A few of my suggestions...

First and foremost, I suggest you NOT to take anything we suggest too seriously. You know, 'designed by a comitee' always stands for something bad and uninspired, heh. You game is quite interesting, and originality is one of its strong points... of course similar games exist, but certainly not many.

However, just in case you found something we suggest something you always wanted to do anyway, just never thought about it properly before... ;)

First, have you seen the game Space Rangers? If you didn't, I suggest you take a look, and pay expecially close attention to 'text quest subgames'. (not just minigames - some of them are long and intricate enough to be called just that... unfortunately, two of the best and longest were cut in English version, or so I've heard... I've played Russian one)

Expansion features a mode where you take on text quests independently - and should be a very good choice... provided it is avalable in English.

Introducing something similar in your game would fit with the general idea of the game perfectly, your writing skills will ensure that they will be interesting, and such 'subgames' would make excellent expansion pack content... since, admiteddly, they are not THAT easy to make right, even given their textual nature.

In fact, your game already have very similar elements, but expanding it simiar to SR would have great potential, or so I think. Making those quests nonlinear based on your choices and avalablity of items from different encounters would add to replayablity value greatly (and your game lives and dies by this value).

An other minor suggestion - add different personality profiles to crew members of different occupations. For instance, one with high gunnery skill should, in theory, acutally be disappointed by your refusal to take out a space ship your've been asked to destroy, etc.
Perhaps some of it is already in place, but I didn't notice.