Fully leveled crew by jump 3!

[Xadism]

Tonight I managed to completely level my three initial crewmen in Piloting, Shields, and Weapons before my fourth jump. Here's what I did:

1) Start with the Torus
2) Get attacked by a pirate in a Rebel Rigger with *no missiles* (important)
3) Turn off my drone
4) Set the ion cannon to autofire, target O2
5) Go have dinner, leave the game running for a couple of hours

With my shields manned, they recharged faster than the rigger's laser, so no damage ever got through. Meanwhile, I kept the enemy's O2 offline most of the time; eventually the enemy crew abandoned their posts to go to medbay. The third enemy crewman couldn't fit in medbay and just died. We quickly reached a stasis point - they were continually near zero O2, but medbay kept them alive. This let my gunner practice firing all day, and my pilot practice evasion all day. By the time I came back the crew was fully leveled. I think I let it run about three hours, I don't know how long it took till everyone was leveled.

[Drasha]

You can fully level your crew on the torus on the first jump if you get the right ship. as long as they just have one laser and one missile weapon you just have to wait for them to use up their missiles are you are good. You don't need to target o2 with the ion just target their shields or cock pit and you don't have to worry about them dieing or not having a med bay.

It gets a bit boring leveling crew this way but some times I do it before the last sector if my luck was bad.

[Kenright]

It definitely wouldn't have taken three hours. Leveling up evasion is pretty quick, and when you have someone manning the shields, you can take and give power back and forth and level it pretty quickly.

As for weapons: 65*2*recharge time of 8s ~ 17m 20s. So probably 18 or 19m.

[actionhero112]

Yeah I wouldn't recommend doing this, especially how temperamental and brutal the game can be about killing off your crew members. The potential benefits aren't worth the hours you put in. Especially considering how the game, can and will kill you quite frequently at the beginning of normal mode if it feels like it. Your crew will be leveled by the end of the game anyways.

I do think it's funny how people spend so much time trying to figure out ways not to play the game.

[Kenright]

Yeah I wouldn't recommend doing this, especially how temperamental and brutal the game can be about killing off your crew members. The potential benefits aren't worth the hours you put in. Especially considering how the game, can and will kill you quite frequently at the beginning of normal mode if it feels like it. Your crew will be leveled by the end of the game anyways.

I do think it's funny how people spend so much time trying to figure out ways not to play the game.

I don't know, leveling up a pilot and engineer (I level up two of each) is definitely useful. Leveling up shields is fairly useful, and weapons will level up over time.

With the pilot and engineer, you can usually evade 30 - 50 % of shots. Which includes missiles, meaning smaller repair bills and thus more scrap, and a slightly lower chance of everything going catastrophically wrong.

[Xadism]

I do think it's funny how people spend so much time trying to figure out ways not to play the game.

Well, the best part is I spent almost no time at it. I started off thinking I would asphyxiate them. About two minutes in I realized what was happening, and since I needed to eat anyway I wandered off for dinner and left it running.

I certainly wouldn't do it if I had to sit there for hours each time. Time in my life is too precious.

[Local_Ork]

I did it too few times :p

My additions:
*I actually target enemy shield with Ion , so he can live... for a while.
*Try to get additional member first (like try to get one from slaver ship), so You can have 4 "masters" in one run.
*Also rotate crew, so all of them gain exp in piloting, engines, shield and weapons (just in case You lose one of them or want switch them for whatever reason).
*And switch off option that pause game when not on top, so it run in background... also helps.

[boa13]

I've done that yesterday on jump 1 with the Red-Tail.

The advantage of that ship is that it has four weak lasers, so the experience gain in weapons is not so much linked to the rate at which the weapons recharge, but to the rate at which the enemy shield recharges. Every time it regained its single point, I had a laser ready to go. I have not measured how much time it took, but it was rather fast (10 to 15 minutes I would say). I had to stay active in front of my computer though, no dinner for me.

That ship also has four crew members, so you can quickly get masters in all stations. Leveling engines and piloting is slower, I actually did not use the trick of cutting off-and-on the shields, since the three skills advanced approximately at the same rate. Overall it takes longer, maybe half an hour.

I would not recommend this being done on every run (others have said it should not be necessary), but technically it is optimal (and tedious) play, and I was curious to see how it goes.

[OmegaJasam]

Getting that extra 10% dodge chance early, and depending on your weapons the ability to fire before they do save a lot of money.

Most importantly, saving it /that/ early lets you get an early shield/engine/doors/medbay/oxygen e.t.c. upgrade with the scrap saved that you wouldn't normally, which in turn means less repairs.

You set yourself for a pretty nice positive feedback loop. If you go as far as to level all your crewmembers in all 4 skills to max, you'd actually end up with some major risk aversion. (Any crewmember can take over from another, so if you need your shield guy to do repairs, you can move engine onto shields with no penalty e.t.c.)

If you get the fire-speed up to max, I /think/ But am not entirely sure, that you may be able to asphraxiate the ship after by ioning the medbay for extra scrap. f you can this means more extra scrap early on by suffocating the enemy crew where safe before you get boding.

[Icehawk78]

Yeah I wouldn't recommend doing this, especially how temperamental and brutal the game can be about killing off your crew members. The potential benefits aren't worth the hours you put in. Especially considering how the game, can and will kill you quite frequently at the beginning of normal mode if it feels like it. Your crew will be leveled by the end of the game anyways.

I do think it's funny how people spend so much time trying to figure out ways not to play the game.

I'd assume if you did this that you wouldn't take the chances on the events where you can lose crewmembers. Losing one out of four crew in the first two sectors, before you've levelled up anyone? Might be worth the (potential) reward. Losing one out of four crew, after every single one of them is at their max level? Not a chance. By the time I've got anyone on my crew with 2*, I refuse to risk crewmembers, since the potential cost is much higher then.