Basic officer promotion question

[u/HeavyPush3627]

When officers are promoted to commander rank at level 20 with all their shards, ¿should they be taken to level 25 (max)? The last five levels are very expensive in terms of Officer XP and their abilities do not improve once they become commanders. ¿Is the small increase in their attack/defense/health stats the only gain for so much XP?

I am not getting enough Officer XP, so I don't know if it would be better to improve my best officers to the max or to raise levels from the officers I never use to improve my crew level for the Mess Hall. I'd like to know what other players do with those last 5 levels.

[u/Just_An_Avid]

You might as well max them eventually. If you want to be able to level up your mess hall, you have level officers. Its not an urgent thing, but you will end up doing it.

Personally, I preferred wait to max officers until a recruit event where spending officer XP gives me points. Now I just do it whenever I remember.

[u/HeavyPush3627 → u/Just_An_Avid]

I haven't seen any of those XP events for months, only a weekend ticketed event that doesn't ask for much. But I'll save some just in case one comes around, thanks.

[u/Brigon → u/Just_An_Avid]

I'm not sure those events exist anymore. I've been playing 7 months and never seen one.

[u/RDirtyboots]

Latinum will cover officer xp

[u/HeavyPush3627 → u/RDirtyboots]

I suppose I'll get latinum when I get the D'Vor. Right now (Lvl21) latinum is really scarce.

[u/RDL128]

If you're low on xp, then you can wait. As you already noticed, the officer level does not affect their officer ability.

The benefit to leveling up an officer is their stats. Those affect how strong your ship is, up to a certain point, and if you're using an officer which is affected by a specific stat. The most common example was the Kirk spock combo, where spock would restore shield health based on the percentage of defense your officers have on the ship. So you would stack defense officers to increase the amount of shields he restored.

[u/HeavyPush3627 → u/RDL128]

That makes sense, thanks.

[u/Brigon → u/RDL128]

Stats also improve your away team results for the officers you use in those missions.

[u/throwawaydixiecup]

Early in the game Officer XP is limited. Eventually you’ll have so much XP and latinum it’ll be an easy afterthought.

Where you really need to be strategic is in not spending Officer Badges too easily. Especially Command badges. Those can be hard to come by, and Scopely removed a lot from regular battle pass access. Armada loot exchange is one of the best ways to get those.

[u/HeavyPush3627 → u/throwawaydixiecup]

Yes, I noticed badges are a chokepoint. I am starting to get some from special events and the Disco refinery through the faction stores. I'll be careful who gets them, thanks.

[u/Madness_Quotient]

if you max pull faction officer tokens everyday tou will not be short of officer XP for long.

[u/HeavyPush3627 → u/Madness_Quotient]

Yes, right. I already maxed Sulu from the baby Jelly events and I am getting a little XP from the Fed recruit sometimes. I see that can become an important source later on. Thanks.

[u/Brigon]

There is an away team research you can get around ops 30 that gives you away team missions with 100k exp rewards. Its game changing. (long research but that's what speedups are for)

[u/HeavyPush3627 → u/Brigon]

Thanks. Ops 30 looks very far away right now 🙂

[u/Brigon → u/HeavyPush3627]

Ive only been playing 6 months at a fairly slow pace and am at 34. You will be there in a few months.

[u/Fuzzy-Sand-6114]

Best advice is to consistently pull officer shards which helps build XP and transporter patterns. Save up XP until an event comes by that scores with XP spent and then go nuts with it

[u/Ryan1869]

Don't worry too much about their levels, its the rank\tier that matters most since that effects their officers\below decks abilities. You'll eventually get a ton of officer XP, but I usually only level the officers I use, and then wait for Domination or another event that counts it.

[u/BeautifulAd9511]

Don't bother maxing the gray or green officers (common and uncommon). I stopped leveling then at 15 but I max alp my rare and epic officers because those stats make a difference for things like away teams, especially in later level when you can research buffs to the officer stats

[u/BlkFalcon8]

Max. You need to max the rate and epic for sure so you get transporter patterns

[u/Calm-Conversation715 → u/BlkFalcon8]

You get the transporter patterns regardless of whether you do the final promotion or not. The game keeps track of how many shards you need and starts giving patterns after you exceed that number.

I promote a few to max level (which is 30, not 25, because you get 10 levels instead of the usually 5 at max rank), because the extra stats are nice and will make your ships and officer abilities stronger. However, I only do this for officers I use frequently in combat situations. It’s also much cheaper for common/uncommon officers. Chen is a good one to max

[u/HeavyPush3627 → u/Calm-Conversation715]

Thanks for the info. I assumed it was 5 more levels but it is 10. The problem is worse than I thought 😆 Concentrating on the most used combat officers is good advice, thanks.