Read the selected-pilot allowance
Open Operations > Build OpFor and select the mission. Enemy crew upgrades shows a read-only selected-pilot breakdown: skills, SPA and SCA counts, contribution and, in Draconis Reach, named status and Edge ability count. Only participating saved mission pilots are counted, each once. Sitting-out companies and unselected pilots do not contribute. Locked mission rosters retain their pilot snapshots.
Hinterlands grants one enemy upgrade per skill improvement from Gunnery 4 / Piloting 5 (Alpha Strike Skill 4), plus one for each SPA and each SCA, irrespective of ability point cost. A commander appointment alone is not an SCA. Training SP and worse-than-stock ratings do not grant or subtract upgrades.
Structured abilities are counted once per kind/name. Legacy SPA records use Edge ability Handicap in Draconis Reach, consistent with its rules reference. Free-text ability notes require a GM count review: open Crew upgrades > Review ability counts for that pilot, enter the totals including structured entries and notes, and record the ability names and evidence. The allowance is provisional until reviewed. Changing the saved pilot invalidates that review. Hinterlands shows SPA/SCA controls; Draconis Reach uses Edge abilities.
Draconis Reach standard or veteran crews
Use Crew upgrades > Starting crew. Standard enemies begin at 4/5, or Skill 4 for Alpha Strike, and receive the sum of selected named characters’ Handicap. No average is used for standard enemies. Unnamed crews contribute zero.
Veterans begin at 3/4, or Skill 3. Their additional allowance is max(0, ceil(total named-character Handicap / number of named characters) - 16). The subtraction accounts for the veteran starting Handicap. Zero named characters gives zero allowance. Unnamed crews are excluded from the numerator and denominator.
Handicap uses current levels from the Draconis Reach Named Pilot Improvement Table, printed page 34: Gunnery/Piloting or AS Skill, Edge tokens and Edge ability count. It is not cumulative SP expenditure. Battle Armor character Handicap is halved and rounded up before combining. Unsupported levels require record review. The enemy improvement costs use page 186, with the campaign’s matching-Piloting rule.
The GM sets Named character in Company Information > Pilots & crew > Edit record, with an audited correction reason. Companies may have at most four named characters. Prior conversion selections remain recognized; typing a name into a crew record does not make it a named character. New Draconis Reach conversions explicitly mark selected characters as named.
Purchase, refund and validate
Choose a unit from Crew upgrades > Enemy crews. Hinterlands Gunnery or Piloting improvements each cost one upgrade; every Gunnery improvement requires a purchased Piloting improvement on that same crew (a pair costs two upgrades). Alpha Strike Skill improvements each cost one. Draconis Reach Gunnery costs 20 Handicap points and Piloting costs 5. Each Gunnery improvement needs a purchased Piloting improvement on that same crew. Buy a pair for 25, or buy Piloting first and then Gunnery. Alpha Strike has only Skill purchases, costing 20 each.
The allowance is separate from BV/PV force allocations. Purchases retain the enemy unit’s recorded budget cost. Skills cannot go below zero. Managed skills are read-only on Unit details; use Crew upgrades to change them. Newly added enemies receive the selected starting crew.
Remove this crew upgrades and refund allowance restores that crew to its selected starting level. Changing Starting crew requires confirmation and resets all enemy skill purchases for this mission. Removing an enemy releases its upgrade spending. Existing manually edited non-stock crews need review and restoration to stock before enabling the pool; nothing silently assumes their cost.
An allowance cannot be overspent. Unresolved selected-pilot abilities, unsupported Handicap levels, changed campaign rules, mismatched crew values or an allowance reduced below its spending prevent purchases and readiness until corrected. All changes use the GM-only audited save workflow. Completed missions and missions with unit reporting begun are read-only.