Carriers and Crews

[The Flaming Red]

So I’ve been playing the game for the first time the last couple of weeks, just learning the basic systems and gameplay. While I feel I’ve got a good grasp on many aspects, there are a couple of areas of the game I’d like to hear how others have been playing:

1 – Carriers and their crafts – I feel I’ve got a good grasp of ship combat, when to avoid combat, when to press my attack, when to board, how the buffs and debuffs are used. Been having fun experimenting, changing my ship up, trying different components. However, what I feel I have completely misunderstood are the carriers.

As launching a craft costs AP, I can’t quite understand what the advantage is for say, launching a bomber to go on a 4 turn bombing run over just using that AP over a conventional weapon each turn? So far the only advantage I can see is that you can launch the craft at any of the 5 distances, but given that thus far, I have build my ships to maximise their AP use each turn (a use it or lose it system), I have weapons anyway to ensure I’m still using while the small crafts are already out there. The last carrier I tried, I ended up just replacing all the hangers with weapons and got an extra slot out of it when I replaced the launch bay with something else.

But I assume I’m missing some important detail, or not building and using these carriers and crafts correctly. (Or maybe they’re just far superior if I start maxing out a small pilot – but as I was testing and starting with these things, it just seemed normal weapons were better). I’d like to hear some insights on how to better use a carrier.

2 – Crew Compositions – While playing the game on easy to learn, the four-person combat became mostly trivial really quickly especially as my crew levelled up – as I rarely lost a person outside of some specific missions, xeno and having a bounty hunter send easy small waves at me (which I killed without issue) lulling me into a false sense of security before the bounty hunger himself come and slaughtered my entire party. I think that the ‘easy’ setting has meant that I’ve neglected the ground fighting portion of the crew. It was very late into this learning run that I learned that you could even recruit some ‘special’ classes from contacts that you can’t pick up on worlds, and that you can buy individual weapons and armour for each of them (I assumed all of this was related to the armoury level built on one of my ship slots – I completely missed I could customise them beyond that).

As such, I feel I’m quite underprepared in this aspect of the game for when I move up to a more serious playthrough on a harder difficulty. I’m interested about hearing some interesting squad compositions you use that I can try out (I assume I’ve not even encountered all the classes yet given I’ve just realised they existed). Also, do you tend to use hired crew or do you tailor one or more officers for this (I was just using basic crew).

I intend my next playthrough to really focus on improving my understanding on this area, so any other basic tips and general rules and things to aim for would be awesome for me to aim for and experiment with.

[di eshor ribly]

1) The primary benefit of launching your craft is that you can then coordinate fire on the ship the same turn the craft attacks. The more damage a ship sustains in one turn the higher chance you have to damage critical components. With the right set up you can one shot an enemy ship in one turn with a salvo of bomber craft and missiles/torpedoes. Or shielding your ship from incoming missiles via interdictor craft.

2) Always specialize your combat crew. It's the primary advantage they have over a single-job combatant. This means that 99% of the time your combat crew is officers, the exception being a Soldier or something while you scout for the fourth officer.

Basics: You need at least one swordsman type. Your slot two can either be a second swordsman, or a pistol/blade combo (bodyguard/swordsman/pistoleer), or a shock trooper. The main reason for this is these classes can counterattack and parry. You'll probably want a bounty hunter rifleman in slot 3 or 4 to debuff and shoot stuff, and a combat medic healer/buffbot to round out the combat crew. Try to find officers with high fortitude/quickness/wisdom (20+ minimum, the higher the better) and put them in the heavy armor options.

The rest of your crew can fill out ship dice pools, give you job options (diplomat, blade dancer, spy, smuggler, bounty hunter, merchant, scientist), or be used as small craft pilots for the carrier ships. Officers do make better pilots, but as long as you don't go too hard on the advanced craft a regular Wing Pilot can handle it. Economy craft vs high end sports car kind of deal. The high end craft need deep dice pools to be used at peak performance.

