Gaming

In the first two or three sectors, it is not uncommon to run into a Mantis Scout, either Mantis or Pirate, which usually runs with a single-shot laser and a beam weapon that can't penetrate a single shield. If you have only one shield, they'll execute a nasty one-two punch where the laser drops the shields and then the beam burns up multiple rooms.

But if you show up with two shields, the Mantis can never penetrate to your systems or hull, so you can toy with him forever, and level up your crew while doing so.

All crew members level up in the following ways (I can't find the original article where I read this, so it's speculative):

Pilot and Engine: Gain a point per shot evaded. Maybe 20 to level up? L1/L2/L3 5%/7.5%/10% evade bonus if at controls.
Shields: Gain a point for every shield re-started. Takes a lot to level up, maybe 40-60. 5%/10%/15% faster shield restart
Weapons: Gain a point for every shield dropped, system disabled, and ship kill (I think). Also lots, maybe 40-60. 5%/10%/15% faster weapon charge.
Repair: Gain a point for every system repaired. 10-20, I think, to level up.
Combat: Gain a point for every kill. Pretty sure 10 kills to level up.

Level 1: White icon
Level 2: Green icon
Level 3: Yellow icon
(Please forgive my confusion here. I made some mistakes on the first edit.)

With the Kestrel A, you have to leave your weapons hot but untargeted, as the Burst Laser Mark II will quickly tear apart the Mantis ship. But your three crew can man the Pilot, Engine, and Shield rooms and level up. Once they reach Level 3 (A yellow icon and two Xs over the head of your system power level meter), be sure to have them rotate to new positions.

If you have unlocked the Kestrel B with four crewmembers and four basic lasers, you can man all four positions, unpower all but one laser, and level up all four positions at the same time. The enemy always keeps someone in the shield room, so a single basic laser can never out-pace the restart of their shields (enemy crewmembers may also level up--their weapons seem to fire faster later on in a grind session, which in turn levels up your shield-guy faster).

Your pilot and engine-personorthing will evade more shots if the engines have more power, so in the rare instances when you're flush early on and looking to power-level your crew, consider dropping a point or two on the engines.

Some tips:

* Mantises have double attack speed in hand-to-hand combat, but repair at only half speed. Mantises make great away teams, then, but even though they are fast they suck at repairing and putting out fires. Getting a teleporter seems to attract random events and slavers that give Mantis crewmembers, and they seem to show up for hire at stores more often, but that's just a guess.

* Engis, on the other hand, do half damage in combat, but repair at double speed. They're best left on your own ship. It's actually better to have other species man systems so that the Engi is free to double up on the repairs in any manned system room. Engis can still act as a damage-sink in combat, but they are the second-worst next to the Zoltan.

* Zoltans are awesome to have on systems, but they have only 70 hp, die in seconds in combat, and can even by killed by multiple hits on the same room. They provide one power point to any room they're in. It's a bad idea to have a Zoltan as pilot, as his power-point goes unused by the ship. So when grinding, you may wish to leave the Zoltan out of the pilot's room. On rare occasions, with an eight-person crew, I've had the luxury of being able to unpower the Medbay and make a Zoltan the McCoy of the ship. It's best to make them expert in the system closest to the Medbay.

* Rocks have 150 hp and might actually be the best combat units, because once they're leveled up two of them are almost impossible to stop. But they are painfully slow and not easily recirculated back to the ship and over to the medbay on the Kestrel A. On that ship, however, a Rock makes a great engine-man who can jump next door to the teleporter, and also be there to fix the O2 room. Rocks are immune to fire and so can be transported into burning medbays on enemy ships, with hilarious results (they can still suffocate, though), and also make an excellent repair chief for the back-end of your Kestrel.

* Slugs are just as unremarkable as humans except that they provide a number of "blue" options in random events, light up darkened rooms adjacent to the one it is in, and telepathically know the location of enemies regardless of the status of your sensors. Despite the example I give in a post below, the Slug is probably best kept manning a system at home.

* It's worth grinding-up Engis and Mantises, too, as they can fill in vacant slots while the primaries are healing, and away teams can't be used easily against automated ships, so they'd better get good at repairs or something else, too.

* It is a terrible idea to try to level up your repair skills by taking damage. You'll take plenty of that along the way no matter what.

* Only one point is awarded per event, so if you have a Zoltan in the shield room purely for the power and a human at the actual controls, only the human gets the point. Similarly, Mantises seem to get most of the kills in combat because of their higher attack speed. But the AI is pretty smart and has a habit of beaming in on your weakest and loneliest crewmembers, so don't be surprised if you see a Zoltan or Engi combat expert on your crew some day.

* You can "pull" a crewmember to a higher level faster at either pilot or engines by placing a better qualified person at the other control. For example, an L1 rookie goes into the engine room, while a L3 pilot is at the controls. The ship has a 15% extra evasion chance, rather than a 10% chance if both are L1, so the rookie will level up faster than if he were paired with another rookie. If you start both out at no experience it will take them a long time to get to L1, but considerably less for both to reach L2 because their bonuses benefit each other and increase the rate of evasions once they have leveled up once.

When grinding a crew, you might want to find the auto-pause option and disable that, so that the game will run in the background while you're doing something else. Once I went to bed while grinding, which is how a backup pilot managed to score a record 1799 piloted evasions. (It didn't help him, he and his crew failed the following morning.)

You can fall into a grinding scenario in later levels as well. Enemy ships seem to have a finite number of missiles, just as you do. If you deploy a defense drone and shoot all the missiles down, sometimes the enemy is left with only beam weapons or lasers that can't burn through all of your shields. This is a great opportunity to grind up replacements and new arrivals, which you will certainly have random crew losses seem to unfairly pick among your highest-level crew (especially the combat experts).

Leveling up crew makes major contributions to your overall survivability, so it's worth doing if you have the patience.