Personnel
Every ship has a limited capacity to host crew. Crew consists of 3 types of NPC:
- Captain (Pilot for smaller ships): Enables a ship to be remotely given orders. Skill points contribute most to ship efficiency.
- Crewman: Skill points contribute slightly to ship efficiency.
- Marines: Used to claim abandoned ships and board other ships and stations or to repel enemy boarding attempts.
On stations there are also
- Managers: Give orders to subordinate ships
A skilled captain will unlock more maneuvers, fight and trade better and will unlock new options for the DEFAULT BEHAVIOUR of the ship.
Ship crew management is an essential part of improving your fleets abilities. The skill of Service Crew will also improve the rate of ship actions and the quality of steering, aiming, trading and fighting (Everything gets better with a good crew!) although their skills will not count as much as those of the captain/pilot. The sum quality of a ships crew is increased with the number of people and with the SKILL of each individual.
Passengers from missions also count as temporary crew:
Everybody can be a captain (if he just has to believe in himself)
Every person you hire, whether through the shipyard or wharf “UPGRADE SHIP” interface or by hiring individual people on platforms, can be assigned to any of the three categories. This also means you can assign any marine or crew member to be a captain or manager.
Skills
The quality of people in your crew is grouped by skill sets. These skills are always shown with star ratings from 0 to 5 stars. If you open the detail view of an individual crew member, you will find that their total skill is made up from individual types of skills such as:
- Piloting
- Morale
- Management
- Engineering
- Boarding
How good an NPC then performs in any duty depends on these skills. While a CAPTAIN’s overall performance depends mostly on PILOTING a marine depends more on his boarding strength.
All NPCs improve through their MORALE however.