Npcs for hire

[HunZolka]

Does someone know what exactly a station spacialist's actual effect is on a producing station?

I just employed a Cell Engineer on a station that fabricates only energy cells, but the resource consumption and the produced amount/hour as well remained the same. Am I missing something?

[SadMonk]

As far as I have seen, the specialists give a bonus to the station's production modules resulting in more goods being produced/hour.
Their names should be listed under the module details. How big that bonus is depends on their science and engineering skills.
At least, I noticed that the bonus got bigger, once I trained my specialists.

Did the station mission log tell you to get a cell engineer? It might be, that he is used for something different and you need some other kind of specialist for energy cells

[HunZolka]

The station-related mission called for a Cell specialist, and by delivering the guy the mission disappeared, so I guess I employed the right man.

Only his Engineering skill was highlighted, unlike the metallurgical engineer (in their case indeed both science and engineering are important), so I guess only engineering mattered, which I maxed out.

[exogenesis]

After reading those descriptions, it's still entirely unclear to me how a one-star versus a five-star skill actually affects anything. They're all of the form "<crew type> comes in different skill levels. <crew type> performs <jobs>."

But there's nothing anywhere like "One star allows <task>, but <other task> requires two stars," or even "the efficiency of <task> depends on the level of <skill>".

Is there any information of this type known?

Yes.
Essentially stars have no effect on factory specialists.
Every other star type that is highlighted, does.

Engineer is especially easy to see when capping a ship and watching repair times for a 1 or 2 star vs a 4 or 5 star on the same ship.

Pilots, defense officers and captains are very muddled as to how it affects them, using all three skills for all of them.
This makes no sense to me, since defense officers mostly just need combat skills.

Think specialist skills do have effect on production efficiency,
e.g. recently got two Metallurgical Engineers at the same time for two almost completely built Construction shops.

One specialist cost ~300K:
engineering skill 2 stars (science 4) gave product efficiency of +5.6%

the other 600+K:
engineering skill 5 stars (science 5) gave product efficiency of +10%

EDIT: just realised I replied to a 5 month old post