A possible bug is happening with Officer Extension + Random Assortment of Things (R.A.O.T), replicateable with the "Neural Shard" start (or getting the Neural Shard)
Officers can't be assigned to combat ships in the refit while docked to a planet, and later, once you get some skills involving
elite skills, you can no longer have any officers in your fleet.
The officer count stays at -499996/-499999 regardless of what you do.