Scopely’s polished, Star Trek-themed MMORTS relies on the heavily charismatic cast of Star Trek: Into Darkness. Playing this game, you’ll be able to recruit a crew that includes Chris Pine’s Kirk, Zachary Quinto’s Spock, Benedict Cumberbatch’s Khan, and many more. However, like in any gacha game, some officers are week, while others are good and others still are truly extraordinary. These will help you win the toughest of battles.

As we mentioned in our BlueStacks guide to Star Trek Fleet Command’s battle system, a fully upgraded crew will significantly improve your ship’s stats, including damage, health, armour, and much more. However, the Synergy and Morale systems have the potential to be astounding game changers if properly accounted for. If nothing else, STFC is a game where tactics and carefully planned interactions between your captain and crew will really shine.

What Synergy and Morale Are

Synergy happens when each of your bridge officer belongs to a different role, while your central role is fulfilled by someone who belongs to the Captains. Depending on whether there are one or two bars active on each side, all three, only two, or just the captain might benefit from the added stats. You might think that this is not such a big thing, but we guarantee it is. Just wait and see. For instance, Uhura belongs to the Engineer class, Spock to the Science one, and Kirk is Command.

You can see a champion’s class either by looking at the bottom left corner of their portrait, which will show the respective sign of each class, or by going into the upgrade screen and clicking on the i button next to their name. Our set-up with a Kirk Ensign gives him a 6% synergy on each side for a total of 12% boost to his stats. The higher your character’s level and promotion, the better this synergy will be for them. To give you an example, Sulu, who is a Lieutenant, now benefits from 10% synergy from each side.

This is a noteworthy edge that can easily render your ship much stronger than it would be otherwise. Still, even though Kirk is lower than Sulu in rank and level, he seems to be better suited in the captain role. If we were on the dev team, we would have done the same. Morale, on the other hand, is a positive buff that can affect your crew in certain situations. There is an Intermediate Morale and a Final Morale, just like there’s an Intermediate Hull Breach and a Final one.

If you go to your Officers tab and organize them by Group, you’ll get the characters that can either use or benefit from Morale. Sulu and Scotty are both uncommon officers which you get pretty early in the game and that can benefit from it. However, they’re not the most effective ones when it comes to this buff.

How to Perfect Morale

Sulu’s Morale booster is Do Not Test Me, an ability which has a 40% chance of inspiring the crew for one turn when the ship takes critical damage. This has a fairly rare rate of occurrence, not to mention low impact, since it happens only for one round. At the other end of the spectrum is epic Kirk, who has one of the best Morale enablers in the entirety of STFC. That’s right, he’s much more than a pretty face. Kirk’s booster is called Inspirational and it has a 50% chance of inspiring morale to all of the ship’s crew for two rounds at the start of each round.

Play Star Trek Fleet Command on BlueStacks

What’s more, his Leader ability, which is triggered when he’s placed in command, will provide his crew with an 80% bonus to all their stats for as long as they have Morale. It is at this point that it becomes apparent just how strong he can be. Out of 20 rounds of a fight, Kirk’s Morale will likely be active for 15 or more, which also means that, during that time, your crew will be almost twice as strong.

How do we best use Kirk’s abilities? Well, we pair him with rare Spock, of course. The two make an unbeatable team if we take into consideration the way that the most loved half-Vulcan, half-Human responds to Morale. His officer ability is called Illogical and it basically restores your ship’s shields by 25% of the total Defense of the crew whenever they are under the effects of Morale.

The Spock-Kirk Morale combo gives you immense survivability. The only thing we’re a bit dissatisfied with is that it takes a long time to farm both of them – a bit too long and too P2W for our liking. Still, it makes it all the more worthwhile when you finally get them. Just like in the case of Synergies, certain characters are better when paired together than others. They are also an invaluable team when it comes to completing those PvP missions we’ve previously talked about.

A Crew for Every Task

Although you’ll naturally want to go for the crew that most improves your odds of survivability in both PvE and PvP, certain characters are better suited for other aspects of the game. Take, for instance, Gaila. She has the Parsteel Hunter Captain Maneuver, which means that when she’s leading a ship, the amount of parsteel you get is increased by a whopping 25%.

This might not seem like that much at a first glance, but if you’re raiding miners, a full cargo of 3k can yield an additional 750, which is not negligible at all. Obviously, the more you loot, the bigger the gain. Conversely, T’Laan’s Thorough Scans makes it possible for you to level your ship faster by attacking hostiles, as it gives 15% more experience when defeating them.

Whatever you do, the heroes that appear the highest in Group sort tend to be the ones that can help your ships the most. As we’ve seen with Kirk and Spock, it’s up to you to find the best combinations between them. With this being said, don’t try to race or role pair them.

As tempting as it might be for the tiny role-playing spirit inside each of us, this is a strategy game where the best tactics can easily give the edge to an underdog. Next time somebody with significantly less power than you steamrolls your crew, you’ll know why it happened and how to prevent it from happening again.

Download BlueStacks Now!