Intuitively, I think players expect a decoy to "look like" the ship it's decoying from, i.e., to have the same signature. I can see why the actual mechanic is different, as its more flexible and less micromanage-y than requiring exact size matching (plus avoid issues with ship sizes that aren't nice, round numbers), but the fact that an infinite swarm of size-5 decoys is arguably optimal (same performance and cost as any other option, maximum flexibility) seems to eliminate what could/should be a gameplay decision point.

I don't agree smaller decoys are always optimal. For when your facing negligable missile threats smaller sized decoys mean ships with standard settings will always launch some decoys even against tricklefire from AMMs that your PD or Shields can shrug off which adds cost (or alot micro if you want to turn it off situationally).

For larger decoys it's much easier to have a sensible cut-off setting so that for negligable threats with fewer incoming MSP then 0 decoys will be launched, while still ensuring all decoys will be launched against that deadly alpha strike.

Can player races resurvey a system if they suspect a dormant jump point?

I assumed you had to wait until you could have a sensor detect another race's ship transit through the suspected dormant jump point.

Yes, it was added a while ago, although you were always able to manually resurvey a specific location, IIRC.

Do you mean literally resurveying jump points

This one.

Can player races resurvey a system if they suspect a dormant jump point?

I assumed you had to wait until you could have a sensor detect another race's ship transit through the suspected dormant jump point.

I dont really think "for the sake of" can apply when it comes to a role playing game though. If you get me? Like why is the Story character check box there? Its to build stories around Officers, I personally get great enjoyment out of seeing the histories and it adds so much to the RP side, but even gameplay wise when you start out you have loads of officers with nowhere to go. so over time they die or retire and before you know it around early/mid game you are left with nobody in any senior positions. Yes you can promote but the lack of history messes with the RP. Maybe its my playstyle I play at 20% tech with no starting ships because i enjoy the slow burn and other players might build loads of ships with the starting points and give them a good head start. I dont like that though I want to crawl out of the starting system.

Senior officers dying off vaguely sounds like a problem from older versions of the game?.. Now you're able to create extensive naval hierarchies on day 1 and always have as many high-ranked officers as you desire, as the game will auto-promote to fill any vacancy. I understand your desire to have many officers before you have a large navy though, and that's why I like the miscellaneous command component solution, as it allows that option without encumbering any beginner player with a plethora of seemingly relevant officer positions that actually do nothing. Either that, or a game setting for additional positions would work just fine.

Ground forces are a bit more difficult in that regard, you either need small baseline formations, smaller amount of formations below each higher level HQ or a damned lot of GFCCs if you want to get your hierarchies close to top rank, but like large and detailed naval rosters, it also takes time. Ultimately I think there's plenty of RP possibilities in the game already, and while I'd love to see a few extra steps in my Grand Admiral's brilliant career as he rose through the ranks since enlisting as a chief cook on the SS Rustbucket, if I had to choose, I'd prefer getting more officer positions through functional modules that benefit the gameplay as well.

I don't think adding officers for the sake of adding officers is a good idea if they're not functional, that'd just result in unnecessary bloat and make your roster harder to navigate. All the lower officer positions are abstracted with unnamed NCOs anyway and it'd be weird to have named officers occupy and leave them as they please (i.e. whenever a new assignment for them is created) without any impact on ship performance whatsoever. I like detailed assignment histories myself but they tend to happen naturally as your game grows older, mine currently has ~2700 naval officers, many of which have served on 4 or 5 different ships during their careers.

Player-designed command components sound interesting, and I think it'd be nice to have an option to have miscellaneous officers with your miscellaneous components, however making them actually apply their bonuses would be a natural next step, and I'm not sure how easy would that be code-wise, or balance-wise (let's say their efficacy would depend on component size, would we use the 1 HS AUX or the 4 HS PFC as a baseline?). So I think miscellaneous command posts would make for a fine roleplaying addition, but the actual, functional command modules are best left as dedicated, researchable components.

I dont really think "for the sake of" can apply when it comes to a role playing game though. If you get me? Like why is the Story character check box there? Its to build stories around Officers, I personally get great enjoyment out of seeing the histories and it adds so much to the RP side, but even gameplay wise when you start out you have loads of officers with nowhere to go. so over time they die or retire and before you know it around early/mid game you are left with nobody in any senior positions. Yes you can promote but the lack of history messes with the RP. Maybe its my playstyle I play at 20% tech with no starting ships because i enjoy the slow burn and other players might build loads of ships with the starting points and give them a good head start. I dont like that though I want to crawl out of the starting system.

I have managed to sort of fix my Navy officers issue by simply adding all the available modules into my ships designs. This is inefficient I know but its working for me. I also create detailed command hierachies which helps. I have the same problem with the Ground officers to and I still need to get better with ground forces but i havnt had full game since the ground force templates was added. So this might be solved already because i can template loads of training regiments or construction regiments early on, but I was enjoying my current game to much when it came out so i never ended up starting a new one. 

Like It would be cool if their bonuses applied in some way but all I was saying that if it would cause balancing issues id be happy to see them not in other to see the suggestion happen.

The suggestion is also really just RP for me. I want more places so i dont have to put unnessary modules in my ships and by just playing the game you get a steady stream of officer promotions that keep up with an average paced gamestyle and I suppose i dont really see the need to stack more bonuses on ships when there are already so many ways to add them through the Navy command tab.

To come at it from the other side I wonder if there is a risk to having to many promotions happen and so your left with nobody in the middle ha
I like the Mis component idea also. You could use it to create officer training fleets also basically just bricks with loads of officer positions. ha