Currently the game runs on 5 main resources. Credits, mined minerals, artifacts, energy and research. (some might argue planets but they provide these things for the player minus of course energy)
The power given to player by these resources however is displayed through only one manner (at least in terms of efficiency) and that is decks. Decks allow you to hold modules brought to you by buying them with credits and mined minerals as well as artifacts and energy used on fighting NPC's as well as research to provide the module to you.
While the numbers and types of modules you can have allows you to vary your build somewhat (hacker, fighter, mission runner ect) it does not do it very effectively leaving combat rather transparent. Traps and a few other artifacts vaguely alleviate this.

Most ships are run by officers, usually robotic ones (android helmsman, scientists ect) and while those are great for most things they lack intuition as well as the chemical signals (fight or flight response) that can make or break a space battle.
Officers give a special boost to ship combat. How would it work though?
In a way different to that of decks. Rather then putting ranks into something allowing you to have more officers or just hiring them they would come from a school.

With the introduction of bases this would fit perfectly with a base module to train officers

on the ranks of 25,50,75,150,250,400,650,900 a player would gain an officer slot as well as 4 officer crew slots.
The bonuses they provide vary depending on their training and experience.
Officers are then offered from the base and add to upkeeps of ships which then go (partially, probably 10%) to fund base operations. This gives incentives to have officers aside from their bonuses.

This is all sounding complicated now... let me start with the base module and how that works, then we'll go into how it helps your ship as well as ship combat.

Base module:
Officer school (price unknown but would match with other expensive modules like the CT lab)
Players would contribute minerals, credits, artifacts, just about anything including some research. Each bit is added without a cap meaning players can donate as much or as little as they want, officers will still be trained. However each thing will change what officers learn within a medium width tolerance.
For example, if exotic matter was given to the officer school, officers would be better at mining it from planets you own and perhaps reduce cost of missions requiring it. Also it could make you earn more probes via artifact mining or very rarely allow you to shoot dark matter at enemy ships.
For a more detailed example building off the one above lets say for each 1 exotic matter contributed to the school, officers in that training cycle gain a 0-.0001% bonus to planetary mining, 0-.00001% chance to lower the cost of exotic matter required in missions by 1% and a 0-.000001% chance of producing an officer who knows how to add an exotic matter attack to any ship he flies with.
These numbers seem microscopic i know, but that doesnt tell what else happens with officers!

At the point of donation (taken over 24 hours of a cycle) the school does nothing. It then proceeds to teach new officers over the next 7 days. At this point nothing more can be donated to the school. After 7 days it produces 5-20 officers with effects that match the school donations. At this point they are level 1. Officers can remain in the school gaining 1 level every 7 days up to level 5 at which point they must "graduate".

At which point (or after the first 7 day cycle) the officers of the legion share officers with the rest of the legion. A player as said before is allowed 1 officer and 4 officer crew at the ranks provided. The officer gains a 1% boost to all of their bonuses (1.01xbonuses = total bonuses) while crew members get only half of their bonuses applied (0.5xbonuses=total bonus). In addition only an officer (not officer crew) can use an ability if it has one (like shooting exotic matter in the example).

So this can change up how we mine, and research and so on but how does this affect combat?

Similar to the example of shooting exotic matter different things can be applied here both passively and actively.
For instance, shooting exotic matter could bypass shields, or maybe deal double damage to shields and half damage to hulls.
Other officers might have an acute intuition for traps allowing your ship to detect or even set them off without taking harmful effects!
The first is an example of an active ability. You would fire said exotic matter at the cost of x amount (probably at 3 levels) of exotic matter and energy at an enemy ship.
Fire exotic matter charge:
large 500 exotic matter, 25 energy: does 2.5x damage to enemy shields
medium 300 exotic matter, 18 energy:does 2x damage to enemy shields
small 100 exotic matter, 10 energy: does 1.5x damage to enemy shields
While detecting traps would be a passive ability enhanced by something like scan and hurt by cloaking.
Setting off these traps would in turn be an active skill with a level of failure based on the officers experience with that specific trap.

This opens up new areas for combat even with the few examples i provided. Say someone has been bugging your legion lately but you cant get near it due to pacifying traps. Now you can use trap sniffers and disarmers to route the traps and take them down. Officers rich in counter measure training can counter-act this allowing for tug of war to insure no one officer power is too strong.
This brings legions closer and allows them to fight as a more close nit force.

But wait, i attack players all the time, this idea is terrible for me!
Never fear you can still discover and avoid the power of their officers even if you dont have your own (which i would assume is unlikely). The battle tab is the result of a base level scan of your ship. However using the powerful sensors on board that are used to scan for planets you can scan the enemy officers (at a % success affected by officers, scan power and cloaking power). In addition to gathering basic info (names) to more advanced into (exactly what each officer and crew member bonuses are provided to the enemy ship) these scans are shared with legion members permanently. Keep in mind players can change their officers at any time by putting them back into the legion base (store of x max in the base depending on module level), firing them or leveling them up so this information may or may not be up to date.

More notorious officers (officers scanned with great detail by multiple players and legions) would rate on a galaxy wide officer board. Not just for levels, but successful attacks, disables, kills ect. This remains so long as the officer remains in the ship that has been scanned. If the officer changes ships it's stats are still on the board but the ship he/she flies on will be replaced with just the legion that ship belongs to. This may seem like a negative effect, but there is an additional bit.
Legions can trade officers with other legions. This is possible only AFTER the officer has been on a legion member ship for longer then 30 days (to avoid any possible abuse of this system). This allows for another positive use of alliances aside from this guy attacked us, take him out with us.

The final bit to mention is officer leveling. Each officer gains 1/10th the % based in my earlier example to each stat when it levels. So if it had a 0-.0001% bonus to planetary mining of exotic matter per 1 exotic matter contributed, and 5000 EM was contributed giving it say 3.25% bonus to mining it would gain 0.325% bonus to planetary mining per level. At level 5 this officer would give a 4.875% bonus to planetary mining.
Having 1 officer and 4 officer crew with this bonus (relatively unlikely) would give a total bonus 14.625% bonus to planetary mining.


All things mentioned could be altered for balance. This would be a VERY large addition to the game and thus i would not expect this to be implemented soon. The addition of this is on par with the implementation of legion bases (which i know was a large under taking) give your ideas on how to improve this idea, or if you do not like it how to do something similar where battle is a bit more interesting then click, am i winning? pretty much, click click click (which is what about 80% of it is)

firstly its a pretty good idea and i like the concept of being able to recruit and employ actual officers, however to get your point across, especially online, you need to be short and precise.

if an idea was to be incorporated into the game the creators would put their own spin on it, therefore not every aspect of the idea has to be explained. i only say this because i think you have good things to put forward but are unlikely to get feedback as many viewers would be scared off by the extensive amount of text.

interesting take on officers. although im not sure about your emphasis on exotic matter. yeah, everyone has alot of it, but the base needs it, and youll run out if you can get it up to level 6. my officer idea was more about upgrading your ship stats instead of production stats, but i like your concept of leveling officers up to improve their stats. thatll make it more like pokemon (gotta catch all the officers! ) whereas you can actually make decisions on wether or not you want a higher level crap officer, or a low level amazing officer. i think that if dan does implement this idea, then he should use a combination of our ideas.

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=7037

TL;DR
It will be easier to code if it is made simpler.
But regardless, the idea of officers has had many different versions suggested in the past year, so kudos for making an original one.
Two threads I remember: Crew Overhaul Idea and Officers to the Crew