intimidate: 1 Bounty Hunter for Intimidate and his excellent Talents is a good option. You can also use Zealots, Diplomats, Commanders, or Military Officers.

Doctor: Your only option is Doctors with Scavengers a distant second. Recruit a second doctor if you have unlocked it, otherwise focus your doctor officer on doctor jobs and take at least 1 auto pass talent.

Fire 2 Electricians, 1 Navigator, 1 Gunner, and 1 Pilot and our Engineer Officer. Fire the worst 2 combat crew, but you will want a swordsman so plan to rehire one ASAP if you fire him. We should have 8 free berths.

For Piloting, lets add 2 Pirates. They are Pilot / Intimidate / Gunnery so will help fix the missing gunner as well.

Lets add 1 Mechanic and 2 Engineers to the ship. This will cover the fired Engineer officer, and add some Ship Operation and Electronics back to the pool, as well as nice free repairs.

Big Flex Negotiate Officer (replaces Engineer) Last but not least we need a Diplomat Officer (who adds some command too.) If you don't have a diplomat contact, find whoever on your crew has the best free +Negotiate natural skill and promote them to officer. This officer will be a X / 11 Diplomat / 11 Merchant and so it will be a long time before that extra job really is felt. Diplomats and Merchants both love Negotiate and Charisma and scale well by focusing on jobs that raise that skill. You probably want to go X / 1 Diplomat / 1 Merchant, Merchant 8 then 8 Diplomat to get the talents that give contacts just for selling as well as talents to unlock more contract abilities.

Class Perks and Gems
Pirates: Ahoy matey! These rascals are a great swap for pilots. They have fun combat skills, a few decent non-combat skills, and some blockade skills that let you turn a mission near a hostile faction into more money in your pocket by abusing merchants.

Spies: are also excellent Electronics alternatives. (Electronics / Stealth / Pistols). Swapping Electronic Techs 1/1 with Spies is totally valid, Spies are amazing once they get some levels because of constant free Intel Reports and reputation tricks. Once a few of your Spy crew are leveled you begin rolling in Intel Reports that are great for raising reputation with contacts or just selling for cash.

Zealots: Zealots aren't just combat classes. Though they don't have a lot of non-combat skills, almost all of them are good. They can interrogate prisoners, gain extra reputation in conflicts, auto pass Intimidate, and many other useful skills. What they do is specific but generally very useful for ship adventure.

Diplomats: Diplomats are like the grease that makes your whole Star Trader game better. Their skills all influence areas of the game that only they really boost and will let you accomplish things that much faster. Anything from more money and reputation from missions, better influence with contacts, or making paying your crew fun, Diplomats do it all. A couple of Diplomat crew members are never a bad choice.

Bounty Hunters: Intimidate is a needed skill and Bounty Hunter Crew give a couple of skills that are just great to have. Their Boarding Talent is fantastic, they have auto pass skills, and they have the Red Badge which reduces lost reputation while doing missions, an event that happens CONSTANTLY and only they can mitigate.

Smugglers and Scavengers: You would think these two classes would have more generic ruffian abilities. Unfortunately they are both hyper focused in their Talents and don't have good skillsets. Scavengers have high Explore which isn't a good generic skill. Smuggler has Negotiate which isn't a useful Pool Skill and he doesn't have good skills to use Negotiate on. Neither class has unique abilities that make them worth taking and don't have the skills that make them worth taking for generic gameplay. If you're planning on Scavenging or using Black Market (always save first before trying on low difficulties) these classes are worth using for their hyper focus on that area. Those are the two worst card games and these 2 classes won't do enough to make those games ever safe but they do help.