So, the crew grade bonus does not apply to whatever task your ship is doing? So, for a freighter it's better to have 20% bonus Logistics commander and -10% crew rating bonus, than 15% bonus Logistics commander and +10% crew rating bonus?
I'm pretty sure crew rating applies to load/unload times, actually.
I don't think this is the case, but do not know for sure. I base this on three observations:
1) The following (very old) rules post describing what crew rating
does apply to:
viewtopic.php?f=13&t=227 . I know that this post is somewhat out of date, since crew grade also affects how rapidly a ship's TF training level goes up, but TF training was added after this post while load/unload has been around forever and I don't , plus....
2) There's a separate bonus for loading/unload - the "logistics bonus". This is aimed directly at load/unload, and takes effect through the TF mechanism.
3) The crew grade bonus applies to individual ships, and therefore doesn't make sense for modifying load/unload times. The reason for this is that load/unload happens at the TG level, not at the ship level, and so applying and/or averaging individual bonuses would create a coding nightmare (ok, maybe just a mildly disturbing dream) for very little gameplay gain. In the past, it's been suggested that a ship's captain's logistic bonus affect load/unload time, and Steve never implemented the suggestion (to the best of my knowledge) - if he had the code already in place for grade to affect load/unload, then it would have been easy and logical for him to make the change for captain's logistics bonus.
As for crew grade affecting the time required for everything the ship does, I don't think this is the philosophy behind the rating. I think it's more in line with the crew's effectiveness in military operations.
Of course I could be wrong - I've not done the experiment
John