Who Raphaël DuPont is and why miners want him
Raphaël DuPont is a rare Engineering officer in Star Trek Fleet Command built around one job: pulling raw materials out of the ground faster and keeping more of them when someone comes to take them. He sits in the Surveyors and Miners group, and his whole kit points at the economy side of the game rather than combat.
If you spend time parked on grade-3 crystal, gas, and ore nodes, he earns his seat quickly. As captain he speeds up that mining, and as a bridge officer he raises how much cargo your ship can protect from raiders. For a mid-game player trying to feed a growing base, that pairing is useful.
He is a Federation officer, so players leaning into the Federation faction can fold him into existing crews without much fuss.
The character behind the officer
DuPont comes from a wealthy French family with a long line of artists and public figures. As the second son of the painter Aumier DuPont, he had access to the best education money could buy, and he turned out to be a gifted mathematician with a strong grasp of thermodynamics and theoretical physics. Academic praise followed.
The lecture halls bored him. He became fascinated by stories of miners working the dangerous edges of space beyond Federation control, and he wanted that life for himself. Stuck on Earth and hemmed in by regulation, he eventually took his family’s prized starship one night and left to chase his own fortune among the stars. That restless, treasure-hunting streak is the flavor the game leans on for a mining officer.
His role in STFC
DuPont is an economy officer, full stop. He does nothing for weapons, shields, or hull in a fight. What he does is make a mining run more productive and a little safer, which matters when you are gathering the materials that fund construction, research, and ship upgrades.
Two pieces drive that role. His captain maneuver raises grade-3 mining speed, and his officer ability increases protected cargo so more of what you mine survives an attack. Read together, he is a node officer: someone you put on a survey ship that is going to sit on a resource for a while.
Faster mining means each node empties sooner, so you cycle through more nodes in the same play session and spend less time waiting on a full hold. That speed compounds when you are stockpiling for a long build or research project.
Captain ability and officer ability
Grade III Miner (captain maneuver)
As captain, DuPont increases the rate at which your ship mines grade-3 crystal, gas, and ore. The starting value is +35% mining speed as of the latest data, and the bonus depends on him holding the captain’s chair. The higher-rank values in the underlying data do not form a clean, readable progression, so treat 35% as the figure you can count on and think of the rest as a bump that grows with promotion rather than a fixed table.
Grade-3 nodes are the target here. If you are still mining grade-1 or grade-2 materials, the captain bonus does nothing for you, so he is a pick for the stage where grade-3 raw materials are your bottleneck.
Hidden Stash (officer ability)
In any bridge seat, DuPont raises your ship’s protected cargo. Protected cargo is the amount of resources an attacker cannot steal when they beat your ship, so a higher number means you keep more of a full hold even if you get hit on the way home.
This ability scales cleanly with promotion, and the per-rank values hold up across sources, so a table is safe here. Values are current as of the latest game data:
| Rank | Protected cargo bonus |
|---|---|
| 1 | 50% |
| 2 | 100% |
| 3 | 150% |
| 4 | 200% |
| 5 | 300% |
At rank 5 he triples the ship’s protected cargo, which is a real safety margin for a miner running far from home.
Where Raphaël DuPont shines
He has a narrow but clear set of good homes:
- Speeding up grade-3 crystal, gas, and ore runs as captain, especially when you are gathering for a big upgrade.
- Protecting a heavy haul. With Hidden Stash on the bridge, a raider who catches your loaded survey ship walks away with less of it.
- Federation economy crews, where his faction lines up with the rest of your roster.
The protected-cargo seat works best on a survey ship with a large cargo hold, where the percentage bonus turns into a meaningful number of resources kept. Pairing him with a captain who buys mining speed or impulse speed can stretch a single run even further.
He is not a hostile killer, an armada officer, or a PvP attacker. Putting him on a battleship for combat wastes the seat. Match him to the job he was built for and he pays off.
How to get Raphaël DuPont
DuPont is a rare officer, and like most officers you build him by collecting shards and promoting through five ranks. The shard cost climbs as you go:
| Rank | Shards to promote |
|---|---|
| 1 | 34 |
| 2 | 51 |
| 3 | 102 |
| 4 | 136 |
| 5 | 204 |
That works out to 527 shards from recruitment through max rank. Ranking him up also spends officer experience, Federation credits, and Engineering badges along the way, in line with any Engineering officer. For where to actually find his shards, check the current store and event rotations, since officer availability moves around over time.
Synergies
DuPont’s class synergy leans toward Command and Science seats. His bonus contributes Command 20%, Engineering 10%, and Science 20%, so he pairs most efficiently with Command-class and Science-class officers rather than other Engineering ones.
The game also lists a specific set of synergy officers for him, each with its own percentage: Barot at 20%, Stonn at 20%, Domitia at 20%, K’Bisch at 20%, Elea Mäkinen at 20%, T’Pring at 10%, and Helvia at 10%. If you are building a crew around DuPont and own any of these officers, they are the intended partners. Beyond those names, fill the last seat with whatever rounds out your mining setup.
Frequently asked questions
Is Raphaël DuPont any good?
For mining he is a solid rare officer. His captain bonus speeds up grade-3 raw material gathering and his officer ability keeps more of your haul safe. For combat he does nothing, so his value depends entirely on whether you mine grade-3 materials.
Where do you get Raphaël DuPont shards?
Shard sources rotate. Check the current faction store and active events in your game rather than relying on an old answer, since officers move between sources over time.
What ship is he best on?
Put him on a survey or mining ship that is going to sit on grade-3 nodes. That is where both his mining-speed captain maneuver and his protected-cargo officer ability do their work.
Is he worth ranking up?
If mining is part of your routine, yes. Hidden Stash gets much stronger with promotion, climbing from 50% protected cargo at rank 1 to 300% at rank 5, so the rank-ups directly improve how much of a full hold you keep.
The bottom line on Raphaël DuPont
DuPont is a specialist. Hand him a mining job and he speeds it up and guards the payload; ask him to do anything else and he falls flat. If you are at the stage where grade-3 crystal, gas, and ore are slowing you down, he is worth the shards. If your economy is already humming or you need combat help, spend those resources elsewhere.
