I've been thinking about this recently because I've started to play with the various mods that the talented people on this forum have been posting.
You end up wanting to have more ships in your fleet than your character can handle. Same goes for cargo. It's annoying to have to fly back to the abandoned depot and switch things there everytime you want to make a switch.
I was thinking it'd be great to have an officer that can handle a secondary fleet that follows yours around but is non-combat, or at least a reserve fleet. It wouldn't need to have crew to fully man all ships, but just enough to make them fly along with you. Sure they'd be sitting ducks by themselves, but they're always with your main fleet....unless you get destroyed. Then you just multiplied your losses.
Anyways, just thinking "out loud" as it were. Bottom line I wish there was an easier way to carry ships around that I'm not necessarily expecting to be part of the fighting fleet. The game designer part of my brain tells me that the fact that I'm wishing for this at all means that scarcity is working though
