I don't remember Alex making the decision to increase the baseline officer number from 4 to 8 being in response to any particular player complaint. It certainly came out of the left field to me.
I remember people posting that the "more officer" skill had the biggest increase in power and was practically mandatory, and unless player had an all-capital fleet, player wanted more than four officers to give every ship that could be deployed an officer. Even if I had all capitals, I still wanted at least six officers since without +xp% multipliers and DP pool limits, I could have a huge fleet with a primary fighting fleet and substitute ships to deploy in case main ships were too worn down from attrition, like a sports team. Today, with +xp% and DP pools, player is incentivized to bring only enough to fit everything on the field, with no substitutes because they harm stats.
You misunderstood me. By "splitting" I meant officers have all the personal skills that exist in the game now. Skill system remains the same but the Combat tree now has upgraded variations of current skills that only the player can have, nobody else. This way you prevent ridiculously buffing Remnants and high end bounties.
I think that is what elite effects were supposed to do, but unfortunately, Officer Training and Cybernetic Augmentation give nearly as many to officers, and AI cores (the ones that make otherwise balanced Remnant hulls better than human ships and player has to fight late) have them all. In effect, everyone has them, except the player's fleet that did not take officer skills for them.