I can vouch for this concept. Communication is the most important part of my ship (Charon is my gunner), and how I judge the competency of a crew. Even someone playing their first match can be turned into a useful crewmember with effective, albeit in that case directive and specific, communication.
i wish more people when trying to communicate the location of the enemy to the captian would consider useing the compass at the top.
certin captians **cough cough captian phoenix** can get their sence of direction mixed up when haveing to focus on more immediate things like combat.
so if someone says 'enemy to the Nw pretty far away' instead of 'enemy behind us on the left sort of' instead of haveing to look about in the general direction to spot the guy, all it would take is a quick glance to the compass on the top of the screen.
I use the compass directions when communicating between ships. My gunner does not care what direction we are heading, so long as he can fire and we're not hitting something. Same with the engineer. I prefer to keep crew commands based on the ship, so I don't have anyone referencing the map or compass just to execute. It adds an extra step. Same thing with clock callouts--'left' and 'right' can be subjective, but the clock is relative to ship heading.