The Nova Squadron is a station building where your most promising cadets train into elite Starfleet officers. It unlocks once your Operations building reaches level 30 and upgrades all the way to level 70. Every level raises the shield health and weapon damage of your whole fleet, lowers the cost of a specific set of building materials, and pays out Nova Squadron particles for a dedicated research tree. It is a mid-game combat building that keeps earning its spot well into the late game.
What the Nova Squadron does
The Nova Squadron carries three buffs that apply to every ship you own, not to one hull class or faction. Two of them scale hard as the building climbs toward level 70, so this is one of the buildings that keeps paying off long after you place it.
| Buff | Active from | Level 1 | Level 35 | Level 70 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shield health bonus (base SHP for all ships) | Level 1 | 30% | 800% | 3,200% |
| Weapon damage bonus (all ships) | Level 1 | 20% | 379% | 1,500% |
| Special building materials cost efficiency | Level 1 | 1% | 35% | 75% |
The cost efficiency buff lowers the price of a fixed group of special building materials: Section 31 Transmitters, Emblems of Assessment, Quantum Communicators, Subspace Relay Upgrades, and Holo-Field Amplifiers. If you use those materials, every Nova Squadron level shaves a little off the bill.
On top of the buffs, each upgrade grants Nova Squadron particles. Levels 1 through 40 give 42,525 particles per upgrade, and from level 45 that rises to 170,100. You spend the particles in the Nova Squadron research tree, which unlocks and upgrades nodes for isolytic damage, damage mitigation, and related combat effects across the burning, morale, and hull-breach lines. That research is the reason to keep upgrading even when a single level’s buff jump looks small.
How to unlock the Nova Squadron
The Nova Squadron becomes available when your Operations building hits level 30. Placing the first level costs 1 Starfleet Distinction and 800 Parsteel and finishes in about 35 seconds. Each upgrade after that raises the Operations level you need, so the building’s ceiling tracks your overall station progress rather than sitting as an early unlock you rush and forget.
Upgrade costs and build times
Costs and timers climb steeply, so the table below shows milestone levels rather than all 70. Requirements are Operations levels, resolved from the game data.
| Level | Cost | Build time | Requires |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 Starfleet Distinction, 800 Parsteel | 35s | Operations 30 |
| 10 | 7,000 Parsteel, 868 Starfleet Honors | 1h 50m | Operations 34 |
| 20 | 144,500 Parsteel, 1,851 Starfleet Honors | 1d 5h | Operations 39 |
| 30 | 13.26M Parsteel, 2,835 Starfleet Honors | 3d 1h | Operations 44 |
| 40 | 2.866B Parsteel, 3,760 Starfleet Honors | 48d 11h | Operations 49 |
| 50 | 125B Parsteel, 4,686 Starfleet Honors | 830d 2h | Operations 54 |
| 60 | 40.19T Parsteel, 5,611 Starfleet Honors | 1748d 22h | Operations 62 |
| 65 | 6,074 Starfleet Honors, 6.015M Σ-Parsteel | 134d 9h | Operations 65 |
| 70 | 6,537 Starfleet Honors, 26.97M Σ-Parsteel | 538d 4h | Operations 70 |
At the top levels the Parsteel cost switches to Σ-Parsteel, the compressed resource used for late-game upgrades. Taken from level 1 to 70, the full bill is 1 Starfleet Distinction, 114.2T Parsteel, 231,344 Starfleet Honors, and 88.39M Σ-Parsteel. The cumulative build time runs to roughly 18,808 days unboosted, which is why speedups and build-cost research matter far more than the raw totals suggest. All values are current as of the latest game data.
How the Nova Squadron fits your station
Because it unlocks at Operations 30, the Nova Squadron lands squarely in the mid game, and its early levels are cheap enough to clear in minutes. The value comes from the shield health and weapon damage buffs, both of which apply to your entire fleet, so every level you add helps in every fight. Treat the Operations requirement as the real gate: the building can only climb as fast as your Operations level allows, so it paces itself against the rest of your base. The particle payout gives you a second reason to keep it moving, since those particles feed the isolytic and mitigation nodes that matter most in armada and player-versus-player combat.
Is the Nova Squadron worth upgrading?
Yes, within reason. The fleet-wide shield health and weapon damage buffs make this one of the stronger combat buildings on your station, and the particle output opens a research tree you cannot reach any other way. The catch is the late-game cost curve: past level 50 the resource and time requirements climb into the billions and years, so most players push it steadily through the mid levels and slow-roll the final stretch behind speedups and events. Keep it moving as your Operations level allows and it earns its footprint.