In the current build, Officer Management seems to stick out as a somewhat redundant and uninteresting skill, as all it really does is permit you to hire more people. It doesn't do something like, reduce how much you have to pay them, increase their statistical bonuses to captained ships, give them an extra skill to pick from when leveling, or anything like that. Just lets you buy more. It's like if there was a skill that was simply "Able to command up to 35/40/45 ships in a fleet", potent but a bit dull.
Prior to 0.9, your officers worked for free, barring the initial hiring cost. Bringing significant attribute boosts to the ships they captain, they obviously ought to be limited in some way, lest the player simply amass a roster of 20 to 30 max-level captains and simply run over everything with nothing in the game left to provide a challenge. With the latest update though, you have to pay them a salary based on their level—in the current state of the game, up to 2500 credits per month for a level 20 officer—which makes me wonder why the Officer Management skill is really a
necessity anymore. Couldn't the task of limiting the accessibility of officers be performed by having a large roster be a more significant drain on funds than going it with only a handful?
Spoiler
Besides, I've seen at least one instance where the game breaks its own rules and creates a fleet with fourteen officers. If I've got cash to spare, why can't I go over ten?
And on the note of salaries, have I just not played the new build long enough to find out where I can bench officers or is there no place to do that? I see that administrators who are without an assignment only get paid 10% of their salary, but officers get paid in full whether they're at the helm of a ship or unassigned for the entire month, and actually capitalizing on the Officer Management skill means you'll eventually be stuck with a permanent 25K credit penalty every pay period. Being able to drop them off someplace would be beneficial for those times where all I plan on doing for the next few months is taking on survey missions or just exploring outlying systems. And if the cap is going to be limited at ten active officers at any one time it would be nice if I could swap some out to accompany changing fleet compositions instead of having to fire a long term investment entirely to make room.
