Once your Energy Core reaches Level 20, you unlock one of the most important progression systems in the entire game — the Crew system.
Crew members are not just passive buffs. They directly increase your ship damage, defense, healing, resource income, and even your PvP performance. If you ignore this system, you will always feel weaker than players who invest into it.
Let me walk you through how it works, how to get crew, and how to upgrade your Nexus properly.
Foundation Galactic Frontier Crew System Guide
Crew members can be assigned to:
- Your ships (Kinetic, Beam, Ion Echo hubs)
- Your buildings (for resource boosts)
Ship crew gives direct combat bonuses.
Building crew gives massive economy bonuses.
This system quietly increases your overall power more than almost any other upgrade in the game.
How to Get Crew Members
Crew are summoned using Deep Space Beacons.
You can get these from:
- Commerce Guild Shop
- Glory Shop
- Valor Shop
- Intel Exchange
- Regular shop
- Packs
If you play PvP, use your Glory and Valor to buy these. That is by far the best free-to-play method.
You can summon in batches of 30.
Every 30 summons guarantees either a Hero Crew member or a Construction Crew member.
Legendary crew are rare — but extremely powerful.
Echoes of Deep Space
While summoning, you will also obtain Echoes of Deep Space.
These are one of the rarest and most important materials in the game.
You need them to upgrade your Nexus hubs.
Without upgrading your Nexus, you cannot equip more crew members.
How Nexus Upgrades Work
Each Nexus tier unlocks more crew slots:
- Early tiers allow 1–2 crew
- Tier 4 unlocks your third crew slot
- Tier 7 unlocks your fourth crew slot
Upgrading these requires Echoes of Deep Space, so do not waste them.
You can reduce how many summons you need by buying Echoes directly from the Valor Shop.
Choose Right Crew
Do not just equip the highest rarity crew blindly.
Some crew are meant to counter specific enemies.
Example:
- Ling Chen massively boosts counterstrike damage
- Py reduces counterstrike damage
If your opponent uses Ling Chen, Py becomes extremely valuable.
Always read the crew skill tooltips and adjust your crew based on who you are fighting.
Purple Crew
Do not ignore Epic (purple) crew.
Many of them give:
- Attack bonuses
- Normal attack damage bonuses
- Skill damage scaling
These directly improve your champion ultimates and overall fleet DPS.
Construction Crew
Construction crew assigned to buildings can give:
- Huge food boosts
- Smelting income bonuses
- Faster production
- Better economy scaling
This directly turns into faster upgrades and stronger fleets.
Players who ignore construction crew fall behind quietly.
Crew is one of the biggest hidden power systems in Foundation: Galactic Frontier — and mastering it gives you a massive advantage in both PvE and PvP.
