Bridge Officer Ranks/Promotion

[IonsRevenant]

Just started playing recently (Level 5) and I'm wondering if anyone can guide me through promoting my Bridge officers. Do I have to buy all of the Ensign abilities before I can train them in Lieutenant abilities?
It's a bit odd in that the Progress tab on the status screen for all of my BOFFs say how much expertise I have spent on them, but the "Spend for Next Rank" is 0. What's going on? My character shows how much XP I need for the next grade and rank. Why don't my BOFF?
Also my character says I have 3327 expertise to spend. But I've already spent a good portion of it. Bought 2 Ensign training manuals for 3 of my officers. (Yet strangly they all say I''ve spent 2550 points, even the officer I didn't spend any on.)

[Kyriel]

You're almost there lol. I only just discovered it myself today :) At the bottom of the status screen there is a drop down "career" menu for each officer - two options - promote or discharge :) You don't have to buy any ensign abilities to train lieutenant abilities, but you do have to have your officer at the required rank before they can learn. I have read that you can only teach from your own discipline to an officer of the same discipline e.g. science captain can train science bridge officer. Sounds a bit naff though and I'm not sure if it's correct since otherwise it will be difficult to upgrade other officers. Maybe look into that lol.

Expertise is shared between your whole bridge crew I believe, so that's why the number of spent points is the same for different officers. Be careful what you train them in! I went and spent lots of experience points training 4 or 5 lieutenant science skills on one bridge officer - it's now starting to look like it's only possible to have one skill actively available to you from each tier for each officer when you're in battle. You can go into the "stations" screen and change what that single ability is but as far as I can tell from literally 5 minutes of looking (so don't be surprised if I'm wrong about this lol) going into the stations menu would be the only way of changing which officer's abilities from each tier are available. Doesn't sound like fun in a fight! So if I'm right, spread your skills out amongst more officers. For example, I'm thinking I'll aim to get as many science officers as possible (as I'm going for a science build) then teaching each different skills from each tier so that I have as much variability as possible without opening menus during an engagement :)

[Belsaris]

Skill points are pooled to use on all boffs but don't worry you end up getting a lot as you level and you will level fast just doing missions. Boff promotion also caps at the level below you so if you are still level 5, I don't remember but you might have to get promoted to the next rank first before you can start promoting boffs and training anything higher than ensign.
Also the boffs can use 1 space and 1 ground skill for each rank. All you do is train what you want, you don't have to train everything to promote.

You can actually train your boffs for any skill they have listed as long as you get the training manual. There are trainers that sell them at the main space docks and the exchange. Your class determines what kind of training manuals you can craft later in the game. I go for variety when picking boff skills and balance. Good to have a couple of sci healers, engineer buff/healer, and tactical dps buff mix. Each officer should have different skills so you have more options in a fight, plus cooldowns affect your whole crew so if you have the same skill on two boffs, both have to wait for the cooldown to use again. Of course everyone is different. One of the great things about this game is you get to customize your crew to your playstyle.

[Serious Dave]

Ok here's how it works.

As Bifrost pointed out the "promote" is on the bottom of the screen in that little drop-down menu and it's also on that page with the boff's skills so you don't have to flip pages while training one.
You can only promote boffs up to to 1 rank lower than yourself and they end at commander.
So if you're lt. they can only be ensign, if your lt.cmdr they can only be lt., etc,etc.

Teaching them stuff works via those training manuals. Every player can teach every boff if you have the manual. Most are available for purchase at vendor but a few high rank one can only be acquired via doff missions or crafted by players, those are also at the exchange for the most part.
You can craft some training manuals yourself if you've got 6 bars of skill points in their representative category in your skill tree. But there's the profession restriction of tac, sci and engineer, meaning that a tac captain can only craft tactical manuals and so on.

And here's how training works:
Each boff can learn all things of his/her profession and keep them but ouf course your ship can only slot so much skills in your boff stations. While you can teach one boff all skills it really is as waste of experties since each skill that he/she knows increases the cost for teaching the next one.

Also you're not supposed to change your skill layout during fights. You slot what you think is optimal for your ship & ground team and then roll with it till you think you can optimize it more, get a different ship or try out new skills.

The reasons why those skills are swapable (now) is so we don't need a million boffs if we have more than 1 ship and to skills not getting completely "erased" if we want to use another one of the same rank.

[IonsRevenant]

Okay, I had seen that promote button, but it was blanked out. Now at least I understand why. :D So I have to wait till I'm (Commander is level 10?) before I can promote them. Got.

Thanks everyone! :D

[Vellari]

Correct, cannot promote past your own rank. Cmdr is level 20 (10 is Lt.Cmdr),

1 = Cadet
2 = Lieutenant
10 = Lieutenant Commander
20 = Commander
30 = Captain
40 = Rear Admiral Lower
45 = Rear Admiral Upper
50 = Vice Admiral
55 = Admiral
60 = Fleet Admiral

That is to say, at L30 you will be able to promote to the last rank (Cmdr) available for Boffs.

[Baron Khazadson]

Ok, I'm at the point where I'm an LTCOM and have LT BOFFS, but I cannot swap out a Ensign Skill for an LT Skill. Is that because I'm in a mission?