what abilities can ship crew such as XO use

[michaell8000]

so one of the questions i have is besides the ability to boost their specific stat what other abilities work for them like i think it'd be amazing for control to be useful on a comms officer.

[Doresh]

Not that I know of. The main crew stat is the only thing that matters for them, so any ability that doesn't add to it doesn't really do anything.

[michaell8000]

Originally posted by Doresh:

Not that I know of. The main crew stat is the only thing that matters for them, so any ability that doesn't add to it doesn't really do anything.

really nothing besides crew stat jeez well that's a waste of 10 slots now isn't it.

[Shakuras]

there's 7 level of "crew stats up", a few special "crew stats up" like hero for more, there's also the multipliyer skill like Super Coordinator / True innovator.
don't worry, there's plenty enough skill to fill up your crew slots.

[Doresh]

The DLC Group Dispatch with the Shadow and Rising Gundam also has a "Support Crew" Ability that adds a +20% modifier to all crew stats.

[meiam]

As I'm getting closer to end game I'm finding the ability system incredibly boring, its pretty much just boil down to "pick the skill that make the character stats goes up the most". At this point I'd rather the game not have it, it just introduce more grinding.

[lPaladinl]

It falls flat for Ship Crews for sure. Your Captain can have some interesting builds but everyone else only has their one stat matter, nothing else counts.

Combat pilots can be more interesting as well, but it also tends to be most fruitful just to build on your damage output. The best defense is... destroying everything before it can fight back. Plus it's easy to get evasion high enough naturally to provide majority of your defensive needs.

I find stats boosting on combat pilots to be a waste of time. You get far more damage out of percentage boosts. I'm sure you can boost their attack stats up enough naturally to cover all accuracy needs in Inferno (the only difficulty were stats truly matter anyways since everything can be maxed out in the original difficulties.)

Otherwise there's some room to make support units, especially if you do raid groups. I plan to test how useful defensive units can be in Inferno, since you're more likely to actually take hits and I can see it being useful to have a tank around. Like having a Hyperion with the permanent shield (No damage if under 6,000 damage per attack), mix in abilities that raise blocking mitigation or support defend bonuses. Should be able to build something that either takes no damage at all or takes little damage and can repair all of it's damage per turn.

It's probably unnecessary but if nothing else it's an insurance policy. You need to invest somewhat into defense stats to keep ahead of the curve in Inferno or else any hit that makes it past your evasion is instant death. It'd also ensure that you can build pure glass cannons so long as they stick with a defender.