These Talents are an excellent way of defusing tension upon meeting possibly hostile ships - for the early game phase I recommend avoiding ship-to-ship combat entirely until you have some good 'Combat Recovery' talents.

"Stiff Salute": Lets you automatically leave an encounter with a Military Officer or Zealot with a 'Draw' result

I always give the military officer job to one of my starting officers because of this talent. It just works so well with all playstyles, as you never know when you'll have a full hold of illegal goods, be limping back to port, or be caught short while spying in an enemy system. Being able to run away from a hostile encounter can be the difference between victory and defeat.

"Forged Permit": Reduce hostility of Military Officers

Not as good as Stiff Salute, as it doesn't work on Zealots , but worth getting if you don't want to take a Military Officer for just that 1 talent. This talent won't guarantee a successful outcome, but often a small reduction in hostility is all you need to be able to bribe them to leave you alone.

"Jettison Cargo": Throw a random type of cargo out of the ship to retreat from Pirates

This is a great talent, and I usually take 1 of all the really cheap trade goods (fuels, leather, scrap, biowaste etc) to lessen the chance of me losing any valuable trade goods that I'm smuggling. Pirates can be hard to get away from, so having this talent really helps.

"Faked Signature": Reduces the hostility of Bounty Hunters

This talent won't guarantee a successful outcome, but often a small reduction in hostility is all you need to be able to bribe them to leave you alone.

"Skip off the void": Retreat from anyone at the cost of some Hyperwarp Drive damage

This Talent takes a large investment in levelling, but is the only reliable way of escaping Xeno ships as you travel through the void. A must-have for any navigator, as it works against all other space encounter types as well.


To be continued...

These are all the skills for which the standard assortment of crew in the spice hall do not have auto-pass talents for. To get these, you will either have to assign an officer to the job or seek out a contact who you can recruit them from.

So many of the games safest missions involve diplomatic escorts, so as such choosing a Merchant or Diplomat will give you access to a Negotiation Auto-pass talent which is a great way of getting easy money.

Passing Doctor skill tests (Doctor and Combat Medic) are vital for keeping the crew HP up, and your crew will quickly become unhappy and leave if you can't keep them safe while flying around the galaxy. Luckily, your starting doctor officer has the Medical Staff pre-selected, but as there's a 3 week cooldown on talent saves you may want to invest in another.

Failing Command tests cause you to lose morale, which, as I'm sure you've found out, is not a good thing. Command tests are also used to bluff your way through checkpoints on covert missions. Command test saves are found on the Commander and Quartermaster jobs

Another skill test used to prevent morale loss during flight, auto-pass talent are found on the Pirate and Zealot Class

The stealth save talent is found on Spies and Smugglers, and is invaluable for Star Traders that like to run a lot of covert operations under the nose of hostile factions