When an action is started, various modifiers can be applied based on the crew composition and status. Most modifiers apply to the action duration, but other aspects may also be affected.
The action window offers a possibility to display the details of all modifiers applied to an action and impacting its duration. While the values are displayed in terms of time modifier, all underlying computations are based on the action speed. This is why you may find that the values explained here and the ones shown in the game are inverse of each other.
The class affinity bonus is the most important modifier, and is meant to directly impact your choice of crew composition. Most actions are attached to a speciific crewmate class, which is called its affinity class. The more crewmates with the action’s affinity class in the crew, the better the action can be performed.
The affinity modifier is given as follows:
| Number of affinity crewmates |
Affinity multiplier | Improvement | Marginal improvement |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | x0.5 | 1/2 | |
| 1 | x1 | +1/2 | +100% |
| 2 | x1.25 | +1/4 | +25% |
| 3 | x1.375 | +1/8 | +10% |
| 4 | x1.4375 | +1/16 | +4.5% |
| 5 | x1.46875 | +1/32 | +2.2% |
There are a few interesting observations:
The list of current class affinities can be found here.
Crewmates can have traits that give them a bonus when performing specific actions. On top of this, Arvad crewmates also have a bonuses granted by their past Arvad job, which scales with their tier.
Traits and job bonuses relevant for the task are all summed together across all crewmates to obtain a single crew modifier:
The job tier of Specialists and Department Heads is increased by 0.5.
A crew stationed in a habitat will get an action bonus up to +20% based on the habitat population.
Not all actions are subject to receiving this bonus. At the time of writing, the following actions are incompatible with the habitat bonus:
When their food level drops below 50%, a crew enters a rationing) mode and starts suffering efficiency penalties (up to -75% when rations are fully depleted).
Similarly to the habitat bonus, not all actions are affected by this penalty. The exclusion list is currently the same as for the habitat.
The four modifiers listed above are multiplied together to give the final modifier that the crew will apply to their action:
Remember that when considering the time an action will take, the formula above will give a speed modifier. In order to translate that to a duration modifier, we need to take the inverse of it:
Let’s take the following crew, well fed (above 50%) and in a low-population habitat (below 500 population):
This crew will be starting a refining process, and the focus will be on computing the action speed bonus.
There are two engineers in the crew, so the class affinity modifier is .
The scientists have no impact on refining speed because they are not the correct affinity class.
There are two traits impacting the refinery operations. Each refiner trait is providing a bonus.
The Engineering Arvad job provides a bonus per tier. The Structural Engineer is tier 1 and, being a Citizen it does not benefit from a half-tier boost. The bonus is .
The other traits are not impacting refining speed.
The total bonus for traits and jobs is: .
This gives a modifier of .
Those modifers apply to the refinery operation. With the habitat low population the modifier is and thanks to the crew being well fed they will not face any penalty ().
The final modifier value is . This means that the crew will operate with a speed bonus.
As a duration modifier, this gives . This means a reduction in the action duration.
The logistician trait on the first engineer may have a minor impact on the entire duration of the action, as it will increase surface transport speed by , and will reduce crew or materials transit time.
Thanks to their class affinity, scientists can reduce the waste of secondary products during refinery operation. The formula for this is the following:
This gives the following table:
| Number of scientists |
Waste percentage |
Recovery percentage |
Marginal improvement |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 75.0% | 25.0% | |
| 1 | 37.5% | 62.5% | +150% |
| 2 | 30.0% | 70.0% | +12.0% |
| 3 | 27.3% | 72.7% | +3.9% |
| 4 | 26.1% | 73.9% | +1.6% |
| 5 | 25.5% | 74.5% | +0.8% |
| v Source \ Ability > | Construction Time | Core Sample Quality | Core Sample Time | Deconstruction Yield | Extraction Time | Food Consumption Time | Food Rationing Penalty | Free Transport Distance | Hopper Transport Time | Inventory Mass Capacity | Inventory Volume Capacity | Manufacturing Time | Marketplace Fee Enforcement | Marketplace Fee Reduction | Propellant Exhaust Velocity | Propellant Flow Rate | Reaction Time | Refining Time | Secondary Refining Yield | Ship Integration Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Affinity class | Engineer | Miner | Miner | Miner | Merchant | Engineer | Merchant | Pilot | Pilot | Scientist | Engineer | Scientist | Engineer | |||||||
| Arvad department: Arts & Entertainment | 5.0% | |||||||||||||||||||
| Arvad department: Engineering | 1.25% | 1.25% | 1.25% | |||||||||||||||||
| Arvad department: Food Preparation | 2.5% | |||||||||||||||||||
| Arvad department: Food Production | 2.5% | |||||||||||||||||||
| Arvad department: Logistics | 1.25% | 1.25% | ||||||||||||||||||
| Arvad department: Management | 0.5% | 0.5% | 0.5% | 0.5% | 0.5% | 0.5% | 0.5% | 0.5% | 0.5% | |||||||||||
| Arvad department: Medicine | 0.833% | |||||||||||||||||||
| Arvad department: Navigation | 1.0% | 1.0% | ||||||||||||||||||
| Crewmate trait: Builder | 5.0% | |||||||||||||||||||
| Crewmate trait: Buster | 2.0% | |||||||||||||||||||
| Crewmate trait: Dietitian | 5.0% | |||||||||||||||||||
| Crewmate trait: Hauler | 5.0% | |||||||||||||||||||
| Crewmate trait: Logistician | 5.0% | |||||||||||||||||||
| Crewmate trait: Mogul | 16.0% | |||||||||||||||||||
| Crewmate trait: Navigator | 2.0% | |||||||||||||||||||
| Crewmate trait: Prospector | 5.0% | |||||||||||||||||||
| Crewmate trait: Recycler | 10.0% | |||||||||||||||||||
| Crewmate trait: Refiner | 5.0% | |||||||||||||||||||
| Crewmate trait: Surveyor | 10.0% | |||||||||||||||||||
| Not further modified | true | true | true | true | true | true | true |