In my prior game, I had 30 or 40 R1 officers and about 12 R2 officers. All of my ships needed R2 minimum. This led to the computer dismissing a lot of promising R1 from service, and since they never got promoted to R2, due to my empire not issuing promotions for "Sitting on your ass", I had many ships with no R2 assigned commanders and no way to get the R1s to do anything to get promoted.
What obvious trick am I missing?
How do I build ships for R1s to command?