You can join any Alliance-started Armada at any level, but starting one yourself needs an Armada Control Center (Operations Level 23), built and upgraded with Armada Tactical Cores from the Alliance Store. A key rule shapes every Armada crew choice: a debuffing officer (Hull Breach, Burning, Critical Hit Chance Reduction, and similar) can only be crewed by one player per Armada, and that debuff then applies to the whole group -- so coordinate with your Alliance before the fight rather than duplicating the same debuffer. Buff officers that only help the player using them (Morale, Shield Regen, self Crit Chance) don't have that restriction. Loot splits by ship power -- roughly equal power means roughly equal shares, and a standout-strongest ship in an otherwise even group takes a bigger cut while the rest split what remains; any officer or ship ability that multiplies loot applies after that split, not before it. A solid generic crew that covers most Armada types is (c) Epic James T. Kirk (Enterprise Crew) - Rare Spock (Enterprise Crew) - Epic Khan (Khan's Crew), or the TNG equivalent (c) Epic Jean-Luc Picard - Rare Beverly Crusher - Epic Khan. Swap Khan for a Hull Breach specialist (Epic Gorkon or Epic Lorca) or a Burning specialist (Epic Nero or Epic Georgiou) if your group needs that debuff and nobody else is running it. Certain Armada types call for a specific ship as well as crew: bring the Stella against Eclipse Armadas, the USS Franklin or Franklin-A against Swarm Armadas, a Vi'dar or Vi'dar Talios against Borg Armadas (Vi'dar Talios specifically for Borg Solo Armadas and the Borg Mega Cube), and the SS Revenant against Borg Polygon Armadas. Against the Borg Mega Cube specifically, one Armada participant running a full-synergy Borg crew (Nine of Eleven, Seven of Eleven, plus a third Borg officer) can zero out the Mega Cube's critical-hit damage entirely for the whole group.
Ship PvP -- attacking and being attacked by other players -- opens up at Operations Level 10. What actually wins a fight depends on your unlocked officers, ships, research, Fleet Commander Skills, and Ops level, so treat any fixed lineup as a starting point to adjust, not a rule to follow blindly. At lower Ops, cadet-tier crews like (c) Common Cadet James T. Kirk - Common Cadet Nyota Uhura - Common Cadet Hiraku Sulu (all Another Time) are enough to get started. As you unlock better officers, PvP crews generally sort into three families: Morale crews for a straightforward stat boost (Epic James T. Kirk - Rare Spock - Epic Khan), Hull Breach crews to raise your fleet's critical hit chance (Epic Gorkon - Rare Chang - Epic Khan), and Burning crews to apply a damage-over-time effect (Epic Nero - Rare Vemet - Rare Kumak). Beyond the generic families, the game also recommends ship-class-specific "Strike Team" and "Retaliation Squad" crews (different officers depending on whether you're crewing a Battleship, Interceptor, or Explorer, and whether you're attacking or defending against one), plus faction-specific counters -- for example, Epic Liviana Charvanek (Romulan Patriots) against Federation ships, or Epic Jean-Luc Picard with Epic Geordi La Forge (TNG Crew) against Klingon ships.
Base PvP (raiding) opens at level 15, letting you attack enemy stations -- or be attacked yourself, if you don't have an active Peace Shield. Cracking a base (destroying its docked ships, shields, and defense platforms) can take 100+ hits, so the ship you pick matters as much as the crew: weigh a ship's power against its repair cost rather than just going in with your strongest hull, since a ship that does comparable damage for a lower repair bill is often the more efficient choice over a long raiding session. Popular cracking crews include (c) Epic Rom (Ferengi Conglomerate) - Rare John Harrison (Section 31) - Epic Honorguard Worf (Khitomer's Revenge), or for lower-level players, (c) Epic Khan - Epic Kirk - Rare Spock (Khan's Crew / Enterprise Crew). As a defender, (c) Epic Carol Marcus - Epic Gary Mitchell - Rare Keenser (all Auxiliary Controls) is a solid pick. Once the defense platforms and docked ships are down, base cracking (looting the station itself) calls for a survey ship like the Amalgam -- worth it specifically when the base's loot exceeds what your best survey ship could otherwise carry -- paired with a high-cargo crew such as (c) Rare Two of Eleven - Rare B'etor - Epic Four of Eleven. Two Fleet Commander abilities worth knowing here: Sloan's Quick Draw Raiding (reduces the rounds needed to charge weapons when attacking a station under enemy delay effects) and Lorca's Deadly Station Reload (lowers your defense weapons' warm-up time when defending).
