We currently need extra personnel for:
* Additional crew to replace losses in combat.
* Additional crew to pilot captured ships.
* Marines to capture ships in the first place.
If I did not have Special Ops perk, I would need to bring a Starliner full of marines to capture battleships.
Ok now we're totally off topic, but this should be the case. Warships are warships, not troop transports. You shouldn't get to have these awesome warships AND use them to carry enough crew to be prize crews for a bunch of captures.
-If you want to capture lots of ships, you should need to have a liner and salvage rig in your fleet
-If you want your fleet to go on long voyages, you should need to have a fuel tanker
-If you want to transport or capture tonnes of cargo, you should need to have a freighter.
But as it is now, SS keeps the player from having to make any interesting choices about fleet design and composition, by going "here take a bunch of warships and you can do whatever you want with them! you don't need any support ships because warships can do everything." Fighting ships generally have a little too much fuel, crew, and cargo capacity. Like how much time did David waste making those support ship sprites, if the player never needs to use them?
The game should be balanced to force the player to make actual, tough choices and use vulnerable support ships depending on what they want to accomplish. I'd like to see a game that requires some thinking, rather than a mindless stomp fest, and i'm pretty sure this is in fact the design intent.
And the campaign missions (coming back round to the topic) should also utilize all these support ships in a variety of interesting ways.