Say, Alex, is there any way to set up officers to continue leveling and getting skills past LVL.20?
Manually setting max level over 20 just gives me a blank skill selection for LVL.21. A workaround I tried by giving officers 2 points per level sorta works. It was fine until I hit late-game where NPC fleets could get LVL.20 officers. The problem here is that certain initial officer skill rolls will result in maxing out 10 skills at level 19, leaving the game to apparently stall/freeze with the lack of skill selection for LVL.20. (I'm assuming this is the case as the game played fine until the late game when LVL 20 officer in NPC fleets are more common. Reloading the same save would work; it rarely ever froze at the same point, so I imagine it was just RNG with officer generation.) I haven't tested increasing the officer skill-count limit to like 11. (I can't see that working well either since the UI seems to be designed for 10 skills max.)
I know you have your own design intentions for the game, but seeing as skills aren't quite set in stone yet (infrastructure skills have yet to be implemented), I imagine there's gonna be some growth in the skill/leveling system later to account for that.
Also, any consideration for officers to gain fleet-wide and/or Industry skills as well? Fleet-wide skills would be cumulative, the trade-off being the bonuses are individually lower. I mention this since right now, we only have combat officer builds (mostly Direct Combat vs Carrier). I would like to think fleet-support builds would be a viable path in the future when Infrastructure is a thing. (Personally, I would LOVE to off-load some industry skills, like surveying, to an officer if I could considering the player limit of LVL 40.)