[Aerosol]

How about officers? Maybe a facility that would be one or two units per empire that would be like a service academy that would be upgradable to produce leaders that give bonuses and drawbacks in combat. Wouldnt need to generate a whole lot because it could be limited to ship captains only. That way you could assign leaders to ships according to where you know they are going and what capabilities they will need (so you could assign inexperienced low-rated guys to explorer ships or something like that and give big capital ships to your highest rated guys etc.) Maybe the same idea for marines and fighter squadrons..