The main concept of a game are the events. Im not speaking about few events durning whole game, Im rather talking about that every piece of this game is based on events.
They defines everything - crew morale, researches, missions, relations with aliens, and relations between crew members. What is most important all disadvantages of events works from the moment it occures, but you dont know about it. To know about it, and also take advantages of that event you need to speak with crew members that it happened to, and make them tell you, So talk, talk, talk and react, because thats what captains should do - talk to his crew instead of hiding in his quaters.
Ill give you example, and by the way ill show a bit of research engine:
For example You want to invent a laser gun. Youre not inventing whole gun, but rather inventing pieces "coil", "energy source", "casing" and "gun electronics". To do not go too deeply -> first is randomized what part will be researched first, than, based on science skill of scientist the time required for research will also be randomized and not known to player, but it still will be a lot of time to make reseach cause sitting and thinking is hard. And here comes event. There is a lot of events connected to those research -> for "energy source" it can be accident in engineroom, that generated a lot of energy, some findings durning a mission, some chemicals researched before or even some other scientist who had no other tasks to do, so he was sitting in a cantine and thinking about coffie express upgrade has an idea of energy source. Those events are shortening research time a lot (dividing left research time by randomized factor) and Player as a captain need to find out that event occured (by talking to his crew) choose if he agree to take this event on consideration durning research, cause some of those events are failure branches. So in case of the laser gun, that engine explosion can be failure branch - it means that if player decide to use this "event" durning research it will speed up the research, and it will look like the gun is ok. You researched it, you manufacture it, and send team with such gun into mission. It seems ok, but after the mission you receive info that this energy source is to strong, and after shooting one of the team member has some injuries, and 20% injury chance is added to this weapon. And again You need to decide if you want still use this weapon with injury chance, or to do more research to make it work better. Events do a lot of stuff same time, f.e. event i wrote about "engine accident" is the same event that lowered technican morale, it also affected the ship etc.
So in few sentences You wanted me to deliver it:
In this game, You wont be only managing a ship, but You will be part of this ship, because its your ship. You will need to speak with te crew, because as good captain you will need to know what happens on the ship, what bothers the crew, and what is needed to make this journey success. You will move from captains desk, and walk on the ship, meet face to face with crew, decide stuff that affects their lives, and whole ship. You will make decisions and manage the ship, but you wont know how your decissions affects the crew, until You will speak with them. Be like Sisco on DS9 or Pickard on Enterprise-D. Know each member of your crew and be their friend. Let them trust you, so they will tell you more, and make your life easier. Or just sit at the captains desk with console, and make it hard and boring way.