[Trese Brothers]

Craft can also be used defensively at range 4 and 5 to auto-block incoming missiles and torps. Shuttles can also board at any range as many times as you want, not talent bound. Launching 4 shuttles on the first turn will result in back to back boarding rounds over 4 turns, even if you hold at range 5.

[JimmysTheBestCop]

Above Hard+ I would always recommend 4 comvst officers with at least 10 combat jobs between them.

Is it needed on all the difficulties above Hard not really. But it's the easy recommendation cause it works and will make new players last longer.

Small craft and carriers aren't better or worst as most things in STF fall inline with that thinking. It's just different. It gives the player more options to do more things she role play different things.

Mixing in small craft, ship weapons, boarding can allow for some interesting builds to spice things up. It allows lots of options for a player to decide upon.

Instead of always going 5 torpedoes or 3 missiles or 3 rail guns etc.

It's just cool to do completely different things from play through to play through.

Ground combat especially against xeno when you start getting near Impossible difficulty is like a completely different game then STF on normal.

[FAT WANZER]

Originally posted by The Flaming Red:

So I’ve been playing the game for the first time the last couple of weeks, just learning the basic systems and gameplay. While I feel I’ve got a good grasp on many aspects, there are a couple of areas of the game I’d like to hear how others have been playing:

1 – Carriers and their crafts – I feel I’ve got a good grasp of ship combat, when to avoid combat, when to press my attack, when to board, how the buffs and debuffs are used. Been having fun experimenting, changing my ship up, trying different components. However, what I feel I have completely misunderstood are the carriers.

As launching a craft costs AP, I can’t quite understand what the advantage is for say, launching a bomber to go on a 4 turn bombing run over just using that AP over a conventional weapon each turn? So far the only advantage I can see is that you can launch the craft at any of the 5 distances, but given that thus far, I have build my ships to maximise their AP use each turn (a use it or lose it system), I have weapons anyway to ensure I’m still using while the small crafts are already out there. The last carrier I tried, I ended up just replacing all the hangers with weapons and got an extra slot out of it when I replaced the launch bay with something else.

But I assume I’m missing some important detail, or not building and using these carriers and crafts correctly. (Or maybe they’re just far superior if I start maxing out a small pilot – but as I was testing and starting with these things, it just seemed normal weapons were better). I’d like to hear some insights on how to better use a carrier.

2 – Crew Compositions – While playing the game on easy to learn, the four-person combat became mostly trivial really quickly especially as my crew levelled up – as I rarely lost a person outside of some specific missions, xeno and having a bounty hunter send easy small waves at me (which I killed without issue) lulling me into a false sense of security before the bounty hunger himself come and slaughtered my entire party. I think that the ‘easy’ setting has meant that I’ve neglected the ground fighting portion of the crew. It was very late into this learning run that I learned that you could even recruit some ‘special’ classes from contacts that you can’t pick up on worlds, and that you can buy individual weapons and armour for each of them (I assumed all of this was related to the armoury level built on one of my ship slots – I completely missed I could customise them beyond that).

As such, I feel I’m quite underprepared in this aspect of the game for when I move up to a more serious playthrough on a harder difficulty. I’m interested about hearing some interesting squad compositions you use that I can try out (I assume I’ve not even encountered all the classes yet given I’ve just realised they existed). Also, do you tend to use hired crew or do you tailor one or more officers for this (I was just using basic crew).

I intend my next playthrough to really focus on improving my understanding on this area, so any other basic tips and general rules and things to aim for would be awesome for me to aim for and experiment with.

Craft is good with their combo as the enemy will be debuffed the biggest debuff i had ever inflic with craft is with xeno red ship(dreaded ship) it goes from high armored shield high shield capital ship to 7%armored capital ship

[Tomcat]

1) Carriers came later on. They didn't exist on release. Carriers just add another challenge to overcome. They are tricky to deal with in the mid game and I usually run from them until I'm better loaded.

To PLAY as a carrier? Not worth it. Yes a weapon is better use for the AP. Destroying and disabiling is just better with 3 missiles with offense components. If craft used a separate resource outside of AP or simply just didn't use AP, I would change my opinion.

