So I would like to expand my Beginners/Intermediate Guide to Expert Level. These are the questions I can think of. If any of you have answers, which are (or you feel have a high enough potential to be) facts, please help me out. I would also like to name the most helpful lets say 5 players by name in the guide later, so if you are opposed to that, just say so.

a) how high can 1 single crew member be trained?
 - meaning is it possible to train them as high as to get to the cap with only 1 or 2 of each crew? so you can still get more than decent credits with your main ship?
aa) is there a different cap if the starting level of the crew is lower? lets say i buy a captain for 200 gems and another one later for 250. i already trained the 200 gem one higher than the 250 one. if there is a cap, and the cap depends on starting values of a crew member, it would make sense to start training only the 250 one. on the other hand, if it doesn’t make a difference, i would stick to the 200 leveld one.
ab) is there a point where a crew can no longer be trained by a random lower crew; aka. It can only be trained any longer by crew that u need to level first as well?
((my logic behind this question: I once trained a repair dude and I felt he didn’t get any improvement at all. And if I fuse drones that are more than 100 hp below the drone I try to fuse them into (270 hp drone into 400 one) I seem to be getting mostly only +5hp, at most sometimes +10hp but never +15 or better any more.
These 2 things make me wonder if 1) crew only have a chance to get improvement every time they get trained; and that this chance gets worse the higher they get and 2) if at some point regular crew are no longer enough to even get the slightest improvement on higher crew and thus it is PERCEIVED as a cap, where in fact it woul require a pretty highly leveld crew member to still have any potential training effect for your main crew dude.)
ab) is there a general cap on attack of 125% or only for attack crew. meaning it can still get 115% higher from captains?
or in other words: can i get 125% from attack crew plus 115 from captains or only 125 once at best?

ac) this may be a stupid question but: do captains only improve the % boni on your ships values you get from other crew or do they improve the values of the ship directly?

b) Drones: would appreciate if you guys could help me add some values to my statistics:
ba)what is the highest hitpoints/ attack you ever/usually got an any given NEW 5 star drone?
bb)same question but lowest?
bc) what are the highest you trained any given drone by fusing?
bd) is there a cap on how high a drone can be fused?
Would appreciate answer in form of a list like such:

Aegis min 250HP Max 390HP – (or att dmg or both)
Harvester – 895HP – Legendary – (a)gotten by evolution – (b)gotten by offering/Levi/Supply drop (c) certain can only received by (b)


C) Parts/Drones/Damage:
so lets say all my 30 drones are only 250hp & 25 att.
and my ship has for simplicity’s sake 15x lvl 10 drone bay and 15x lvl 1 drone bay.
lets also say my total damage of the ship is 30k.?
is the attack of each drone 1000 then? or do drones in lvl 10 bays have better attack than the ones in lvl 1? if the drones are otherwise completely the same mind you!
if so, how do you calculate that?

how much damage does any given drone have? how is it calculated?

D) Drones.
would i be right to recommend to only buy as many drones as u absolutely need to fill your bays? And only fuse them higher over time by using surplus drones u get from supply drops/offerings/leviathans? Of course only fusing into the highest starting drones.
This question is meant as an advice on best gem spending practice.

Da) any more known facts on drone leveling?

E) What is your policy on crew take of credits and trying to earn credits?
I mean its easy if you have a ship to kill mines and another one to carry crystals. but what do you recommend to people who wish to do it in 1 ship?

((ea) how many (cargo-)crew do you use on your cargo ship?)) prolly exactly as many as it takes to get the cap (120% or so(doing this at work, so no exact numbers here))
eb) do you use other crew as well on your cargo ships? def crew?



