Star Trek Fleet Command Guide: Tips, Tricks & Strategies

If you’re just starting your adventure in STFC, you might feel lost as the game literally throws an entire universe at you and challenges you to explore it.

Today, I am here to help you with this beginner’s guide that more advanced players might also find useful. You’ll learn, based on my experience playing the game, how to play effectively, manage resources, become a super power in the game and have more fun.

So no matter if you’re a new or a returning player, this updated guide is filled with tips and tricks you need to know to play Star Trek Fleet Command like a pro.

Getting Around in the Game

The user interface in Star Trek Fleet Command is full of menus and features, so knowing the layout is important if you want to succeed.

You’ll get used to this as you play and you can skip this section if you’re an advanced player – but otherwise, read on to learn what all the buttons do and which are the most important.

Avatar & Settings

Your avatar is in the top-left corner of the screen. Tapping it opens the settings menu, where you can contact customer support, adjust graphics options, and view your Player ID. Keep that ID private to protect your account. From here, you can also access the PC client if you prefer playing on a computer.

Player Power

To the right of your avatar, you’ll see your Player Power. This number represents your overall strength and is the main way the game ranks you on the server. You can compare your stats with others by visiting the leaderboards.

Latinum

Next to your Power score is your Latinum total. Tapping it takes you straight to the in-game store. Latinum is the game’s premium currency. You’ll need it for everything from speeding up building timers to purchasing powerful, special items. There’s also a “Sale” button that leads to the same store.

Syndicate Level

Just beyond Latinum, you’ll find your Syndicate Level. As you increase this level, you unlock buffs that enhance your gameplay. Think of it as a secondary research tree tied to your operations level. The higher your Syndicate Level, the more powerful the passive bonuses become.

Main UI

The main section of the UI holds several critical menus. These are the ones you will interact most with:

• Ships: Displays all buildable ships, their blueprints, and your available ship slots.
• Officers: Houses over 150 unique officers, each with special abilities and combat synergies. Effective officer combinations can make or break tough battles, as well as build amazing ships.
• Command: Unlocks Fleet Commanders, another research path that hinges on which officers you slot.
• Factions: You’ll start with three major factions: Federation, Klingon, and Romulan. More unlock as you progress. Each faction has its own reputation system, so decide which ones you want to focus on based on the ships and rewards they offer.

If this is starting to seem a bit too much, why not check out another game in the same universe? Read my guide to fixing Star Trek Infinite crashes and freezes to get started on the right foot.

Items

The “Items” menu is where things can get confusing. It’s divided into categories for loot chests, speedups, materials, resources, and “other.” You will usually have plenty of items here – try not to hoard them too much, as it will slow down your progress.

Refinery

The Refinery lets you convert the resources you collect (like raw ore) into more refined materials and officer shards. This is a key part of progression, so make it a habit to stop by daily.

Events

On the right side of your screen, you’ll see an event tab – sometimes labeled “Winner” if you’ve reached an event milestone. Tap it to view all active events, including battle passes. These events often offer great rewards to boost your Power and resource stockpile.

Navigation (bottom right panel)

This panel helps you switch perspectives and track various location-based tasks:

• Interior / Exterior / System / Galaxy: Toggles your view between your station’s interior, station exterior, the solar system map, and the galaxy map.
• Mining / Hostiles / Hazards: Filters what appears on your system map. This is helpful for focusing on resource nodes or avoiding dangerous areas.
• PE Shield: Activate a station shield here to protect your base from raids.
• Home System (Green House Icon): Instantly centers the camera on your home station.
• Exocomps: Access your consumable boosts for research, speedups, or battle enhancements.
• Ships: Shows you the ships currently docked. Early on, you’ll only have one dock, but you can eventually unlock up to six as a free-to-play player.

Alliance

On the left side, you’ll find the Alliance menu. Alliances are extremely important as they can help you progress faster, do better in events and have more fun overall.

Field Training / Dailies

Field Training offers valuable instruction and resources, while Daily Missions provide a steady stream of rewards.

Building / Research Queues

You start with one Building Queue and one Research Queue. If you have the option (or budget) to add a second queue for each, do it. More queues mean faster progress, and in a game where timers can be long, this is a massive advantage.

