Capital ship crew; hire officers, maintence crew;

[DazaKiwi]

This could be like any management game where they have stats, maybe some negative traits that can affect ship morale? even hire gunners for their experience and skill which gives the ship + accuracy for defense etc. Morale can affect these stats if the ship doesnt get fully repaired and also if the ship is too often in combat can damage morale too. Good maintence crew get the ship repaired quicker. But perhaps higher upkeep cost.

Ongoing space battles could have chance of some crew losing their lives? or wounded. I could imagine having to build sickbays which on a stat screen could show if they are full or not and even list crew members names (even though you wont actually see them there or existing). I think you could do a lot of mangement via screens. This could be optional though. I know NMS is primary a exploration game, and im not expecting a fully fleshed out be your own Captain and spend 90% of your time in the ship. But having some lite management features to give players immersion and taking a break from doing away missions, exploring. A science lab could work on rare objects you find to come up with new tech from it.

I would love to see NPC walking about the ship as they go from shift to their rooms or if not that deep just have random walking routines. Even if some are standing at wall screen terminals pretending to do work and some leave and later return etc. This would be ambience and immersion features.