Crew skills

Crew members gain skill through experience working at various ship tasks: Piloting the ship, Shield recharging, running the Engines, Weapons operation, Repairing damage, and engaging in Combat. All races have the same experience gains except humans who are slightly faster.

Piloting skill

Crewmembers manning piloting gain one point of experience for each projectile dodged during combat. This includes asteroids, provided you are still in combat. Remaining in an asteroid field after the combat ends will not raise piloting skill. Skill is also not gained when your ship is cloaked.

This can be trained by finding an enemy that cannot break through your shields, and letting them fire at you.

Crewmember's skill level		Manning bonus
	Level 0 (White)	+5% evasion
	Level 1 (Green)	+7% evasion
	Level 2 (Gold)	+10% evasion

Engines skill

Exactly the same as piloting, crewmembers manning the engines gain one point of experience for each projectile evaded. It is trained the same way with exact limitations. Unlike piloting, engines skill also affects the charge time of your FTL drive: with more skilled crew, it charges faster (Note: The in-game FTL charge time bonus values are incorrect; for the actual charge time improvement see the table here).

Crewmember's skill level		Manning bonus
	Level 0 (White)	+5% evasion
	Level 1 (Green)	+7% evasion
	Level 2 (Gold)	+10% evasion

Weapons skill

Crewmembers who man the Weapon Control gain one point of experience for each weapon that is fired. It doesn't matter whether it hits or misses, or whether it can do damage. Volleys of multi-shot weapons such as burst lasers count as a single fire and, thus, grant a single experience point. A crew manning the Weapon Control system gains one point of experience when an artillery system fires.

This can be trained by firing repeatedly against an enemy that cannot damage you, using weapons that cannot damage the enemy. You also get training when firing bombs at your own ship, but that consumes missiles.

Weapons can be "cancelled" during firing by turning them off just after you receive the skill increment. With enough patience, it's possible to train weapons skill without firing a shot.

Crewmember's skill level		Manning bonus
	Level 0 (White)	10% faster charge
	Level 1 (Green)	15% faster charge
	Level 2 (Gold)	20% faster charge

The bonus is a decrease in charge time. For example, fully trained crew reduce charge time by 20%, so the improved charge time is 80% of the unmanned charge time; a Basic Laser improves from 10 seconds to 8 seconds.

Shields skill

Crewmembers manning the shields gain one point of experience for every projectile that hits your shield bubble and depletes it during the combat. Ion projectiles, when blocked by shields, ionize the Shields system, preventing manning the system and getting the skill points.

This can be trained against an enemy that cannot deal damage through your shields. As with piloting and engines skill, asteroids will not provide training unless you are still in combat.

Crewmember's skill level		Manning bonus
	Level 0 (White)	10% faster recharge
	Level 1 (Green)	20% faster recharge
	Level 2 (Gold)	30% faster recharge

The bonus is an increase to recharge rate. Recharge time is the inverse of recharge rate. For example, with fully trained crew, recharge time is divided by 1.3 -- so a 2 seconds recharge is reduced to 1.54 seconds.

Repair skill

Crewmembers gain one point of experience for completing the repairs of one system or subsystem level. The skill point is granted to the crew who performs the finishing repair animation.

One crewmember can be specifically used to do (finish) all repairs to concentrate the experience points. Other crew can help with the repairs, but must be assigned a different task or simple ordered to leave the room (a repair drone can be depowered), so that the designated crew completes the repair.

Note: sealing hull breaches provides no experience.

Crewmember's skill level		Bonus
	Level 0 (White)	Default repair speed
	Level 1 (Green)	10% faster repair
	Level 2 (Gold)	20% faster repair

Combat skill

Combat skill increases the damage dealt to crewmembers and onboard drones, but doesn't increase the sabotage damage to (sub-)systems. The combat skill works as a multiplier when calculating the hand-to-hand damage.

A crewmember gains one point of experience for dealing the killing blow to hostile crew in hand-to-hand combat or damaging one system level of a (sub-)system. Your mind-controlled crew also gains combat experience for damaging your ship systems. However, killing cloned crew or destroying onboard drones doesn't grant experience.

For reference, the amount of damage that an unskilled human crew deals per hit is 3 to 7 HP, an average of 5 damage per hit.

Hint: boarding can be effective for gaining XP by destroying enemy ship systems before taking out the crew. The enemy can be given opportunity to repair the damaged systems in order to allow your boarders to damage them again.

Crewmember's skill level		Bonus
	Level 0 (White)	Default crew damage
	Level 1 (Green)	10% more crew damage
	Level 2 (Gold)	20% more crew damage

Skills table

Note: In the XP column the value in parentheses shows the XP requirement to increase a skill level by Humans.

Skill		XP to level up	Skill level bonus				XP source
			0	1	2
	Piloting	15 (13)	+5	+7	+10	% evasion	Dodge while manning Piloting (exceptions: active cloak, ship fight is over)
	Engines	15 (13)	+5	+7	+10	% evasion	Dodge while manning Engines (exceptions: active cloak, ship fight is over)
	Shields	55 (50)	10	20	30	% faster recharge	Shields system manning when shield bubble is hit and depleted (exceptions: ion projectiles, ship fight is over)
	Weapons	65 (58)	10	15	20	% faster charge	Weapon Control system manning when firing weapons and artillery systems
	Repair	18 (16)	-	10	20	% faster repair	Repair a damaged system for one system level
	Combat	8 (7)	-	10	20	% more crew damage	Kill enemy crew or damage a system for one system level (exceptions: killing cloned crew, destroying crew drones)

Cloned crew loses 20% of skill points in every skill (but loses only 1 skill point in Combat skill).