How to get specialist crew and good standard crew

[Kohlenstoff]

When you are leveled up at level 100, you will most probably never find any specialist crew (gunner, mechanic,...). Even the drak recruitment will not help (and even if, you would only get pilots).

But there is a effective way. It is not so fast, because it includes COMMON leveling of at least one ship to 100 after recruitment. But you will have in a few gaming days all specialists, which you need.

First you need a good leveled ship. At least level 20-30 or so. But more is better. Before you start to search for specialists, you should know, which ones you need. Playing a level 100 ship will show you. So i suggest to have experience of playing a level 100 ship first. Its also useful, because the step with the leveling ship with leveling crew will be harder than common playing.

Before you start,you should think about, which specialists you could need and which new ship you could want.

1. Install this mod:
http://www.soldak.com/forums/showthread.php?t=24748
(You will need this for transfering the gained crew)

2. Take your high leveled Ship, equip it with 1 or 2 marines and a bit defense and regeneration stuff and make a new sector at level 0. In sectors with level 0 you will get the most specialists dropped. Ensure, that the races are present, from which you need crew member. You get only crew from races, which are living in this sector! Crew and specialists of Rebels and Legion can also be found, but keep in mind, that they cannot be installed in any racial crew slot of any ship. The best ship is a scavenger ship with some devourers. But other ships will also do the job.

3. Search now for enemies, which use fighters (Harbinger). Shoot carefully any other enemies and try to lure the Harbinger to the rim of sector. For slow shooting players one or two should be enough. Fast shooting players should try out to lure 4 of them out. Be careful, they follow you only as long they dont have other targets or get too far away. They stop also following, when you let them follow you without stopping for more than a second.

4. When you are at the rim together with the Harbingers, start to destroy the fighters with the marines. Be careful and try not to hit the harbingers. When you are good, you will have in some hours 6 specialists and some other maybe interesting crew members. This is, what i got from 3 hours. Continue until you are satisfied with your selection of specialists (take enough time to choose good ones,... look at their level while comparing stats! A level 0 is good, when he got a stat of 3, a level 5 should have a stat of 5 to be good).
When you want to level up some of them now, equip them while searching for more. Even the low leveled enemies without XP let crew often level up.

Here you can see me shooting like described. Im very lucky and found two crewman in this short video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VQHGrZuwb8
You can imagine, that in this way way more enemies can be killed in a certain time, than in the common way. The harbingers spawn also lot of "expert" and "elite" fighters, which drop more stuff. In this way the farming becomes VERY effective. You can use this method also to farm in high levels for good items. I suggest to have scavenger ship and many devourers for that. The battlefield is soon littered with items, so you should move in small steps around the map (make steps not too far or fast or you "loose" the harbingers).

5. Transfer now the specialists to a new level 0 ship and equip in crew slots only these specialists. During leveling shoot only enemy ships and don't do any quests. Stay in sectors with your ship level or below your ship level!! Choose "fast pace" sectors for more enemies. Keep an eye on your crew and replace any leveled crew member with one, who needs to level up. Every ship can level up about 4-6 crew members simultanously during leveling process. Some of your crew will maybe stay 20 or 25 levels behind, when you are done. They will continue leveling during use of your new ship.

Now to the good standard crew: When you find a "drone" crew member, keep it!!! They drop very rarely and almost only in early levels. You can scavenge drones. I invested 25 million in scavenging and the result were 7 drone crew members with 5 (FIVE) stats and many other useful ones (critical mainly). One of them is even a "legendary" (see screenshot). With drak you would need way more than 10 times more time to get standard crew of this quality, than you need to get money and scavenge drones. And drone crew is allways happy ;-) . Only the drone marines are almost not useful due low health!!!

[Yindo]

Originally Posted by Kohlenstoff

Now to the good standard crew: When you find a "drone" crew member, keep it!!! They drop very rarely and almost only in early levels. You can scavenge drones. I invested 25 million in scavenging and the result were 7 drone crew members with 5 (FIVE) stats and many other useful ones (critical mainly). One of them is even a "legendary" (see screenshot). With drak you would need way more than 10 times more time to get standard crew of this quality, than you need to get money and scavenge drones. And drone crew is allways happy ;-) . Only the drone marines are almost not useful due low health!!!

Interesting never realized they had 5 stats to them.

[Kohlenstoff]

Drones are like normal crew. 1 Stat is common, 2 stats are rare, 3 stats very rare... 5 is the maximum. But the chance is very low, that you will ever encounter a single normal 5 stat crew without grinding drakk recruitment for a really long time. Thats, why scavenging drones is the best way to get a good standard crew.