I mainly use the hyperion hangers for the large slot officers. Other than that, the wings card non-combat card abilities tend to be better than the nonwing versions. So I usually just have bombers for the better blockade cards.

2) Crew combat composition. One needs to be a doctor/medic. Third job doesn't matter. This means that if your medic dies, you can replace with a promotion. Find someone in your crew that has good doctor stats or HP.

I find Xeno hunter/Soldiers to be very effective. Shock trooper came late in the dev and are just as good. One person would be XH/Soldier/Shock. I would use XH abilities if they fall in the back and Shock abilities in the front.

I always do the Cadar unique recruit vignette. I always make him a Xeno Hunter as a third job.

The 4th guy can be another XH/Shock/Soldier. Or it can be a swordsman for a more safer team build. TBH, only the captain makes a great swordsman. Everyone else usually dies unless I just get lucky with the stat rolls. For captain, I like using Assassin/Sword/Dancer. Zealot/Sword/Dancer is easier to use. Both have their advantages/disadvantages.


If you want a more conservative lineup, You can use a captain swords and another swords on number two. Then do medic and a Hunter. Your other swords should have wingcommando.

Finally, if you are bored, you can try a three swords and medic. Captain swords leads while supported by wing commandos.


Medic usually should be in slot 4 in most line ups. If you are using the 3 Rifles team, Medic would then be slot 2 to which one of the Hunters might have to help the medic with morale heals when needed. But now that shock troopers exist, I guess you could lead the medic on slot 4 for those too.

Weapon of choice is heavy guns but only after you get Xenohunter plasma burner. Early on, I would use sniper rifles. Shotguns have been changed and I haven't bothered to play the game since they were introduced but they are probably good for the pointman rifle user. I personally do not find any of the pistol classes to be as good as Rifles or Blades.

[FAT WANZER]

Originally posted by Tomcat:

1) Carriers came later on. They didn't exist on release. Carriers just add another challenge to overcome. They are tricky to deal with in the mid game and I usually run from them until I'm better loaded.

To PLAY as a carrier? Not worth it. Yes a weapon is better use for the AP. Destroying and disabiling is just better with 3 missiles with offense components. If craft used a separate resource outside of AP or simply just didn't use AP, I would change my opinion.

I mainly use the hyperion hangers for the large slot officers. Other than that, the wings card non-combat card abilities tend to be better than the nonwing versions. So I usually just have bombers for the better blockade cards.

2) Crew combat composition. One needs to be a doctor/medic. Third job doesn't matter. This means that if your medic dies, you can replace with a promotion. Find someone in your crew that has good doctor stats or HP.

I find Xeno hunter/Soldiers to be very effective. Shock trooper came late in the dev and are just as good. One person would be XH/Soldier/Shock. I would use XH abilities if they fall in the back and Shock abilities in the front.

I always do the Cadar unique recruit vignette. I always make him a Xeno Hunter as a third job.

The 4th guy can be another XH/Shock/Soldier. Or it can be a swordsman for a more safer team build. TBH, only the captain makes a great swordsman. Everyone else usually dies unless I just get lucky with the stat rolls. For captain, I like using Assassin/Sword/Dancer. Zealot/Sword/Dancer is easier to use. Both have their advantages/disadvantages.


If you want a more conservative lineup, You can use a captain swords and another swords on number two. Then do medic and a Hunter. Your other swords should have wingcommando.

Finally, if you are bored, you can try a three swords and medic. Captain swords leads while supported by wing commandos.


Medic usually should be in slot 4 in most line ups. If you are using the 3 Rifles team, Medic would then be slot 2 to which one of the Hunters might have to help the medic with morale heals when needed. But now that shock troopers exist, I guess you could lead the medic on slot 4 for those too.

