Read Harrington serries quite recently. I do think some
- Astrogators could be used to... lessen the energy cells consumption when jumping.
Weapon tech or weapons officer could influence attack speed, weapon range, more accuracy of automatic defence (especially A/B-PBE during anti-fighter deffence)
One could use Bosun or Executive officer to improove the total efficiency of the crew...
Still don't have a clue if one could make
- intelligence oficer (improove scanner range to cover all sector???),
Electronic warfare officer (slight/good chance of enemy ships loosing lock on your ship for couple of secconds),
supplies officer
comm officer
landing bay commander
wing commander (improove total efficiency of deployed fighters [m1])
flight crews (experienced/noob m5-m4-m3 fighter pilots)
and couple of others work ingame..
Of cource to MAke the bosun and EXEC effective, you should, firsthandedly divide the crews to:
The professions you have now would mostly be the officers, have their own departments, shich would consist of rookie->experienced enlisted men.
Officers should depend on the EXEC, which would influence their total perfomance. (bonus to ship)
Officers themselves should give bonus to ship and influence their departments (e.g. only training speed)
The bosun on the other hand, would be the direct representative of god for the enlisted, and influence their BONUS for the ship.
Enlisted would be 'trained on the fly'. It means you take the rookies on board and the better officers you have, the faster exp they gain.
The bonus of the enlisted should be like... +1/2 to +4/5 that of the head of the department they belong to, depending on the number and free slots in that department. E.g. you can put 40 enlisted to engineering (like repairing and maintaining ship). you put one uber-experienced non-com in there and he gives you +1/2 of his superiors exp. But if you put 40 experienced men in there, you'll get 4/5 of bonuses, or even more.
So, as you see, if applied and handled properly, this crew stuff will make it to the X4.
Hope any of these ideas could be implemented. At least understood first.