Hope this is a suitable place to post.
Had a bit of a discussion on global about training times and skill points. Just picked up my 4th crew member and done a little checking myself so if anyone's interested:
Training time looks to be based solely on the total of skill points + survival + diplomacy + combat. There's no difference between them, so no affect if unassigned points are added to a stat. Any points put into a skill (eg heat or first contact) no longer form part of the total so the training time is decreased. The skills themselves don't have an effect, just the points removed from the total.
Also, there's no difference between trained / acquired points, and starting stats of a character. So if you recruit a low-skill crew member and train them up, their training time will be the same as a high-skill crew member just bought with the same total points.

Nov 23, 2012  Hey all. We have just released some new code. Nothing fancy this time, but at least you know we are patching the game constantly Bug Fixes - Fixed more explore bugs - Fixed shield regen issue.

The upshot is if you've done a little exploring already, DON'T buy a super-low-skill crewmate, it's a waste of time. Get one that will slot into your exploration schedule, ie with the right stats to go for the next zone.
I'd ideally like to give a formula for the training time, but am a bit stuffed because the estimated time (that you get told the training will take before you click 'go') is NOT the same as the actual time. In my experience it varies by anything from a few seconds to a few minutes - don't know if anyone else has seen this? The estimated time has always been the longer of the two for me.
Couple of quick examples are (sorry, no pics):
Anna (Rookie)
Skill Points 90
Total Stats 70
No Special Skills
Training TIme ('estimated'): 15m 42s
Anna (Rookie)
Skill Points 1
Total Stats 93
All Special Skills
Training Time ('estimated'): 8m 36s - You can see the reduction by assigning special skills
Tobias (Sergeant)
Skill Points 288
Total Stats 256
All Special Skills
Training Time ('estimated'): 1h 52m 19s

Alright so to start this off, I should make it clear that this guide will provide the most help for newer players. Older players are most likely out of luck if you have explored most or all of the planets. Once the planets have been explored you have lost your chance to make a high stat crew.1. To get the most advantage out of exploring, its best to start with the weakest crew possible. Your optimal crew should have base stats around 20 in each category. You want to do because the lower you start off at, the greater the reward from the earlier area that you explore.

The next section will give better details as to why.2. Try to get as many crew as possible before you try this. I understand the 4th and 5th crew members are hard to get because of their flux cost so its up to you to decide what you want to do. I would get a minimum of 3 crew because training the other crew later on will take some time.3. Once you have your weak crew, train them.

Your goal is to max out all of the special skills. These skills will help with exploring later on and also lower training times.

All the special skills can be unlocked by 2 ways. You either have 20 points in combat, survival, or diplomacy; Or you finish upgrading an available special skill.

They unlock themselves in sequence. Once you have finished upgrading these skills, do not spend any points that you get from training yet.4. When your crew stat's are low, the training time overall is low. Although it shouldnt be needed, you can do some additional training to build up some extra points on your crew while waiting for the others to finish rule 3. Do Not Spend the points.

Building up the extra points can be useful if a crew has a high stat already. It should not matter but it can help just incase.5.

When your crew is finally ready to start exploring. You should treat each category as a different set of missions.

Trying to do them all at once will only cause screw ups and its best to them individually. It does not matter which order your do them in.6. Send Every crew member on every mission. There is no downside to this and the points you might gain are not split up.7. If your crew member happens to have a higher stat than is needed, that is ok.

Do not spend point on it unless recommended (see charts below). Most starting crew will still be well below the stats that will harm this guide. Eventually your crew will all even out stat wise and you will have 3, 4, or 5 crew members with identical stats. Their unused points may vary and odds are they will but it shouldnt be by much.8. DO NOT SPEND THE EXTRA POINTS YOU GET FROM EXPLORING UNLESS RECOMMENDED.When exploring an area, the stats of your crew can change the reward you get. This is why im stressing not to spend points unless nessessary. If you do, you will not reach the goal of a 500 all crew.When the new crew system was introduced, The old system where you failed exploring but still gained points was removed.

Now the game works where if you fail and your crew's stats were below a certian amount, You get no points and all progress in exploring an area is lost. You might also get an injured crew member. Injured crew members dont lose points but in keeping all your crew at the same stats, you will have to wait for that one crew to become available again before you can continue exploring.

