Every ship needs at least one Officer assigned before it can fly at all, so this is not an optional system to grow into later -- it's active from your very first ship. You recruit new Officers with recruit tokens, and the Officers screen (reached from the menu in the upper-left corner) is where you view, level, and promote the ones you already have. Levelling and promoting an Officer makes them stronger on whichever ship they're crewed to, so time spent here compounds across your whole fleet rather than a single ship.
ATTACK, HEALTH and DEFENSE are stat bonuses applied straight to the ship an Officer is assigned to. The other three describe where an ability triggers from: a CAPTAIN'S MANEUVER is a unique ability that only activates when that Officer sits in the Captain's Seat; an OFFICER ABILITY activates whenever the Officer is placed on the Bridge, Captain's Seat or not; and a BELOW DECK ABILITY (BDA) only activates when the Officer is stationed in a Below Deck slot instead -- Below Deck Officers never get a Captain's Maneuver, because they aren't on the Bridge at all. Reading an Officer's ability text tells you which of the three you're looking at, and that in turn tells you where to slot them.
An Officer's displayed Power comes from their level, tier and three stats (Command, Science, Engineering) -- but not every ability scales with that Power the same way. Captain's Maneuvers specifically are affected only by synergy with other Officers on the same Bridge, not by that Officer's own level or tier, which is easy to miss and means levelling a Captain alone won't strengthen their Maneuver. Below Deck Abilities are the opposite case: unlike Captain or Officer Abilities, a BDA can scale with the Officer's level, tier or stats, on top of only working from a Below Deck slot -- check the ability text on the Officer info screen to see whether a given BDA scales before deciding whether upgrading that Officer is worth it.
To assign an Officer, tap a ship, tap Manage, then Assign Officers -- but the ship has to be recalled home first; you can't crew a ship that's still out. The next screen shows how many slots that ship has: an empty slot lets you pick an Officer, an occupied one lets you swap. Whichever Officer sits in the Captain's Seat also becomes the ship's Captain and triggers their Captain's Maneuver. Some Officers share a Synergy group, shown as a yellow lightning bolt icon -- crewing Officers from the same Synergy group onto the same Bridge boosts the Captain's ability, so Synergy is worth checking before you split up a matched set across different ships.
Levelling spends Officer XP and is separate from Promoting, which spends both Officer shards and resources -- you need enough of both before the Promote tab on an Officer's detail page becomes usable. Traits are the other axis: how many an Officer can have depends on rarity (Common get none, Uncommon one, Rare two, Epic three), and traits unlock in order using Trait XP, which is earned by running Away Team Assignments. Each trait tier has its own level requirement to max out before the next one unlocks -- Tier 1 at level 3, Tier 2 at level 4, Tier 3 at level 9 -- so an Epic Officer's third trait is gated behind fully levelling the first two, not something you can rush independently. When picking an Officer for an Away Team Assignment, 1-4 highlighted dots on their card show whether they carry a trait that assignment's Critical Traits call for, which is the fastest way to spot the right Officer without reading every trait individually.
Officer Laurels are a universal Officer Promotion currency introduced with Update 90 (April 2026) and used to promote every Officer added since. They're earned through the Academy Refinery by spending Academy Command Credits, which makes the Academy building relevant to Officer progression even if you're not actively working through its own research tree for other reasons.