Weapon of choice is heavy guns but only after you get Xenohunter plasma burner. Early on, I would use sniper rifles. Shotguns have been changed and I haven't bothered to play the game since they were introduced but they are probably good for the pointman rifle user. I personally do not find any of the pistol classes to be as good as Rifles or Blades.

pistol captain triumph over blades and rifles in terms of dps as 5 shot every round is devastating then again with the update the shotgun is dps king especially with the unique bahamut shotgun.it crits 300 with titanshell and buffs to 2 xeno deleting them
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2463934114
Craft is good debuffer the armor and shield of xeno craft is on minus point after 2 bomber + 1 gun raking fire(this screenshot is after xeno purge the debuff but some debuff still remain.
Then again i got overleveled cause addicted to crewcombat where debuff is king so my ship combat love the debuffer too
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2463946176

[Tomcat]

Once a Xeno hunter is built correctly, you are doing one hit kos to two humans at a time. For Xenos you can melt through their armor faster than a pistol. It requires some good rifles stats though because a miss is devastating since you are putting all your juice in one attack.

Blades are mainly defensive and self preserving but an Assassin Captain does have a pretty good multi one-hit ko when dealing with humans that have an officer.

I don't see how pistols ever beat rifles when their penetration ratings are typically lower. Plasma damage also ignore armor.

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You can waste 3 turns for your craft to launch travel and attack. Or you can just start debuffing them immediately on turn one. This is one of those games where if you do damage, you are already killing and damaging components. Hence, that itself is already a debuff, though a more permanent kind.

[mark.r.hendrickson]

Carriers are for flavor. They are also expensive. I wouldn’t buy one unless I already had a substantial pile of money. Then I would probably buy one, because as flavors go, they’re pretty cool.

Conan’s answer to what is best in life:

“To launch an alpha strike, to see it obliterate the enemy, and to hear the lamentation of the xeno. That is good.”

Against xenos on the ground I usually go:
1: sword, zealout, commando
2: sword, zealout, blade dancer
3: bounty hunter, xeno hunter, soldier
4: combat medic, military officer, pistol (or spy)

Xenos have lots of blades which are best countered by blades.
Bounty hunter debuff unfaltering ire is a must have. As is xeno hunter buff Iris-laced resolve.
Zealout buff unstoppable force required.
The thing with xeno is, they are crazy about the buff and the debuff. And if you can buff and debuff faster than they can, it drives them nuts and they will waste all their time buffing and rebuffing. That’s why unstoppable force is so great. It’s a buff that prevents debuffs. Total poison pill for the xeno on which they just rage choke.
Healer not always necessary to survive one fight, but essential to two survive two in a row, which happens often.

Xeno’s have a hard time against this crew. Really, anything in the game has a hard time against this crew. The only thing I don’t like about this crew is how long it takes them to kill people. My 4 spy crew usually killed the enemy in one turn. But I dare not take them against xeno. The Xeno hit very hard, so a strong front end tank cohort is required to survive. My spies would not be hit very often, but when they were hit, it would likely be a one-shot death.

But against humans, many combos are possible.

[MasterShake]

Like many told - carriers aren't better or worse than destroyer builds. Just different.
As for performance...myself haven't yet tested the very newest carrier modules, but I suspect that 2k hull damage in one bombing run wouldn't be top score anymore. Surely such alpha strike takes time but that's completely different experience from being "destroyer" class captain.

[The Flaming Red]

Thanks everyone for the awesome advice here!

Originally posted by di eshor ribly:

The more damage a ship sustains in one turn the higher chance you have to damage critical components.

Thanks. This was a mechanic I did not realise existed.

Originally posted by Trese Brothers:

Craft can also be used defensively at range 4 and 5 to auto-block incoming missiles and torps. Shuttles can also board at any range as many times as you want, not talent bound. Launching 4 shuttles on the first turn will result in back to back boarding rounds over 4 turns, even if you hold at range 5.

Must admit, having spent the rest of the playthrough without the crafts, using them defensively wasn't part of my strategy thus far, so haven't really seen the benefit that I am sure this will provide just yet. Same with spam boarding, as to board in the past, I'd have closed range - but as I said, I did feel I couldn't have been playing carriers right. I have probably underused boarding in battles a lot as well, given my second question.

