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[Serenitis]

Moving (seemingly) everything to revolve around the presence of officers is one of the reasons I 'fell out' with the game.
The player having officers at all is entirely dependant on the what the rng gives you, and when you're at a severe disadvantage without officers, and there's a non-trivial amount of abilities which straight up do nothing without an officer present, that's not good.

However...

...there are no such things as unofficered ships, just ships with weaker officers.

This.
If every ship had an officer by default, that changes things a bit.

Every time you acquire a ship it gets assigned an officer generated from whichever faction owned the market it was bought from, or player.faction if it was recovered/salvaged. (This is to ensure compatibilty for anyone who might be running custom faction mods.)
This officer has zero skills of any kind, but will 'level up' as they get used, up to some defined cap which is arbitrarily low.
Once the 'default' officer reaches thier level cap the player could use a story point to 'unlock/commission' them which increases the cap and allows further skills to be learned. (Possibly repeatedly with increasing cost?)
At any point the player chooses they can be replaced with a 'conventional' officer should they come into possesion of one.

Officers for combat ships will accrue experience from particpating in battle and will have access to mostly combat related skills.
Officers for non-combat ships will accrue experience from contributing to logistics & support activities and will have access to mostly support related skills.
Combat officers will level-up faster, but in bursts.
Logistics officers level-up slower, but almost constantly so long as the fleet is carrying stuff/salvaging/surveying/using sensor toys/etc...

Honestly, I preferred the 'old' setup where officers were 'nice to have' but in no way required for general chill play.
But if you're going to make them nescessary for everything, you might as well make sure the player at least has access to something by default without gating it behind waiting for the rng to deliver.

[6chad.noirlee9]

Spoiler

Moving (seemingly) everything to revolve around the presence of officers is one of the reasons I 'fell out' with the game.
The player having officers at all is entirely dependant on the what the rng gives you, and when you're at a severe disadvantage without officers, and there's a non-trivial amount of abilities which straight up do nothing without an officer present, that's not good.

However...

...there are no such things as unofficered ships, just ships with weaker officers.

This.
If every ship had an officer by default, that changes things a bit.

Every time you acquire a ship it gets assigned an officer generated from whichever faction owned the market it was bought from, or player.faction if it was recovered/salvaged. (This is to ensure compatibilty for anyone who might be running custom faction mods.)
This officer has zero skills of any kind, but will 'level up' as they get used, up to some defined cap which is arbitrarily low.
Once the 'default' officer reaches thier level cap the player could use a story point to 'unlock/commission' them which increases the cap and allows further skills to be learned. (Possibly repeatedly with increasing cost?)
At any point the player chooses they can be replaced with a 'conventional' officer should they come into possesion of one.

Officers for combat ships will accrue experience from particpating in battle and will have access to mostly combat related skills.
Officers for non-combat ships will accrue experience from contributing to logistics & support activities and will have access to mostly support related skills.
Combat officers will level-up faster, but in bursts.
Logistics officers level-up slower, but almost constantly so long as the fleet is carrying stuff/salvaging/surveying/using sensor toys/etc...

Honestly, I preferred the 'old' setup where officers were 'nice to have' but in no way required for general chill play.
But if you're going to make them nescessary for everything, you might as well make sure the player at least has access to something by default without gating it behind waiting for the rng to deliver.

[close]

i think this is a great idea, however, i still think finding officers should be kept along with being able to swap them
brand new ships get random person, you can swap in a better one if on the payroll/found later

[Farya]

Actually that might be nice to have officers who are useful out of combat. So that you may have a researcher on your Apogee to help with salvage and survey operations etc. This could also allow for new mechanics like having a kind of fleet command structure where your officers may be assigned to task out of combat - sending a salvage specialist to check out a derelict station. Or maybe you could make up a battle plan before deploying your ships - like ordering frigate commanders to capture points or escort carriers, so you don't have to do so for a command point right after combat starts.

[Megas]

Moving (seemingly) everything to revolve around the presence of officers is one of the reasons I 'fell out' with the game.
The player having officers at all is entirely dependant on the what the rng gives you, and when you're at a severe disadvantage without officers, and there's a non-trivial amount of abilities which straight up do nothing without an officer present, that's not good.

I think mercenaries are a mistake, because now the enemy can spam officers on every ship (by endgame) and have a perpetual advantage over the player.  It is about as bad as ships exceeding your fleet cap up to the first 0.9a release (before we got capital spam).

Would have preferred the absolute max of ten and no way to exceed that like in the pre-mercenary releases.

[JUDGE! slowpersun]

Actually that might be nice to have officers who are useful out of combat. So that you may have a researcher on your Apogee to help with salvage and survey operations etc. This could also allow for new mechanics like having a kind of fleet command structure where your officers may be assigned to task out of combat - sending a salvage specialist to check out a derelict station. Or maybe you could make up a battle plan before deploying your ships - like ordering frigate commanders to capture points or escort carriers, so you don't have to do so for a command point right after combat starts.

This I both like and agree with, but too bad it would basically require an entire new game system to be coded into game.  Would be nice to have certain missions/mission types to basically have a time bar/countdown attached upon arrival to an objective, but not to waste the player's time; instead, to basically build dramatic tension (ie, have some other fleet find you and battle, or maybe you cut and run?!).  Officers/ship choice would then affect how quickly action occurs AND positive/negative outcomes, not just how much ****ing ore you pull from a mining station.  Plus, it might give an excuse for going back to the old salvage system with diminishing returns for debris fields, not this one and done nonsense...

