With the recently completed High Commander auction there has been a lot of chat about how bonuses from the Management job department should work. Here is my 2c on this. The stated aims from the team to date have been that Management bonuses would be a "small overall bonus". We have a bit more info now since the release of the Exploitation Guide to second guess how these overall bonuses might work. (note this is not a discussion about what the actual Management bonus % might be!) First, some assumptions: 1. The Management bonus impacts actions that a player's team undertakes. The Management crew member must physically be on the team, not unassigned. The bonus DOES NOT apply to other crews on the same asteroid or ship, controlled by either yourself or other players.

This is the tenth in a series stepping through the crew market for Influence, hoping to find some small nuggests of alpha to help you to make informed decisions when it comes to secondary purchases. For those not familiar, please reference the Crew Member Jobs list on the official wiki here. Check out other installments in this series here. Usual caveat: figures and ETH prices in the article were accurate only at the time of writing, but likely to be rapidly outdated as the market moves and new crew are minted. (Maybe not so rapidly these days! Game cannot launch soon enough.) Numbers Clearly, the production, transport and consumption of food across the belt is going to be a pretty vital in-game concept, hence there are multiple job departments devoted to the notion, Food Production being one. Food Prod is the third largest job department. Not many details have been released on the specific mechanics around food production, and I think this is reflected in the fact there hasn't been a great deal of chat specifically on food so far, that I've seen anyway. So, apart from the fact that it is these crew who will perform the task, details around how food is produced, from what, and where are as yet to be confirmed. All we know is that it is going to be important, potentially lucrative. You don't want to be left foodless in the middle of the system. Also, Miners gotta eat. Otherwise they, erm, die. Is that going to be a mechanic, I wonder? Maybe they can craft their own default food-sludge.

This is the ninth in a series stepping through the crew market for Influence, hoping to find some small nuggests of alpha to help you to make informed decisions when it comes to secondary purchases. For those not familiar, please reference the Crew Member Jobs list on the official wiki here. Check out other installments in this series here. Usual caveat: figures and ETH prices in the article were accurate only at the time of writing, but likely to be rapidly outdated as the market moves and new crew are minted. Numbers Ah, Engineering, the right and proper department for real Engineers. With stated bonuses to both refining and manufacturing efficiency, I can see this being a core disipline, very much in-demand for crews focussing on primary/secondary industry. The confusing bit is that, at least to me, the job titles Reactor and Propulsion Engineer seem to imply ship-based activity, but it does not seem that way with the bonuses currently. I guess it would work in the context of a mixed crew. We'll see! (skip to the end of the article for my thoughts there) Engineering is interesting in that every tier is the same - only Scientists, Engineers and Pilots are available. Never Miners or Merchants. Tier distribution:

This is the second in a series stepping through the crew market for Influence. For those not familiar, please reference the Crew Member Jobs list on the official wiki here. Check out other installments in this series here. Today I'll run through the Education department, which clearly will be fundamental to upskilling efforts across the Adalia system. Caveat: at time of writing, official confirmation of bonuses for job titles etc has not yet been released, so much of this is speculative. I'll look to re-do the analysis again once we have this. Also the figures and ETH prices mentioned were accurate only at the time of writing, so likely to be rapidly outdated as the market moves and new crew are minted. Hoping to share some nice alpha for those who are quick to these posts. Numbers Education is one of the smaller departments in Influence. There is a big reduction in counts between Education and the three rarest departments.

This is the eighth in a series stepping through the crew market for Influence, hoping to find some small nuggests of alpha to help you to make informed decisions when it comes to secondary purchases. For those not familiar, please reference the Crew Member Jobs list on the official wiki here. Check out other installments in this series here. Usual caveat: figures and ETH prices in the article were accurate only at the time of writing, but likely to be rapidly outdated as the market moves and new crew are minted. Numbers The Technology department is one of the larger ones - fifth largest, in fact. Despite that, there are a low number of distinct job titles within the department. The overwhelming majority of crew within Technology are Engineers. Since the Influence weekly Q&A session that took place on 7 Oct, we can be a bit more certain about the department bonuses. In the case of Technology, its bonuses will be towards research speed, i.e. researching new technologies, as opposed to learning new skills which will be the focus of the Education department. I think it's important to point out that based on the clarified language, the Knowledge department looks likely to interact with Technology, rather than Education. The Knowledge department's clarified bonuses are towards 'research variety'. More on this later. Tier distribution:

This is the fourth in a series stepping through the crew market for Influence, hoping to find some small nuggests of alpha to help you to make informed decisions when it comes to secondary purchases. For those not familiar, please reference the Crew Member Jobs list on the official wiki here. Check out other installments in this series here. Usual caveat: figures and ETH prices in the article were accurate only at the time of writing, but likely to be rapidly outdated as the market moves and new crew are minted. Numbers This is the Medicine department. At 466 total crew, it's near to the middle of the distribution vs other departments - neither huge nor scarce. Interesting thing about Medicine is its (rumoured!) bonuses being across ship damage/performance and food efficiency. If that holds, it's notable because it implies Medicine would have benefits for both normal usage as well as PvP, and anything related to PvP directly or indirectly is likely to be in high demand come the Conflict release. Thematically it makes sense. Medicial staff should help your crew recover better from attacks (taking less damage and healing more quickly) and could also help with the general well-being and performance of crews, whether in space or on rocks. Seems strong.

