The Academy is your station’s home for officers who aren’t crewing a ship, and you have it from the moment you start playing. Every level raises the attack, defense, and health of all your officers, so it’s one of the few Gebäude that makes your entire roster stronger at once. It runs from level 1 to level 80 and stays useful the whole game.
What the Academy does
The Academy holds your unassigned officers, and it’s where you promote and level them through the Officer screen. Its upgrade effect, the Officer Stats Bonus, raises the attack, defense, and health of every officer you own. That bonus grows each time you upgrade the building, so it applies to your whole crew rather than a single ship or officer.
The bonus tracks your building level closely through the first 40 levels, then climbs much faster at the top. These are the current values in the game Daten:
| Buff | Active from level | Value at level anchors |
|---|---|---|
| Officer Stats Bonus (attack, defense, health) | 1 | L1 1%, L20 20%, L40 40%, L50 75%, L60 125%, L80 400% |
So a level 40 Academy adds 40% to every officer’s core stats, while a fully maxed level 80 Academy adds 400%. The jump between 40 and 80 is steep: 55% at level 45, 75% at level 50, and it keeps rising from there.
How to unlock the Academy
There’s nothing to unlock. The Academy is one of the buildings you begin the game with, so it has no requirement to place at level 1. Upgrading it is where the requirements start: from level 5 onward each upgrade needs your Operations building at the matching level, and a couple of mid and late levels also ask for the Scrapyard (levels 2 and 7) and, at level 55, the Shuttle Bay.
Upgrade costs and build times
Early Academy upgrades are cheap and quick. Costs and build times balloon at higher levels, and the top end runs into Sigma-Parsteel and high-star refined ore and Gas. These milestone rows show the shape of the curve (current game data, before any speedups or research reductions):
| Ebene | Kosten | Build time | Requires |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | 1.200 Parsteel | 17m | Operations 5 |
| 10 | 15.000 Parsteel | 2h 10m | Operations 10 |
| 20 | 433.500 Parsteel | 1d 13h | Operations 20 |
| 25 | 4.774M Parsteel, 190 3★ Common Refined Ore, 2 3★ Ungewöhnlich Raffiniertes Erz | 1d 20h | Operations 25, Scrapyard 2 |
| 35 | 343.3M Parsteel, 1,300 3★ Common Refined Ore, 120 3★ Uncommon Refined Ore | 12d 19h | Operations 35, Scrapyard 7 |
| 45 | 39.78B Parsteel, 3,200 4★ Seltene Refined Ore, 5,000 4★ Uncommon Refined Ore | 207d 7h | Betrieb 45 |
| 55 | 14.48T Parsteel, 57,600 5★ Uncommon Refined Ore, 7,300 5★ Rare Refined Ore | 1742d 12h | Operations 55, Shuttle Bay 50 |
| 70 | 80.91M Σ-Parsteel, 63,700 6★ Rare Refined Ore, 57,330 6★ Rare Refined Gas | 615d | Operations 70 |
| 80 | 39.5B Σ-Parsteel, 778,760 7★ Rare Refined Ore, 700,890 7★ Rare Refined Gas | 14846d 7h | Operations 80 |
Taking the Academy from level 1 to 80 costs about 342.5 trillion Parsteel plus 142.3 billion Sigma-Parsteel and large amounts of refined ore and gas across every star tier. The cumulative build time is roughly 81,331 days unboosted, which is why speedups, build-cost research, and construction bonuses matter so much at the high levels. Nobody upgrades the Academy at base rates late in the game.
How the Academy fits your station
Because each Academy upgrade requires the matching Operations level, the Academy naturally moves in step with your Operations building. Keeping it current with your Operations level is the simple rule: if you let it fall behind, you’re leaving officer stats on the table for no reason, since the bonus applies to every officer whether they’re on offense, defense, or mining duty.
Upgrading the Academy also hands out recruit tokens at many levels, so it does double duty in the early game as a small source of officer pulls alongside the stat bonus. Later, the value is almost entirely the Officer Stats Bonus, and the recruit rewards become a rounding error next to the build cost.
Is the Academy worth upgrading?
Yes, and it’s one of the better upgrades early on. A single level lifts the stats of your entire officer roster, which is efficient value while costs stay small. The top levels get very expensive and very slow, so treat those the way you treat any high-Operations building: schedule them behind speedups and research rather than paying base rates. Keeping the Academy level with your Operations building is standard play at every stage.