I think my first expericence was having one hanger and launch bay on the ship, and me choosing to put a bomber there. Using 2 medium ship slots for what was a 4 turn cooldown attack just left me scratching my head, so when I upgraded to a full carrier, I was a little lost on how to utilise this ship properly.

Originally posted by JimmysTheBestCop:

It's just different. It gives the player more options to do more things she role play different things. l.

Originally posted by mark.r.hendrickson:

Carriers are for flavor. They are also expensive. I wouldn’t buy one unless I already had a substantial pile of money. Then I would probably buy one, because as flavors go, they’re pretty cool.

Can't argue with that. Always liked my carriers, be it in Space Engineers or Starpoint Gemini Warlords. I did want to make them work here.

Originally posted by Tomcat:

They are tricky to deal with in the mid game and I usually run from them until I'm better loaded.

This is probably why I've not been able to use them properly. I'm likely not far enough into the game yet - as I don't think I've even encountered an enemy carrier yet. I've think I've seen a Xeno ship launch a small craft - maybe.... I was already running by then.

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As for crew combat, I won't do quotes as one of the biggest take aways was pretty unanimous that I had made the wrong decision at the start of the game by having my officers be non-combat specialists. While they couldn't die on my current difficulty, I didn't want to rely on that as a crutch so kept them as pacifists, especially if I was going to protect them from combat when they could die on a later playthrough. It seems clear that this was the completely wrong direction.

Admittedly, at the same time, not knowing much about the crew combat coming into the game, even if I made the officers combat specialists, I wouldn't have known enough about the classes to even make an informed decision who should do what - so thanks for all the discussion about the classes. In addition, I had pretty much forgotten that personal stats existed (I see now that before you hire crew, you can view their stats, but this option is off by default and until someone mentioned it, I didn't realise you could see them before they came onboard).

But yeah, early in my game I did a lot of Auto-leveling and keeping crew pretty much how they were at the start as my focus was learning other systems of the game. I'm looking forward to a harder mode.

Thanks all!

[Tomcat]

What I meant by that quote you selected was that Carriers were kind of a a way for the dev to combat all the players who were using missiles and torpedoes. They also made early game boarding dangerous since early game boarding is the cheapest way to start getting kills. All you needed to do was buff defense and you can just float casually to the enemy while they miss all the time.

Once you are built up, you can just easily swat those crafts with anything. You don't need craft to fight craft. Just blast them out of the sky with weapons augmented with offensive components. Without the offensive components though, craft may be trickier to deal with.

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The starting crew are all buffed as if they were influenced by a recruiting talent. However, it is a popular style among vets to immediately start dismissing crew you wouldn't use. I personally get rid of the gunners and combat crew in the beginning. But if any of them had +6 doctor, I'd promote them as my main doctor officer or keep them as backup if my doctor dies. There's so much more to talk about this but I find myself wanting to stop before I type up a novel. But there are tricks and routes to take to give yourself some starting edge. Think of it like a speedrun, we'll just fallout 4 as an example. You could mess around and be slow or if you've played the game, you can go rush and get the spray and pray or the overseers guardian to give you some edge especially if you were playing on Survival settings.

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Auto leveling just auto picks talents. You should play the game blindly and see what talents you are using alot and which ones you aren't. Next time you play, never waste talent points on things you never use. Skill saves are always good to have. Multiple copies lets you stay afloat when they are on cooldown. Crew combat wise, I only ever use like 1-2 moves. If it will be a tricky battle, I probably will have another 2 moves I use. In the current state of the game, there's no reason to have 10 combat talents per crew unless you are overleveled and have nothing else to spend it on. You'll find a bunch of redundant or inferior talents.

And personally, MOST combat officers really only need 2 jobs. 1 for the stats and 1 for the talents. (for example, medic has the better talents while doctor has the better stats per level) The third job can be whatever provided that it at least have skill saves. Voluntarily, I probably would keep the third job as a combat type. But by mid game, it isn't feasible to keep fresh recruiting. You are better off conscripting subpar crew and promoting your "birth" crew whenever an officer dies. Only way you can get crew on par with your levels is conscription.


