Subset Games Forum

When I'm at a store, I usually consider purchasing crew for ships that start understaffed. If there are Zoltan and I have relatively inexperienced crewmembers manning stations I sometimes buy them and have them take a station. (Except weapons, I never put Zoltan on as gunners, can't stand losing weapon charge.) If mantis are available and I already have a teleporter, I like to pick one up as well. Occasionally I snatch a slug because they're cool, or an engi to do repairs.

Do you think crewmembers are worth hiring?

It depends where I am in the game and what playstyle I'm going with. If I'm using boarders heavily and am low on crew I'm a bit more likely to, but if I'm not then I'm not. Even then I would tend to gamble and wait until the last couple of sectors before buying crew in desperation (unless luck gets even worse early on and I lose what little crew I had at that point).

For me, especially if doing a boarding run, there's often more than enough opportunities to get crew for free through events and slaver encounters that there's no point in buying them at stores. You can improve your chances of this by spending the comparatively small amount of scrap on upgrading the medbay/teleporter for the blue options they bring. I would be upgrading them over the course of the game anyway so it becomes especially worthwhile if I get some crew out of it too. That said, it's a bit of a gamble early on when I'm hurting for more shields/engines/systems.

I very very rarely buy crew. I rely on encounters and boarding or slave ships to get freebies. I do buy crew but it's very very rare. Just my thing i guess.

I do not hire crew often, but I do sometimes if the crew member is someone that I would like to have on board my ship (such as a Zoltan).

UltraMantis wrote:I very very rarely buy crew. I rely on encounters and boarding or slave ships to get freebies. I do buy crew but it's very very rare. Just my thing i guess.

Dr_Zegobob wrote:I do not hire crew often, but I do sometimes if the crew member is someone that I would like to have on board my ship (such as a Zoltan).

Huh, I guess I don't feel like putting my trust into the RNG goddess after one of my runs with the Slug A. I had the 2 starting crew until sector 7.

In spite of that, i dont buy. Just a cheapskate honestly. I can't part with cash for something that i can get for free. The only crew i'd buy is a Mantis if my boarding team needed one. That guy would pay for himself many times over.

Certainly i'd never buy a cursed Zoltan. What a waste. But then, that's just me.

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a racist

UltraMantis wrote:In spite of that, i dont buy. Just a cheapskate honestly. I can't part with cash for something that i can get for free. The only crew i'd buy is a Mantis if my boarding team needed one. That guy would pay for himself many times over.

Certainly i'd never buy a cursed Zoltan. What a waste. But then, that's just me.

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a racist

I know what you mean, having just played a ton of the Zoltan ships I have come to hate them. At most I'd only want 1 on my ship. Anymore and you run the risk of losing power to key systems if you have to move them. And god forbid if they die........Zoltans suck vs boarders. I'd rather have Engi on the Engi ship A face boarders. At least the Engi would stand a chance of winning in that case. lol

i honistly love zoltans, because if you have 2 in a shield room, you practicly get perma ion reflection, because ion can't take away zoltan power, so you'll always have 1 shield left. i always find buying crew is kind of useless, unless for some reason the RNG discides you shouldn't get an engi by the end of sector 2 - 3, in which case you probobly should buy one for events and faster repair. but if you find you're on a hard to defend ship (A.K.A zoltan cruiser) upgrade doors and space will be your fighters (or at least weak enough to fight without medbay trips)