Research and Other Divisions

[Got_Donuts]

It would be cool to have different divisions of people to fall into different roles of the ship, along with researching different technologies or even improving current ones.
Science folk could research, or provide enhancements to tech items (maybe faster shield recharge, lowering weapon energy use, ect).
Engineering folk could repair, build or upgrade devices.
Warfare folk could scan systems for hostiles, increase evasion to attacks, or even faster shots from mechanical weapons (projectile or even missiles)

[Produno]

We do kind of have roles that you can apply to crew members. Though this is more for the player to keep things organised and to quickly see who they have for what.
Other than that we have skills which will dictate how good a certain pawn is at something, then when paired with an object, say the navigation panel, it will increase various different things - or decrease if they suck at it

[TikTokToe]

So roles do not = skills; a role is simply assigned because a pawn has desirable skills for certain tasks/roles?   

If I get it, skills are then associated with typical roles?  For example quartermaster skills might include:

Efficient Packing (increases amount of cargo; increases viability
of cargo (e.g., preserving ice):

Efficient Loading (decreases the amount of damage from poorly packed cargo due hull breach, attack, and so on).

And a pawn can be assigned the role quartermaster because it has such skills compared to other available pawns.

If so - great!

[Produno]

So roles do not = skills; a role is simply assigned because a pawn has desirable skills for certain tasks/roles?   

If I get it, skills are then associated with typical roles?  For example quartermaster skills might include:

Efficient Packing (increases amount of cargo; increases viability
of cargo (e.g., preserving ice):

Efficient Loading (decreases the amount of damage from poorly packed cargo due hull breach, attack, and so on).

And a pawn can be assigned the role quartermaster because it has such skills compared to other available pawns.

If so - great!

Yes, exactly! You will want to assign pawns most suited to these roles for optimum output. For example, you may want a pawn with a high social skill to be a quartermaster, this way pawns are more likely to like them and morale may be higher. Maybe pawn traits may play a role in this too.

For now though this will only be viable for hard coded roles. The player made roles are just to keep your crew organised. For instance you can create an 'Engineering' role and assign your engineers to that role to quickly see who can repair or build things.