an NCO is just regular crew with experience that lead the rest of the crew, they are not ever actually officers in any capacity, and every NCO, no matter the experience, answers to and salutes every officer, no matter how new.
NCOs in this case woudl actually just be more and more experienced crew.
i would like to see specialty crew you can hire in the form of faction crew, as well as see an experience system
i HATE the "crew is a commodity" aspect that dominates the game currently
it honestly disgusts me from a thematic and gameplay perspective
besides that, having a few top leve hegemony crewmembers giving +15 armor, and a few this and that giving other small bonuses just really sounds cool to me
i really would like to see some sort of incentive to keeping the HUMAN BEINGS that make your ships work alive: i mean not everyone is an insane pather, and the idea that people would just "shut up and die" is LUDICROUS and really i dont see it happening that way
my case in point that it is possible would be the marines: they are now experienced based
i mean really though, how fun would it be to come across some highest level possible specialists in crypods?
to me it would add much needed flavor to the crew dynamic, and make shopping at the different markets much more fun in the long run
searching for the perfect crew to assign to each ship would be nuts and add more to the endgame
the only real issue would be the new mechanic necessary in order to assign crew: but compared to everything else that has been done coding wise with/in starsector its doable, if something a bit further on the to do list currently
well, thats my vote anyway