Besides, it didn't "work" back then either, which is precisely why it has been changed.
Then why did it work for me? I played the game back then, too. The comparison I could use is for a character without any skills at all (I used to play 0.9.1 and earlier without skills for fun), the game became harder as officers became more commonplace and I had to rely on my fleet more. Though I have to admit, there was no equivalent to mercenary fleets back then and Remnants weren't as aggressive.
Instead of suggesting some arbitrary change and trying to guess how it would affect things, start by identifying the problem you want fixed.
The issue is that without skills, ships with officers are significantly more important than the flagship or unofficered ships, and playstyles not focused on officers top out on the same power level as the officer-centric playstyle (since even if it's boosted the same by skills, it starts out stronger). This has the additional issue of discouraging new players from piloting the flagship, since non-officer-centric playstyles require lot of investment just to catch up to the power that officers offer.
That's funny, because I keep reading how broken various flagships are, with people soloing mid-tier bounties with a single Aurora or something.
Can you point me to an example of such a post? I've been trying to beat a fleet of 1 Nova, 2 Radiants, 5 Fulgents and a dozen frigates for a couple of hours and haven't managed it with just the Aurora. If I kill the Nova, I can't kill the Radiants, and if I kill the Radiants, I can't kill the Nova. I think I need to carry more missiles.
I also remember a series of posts on Reddit recently of a guy blowing up every single star fortress with a single Afflictor. And let's not forget the poor Ziggy, F for that guy for all the various ways he's been humiliated by flagships.
I don't care about phase ships, they aren't fun to fly.
It's like, how much power do you even want? Should ALL combat skills be automatically unlocked for the player?
Previously, if I invested everything, I could solo Remnant ordos with a Conquest, but it's no longer possible. I think it has more to do with Remnant aggression more so than officers, so the change I propose wouldn't bring that back.
Fewer officers by default would push everyone towards capital ships. Why spend a skillpoint to get more officers when I can simply put the 4 officers I already have in larger ships? At least 8 officers lets people use cruisers. No-flagship fleets usually already take Flux Regulation because it's simply a good skill, and it leads to Automated Ships which is also a good skill for no-flagship fleets as it lets you break the 8/10 officer limit(without mercenary respec shenanigans; I don't know how intended that is, seems like cheese to me)
In that case, Grievous's idea of reducing the number of skills officers get by default would perhaps be better.