Let's start with the table of how much experience it takes to level. The "next" column is how much experience it takes to reach the next level from the current one. The "total" column is how much cumulative experience it takes to reach the current level. There are separate columns for mate levels and company levels.

I also give a formula for the experience to gain for mate levels, which as you can see from the table, is very, very close to the correct numbers. It is never off by more than 100 experience, and usually hits the number exactly. I'll explain the formula in the next section.

In the next section, I give a formula that fits the data for levels 71-77 extremely well. If we assume that the formula holds up to level 85, then extending the table looks like this:

The formula for the experience that a mate must acquire to gain a level is approximately a piecewise quadratic function of the level. That is, there are constants a, b, and c such that the experience required to go from level x to level x+1 is very close to ax^2+bx+c, except that the constants change from one level range to the next. Let's start by giving the table of constants, then come back to explain what they mean:


The precise formula is 100*floor(ax^2+bx+c), where floor(x) is the greatest integer that is less than or equal to x. For example, floor(3.7) = 3. An example will probably help. Suppose that you want to know how much experience it takes a mate to go from level 20 to 21. Level 20 is in the [9, 24] interval, so that's the row that you use. You compute 0.37*20^2+11.7*20-35.9 = 346.1. The floor of this is 346. Multiply by 100 to get 34600, which is the number in the formula column for level 20 above.

You may notice that level 9 is contained in two intervals of the above table. Both lines give exactly the same value and match the correct value, so there is no way to determine which line is the correct one.

To get the amount of experience required to proceed to the next company level, you compute 200 * floor(0.0075 * (mate experience required)). This generally means that it takes about 1.5 times the company experience that it takes mate experience, though there is a bit of rounding. This formula is exact up to level 65, as I have directly verified it for 30 separate levels and it hits the correct value exactly for every single one of them.

For level 65 and above, you compute that same value, then multiply by sqrt(level - 64), then round down to the nearest integer. I only have two numbers for this from higher level players, but this formula hits the company experience required to level exactly. Because this means that company experience slows down greatly while mate experience does not, your active mates will tend to catch up to your company level at high levels.

As of this writing, I'm company level 69, so I can't see the amount of experience required for higher levels. Crux (Utopia server) gave me the data for up to level 77, so I've filled that in.

Nearly everything that you do in the game gives you some sort of experience. However, when you see the game say that you've earned some amount of experience, it may not be immediately obvious where that newly acquired experience goes. Mates have three separate levels for the three types of experience, but a company does not. And there's still the question of which mates get how much experience.

There are three basic cases. The first of them is quests. When you complete a quest, the experience that was stated before completing the quest gets scaled up for the nation rank bonus if applicable before the game displays the amount of experience earned on the screen, and then that experience gets awarded in the relevant category to all mates currently in fleet 1, that is, your primary, active fleet. Furthermore, half that amount is awarded as company experience.

The second case is dispatch. When you complete a dispatch, the game displays the experience earned before the country rank bonus, but then scales it up by that bonus before applying it. All mates in the fleet that completed the dispatch get the scaled up experience (likely more than the number displayed on the screen), but no company experience is awarded.

The third case is everything else. Here, when the game awards experience, the company gets half of the nominal experience. All mates in fleet 1 get some experience of the relevant type, but how much depends on which cabin the mate is in. If that cabin has a 100% stat modifier for the corresponding type of experience, then the mate is awarded full experience. If it has any other stat modifier besides 100%, then the mate is awarded half experience.

In particular, any mate in a captain's cabin always gets full experience. Most other mates only get full experience to one type and half to the others. An aide's cabin or some of the junk, default cabins mean that a mate only gets half experience of all types. This is an additional reason why it is so critical to change your cabins on new ships, as if you don't, then a lot of mates get only half experience even in their specialty. It is also a reason why getting ships above your level is less useful than it might otherwise seem, as it will mean that your mates level more slowly than if you could change the cabins to something more appropriate.