The use of NPC ships as battlegroups in missions would be really interesting from a coordination standpoint. I remember somewhere someone mentioned having a dedicated comms officer to coordinate NPC ship orders, and I think having that officer separate from normal scicomms operations, probably on the flagship, could be really useful. Especially since we do have a few experienced Comms officers like Mundy who would be perfectly capable of it.
My next thought is should NPC ships be their own battlegroups, overseen by the NPC Command officer (the dedicated comms officer) or should a couple of NPC ships be assigned to each main ship? Having NPC battlegroups would make it easier for one officer to coordinate them, while assigning one or two ships to each main ship would be more the responsibility of each ship’s comms officer. That would make it more difficult for the comms officer to get surrenders and even more difficult to do science stuff if the comms officer was also on science.
Anyways, that’s just me brain dumping.