[Makinus]

But beyond firing, would it be able to add abilities to the ship itself? Like combat modifiers, maybe regeneration capabilities, and so on?

My idea is to create (mod) a "captain/engineer/specialist" unit that would be carried in a ship and add abilities that increase the combat capability (and maybe other characteristics) of a ship...

So you could have captains, enginners and specialists that could be "trained" in planets without spaceyards that would make your ships more useful...

No idea how to make the AI use them though...

BTW: i´m only with the Demo so far, so i can´t test anything about this in the full game yet...