Also read: The 10 BEST Ships in Starfield

Understanding Missions

Missions drive the narrative and significantly boost your resource intake. You’ll generally see three main categories: Main Story Missions, Faction Missions, and Daily Missions.

Main Story Missions

Highlighted by a yellow border (and located at the top of the list), these missions are important for unlocking game features like Dark Space. They usually revolve around combat tutorials, building requirements, or storyline arcs.

Sometimes you’ll need to upgrade a building before continuing. Whenever possible, keep up with these missions until the game forces you to pause. These are the most important in the game.

Daily Missions

Completing these earns you points toward unlocking reward chests containing resources and materials.

You’ll also earn loyalty badges, which you should save until around Ops Level 23 to grab the Fangi Devor ship – an excellent option for mining Latinum.

Make it a habit to complete all the daily missions each and every day in order to boost your progress and grab that valuable final reward chest.

Away Team Assignments

Unlocked at Operations Level 8, these assignments offer additional resources and materials. Focus on completing the missions that give you officer shards as rewards.

Core Gameplay Tips

Now that we know the basics, let’s check out some tips and tricks that will help you progress faster and do better in Star Trek Fleet Command.

Server Choice
You can freely switch servers up to Operations Level 12. If you plan on playing with friends, decide on a server early to avoid being locked out of their galaxy.

Alliances
Aim to join a top 20 alliance on your server. The rewards and event participation opportunities are far superior to going solo and being part of an active, solid alliance, as mentioned before, is essential.

Field Training
Complete these missions to earn massive rewards and officer shards. It’s a quick way to boost your combat potential and improve overall, without spending resources.

Recommended Daily Routine

Here is what you should do each day to make sure you tick all the right boxes. There’s a lot more you can do (after all, there’s an entire galaxy to explore), but following a routine will help you get most – ideally all – possible rewards each day.

Refinery: Convert your raw resources into refined materials and officer shards.

Claim Button: Collect rewards, especially loyalty badges. Hold onto them until Ops 23 to unlock the Fangi Devor.

Alliance Button: Check alliance events and tasks, help your fellow alliance members and grab any goodies available.

Factions: Use your recruit bundles and look for transporter patterns.

Send your ships to complete missions: Make sure your ships are always on the go, heading towards systems where you have missions to complete. Send them to systems that are farther away when you stop playing, so you can focus on completing the missions when you log back in.

Another important thing is to recall them when massively damaged. Either start the repair process before logging out, or as soon as you get back in.

Scopely ID
Registering a Scopely ID secures your account and gives you access to the web store. Purchasing through the web store grants multiphasic credits, plus you get a free daily mission key for an Epic officer shard. Use a mobile web browser to claim these credits instead of the in-app store.

Optimize Your Building and Research Timers

Star Trek Fleet Command revolves heavily around time-gated progress. Before you initiate a lengthy building or research upgrade, line up any speedups or Exocomps you might need. This ensures you won’t waste precious hours (or days) waiting.

Also, plan upgrades before you log off so they run while you’re away, maximizing efficiency.

Diversify Ship Crews for Specific Tasks

Rather than using a single “best” crew for everything, create specialized lineups when you have enough characters unlocked.

For example, have one crew focused on mining buffs and cargo safety, another geared toward PvE battles against hostiles, and a third tuned for PvP or base defense.

Swapping between these setups on the fly can give you massive advantages and keep you prepared for any type of mission/challenge you might have.

Leverage Your Station’s Defenses

While early on this doesn’t seem to matter much, eventually your station will become a magnet to raiders. So upgrade defensive platforms and station shields on pace with your Operations level.

If you’re in an active war or see frequent PvP, keeping your station well-fortified will deter opportunistic attackers and protect your resources. (Also joining a strong, active alliance will help with that).

Use Uncommon and Rare Materials Strategically

As you climb the ranks, you’ll notice certain resources – like Uncommon Gas or Rare Crystal – can be bottlenecks.

Avoid dumping these materials into less useful ships or research trees. Instead, use them for your highest-priority upgrades, like your best combat vessels or important research nodes that unlock new features.