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One more thing about crews. As you go up in difficulty, it becomes more important to deal with problem traits. Unless the problem trait is on a very useful officer or... if it's stuck on my captain... I would trim them out. Morale issues are the biggest concern here and if you get in a goldilocks zone where a ship ops fail causes a big morale chain reaction because the pilot yelled at the navigator because he wants to blame someone while the swordsman moaned because he is a drama king all while your crew dog is plotting your overthrow, you will have crew mutinies that would set you back or end your run. Everyone has a trait they hate but I don't like Snobs in my crew. Some bad traits, on the other hand, just waste time and money like spice addict.

[DMesse]

Aside from the awesome aesthetics of carriers (including normal ships converted into one), I have never given up the use of small craft due to one reason: combat talents by airborne pilots have a ridiculously low cooldown, available for use again practically immediately.

This may not be a problem to you if you are either running on low difficulty levels or are being very careful to avoid ship fights unless you are 500% confident that you can fight and survive or win in the next fight or two. I know, there are multiple talents that are available for you to entirely dismiss ship encounters. But sometimes the stars just align against you and you've just gotta fight.

I've lost more than a couple runs after literally running out of defensive talents to protect my ship when I ran into 2 or more encounters before I could get my arse into a safe port for refuel, repair, heal, morale boost, or any combinations of all. Those pesky range 4~5 missiles hitting my ship would start a chain reaction of component losses, crew deaths, and morale dives, then if I somehow miraculously drag my ship into a safe planet my crews would leave the ship.

With interdictor(s) on your ship, on the opening phase of ship battle you can launch small craft to stack 1 or more defensive buffs on your ship. Even a level 1 Wing Leader can use Aegis Pattern (+10% defense on ship) on launch. Stack with level 1 Pilot's Evasive Maneuvers (+25% defense). You can only use 1 talent per turn but by turn 1 you've already gained +35% dodge. And that's just with a single interdictor. Connect the dots and can either save the talents on your non-pilot crew for possible 2nd ship fight or pour them in for better chance of dodging hits. Did I mention that Protective Escort talent by a launched interdictor also gives you +25% defense but with a 1 week cooldown instead of 3 weeks for Evasive Maneuvers? Your options become extremely wide.

Once I get an interdictor on my ship, I usually go ham on all hostile encounters in space. I am confident that I can win with sustainable and reasonable losses. I do however try to avoid xeno ships or the oddball fully armed carriers that were built from scratch early in the game until I either get a better ship or I have enough tools prepared to fight waves of small crafts.

[Trese Brothers]

Great strategy reveal @deadlymessenger! It is not often talked about how craft launches can allow you to stack more buffs and debuffs beyond your regular 1-Talent-per-Turn.

[mark.r.hendrickson]

They are buffing machines.

When I run a fully equipped carrier (meaning one that can put up 4 guys), I am keenly aware of how all the buffs and debuffs work and am always managing those as part of the battle.

Every time I read about small craft people focus on the damage, but you’re right, the buffs and debuffs are just as important. Possibly more important.

[Tomcat]

This would make sense if craft was cheaper than defensive components in the upfront costs. Then it will be a choice between cheap upfront costs but constant costs per launch OR high upfront costs but no launch costs.


What I mean is that it by going for a defensive matrix, it's cheaper in both upfront costs and it has no launch costs. There are just too many costs attached to launching craft which makes it too much of a longer road to a goal rather than an alternative.

The costs attached to a craft are: Needing a pilot, Fuel launched, component prices, component slots used.

Perhaps carrier components need more stat buffs. This would make them more attractive to use and would also improve enemy carriers so that they aren't so easy to hit.

Or if alleviating the pilot issue, allow for drones piloting. You can always use an actual pilot for improved craft stats but they can also be piloted without one though with penalties.