Introduction

Infinite Galaxy has a very elaborate Crew system. This guides covers all aspects for beginners.

The Basics

During the game you have opportunities to get Spaceport Prestige Points or crew fragments directly that you can use to recruit Crew. You can assign your Crew to Spaceport Crew slots or promote them to Captain and assign them to a flagship. Assigned crew members and captains give you benefits in various ways.

Crew Specializations

Each Crew has one of four specializations, which correspond to one of the fortify skill projects we will discuss later (listed in brackets): Combetant (Combat), Engineer (Tech), Logistics (Logistics), and Staff Officer (Command).

Most aspects of the Crew are influenced by this specialization. E.g. most of the fortify skill points will be in the corresponding category, the Crew skill will be relevant for the specialization.

For some Crew members there will be additional Crew Fortify points if multiple crew of the same specializations are assigned to the Spaceport Crew.

Crew Grades

There are four Grades of Heroes: Elite (Green), Rare (Blue) and Epic (Purple), Legendary (Yellow). You will find that the basic benefits of the lower grade heroes are smaller, but they are also easier to get, easier to Advance and cheaper to Upgrade, so it might still be that because you get them evolved furter they are best to use.

Besides the above I have found only one real distinction between them, which is that the Purple and Yellow crew members can be promoted to Captain of a Flagship, while Green and Blue cannot.

Number of Crews

I understand there are over 100 different Crew members. I don't have a full list, as far as I know you can only find out about a Crew in game once you have recruited it. It gives a great variation, which is nice, but also means it will be difficult to Advance crew from the random crew recruitment, because the chances are very small you will get a lot of the same Crew.

Crew Recruitment

For some events you will get fragments for specific Crew members, and you can also purchase certain Crew from packs. The main way (for me) to get Crew is from the random Crew Recruitment in the Crew building in your spaceport. You need Spaceport Prestige Points for this, but that is relatively easy to come by via various tasks and events.

Upgrading and Advancing Crew

There are two different ways to improve your Crew. One is Upgrading, which is increasing the experience level, which can be done by clicking the Upgrade button on a crew and selecting Crew Training Course items. These Crew Training Course items are quite easy to get from regular game play. In my eyes the most important benefit of upgrading is an increase in the Fortify Skill points a crew provides.

The other is Advancing, or increasing the Rank of a crew member. This costs the same Crew fragments as you need for recruiting a crew member, which are a lot harder to get. As I wrote above, for some specific heroes you will get them from events, but otherwise you have to depend on luck from crew recruitment, or purchase specific crew member fragments. The benefit from Advancing is very good, you directly increase the benefit of Crew and Captain Skill.

Promoting to Captain and Assigning to Flagship

For promoting a crew member to captain you need a Captain Commission item. I got a couple for free when I started playing and you can purchase them for 400 Khorium in the Trade Center Shop. Once you have promote a crew to Captain you can assign them for free to a Ship. They can also be changed between ships for free and I think Demoting is also for free, but I haven't tried this yet.

The purple and yellow Crew are the only that can be promoted to captain. When you look at their details you will see a Captain Info tab. Here you will find some general stat improvement for the flagship (e.g. Leadership, Attack Bonus, HP, Armor, Shield) and a Captain Skill. In most cases the Captain Skill is the same as the Crew Skill, only you get more, e.g. a Flagship Attack boost of 3.8% as Crew Skill and 8.4% as Captain Skill. The fact that it is more makes sense, because a captain's skill only applies to the flagship it is in, while the same Spaceport Crew skill applies to all flagships. Skill that do not have direct effect on your fleet, e.g. a Warship Build Speed Crew Skill, will have a different Captain Skill that does apply to the fleet, e.g. a Warship Armor boost.

Always pick out a Captain that is complementing the activity you use your fleet for (e.g. a crew with gathering boost captain skill for a fleet you use for gathering). Also consider using a crew as captain that provides a captain skill you do not use on other flagships (e.g. a captain skill that improves the effect of laser weapons you preferably use as captain on a flagship that has lots of destroyers and not a captain with a warship armor boost, as that one you rather use as Spaceport Crew Skill, so that it also benefits your secondary combat fleet).

Assigning Crew to Spaceport

Assigning Crew to your Spaceport can be done for free and you are likely going to change this regularly. Since you will gather a very large amount of crew and there is no way yet to store presets of crew assignments, this can be quite an annoying task.

I have so far two different configurations that I use. One I use only for doing serious combat, and the other is a mix of gathering and development boosts I have active most of the time.

For my combat configuration I have focussed on crew that give me some improvement on my warships. I don't have a good idea yet of which type of improvements are better, so I rather have focussed on the biggest benefit rather than any specific boost. My primary combat fleet consists of a Hercules flagship with an equal mix of all 3 warships.

For my Economy/Development crew I have selected crew that give benefit on Warship Building, Energy Recovery, Resource Gathering Speed, Research Speed and Spaceport Construction Speed. Currently resources seem to be the biggest bottle neck for my growth, so if I get more Crew I probably rather use more gathering and energy recovery boosts than for example spaceport construction.

Switching crew is a cumbersome task, part of the reason why I for the large part just keep on my Economy/Development crew even if I do battle. I checked out a video of Happy Galaxy Gaming who suggested to use the XP level of crew to make it more easy to switch, e.g. have all your Economy Crew to level X and all your Combat Crew to level Y. If you switch from Economy to Combat you just have to switch all level Y crew. The fact that an experienced player suggests this only emphasizes how much a preset system is needed. I do understand his reasoning, and I am actually adapting it as well, it is very bad we need to resort to this solution, as we would just like to upgrade our crew without worrying about it becoming harder to distinguish between different crew members.

Unlocking Crew Slots

Most of the slots for assigning crew are unlocked quite early on in the game, the last 4 are a bit more challenging. Two are unlocked when you upgrade your Command Center to lvl 21, and the last 2 are unlocked when you upgrade your command center to lvl 30.

Spaceport Fortify Plan (Crew Skill Points)

Each assigned Spaceport Crew provides some skill points in one of the 4 categories Command, Combat, Tech, Logistics. For every 10 points you have you can improve one of the available projects in that category to the next level. You can get to the interface to do this by clicking on the right panel in the Spaceport Crew overview that shows how many points you have in each category.

Upgrading your Crew increases the Skill Points they provide.

For 1000 Khorium you can purchase a Job Restructing Plan in the Trade Center Shop which can be used to reset all the assigned skill points. This is quite expensive, but you shouldn't need it too often. In this game it is not necessary to reset these points when you switch between different crews. If you don't have enough points for all the project levels you assigned, the ones furthest down the tree will be removed. Once you assign your other crew again, these will automatically be activated again.

For the projects I provide the following tips:

From Command category I suggest to first focus on Research Speed, you need to do a lot of research and this seems more time consuming than development. For development you can also easily activate a second queue if necessary, for research speed you don't have this option, so another reason to make research speed be as fast as possible.

For Combat and Tech categories I don't have a strong preference. If you have a fleet that mostly consists on one of the three warship types, it is best to chose projects that complement those ships, e.g. Laser Weapons and Destroyer HP if your primary combat fleet is heavy on Destroyers.

For Logistics if you are an active player I suggest to go for Energy Recovery. With more energy you can kill more Marauders and those are a great benefit for extra resources. I am not so impressed with the benefit of Troop Load, as it seems having a bigger Troop Load seems to cost you more gathering energy for doing Planet Gathering.