This is the seventh in a series stepping through the crew market for Influence, hoping to find some small nuggests of alpha to help you to make informed decisions when it comes to secondary purchases. For those not familiar, please reference the Crew Member Jobs list on the official wiki here. Check out other installments in this series here. Usual caveat: figures and ETH prices in the article were accurate only at the time of writing, but likely to be rapidly outdated as the market moves and new crew are minted. Numbers Next to Logistics, which we covered in the previous article, Maintenance is the second-largest department in Influence. As the T4 distribution demonstrates, Maintenance is a Mining/Engineering-focussed department which, given the large numbers applied, we would expect to see in heavy usage in the game. The presumed bonuses look likely to be related to both building and ship operations, aligned to the theme that Maintenance crew can fix things and help equipment run more smoothly. Obvious utility there for both on and off-planet operations, so I expect these crew to be quite flexible. As above, Miners and Engineers appear at every tier within Maintenance, while the other three classes appear variably.

This is the sixth in a series stepping through the crew market for Influence, hoping to find some small nuggests of alpha to help you to make informed decisions when it comes to secondary purchases. For those not familiar, please reference the Crew Member Jobs list on the official wiki here. Check out other installments in this series here. Usual caveat: figures and ETH prices in the article were accurate only at the time of writing, but likely to be rapidly outdated as the market moves and new crew are minted. Numbers The Logistics department is the largest department in the game. At 851 crew it's roughly twice the size of the mid-tier departments, and ~4-5 times the smallest. Logistics is similar to the Security department in that there are no Scientist Logistics roles at any tier. Pilots do not appear at T3 or T4 Logistics and Logistics Engineers are quite rare. The as-yet-unconfirmed bonuses for Logistics are mooted to be bonuses to storage and surface movement costs. This would have natural synergies both for mining and merchant crews, two of the most fundamental aspects of the game, which is why no doubt there are so many crew in this department.

This is the fifth in a series stepping through the crew market for Influence, hoping to find some small nuggests of alpha to help you to make informed decisions when it comes to secondary purchases. For those not familiar, please reference the Crew Member Jobs list on the official wiki here. Check out other installments in this series here. Usual caveat: figures and ETH prices in the article were accurate only at the time of writing, but likely to be rapidly outdated as the market moves and new crew are minted. Numbers There are 450 crew within the Security department. This makes it, alongside Medicine from the previous article, a mid-sized department within Influence. The key thing to know about Security is its Pilots. There are more Pilots in the Security department than there are in any other department, including Navigation. Out of the 456 Pilots in the game, more than a quarter of them are from the Security category (137). I think this should be instructive as to how important the team believe Security Pilots will be to the game in the long term. The mooted role for Security is primarily PvP-focussed. The thinking is that Security roles will help your ships both deal and avoid damage. In fact, if Navigation Pilots make for the most efficient Pilots in the game, then Security Pilots sound like they could be the best when it comes to straight combat. I would hazard a guess that come the Conflict release and PvP, it may be Security Pilots that rule the secondary market.

This is the third in a series stepping through the crew market for Influence. For those not familiar, please reference the Crew Member Jobs list on the official wiki here. Check out other installments in this series here. Today I'll run through the Knowledge department, which should be a good follow-on to the previous article on Education. I'm expecting Knowledge and Education to be happy bedfellows when it comes to research and development, although I have to be honest - I do not yet have strong feeling for what type of bonuses knowledge will ultimately give. The concept of 'variety' has been mentioned, but what this means from a research point of view is unclear. Perhaps this indicates crew with Knowledge workers may be able gain access to skills from parts of the skill tree they may not otherwise be able to? Just my speculation. Again, we will need to wait and see for how these mechanics will ultimately work. Usual caveat: figures and ETH prices in the article were accurate only at the time of writing, but likely to be rapidly outdated as the market moves and new crew are minted. Numbers Knowledge (196 total crew) is the job department with the third-lowest representation, behind only Navigation and Management. These three departments are the clear 'big three' when it comes to scarcity, out of the thirteen departments in the game. Tier

This is the first in a series stepping through the crew market for Influence. For those not familiar, please reference the Crew Member Jobs list on the official wiki here. Check out other installments in this series here. Today I'll run through the first job department in the list - Navigation. Said to include bonuses for ship speed and fuel efficiency, Navigation roles are no doubt going to come into play as soon as the game commences. These crew are going to help ships get to your rocks more quickly, and be more efficient doing so. Further into the game, where all sorts of opportunities may arise, Navigation is likely going to be of great benefit for anyone looking to ship goods, themselves, or other players throughout the belt. A key department for sure. Caveat: at time of writing, official confirmation of bonuses for job titles etc has not yet been released, so much of this is speculative. I'll look to re-do the analysis again once we have this. Numbers Navigation is the smallest department in Influence, by a very large margin, which is an interesting stat for a such a useful-sounding role.