How do you rank your crew?

Aldude

Lots of people have different ways of ranking their own crew.

Some people used a certain now-defunct tool, some people used a now-deleted spreadsheet, some people went by their gut.

I have always had my own spreadsheet. I give a score of 5 to my top voyage crew in each skill (with 4 to my second best, down to 1 to my fifth best) and also give a score of 5 to my top shuttle crew in each skill (with 4 to my second best, but stopping at 3 for my third best). I then rank my crew by the total number of points they have. Any purple I immortalise has to score some points to stay out of the freezer. It also helps me decide which gold to cite.

But I'm curious over how other people do it. What is YOUR criteria for "good crew"?

Ishmael Marx

I don't have a single method, but here are some approaches I use.

I do have a "voyage total" column in my spreadsheet that highlights the top 25 on my current roster. I'm less concerned about who the "best-in-game" crew are, since I only have some of them anyway. I can't control whether I'll ever get Gary 7, but I can decide whether to add a star to my 4/5 Tempted Data or 4/5 Delta Flyer Paris. I also highlight the top 5 for each individual skill & roll, but that's not as interesting to me as it once was when my roster was shallower.

I generally prioritize main cast, since they tend to have more event utility than other crew. As such, I suppose I consider these "better" than other crew.

I generally prioritize crew I like ahead of crew that have the best stats. One of my upcoming decisions is whether to cite Honey Bare or Interfaced La Forge for their respective voyage value. I could also cite FO Burnham, but I don't care for her character, so she's not on my list even though she has stronger overall stats (though obviously with different skills).

I don't use citations on 4* crew, except for the free 4* citations DB has given us. Honor is only for legendaries (and Stargazer Picard). If I don't get them FF'd in their event, then they just float around on my roster until they drop via portals/voyages. This works for me since I have very few 4* cards that aren't FF'd, and I have enough crew slots to lock up a few of them for months at a time. Like many of us, there was a time when my roster management required several great purges, and many 1/4's felt the vacuum of space.

Data1001

Short answer: I don't. Longer answer: crew strength doesn't really matter that much to me at this point — to a large extent because I already have a solid roster able to handle pretty much anything that may come up in any part of the game; but also because I'm playing STT less and less to "accomplish" things, and more and more simply to collect cool new crew (not all the new crew that are introduced, mostly just ones that I particularly like).

Before my roster got to that point, it was mostly a gut feel thing, though — with exceptions for when I needed a specific trait for an unfinished episode mission or needed crew with better stats in a particular skill for Gauntlet. Now, however, if any of the crew I acquire from this point out happen to also be really strong, well that's just mint frosting on my cellular peptide cake.

Zann Calcore (ISA)

Ishmael Marx wrote: »

I don't have a single method, but here are some approaches I use.

I do have a "voyage total" column in my spreadsheet that highlights the top 25 on my current roster. I'm less concerned about who the "best-in-game" crew are, since I only have some of them anyway. I can't control whether I'll ever get Gary 7, but I can decide whether to add a star to my 4/5 Tempted Data or 4/5 Delta Flyer Paris. I also highlight the top 5 for each individual skill & roll, but that's not as interesting to me as it once was when my roster was shallower.

I generally prioritize main cast, since they tend to have more event utility than other crew. As such, I suppose I consider these "better" than other crew.

I generally prioritize crew I like ahead of crew that have the best stats. One of my upcoming decisions is whether to cite Honey Bare or Interfaced La Forge for their respective voyage value. I could also cite FO Burnham, but I don't care for her character, so she's not on my list even though she has stronger overall stats (though obviously with different skills).

I don't use citations on 4* crew, except for the free 4* citations DB has given us. Honor is only for legendaries (and Stargazer Picard). If I don't get them FF'd in their event, then they just float around on my roster until they drop via portals/voyages. This works for me since I have very few 4* cards that aren't FF'd, and I have enough crew slots to lock up a few of them for months at a time. Like many of us, there was a time when my roster management required several great purges, and many 1/4's felt the vacuum of space.

With the exception of actually having a spreadsheet, except in my head, I’ve done much the same as is described above by my peer @Ishmael Marx . I will sometimes prioritize better stats type gold crew over those I like, mostly depending on whether I really need them in an upcoming or current event or if they overall already have many more stars in their fusion than the one I’d prefer.

For instance, recently I had a citation ready and had planned on using it on a character I preferred increasing the fusion rank of; namely this was Trelane, who was at 3/5. However, the Borg mini-Mega-event was just about to begin and I saw a slightly better option. I had The One, Lore at 4/5, the Borg event was soon to be, AND I only needed one more Borg to complete the Borg Collection in Cryostasis. So, I cited Lore, immortalized him, gained a useful crew for voyages and the Borg event, and grabbed the last bit of treasure that the Borg Freezer Collection could offer.

So basically I still try and go with whoever I like but WILL switch to someone with a stat difference if it suits my purposes. As for overall importance of crew, it’s mostly a combination of Gauntlet usefulness, ship battle abilities, shuttle trip power, and voyage score. For example, I consider Mirror Picard to still be one of my best crew because he’s great in the Gauntlet, Voyages, and shuttles. Heck, I still use Scientist Degra because he’s good in Voyages and shuttles, even with only two skills. Also, T’Kuvma has been my steady rock in ship battles and Skirmishes, though I rarely ever send him on a Voyage or to the Gauntlet.

