Who are your officers?

[Kanly]

When you load up a new game who do you promote first?  Do you look for a special crewman (exo-scout, diplomat, etc) or do you promote from within?

I've been either promoting a crewman and making them a doctor, or if I can, grabbing a diplomat and promoting them asap.

Also when leveling your officers - do you level them up until level 6 so they can access more talents, or do you spread the wealth over several jobs?

[Officer Genious]

Personally, I look for those with great stats and promote them first. Then I figure out what jobs I really need for my build and what officers have the best stats for them (at least as far as I can tell). This message always I always keep the best as officers don't leave your ship.

[fallen]

I often start out by using officers to get coverage on my skill saves required -- Tactics, Stealth, Negotiate, Doctor. Having a Talent lodged for each of these, and a few Skill points as back up can be a big boon in keeping everyone happy on board and making sure that missions go smoothly. Especially Stealth & Negotiate for missions.

My tactic is usually to spread jobs around until every officer has 3.

[tenbsmith]

Am I right that ever time you add a job to an officer, you quickly pick up a bunch of skills? If that's the case, then there's a big upside to adding jobs to officers early on.

[fallen]

Feb 9, 2017 18:19:52 GMT -5 tenbsmith said:

Am I right that ever time you add a job to an officer, you quickly pick up a bunch of skills? If that's the case, then there's a big upside to adding jobs to officers early on.

Yep, every new job comes with +4 Skill pts. Ever new Job level adds +1 Skill pt. So, if you get 3 Job levels and spend them on 3 separate Jobs = 12 Skill Pts. If you focus them all down on one job, 7 Skill pts. 7 focused Skill pts, but still.

This is one reason it pays for get 3 Jobs close to each other -- a Pilot / Navigator / Pirate stacks up some impressive focused Skills. If you grabbed Pirate / Doctor / Pistoleer you're kind of all over the place and you might not bring as much to the table.

[tenbsmith]

I'm spit balling here... Many of the rolls in ST2 are ship-based, so your dice are based upon adding skill points across crew. So, for ship-based rolls, you don't need focused crew, it's just as good to have skill points spread across crew for the roll. This is very different than Heroes of Steel where you need to specialize to succeed.

One exception in ST2 is crew combat, there may be others. In crew combat, I get the impression that each crewperson's individual stats are used in rolls. When crewmen X fire his rifle, only his rifle skills are used.

Given this, it makes some sense use mostly non-officers in crew combat and only level up their combat related job. I also tend to design captains who will NOT engage in combat and therefore do NOT put points in combat related skills and attributes.

[fallen]

tenbsmith - it is very astute spitballing

[xdesperado]

Your regular crew are the job specialists. They will likely have higher levels in a single specific job and a more focused set of talents than the officers.
Officers are generalists and let you grab skills/talents that the regular crew can't get you. That said careful selection of officer jobs can get some pretty strong skill levels that can allow you more freedom of choice regarding the regular crew you need to keep skill levels for ship ops up. Example Hyper-Navigator, Smuggler, Bounty Hunter offers a nice initial boost to navigation skill so you might need fewer navigators for regular crew members to hit that 100%+ rating for ship ops.

[MintDragon]

hadn't even considered the previous few posts' strategies... thx fallen and tenbsmith ; new plan of attack for a new game starting in 3, 2, 1...

[grävling]

Feb 9, 2017 19:50:08 GMT -5 tenbsmith said:

I also tend to design captains who will NOT engage in combat and therefore do NOT put points in combat related skills and attributes.

Note: as it currently stands, if you put Attributes as your A choice, you can spend your 50 points by maxing out all your non-combat skills at 26 and bumping each combat one one point to 15. So now I am running a Captain Thinks-A-Lot and her motley crew of savage combat specialists, the Boarding-IZ-US team. It's been fun ....

[ChocoCrowbar]

So what would be some good job combinations?

One of my Navigators has a (6) in negotiate and (5) in intimidate.

So adding the diplomat job and smuggler would make a nice combo.

[xdesperado]

Officer mix I prefer.
Captain-Pilot-Commander (hoping some day to be able to select a different 2nd job but working with what we have currently)
Navigator-Smuggler-Bounty Hunter (excellent mix of talents, greatly increased Navigation skill and competent in crew battles if needed, also helps with other skill pools)
Pilot-Pirate-Military Officer (Good talent selection, increased Pilot skill and again useful in crew combat if needed. Also helps with other skill pools.)
-Doctor-Combat Medic (promoted crew member often either E-Tech or Crew Dog. This is about getting the automatic successes for Doctor skill and having a decent base Doctor skill quickly, Combat Medic also offers Pistol skill and some talents that can make them useful in crew combat if needed and your willing to risk your Medical specialist.)
-Merchant-Exo-Scout/Explorer/Diplomat/?
(My last officer will always have Merchant as second job to help boost my ability to find new contacts, starting job and traits/bonus skills will help determine what the 3rd job is. I tend towards Exo-Scout or Explorer so at least one of my officers gives me Exploration skill and as with the rest look to select a job that will make them competent in crew combat if the need arises.)

Ideally my Doctor's primary job will be E-Tech and my Merchants primary job will be one of the Combat types or if I'm willing to wait for it a Diplomat.

[bobc]

One of my go to officer jobs from the start is Merchant.  I'm looking for high charisma since it underpins many of the Merchant talents; bonus negotiate skills are nice but can be compensated for by the officer pool and the negotiate skill-save talent.

The reason for rating the Merchant so highly is that it is currently the only job that can find contacts with it's entry level talents.  The explorer and E-Tech pick up that ability at higher job levels, but if you want to go networking from day one then the Merchant is all over it.

[johndramey]

Since my captain is always a merchant, I try to cover some of the gaps that my ship has early on. I almost always hunt around for a mechanic and promote him or her, as I find a good mechanic officer to be a godsend. That leaves one other slot, which I'll usually fill with a crew-dog that has good stats. I'll then double job him or her as a doctor.

That leaves me with my captain (merchant/navigator), a pilot, a navigator, a mechanic, and a crew/doctor officer. I really like this setup because it covers almost all of the important skills that I, as a merchant, need in the early game.

[athios]

Like several others have mentioned, I tend to focus on getting a well-rounded group of skill save Talents. Important saves are the ones that you can't get on the "standard" jobs: Doctor/C.Medic (Doctor), Commander (Tactics), Military Officer (Command), Merchant/Diplomat (Negotiate), Pirate (Intimidate), Spy (Stealth). Arguably Exo-Scout (Explore), but you could get by without this.

I'm typically a non-combat type, and my officers are base job + skill save job (with only 1 Job Level and 1 point in skill save Talent) + focused "real job".

Who to promote?
All the starting crew tend to have pretty well-rounded attributes (20 average), so I don't bother with that. I don't really care what their base job is, since I won't be using it. I first hunt for people with the Brilliant or Sharp Witted traits (+50%/+25% chance of double XP). I can typically find 0-3 in the starting crew. Then see if they have suitable bonus skills that can round out whatever I'm weakest in (check in the Status screen).