Participate in Special Events and Arc Missions

Seasonal arcs and special events offer some of the best rewards in STFC. Even if the tasks seem challenging (as they’re not usually beginner-friendly), make an effort to complete as many milestones as possible.

Events frequently grant high-value items – like Rare or Epic officer shards, large resource bundles, and unique ship skins – that you can’t easily get elsewhere.

Progression Milestones

Your Operation level influences the quantity of unlocked in-game content. Major milestones are at Ops level 10, 14, 20, 23, 27 and so on. Try to get to a level as high as possible as soon as possible to get the maximum number of unlocks.

Slow down when things seem to become too difficult – usually in terms of missions you get. Sometimes it pays to grind resources, build up your officers, and strengthen your fleets before rushing to the next tier.

Crew Synergy Matters

I touched on this briefly before, but keep crew synergies in mind when deciding what crew you use on your ships.

While early on you don’t have many options and the boosts will be smaller, once you start unlocking rarer officers, synergy will make it or break it. So try to pair officers from the same story arcs and rotate them around on your ship until you get the best results.

Mistakes to Avoid

• Don’t hoard up on items: Timers will go up quickly, and those 1-minute and 5-minute speed boosts will no longer matter as much as you progress. Use them consistently to gain an advantage and don’t hoard those items!
• Don’t waste resources on early ships: many are basically stepping stones that you should only keep upgraded to the required level to still be competitive with the missions. The ships you will unlock later on will be stronger and better.
• Don’t ignore research: Even though all those research trees are discouraging, always be researching something! Even random research is better than no research at all – although I recommend focusing on the combat one at first.
• Activate shields: If you have shields available when you log off for longer periods of time, it’s safer to use them, especially if you’re hoarding resources for an important upgrade. Otherwise, the risk of getting raided is too big.

Also read: Best Games Like Satisfactory

Combat Mechanics

Combat in Star Trek Fleet Command follows a rock-paper-scissors mechanic, which you can view by tapping on any in-game ship. Here’s the quick breakdown:

Ship Type	Advantage Against
Battleships	Explorers
Explorers	Interceptors
Interceptors	Battleships
Survey	Neutral

Survey ships sit outside the rock-paper-scissors loop, so they don’t get an advantage or disadvantage.

Crewing Your Ships

A well-chosen crew can turn a losing battle into a decisive win. Here’s how officer abilities are divided:

Officer Ability Type	Location	Activation
Captain’s Maneuver	Middle Seat	Only active if the officer is in the captain’s seat
Officer Ability	Bridge	Active as long as they are on the bridge
Below Deck Ability	Below Deck	Works only if the officer is placed in a below deck slot

Synergy

When you place officers from the same synergy group on the bridge, you can unlock bonus stats. While maximum synergy isn’t always your top priority, you do want enough synergy to keep your captain’s ability at full strength.

Officer Rank and Level

• Rank: Improves abilities and can be raised up to five tiers (Ensign, Lieutenant JG, Lieutenant, Commander, etc.).
• Level: Affects stats like Attack, Defense, and Health. Officers can reach level 30 total: 20 levels across the first four ranks, and the remaining 10 in the fifth rank.

Resources and Materials

Understanding what each resource does helps you plan upgrades and expansions effectively:

Resource	Used For
Tritanium	Ship upgrades
Dilithium	Research upgrades
Parsteel	Building upgrades

There are new(er) things you should be prepared to mine, too – I recommend reading my guide to STFC G6 mining here to see what I’m talking about.

Material	Used For
Gas	Research and Explorer ship upgrades
Crystal	Interceptor and Survey ship upgrades
Ore	Station and Battleship ship upgrades

Final Thoughts

You don’t have to be a Star Trek fan to enjoy playing STFC, although this definitely helps.

If you’re just starting out, this guide will help you get your bearings and know what to focus on doing early on. Stay active in your alliance, leverage the Refinery often, and be mindful of the ship-vs-ship combat triangle and you’re already ahead of most.

If you have additional tips to share with fellow players, don’t hesitate to share them with us all by commenting below. Now go forth, Captain – boldly go where no man has gone before!