Still, if crew and marines were to be shifted into this system from the economy system, that would prolly fix some issues/complaints that currently arise (like marine xp pools and peeps wanting the old crew xp system model back).  But not likely until at least 0.99.

[Serenitis]

Plus, it might give an excuse for going back to the old salvage system with diminishing returns for debris fields, not this one and done nonsense...

One-hit, get everything slavaging is one of the few 100% positive changes in this version.
Having to salvage debris 6+ times to get (not even) all the items is a huge timewasting chore when you're having to do it hundreds upon hundreds of times.

I think mercenaries are a mistake, because now the enemy can spam officers on every ship (by endgame) and have a perpetual advantage over the player. 

Same.
Honestly, balancing anything around the presence of officers at all was a mistake. Because the only way the player can guarantee to get an officer (singular) is to pick the Kite starting option.
Every other instance of the player gaining an officer is purely down to chance and circumstance which is okay for fluff or 'nice to have' things, but less than great for mandatory things.
Like officers seem to have become.

[JUDGE! slowpersun]

Plus, it might give an excuse for going back to the old salvage system with diminishing returns for debris fields, not this one and done nonsense...

One-hit, get everything slavaging is one of the few 100% positive changes in this version.
Having to salvage debris 6+ times to get (not even) all the items is a huge timewasting chore when you're having to do it hundreds upon hundreds of times.

One-hit salvaging was the second worst decision of the 0.95a update (behind skill system change, but that's getting changed).  Both unrealistic and clearly pandering to lazy gamers.  Nobody is putting a gun to your head to resalvage a debris field 10+ times, so waste your time if you want; it's just generally way less efficient than doing literally anything else in the game.  Buuuuut, if you're stuck way way out in the middle of nowhere, resalvaging a debris field might be your only literal option to get enough fuel to maybe make it back closer to the core.  Either that, or waste your time until every single one of your ships is lost to supply breakdown and you get the soft version of a game over.  Or dive into the sun to save time? Or purposefully suicide to save time?  Which would "waste" more time?  Since, you know, purposefully suiciding means you have to rebuild your entire fleet...

However, I should point out that salvaging a debris field 10+ times should have diminishing returns and still be considered "unsalvageable" at some arbitrary point (depending on whether there is a debris field size parameter).  How Alex wants to do those maths, up to him.  But clearly he just didn't want to do the maths at all...

But I digress.  Still think there needs to be an NCO system for all unofficered ships, but that I guess would basically require bringing back crew experience.  Hence, why I pointed out that it might just require coding an entirely new personnel system.  Plus maybe a crew morale meter, which is arguably a criminal oversight in the game design...

Edit: Grammar.

[SCC]

However, I should point out that salvaging a debris field 10+ times should have diminishing returns and still be considered "unsalvageable" at some arbitrary point (depending on whether there is a debris field size parameter).  How Alex wants to do those maths, up to him.  But clearly he just didn't want to do the maths at all...

He was focusing on the maths of "I should stop people from doing the tedious, but optimal thing, even if it isn't necessary, so they stop feeling like they lose out for not doing it".

[JUDGE! slowpersun]

However, I should point out that salvaging a debris field 10+ times should have diminishing returns and still be considered "unsalvageable" at some arbitrary point (depending on whether there is a debris field size parameter).  How Alex wants to do those maths, up to him.  But clearly he just didn't want to do the maths at all...

He was focusing on the maths of "I should stop people from doing the tedious, but optimal thing, even if it isn't necessary, so they stop feeling like they lose out for not doing it".

Not Alex's job to police some player's feelings.  In the same way someone suggested adding a water break warning every hour was ridiculous.  If someone wants to waste time trying to accomplish their opinion of the "optimal" thing, that's their biz.  Life is more than min/maxing, but this tangent is swiftly becoming academic.  A mod could prolly revive the old way of salvaging if truly necessary, but seems more like a fail not bringing it back into the actual game.  Especially since using distress signal for help is arguably a bigger waste of time (unless a player intends on engaging in piracy).  Also, still digressing.  I feel like I almost need to quote my previous post just to try to get this thread back on track.  Perhaps I'll just drop a poll regarding people's opinions as to the old vs. new salvage system.

Edit:  Although, I guess it is possible that it was changed in order to limit a viable salvaging play route in order to basically encourage a player to commission with a faction in the early game instead of continuously salvaging battle debris.  But again, play how you want.  It would be moot if salvaging one time gave a player ALL the potential total salvage, but how could a player know that they were receiving total potential salvage if they can't salvage a second time and get nada?  Maybe salvaging should get a countdown bar of some sort, so still kinda wastes player's time a little, but they don't get full loot unless entire bar counts down.  So player can still cut and run early if threatened, but gets less.  Many ways to skin the space cat, I guess.

[Megas]

However, I should point out that salvaging a debris field 10+ times should have diminishing returns and still be considered "unsalvageable" at some arbitrary point (depending on whether there is a debris field size parameter).  How Alex wants to do those maths, up to him.  But clearly he just didn't want to do the maths at all...

He was focusing on the maths of "I should stop people from doing the tedious, but optimal thing, even if it isn't necessary, so they stop feeling like they lose out for not doing it".

Once or twice in the 0.9a or 0.91a releases, I had rare items spawn in the seventh or final salvage attempt before the next attempt yielded nothing.

So yes, I will spam salvage until there is literally nothing left, and it was awful, and wasted too much time and too many mouse clicks.  There is nothing fun repeating salvage multiple times to get the goodies.  That is tedium, not to mention wearing out the mouse buttons from all of that clicking.

So glad player gets all salvage after a single invocation in this release.