Crew

"Ah, what would a ship be without crew? Lonely and inefficient, that's what."

Crew are NPCs who permanently work on your ship. You can hire up to 12 of them depending on your maximum crew capacity.

Each crew member has a profession (such as "Engineer", "Arctic Explorer", "Soldier") that determines their equipment as well as the bonuses they grant. Bonuses can range from permanent ship-side effects like reduced FTL fuel usage up to 99%, to temporary planet-side effects like elemental resistance. For example, the Beast Hunter will grant 280 seconds of minor fire resistance and immunity to Proto-Poison upon leaving the ship.

You can order up to 2 crew members to accompany you, and they will beam down to planets with you to provide combat support. They will respawn on the ship upon death. The Tailor and Geologist can't leave the ship, but everyone else is armed and ready to help you.

Crew members that grant ship upgrades like reduced FTL fuel usage or increased ship speed have diminishing returns, to a minimum of 1/3 effectiveness. However, they can be stacked infinitely, limited only by your crew capacity.

Ways to obtain the crew

 * Contracts
 * : Buy "crew contracts" at the Hiring Office located in the Science Outpost. You need the necessary research for each contract (e.g. to buy Medic Contract, you need to have researched ).
 * : Kevin will give you several contracts (such as the Alpaca Contract) as rewards for completing his quests.


 * Befriend NPCs
 * : Complete the quests of NPCs on planets, be they your tenants or NPCs in randomly generated settlements. They will eventually ask to be employed on your ship.
 * : This crew member will have a random profession. Non-specialized NPCs can choose almost any profession, but some unique tenants have strong preferences (for example, scientist-looking tenants will always want to be hired as Chemists).
 * : Certain NPCs with a preset profession can also be found in the world. Quests or randomly generated dungeons can yield such NPCs who will be willing to join you once found.


 * Penguins
 * : After completing the quest "Dreadwing the Penguin", you can hire Penguins on the vanilla Outpost. They always have the "Soldier" profession, and they all dual-wield various pistols. To hire a penguin NPC, talk to him with 1 Dubloon in your inventory.

Maximum crew capacity
When using BYOS, you need to place items like Crappy Crew Bed or Crew Bed on your ship to increase your crew capacity by 1 or 2 (check tooltips). You start with a crew capacity of 0 (you can't hire any crew), which can be increased up to 12 (you can hire 12 crew members).

As alternative to crew beds, you can make a proper room (with door, light, a bed like Wooden Bed, etc.) and place a Crew Deed inside. Note that Crew Deed only increases your crew capacity by 1, and does not "summon" a crew member.

When using the vanilla ship (non-BYOS), your limit is increased the same way as in vanilla Starbound: https://starbounder.org/Ship_Upgrade.

Firing crew members
You can see the list of your crew members in S.A.I.L.. There is a "Dismiss" button, which will permanently remove a crew member. This NPC will beam away, and you'll never see them again.