Hope all this helps with your perspective on things.

Aldude

Oh, I'm always interested in hearing other people's perspective

Seven of One

I have a spreadsheet where I keep a log of who I send on voyages. I then prioritise my favourites 😉 I cited Killy all the way to max because I use her in skirmish. I cited Interfaced La Forge because when I first got him he was my best DIP and my best ENG. I started working on Falcon (I have v low SEC) and then switched to The Caretaker once he left gauntlet. Now I'm not working on anyone in case Cheesecake Seven appears 😍

Flemming

I have a spreadsheet of all the skills (Base, Min, Max) and the traits. I use a third party software to do some analysis to determine which are my least useful crew.

On top of the Top Base, Top Average Proficiency, things I look for, Key Traits (usually seen on Voyages and Gauntlet, this is very organic) and the more the better.

That all goes into an equation I built to give a FlemmingRank.

Then I have another tasty adult beverage.

5000 Quatloos

I actually keep two ranks, “Final value” and “today’s value”. The former is used for prioritizing begolds and citations, and is a mashup of figures of merit like above for different game aspects. It uses FF/FE stats.

“Today’s value” uses today’s stats and has some bells and whistles added that account for Collection importance, likelihood of appearing in an event, and overall strength or weakness in my bench in a given skill area. I use it to help prioritize who to train next. As I get closer to a complete set of SRs it is becoming less important, but was my mainstay for a long time to focus on the most near-term important crew first (unless I desperately needed freezer bait, which has its own knob to turn).

Dirk Gunderson

I’ve tried some spreadsheets with mixed success due to my laziness with keeping them updated. I have a rough priority list of things to look for:

1) Characters I like.
2) Crew that are helpful for voyages.
3) Crew that are helpful for shuttles/gauntlet.

I’m enough of a completionist that anyone that doesn’t fit any of those three criteria will end up in the freezer, even if it takes a while and they languish at the bottom of my crew roster. And the gauntlet is less important to me because I have accumulated a pretty solid group for all six skills.

Extending voyages has been one of the driving forces behind my citation planning for some time now. I sorted all of my crew and calculated Voyage scores by skill pairs (rather than total voyage score as has been the case elsewhere). I then total up the number of crew that reach certain arbitrary thresholds for each skill combo (2000 points, 2500, and 3000). Then, I look at which skill pairs are deficient and are in need of assistance. For example, until a month ago I had only two crew with COM/MED over 2000 points (Warship EMA and AoS Crusher)...so I cited Delta Flyer Paris up to 5/5*, which also helped me add a fourth crew member with over 2500 points between COM and ENG. ENG/MED is my worst pair (closely followed by SCI/MED), so Leonardo is my next citation target and The Keeper is next after him.

Maybe I’ll get some random drops that disrupt the schedule (unexpectedly getting DF Paris to 3/5* from 1/5* did just that), maybe not. Either way, it makes me better on voyages and, often times, frees up other crew to boost my shuttle success rates inside and out of events.

5000 Quatloos

Flemming wrote: »

I have a spreadsheet of all the skills (Base, Min, Max) and the traits. I use a third party software to do some analysis to determine which are my least useful crew.

On top of the Top Base, Top Average Proficiency, things I look for, Key Traits (usually seen on Voyages and Gauntlet, this is very organic) and the more the better.

That all goes into an equation I built to give a FlemmingRank.

Then I have another tasty adult beverage.

Hey @Flemming - you might enjoy this in your number crunching ... attaching some stats on Trait appearances in bonuses and featuring. All numbers except the "Crude Value" column are % chances that a trait will be bonused in that game mechanic.

(1) Voyage AM Bonuses - this is the weak link as I've "only" logged my last 25 voyages (50 seats' worth for each skill). The numbers for Civilian, Federation, Starfleet, Physician, Hologram are heavily skewed up by the MED seat which seems to limit bonuses to those traits, but otherwise, it's a decent stab at a rough sorting list. I attached the by-skill breakouts as well.

(2) Gauntlet Crit Bonuses - this is a mashup of two older compilations posted on the forums with my own logging of my gauntlet series since November. DB has tweaked the approach two or three times over that whole period, so it's imperfect and evolving, but probably reasonable for a rough cut.

(3) Event Feature Bonuses - this should be complete back to day 1. Use of some of the numbers depends on how likely you think 4-week mega traits are to ever be featured again.

It's kind of neat to see how these map out to specific crew. E.g., fan favorite Leonardo has a very high chance of being Voyage-bonused because he has some of the top traits for the specific skills where they're featured the most. Temporal Chakotay is a little lower but same category, goodness in all the right places.

Nothing like going for that third decimal place of accuracy for the obsessive optimizers out there

Flemming

Nice, I think this will come in quite useful in my data machinations. [Insert Megalomaniacal Laugh #4]

Flemming

HaBlack

I use color coding in my spreadsheet so I can visually easily sort them. Prioritizing in this order

1. Top 30 voyage crew - for figuring out which will get next citation
2. Top 10 base skill value for each skill
3. Top 10 proficiency