The Number that causes this Fail is 10 below the amount needed. If you have a crew member with a stat that is already much higher than the needed amount, 10 below or lower and be used but I have not done any testing on the reward but you are more likely to result in injured crew members too.Crew Stats vs Stats needed-10 points or more: tends to lead to a fail more than success. No progress is gained.-9 points: the lowest a your crew can be and still keep exploring progress when failing. 9-13 points per explore-6 points: seems to be the sweet spot resulting in 8-10 points gained per crew with very few injuries+/- 0 points or equal: most often you will gain 4-6 points+20 points: at the point, the highest rewards you will see are 4+40 points: at this point, the highest rewards you will see are 3+60 points: at this point, the highest rewards you will see are 2These numbers arent perfect when your points are above the needed stat but are fairly close to actual resultsThe size of an area can also influence how many points you get from exploring. Larger areas tend to give more while smaller areas give less. Ive seen up to 13 points given to each crew member on an area before.In the later systems such as Vibrillian and on, I'm recommending using a higher stat than the 9 below amount as injuries became more prevalent in these systems. They farther along you went, the worse it seemed to get.

At one point using crew that were 9 below, I would have 3 crew injured in almost every explore and it would last for almost 2 hours.I've included charts of all current areas in game with them seperated into each stat and ordered from lowest to highest. I should note that these charts were made for a 5 member crew. For every member of the 5 crew you are missing, I would recommend adding 1 additional point to my recommended stat. So I have a different method for training crew skills. I could use some help from anyone following Dmats method to figure out which one is actually best.

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It seems like Dmat's guide gives more skill points 1700+. I am still figuring out how much you get with my method but its 1500+ as well. I think the deciding factor will be how much times they take.If exploration takes just as long with Dmats as it does with mine I would say Dmats is definately the better version. So here will be a list of sites I was able to grab info for. If anyone uses Dmats guide and does these same area's I would love for you to record the relevant information. I will update it so check back now and then.All these sites were ran with 5 people (500+ skill).

If you dont run your sites with 5 people dont bother recording any details.SARKINONAladivin - survival site - 1 hour 26 minutes - 4 fluxAmadun - survival site - 37 minutes - 3 fluxDarkenon - survival site - 1 minute 6 seconds - 1 fluxArgenon - survival site - 1 minute 6 seconds - 1 fluxVlardenon - underground bunker(combat) - 1 minute 55 seconds - 1 fluxVlardenon - Nez Stronghold - 1 minute 55 seconds - 1 fluxCrap on me. Maxed out my first 3 guys no problem but didnt unlock 4th and 5th until late. I stopped exploring and trained them and started exploring again but ran out of planets lol. Last two guys will only been good at weapon/defense arts for a very long time.

Awesome guide! The only fix I've found so far:11SarkinonAmadunHydrogen Based Lifeforms284277 is really.11SarkinonAmadun Neolithic Tribe284277I've been running the last few with one crew member each with 500 in a specific skill, with their other skills at the recommended value, and the other two crew members with all three skills at that same value. In this case there will be 1 crew member with the needed Diplomacy at 500, and everyone else has 277 in Diplomacy. It has worked well so far ranging between 4-10 skill points each time and from 1min to 2hr. (the mission above is 2hrs). Testimonial to how well this guide works.

I started a new account 15 days ago, trained my first 4 crew which were fast to get for about 11 days while i was farming flux to get enough for fifth, and have been exploring planets for 3 days and a half.The first 4 were at 550 points when i started exploring and just now hit 1500 total points, so 950 points from planets in 3 days and a half.The fifth one only trained for a few hours so he started off at 150 points, he is now at 1057.I did not yet explore any of the sark/neurona/cynaps/fulzar planets. Only went up to vibrill. And still have all the survival areas in zerg hozar and vib not explored yet either. 500/500/500 should still be perfectly attainable for you.First step: Get all the special skills on all of them (this will require you having at least 20 in diplomacy survival and combat)Second Step: From now on all explorations you do use all 5 crew each time. (Consider training up a little bit more before going back to planets although you don't have to)Third Step: For the rest simply follow this guide as you normally would with the planets you have left. Your crew with higher points in the requested skill will only be getting 1-2 points but the others will be getting 6-9 points. So since all of your crew still have 2 unupgraded skills you should be able to get points for all of them pretty fast.Good luck, let us know how it goes, or if you have any more questions.

Hello,So I'm following this guide, and now I have entered the exploration phase with my 5 crew members, and I have noticed something.Considering Combat area lvl 200, after doing some observations on my own, I've decided I'm gonna use crew with skill 7 points lower than the area level. So I have 5 crew with 193 combat stat and now a discrepancy appears. 2 of my crew have most of the time 'moderate' risk of injury, while the other 3 have mostly 'some' risk. The first 2 crew also on average get a little more skill points (difference at around 1-2% after 60 missions).Now, my question is - what's the reason for this?

Possible explanation would be that crew has skill level expressed with decimal points, which are not displayed, where 7.0 is 'some' risk, and 7.1+ is 'moderate'. This would be reasonable I believe, but from coding perspective it doesn't make much sense. Or does it?Any ideas?