Shield Capacity - Some Confusion

[The Old Guy]

I just hired and assigned Omari Hassan to my ship. He has a Shield Systems Level 3 skill and on my ship/crew menu this skill is highlighted. However, on the ship menu, the shield "strength" shows 486, both before hiring him and after becoming crewman. I am at Tier 1 Tech Skill. Also, he is the fourth crew member and according to the ship menu, I can have a crew of 5. So, what does the "Your ship has 80% increase shield capacity" actually mean?
Any comments and suggestions are appreciated.
Thanks.

[YukkuRIM]

I also hired the same person. What I noticed is that if you have someone with skill level 3 on board, the required power cost is reduced by 1.
This is also true for Sam. I guess, That's the extent of the benefits of NPC crew.

[Johnno]

If it's intended or not remains to be seen, but NPC crew don't actually benefit the ship equally to player skills. They have set bonuses that don't necessarily follow the tiers of their abilities.

[0utlaw]

That's hilarious I think I have the same crew member, I thought they were all procedural generated. My bonus isn't that huge, I'll have to do some math on how large the bonus is. It's strange I thought the bonus only applied to the crewman working that field, but it sounds like there might be some cumulative bonus of everyone with shield skills.

[Ammikaameri]

Would be nice if there were ingame details what the crew perks actually do but guess we will wait for wiki updates. The values do not update in the shipbuilder view but should work otherwise.

Originally posted by YukkuRIM:

I also hired the same person. What I noticed is that if you have someone with skill level 3 on board, the required power cost is reduced by 1.
This is also true for Sam. I guess, That's the extent of the benefits of NPC crew.

Sam also gives you 30% more cargo space.

[Redeyeflight]

Originally posted by The Old Guy:

I just hired and assigned Omari Hassan to my ship. He has a Shield Systems Level 3 skill and on my ship/crew menu this skill is highlighted. However, on the ship menu, the shield "strength" shows 486, both before hiring him and after becoming crewman. The shield "strength" did not increase from 486 to 875. I am at Tier 1 Tech Skill. Also, he is the fourth crew member and according to the ship menu, I can have a crew of 5. So, what does the "Your ship has 80% increase shield capacity" actually mean?
Any comments and suggestions are appreciated.
Thanks.

There is a bug with shield strength values, and shield systems perk levels, that seems to effect crew members with shield systems perk points as well.

I've only experienced it in NG+ so far, but it seems to deduct shield strength based on the perk instead of adding it, or setting the shield to it's base value, resulting in a loss of base value when the perk is removed via console commands.

I went back to an original save before starting NG+ and it hasn't popped up yet.

OP are you on NG+?

[The Old Guy]

This is my second game - level 11 and about 30 hrs of game play, but not NG+. My main issue has been the lack of conveniently available game mechanic specifics, so I played my first game for about 10 hours to learn the mechanics.

During my first game, there was some confusion on the crew size and skills application mechanics. For example, Sarah was not assigned to the crew, but I was receiving the benefits of her Astrodynamics Level 4 Skill.

However, in Game 2, the issue may also be due to the crew size mechanics plus a minor "bug". I do not have the Ship Command skill nor does any of my companions. I did build my ship to have 5 crewmen. My theory, at the moment, which I will test is - the Ship Menu crew size is accurate, but I also need the Ship Command Skill Level 2 and Omar's skill should not be highlighted. So effectively, I have three crewmen and Omar is not counted eventhough assigned to the Frontier and his Shield System is highlighted.

Considering the breadth and scope, the game has been playing very well for me - with only the occasional trivial bug.

[The Old Guy]

There are two issues, but first confirmed that Sarah's assignment changes the fuel usage and Sam's assignment changes the payload size. The two issues are:
(1) both Vasco's Shield System Level 2 skill and Omar's Shield System Level 3 skill gave the same result 405 to 486 (20% increase). I tested this with Omar as the only crewman.
(2) Omar's ship skills should not be highlighted because I am limited to three crewmen and he was the fourth.

PS: my original post was incorrect - the starting cargo capacity was 405 not 486.
PPS: what this also means - is to derive the maximum value from crew skills I will need assign/unassign crew until I get the Ship Command skill.