F) will add this to beginner/advanced guide if nobody objects:
Revive any 5 star drones always. for beginners it may be recommendable to revive 2-4 star drones as well if you are having a tough time leveling your drones. Further along you may consider leveling the 2-4 star drones dead, since it will be cheaper by at least 5 gems to buy new drones (if u need any at all) and level them from scratch, if you can get xp easily. (if you farm or offer a lot)

G) this ties a bit into some answers to previous questions in here but:
would you classify being endgame/expert stage to have 2 or more specialized ships... or is there a step beyond it where 1 ship can do it all??
or put differently: can 1 ship max out all other crew stats and still get above or around 50% credits from crystals?

H) anyone any idea how defense works? Any idea on defense calculation?

I) or Ha) Do all guardians have the same attack or do different sized ones have different attacks? i think bigger ones have more hp right?

S) a)Do all shipwrecks have the same amount of hitpoints?
     b)Do  the colours of the shipwrecks have any meaning? (elemental weaknesses?)



AA) Any other questions any of you high lvl players out there would want to have answered?

a) There's no limit, but the diminishing returns are extreme at higher levels. Reaching the cap with 1 crew is likely impossible without astronomical amounts of time and money. aa) Based on experiences with fusing drones, my guess is no, but you'd have to use several mentors to get a weak crew to the strength of a strong crew, which could cost a thousands of gems. After that, the crew will likely experience the same diminishing returns at the same strengths. I could possibly be wrong.
ab) No, for fusing drones the stats of the "mentor drone" doesn't matter, and I'm guessing it's the same for crew. When you get no apparent increase from fusing drones or training crew, it is really increasing but it doesn't show due to rounding errors. The apparent randomness from one drone fusion or crew training to another is due to rounding errors. So for your subpoints 1) and 2), I'd guess no and no.
ac) Not a stupid question. The answer is both. You don't need other crew for captains to help, but they help more when other crew is there.
b) for non-exclusive drones,
common: (265, 26) to (440, 44)
rare: (270, 27) to (455, 45)
ultra rare: (310, 31) to (515, 52)
legendary: (600, 60) to (1000, 100)
The ranges, both minimum and maximum, for exclusive drones are about 10% higher than their non-exclusive counterparts. Of course you can go higher than the maximums by fusing.
c) I'm not sure how you got 1000. Attack in this game is weird, and it would make sense to be proportional to drone strength multiplied by ship offense, but it could be more complex. The drones in your high level drone bays shouldn't be any stronger than the drones in your low level drone bays. If you click on "offense" in the hangar, it will say "Each upgrade impacts every equipped drone." I'm guessing drone strength = k*(ship offense)*(drone offense) where k is some unknown constant, but I could be way off. I've considered doing this with k=1 to get some standard strength units to brag about.
d-h) I might answer these in the future.
i) Since version 1.9.2, "Guardian attack power now loosely follows durability, so it is now easier to tell which guardians are more powerful based on their size." That update also suggests guardian hp is proportional to guardian size.
S) a) I think so, but might be wrong. b) I don't think color of shipwreck matters, though I have sometimes imagined whether I could start a rumor on this only by how I use my drones.

AA) After studying exo so much there's still a ton I don't know. That's how amazing and intricate this game is. Some of them I'm afraid to ask. But I don't mind sharing a couple things I'm studying. Where is the edge of the map? if mined crystals, gems, parts, and elemental cores get removed from the map by the storm, do they return when the map expands or get deleted? I know that levi cores do return when the map expands.

Here's a couple intermediate/advanced tips that you haven't mentioned yet:
Mined parts despawn after about 14 days if you don't pick them up. I think crystals and gems and elemental cores despawn in a similar time. Leviathan cores never despawn if you leave them though.
For some more info on crew training, see this thread: goldfire.me/forums/thread/5e303f603ba0d02784eb1433/difference-in-crew-members
I don't recommend you train ultra rare crew like god_electro does unless you are buying a ton of gems or grinding extremely hard. Also cargo hands can't be above 33.8% unless they're exclusive or trained.

Let me know if I missed something or got something wrong or can clarify anything. Even if you have doubts about anything feel free to let us know.