Territory Capture is an Alliance-wide fight for control of space territories that grant powerful buffs -- safeties are off, and success comes down to teamwork and timing rather than any single crew. Two broad approaches: a PvP approach, using your strongest ships and a PvP crew to directly fight for node control, and a speed approach, using your fastest ships and a speed crew to outrun opponents, score points by staying in a contested system, or act as bait to distract enemy reinforcements. For the speed approach, the Realta, the USS Discovery, or any Interceptor paired with a crew like (c) Epic Enterprise-E Riker - Epic SNW Una - Epic Borg Hugh works well. For direct node battles, the Sarcophagus is notably strong against most Grade 3/4 ships; crews such as (c) Rare John Harrison (Section 31) - Epic Alexander Marcus (Section 31) - Epic Kang (Blood and Honor) hold up well there. The same PvP crew families covered above (Resurrection, Burning, Double-shot) apply here too -- Territory Capture is ultimately PvP with a scoring objective layered on top, so build for the fight in front of you and coordinate roles across your Alliance rather than everyone running the same lineup.
A handful of officers boost mining regardless of which ship you're flying -- worth slotting whenever the seat is free. For overall mining speed: Rare Dixon Hill (Holodeck), Rare Arrock and Epic Quark (Ferengi Conglomerate), Uncommon Elea Makinen and Rare Fess (Surveyors & Miners), and Epic Ten of Eleven (Unimatrix Twelve). For cargo size: Rare Alonzo Freeman (Lower Decks), Rare Enterprise-E Data, Epic Four of Eleven, Rare Hoshi Sato (Enterprise NX-01), Epic Mavery (Syndicate), Rare SNW La'an, and Rare Tuvok (Voyager -- specifically for the USS Voyager). Beyond those generic bonuses, several ships specialize in one resource and pair with a matching crew: the ECS Fortunate (Parsteel, Shipyard 7) and Envoy (Tritanium, Shipyard 16) both do well with the Surveyors & Miners trio (Helvia, Domitia, K'Bisch); the Botany Bay (Corrupted/Decoded Data, Shipyard 18) pairs with Uncommon Joaquin (Khan's Crew) for full synergy with Navi and Pan; the North Star (Grade 3 Crystal/Gas/Ore, Shipyard 18) rotates Barot, T'pring, and Stonn (Surveyors & Miners) depending on which resource you're prioritizing; and the Ferengi D'Vor and D'Vor Feesha (Latinum) already carry such a strong built-in Latinum bonus that extra mining-speed officers add comparatively little -- the D'Vor Feesha does better from the Ferengi Conglomerate crew's full synergy than from generic speed officers. Each Klingon/Federation/Romulan faction also has its own survey-ship line (K'vort/USS Antares/Valkis through Grishnar/USS Newgrange/Divitae at the high end) that mines Crystal, Gas, or Ore respectively, each paired with either the faction's Surveyors & Miners trio or the relevant Unimatrix Twelve Borg officers.
Against generic hostiles at Ops 51 and below, weapon type is the main thing that changes your crew: Uncommon Chen (Starfleet Academy) rounds out most energy-weapon crews, while Common T'Laan or Rare Cath (Ferengi Conglomerate) do the same job against kinetic weapons, both slotted alongside a captain/officer pair like Cadet Uhura - Cadet McCoy (Another Time), Next Gen La Forge - Next Gen Crusher, or Epic Jean-Luc Picard - Rare Beverly Crusher (TNG Crew). Past that baseline, most hostile factions have their own preferred ship and crew. Vi'dar or Vi'dar Talios against Borg Probes; the Franklin against Swarm hostiles up to level 35, upgrading to the Franklin-A above level 37; the Stella against Eclipse hostiles; the Mantis against Actian hostiles (with Epic SNW Hemmer for extra loot); the Gorn Eviscerator against Gorn hostiles; the NSEA Protector against Mirror Universe hostiles; and the USS Reliant against Augment Exile (Hijacked) hostiles -- effectively mandatory for the Hijacked D7 and DY-class variants. The Strange New Worlds cast (Epic SNW Pike plus a matching SNW officer for synergy) is a flexible crew that scales well into the higher-Ops brackets across several of these hostile types, and a short list of Below Decks specialists -- Epic PIC Hugh for hull repair, Epic Five of Eleven for increased hostile loot, Rare Tom Paris for mitigation -- are worth keeping in your roster regardless of which fight you're gearing for that day.