Crew Management:
—————-
Written by DaDiarra
This guide will help new players understand the ins-and-outs of Crew Management,
what is killing your crew and causing them to leave, and how to fix it.
-=Intro
One of the key dynamics of Star Traders Frontiers is managing your crew. A Captain’s
crew are both an incredible blessings and an incredible curse if you can’t keep them
happy. It is possible though, to get to a place where you really don’t need to spend
a lot of time worrying about them, except in combat and occasional emergencies.
Generally, at the beginning of a game you are going to need to invest more time and
effort in keeping them safe and happy, but as the game progresses you will spend less
and less time worrying about them.
Avoiding Physical and Morale Damage to Your Crew
In crew management, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Understanding
what’s making your crew unhappy and avoiding it is crucial to early survival.
-=Ship Operation
The biggest source of damage to your crew will come from the regular events you will
encounter when flying through space. Yes, in this game, just flying from one planet
to another is dangerous. There are meteors, waves of radiation, equipment failures,
personality clashes and more that tax your crew’s physical and emotional health.
These dangerous events are displayed in the scrolling box on the bottomish right
when flying through space. It is very important to pay attention to this box and
get to a point where you are passing 95%-100% of those test. The two ways of passing
these tests are increasing you crew’s skill pools or getting Talents that will
Auto-Save some of those tests. Early, you’ll probably need a combination of the two.
Watch that box carefully and you’ll know what skills and saves you most need to
invest in.
To get some idea of what those tests are doing:
* Combat and Intimidate tests tend to damage crew morale
* Ship Ops, Repair, Navigation and Pilot tests tend to damage the ship
* Doctor, Tactics and Ship Ops can damage crew HP
Lastly, if you see a sudden spike in unpassed tests and really crippling effects,
it’s possible that you may be traveling in a quadrant that has a Radiation Storm.
If you’ve discovered the rumor it will be displayed in the Event Log. If you see
this, or suspect it, get the heck out of that quadrant. Radiation Storms cannot be
handled without large numbers of crew with Radiation Storm mitigation Talents.
Even then, it’s best to avoid spending much time one.
-=Ship Combat
It’s pretty obvious that combat will damage your crew, what is not so obvious is that
it will also damage your morale. Lets be honest, nobody likes to be terribly maimed,
burned or see their crew-mate get plastered to a bulkhead. Even taking a few torpedos
as you flee from a pirate can have a significant effect on crew health and morale.
So the best thing, obviously, is to avoid combat as much as possible, especially
early on. Even a Captain who is focused on combat shouldn’t be fighting every ship
they come across while flying to the fights they really want to pick. It may be hard
at first, but you need to learn to SURRENDER. Yes, you may have $4,000 worth of goods
in your hold, but it’s going to cost much more than that to fix your ship and crew
and train up some level 1 crew to replace those level 8 crew you lost.
-=Lesser Sources
Ship operations and ship combat are generally the biggest culprits when it comes to
HP and Morale loss. They should be the Captain’s primary concern early on. There are
other sources though, which need keeping an eye on. The first is probably keeping
your crew paid. The morale penalty for not paying your crew is not actually that
severe, in the short term, but it gets worse if you put it off. If you pay crew every
time you land it is unlikely that you will suffer significant morale loss from this
quarter. The only time not to pay is really only if you don’t have any cash or
absolutely have to patch up your ship first.
Morale can also be lost be lost through all of the Operations: Spying, Blockading,
Patrolling, Exploring and trying to access a Black Market. The Black Market can be
the worst as even attempting it will cause any crew with the Rigidly Lawful Trait
to lose Morale. The good thing about Black Markets though, is that when you come
out, you’ll already be planet side. No crew will abandon until you land at another
planet, and unless your crew has already snarfed up all the spice, you can normally
patch things up before leaving.
Some crew will have Traits that will cause them to lose Morale for other reasons.
Generally these are not major sources of loss and can be managed by trips to the
Spice Hall. It might be worth considering whether it’s not just easier to dismiss
such crew and find someone better suited to your Captain’s preferred activities.
Recovering from Physical and Morale Damage
Keep an Eye on the Status Bar
So, while you’re doing your best to mitigate crew HP and Morale damage, you’re also
going to have to know how to patch things up when they go south. The best way to
know exactly where things stand with your ship and crew is to keep an eye on the
status bar. In terms of crew, the 3rd and 4th boxes from the left are the most
important. The heart icon tells you how many crew you have below 60 health. That’s
considered dangerously low, because one more bad event could knock them out.
The 4th box, with the exclamation mark tells you how many crew have dangerously
low Morale, below 50. These crew might abandon ship when landing or worse,
Mutiny! Ideally, you want to keep every box in this bar empty, except for the
leftmost and maybe the second from right.
-=Spice Halls
If the crew has several low Morale members, then the best idea is to get them to a
Spice Hall. For severely demoralized crew, go to an Independent world or a world
with very low Zone ratings, as the crew does not want to be left behind in the
backwaters of the galaxy. Next, head to a world that is not of your Faction that
has a good Spice Hall, as the crew does not want to be left among a different
Faction either. Paying the crew in the Spice Hall will also increase their Morale.
If you are struggling with Morale it is often worth it to go to a planet with a
high Spice Hall rating (8, 9, 10). These ratings determine how much morale they
can give your crew, so if you’re only visiting 4, 5, 6 planets you’re probably
running chronically low on morale.
-=Doctors
Like paying your crew, healing wounded crew every time you land in a zone is
probably the best idea. Leaving crew unhealed makes it that much easier for them
to die in the next Deep Space Event. If you’re not landing naturally at planets
with Doctors, you should go out of your way to find one. You can see if a zone
has a doctor from the bandaid icon next to the system on the Quadrant map.
-=Extreme Measures
Sometimes you know that you have a lot of unhappy crew on your ship and that
there will be a wave of abandonments as soon as you touch down. If you want to
avoid that, there are a few ways to recover morale before landing, though they
are not without their dangers. They all revolve around using specific talents
that can increase morale.
-=Get in a „Fight”
Furious Prodding (Pirate 1), Incite Victory (MO 11), Overriding Disicipline
(MO 8), Rallying Cry (QM 5), Solace in Battle (Doctor 11) and Steady Hands
(Commander 1) are all ship combat talents that improve morale to a greater or
lesser extent. So if you happened to get into combat, say with a friendly ship
who didn’t shoot at you, you could use these talents in „combat” to fix some
morale.
-=Get in a real fight
Loyalty Rousing (Commander 1) increases morale if you win a ship battle. So if
you found a weak enough ship to fight, you might attack it, use the above
talents in battle and Loyalty Rousing at the end.
-=Let a Mutiny happen
Military Discipline (MO 8), Lethal Example (Pirate 8), Quell Mutiny (Commander 5)
and Voice of Reason (Doctor 8) end mutinies and restore some morale to crew.
If you’ve got a very unhappy crew, but you’ve got some of these talents, you
are probably better off flying around until you get a mutiny and then using
one of them to end it.
