This was the most eastern archer I found. He's from Cyprus.

I thought from the start that when you train the ship, it should already come with a basic crew.   Let's think of something simple: a modest exploration ship with a couple of warriors and a basic naval commander.

Currently there is only one artificial limitation - silhouettes system. It stores occluders as 16-bits indices to save memory. So we can have at most 65k units with silhouettes enabled. Without it's limited only by hardware as @Stan` said. But the silhouettes system is very easy to improve to not have that limitation.

By searching for Julius Terentius you can find images of artistic recreations. By the third century, this seemed to be the standard.

I think this is too complicated, having to handle that for every ship you have will drive people nuts. Has to be simplified.   Yes, the first would be the base garrisons I've mentioned in the past. That's why I proposed an Athenian Tachunautousa Triērēs with no garrison slots (which could then be considered a "champion" machine) for "embarked combat units", just with crew and officers it would be optimised for its function.   Well the helmsman would be an officer. Along with "global ship statistics", they could fight only if the ship is being boarded (although not all oarsmen need to be killed for that action to be successful), at least that was the initial idea for base garrisons: not to have capture points and weird capture dances any more, but this and virtual combat.   Ranged units being able to inflict damage and casualties on garrisoned units is something I'd like to see. Inflicting damage to the structure they are garrisoning in should be the job of some siege engines (while some would also affect garrisoned units).   I guess you mean, in Greek terminology, trierarch, helmsman, rowing master, and bow officer. Returning to simplification, while these officers could be represented as default units (like are siege operators currently), a simple icon in the unit panel should indicate their presence (as mentioned, you could also have other specialists like a purser for some loot bonus, a shipwright for automatic repair bonus, a piper for an extra mobility bonus, and there were others for larger types). Rowers and the default deck troops (170+24 for the Athenian triḗrēs example) should be indicated just as numbers (the latter also units, but with this amount they are not really designed for boarding, that'd be for the embarked combat units), the first related to mobility, while all add to boarding resistance, that's why it'd be easier to defend than to attack, preventing annoying situations. To take a ship, embarked combat units should kill all defending combat units, and a proportion of rowers to be decided. Then all rowers would redistribute over the ships involved (there are reports that ships would have less than 1/3 of recently captured rowers, to avoid rebellions), incurring then in a mobility penalty to the winner, preventing snowballing.   Depending on the nature of the loss. For a takeover, all combat units would be killed (maybe some captured, this related to the slavery discussion, or to have some valuable prisoner, like a Hero), but it could be that the action is becoming too costly (although rowers would be weak, they would defend themselves, virtually) and the action has to be aborted. All in all, things would end behaving similar to naval combat in Shogun 2 TW.   These should come from facts from the period (not the usual "equip random @#$%" when there's a lack of historical knowledge, which cheapens the game). I've mentioned in Thoughts on the Athenians things like epotides, parablemata or cataphracts, but some of these basically already come with certain civs or ship types.   Not the ship, that would be unrealistic and snowbally. And the taken rowers won't be very happy, so their experience could actually be reset, and one could assume they get diluted with time with actually loyal rowers. Capturing a good type of ship (maybe some even the civ doesn't have) would be the reward in itself.   Sure, it should come from the actual virtual combat.   The option of doing all this but in the end not capturing the ship (thus no rower redistribution, but killing all of them) should also be possible.   Back to specialists, for the Rhodian Four I mentioned you would additionally have a masseur and a doctor, which could provide a bonus on health regeneration. The "repair mechanic" is the shipwright. I proposed in Thoughts on the Spartans to replace the Shipwright tech with Shipsheds, since they were more seriously built at this time, while shipwrights come from way before, while for all this stuff it makes more sense to "equip" them (again, techs shouldn't be like that, but actual developments from the period).   Sure, everything would be properly regenerated close to a port, while at sea a very small regeneration could come from the bonuses associated with each specialist. For example, actual numbers (of rowers, etc) could slowly regenerate if the trierarch is present (he's the one hiring people, so losing him would be a blow), also because one can assume that naval activity is more than what's being explicitly represented.   This should slowly evolve, starting from the less ambitious. Boarding details are not that necessary for tactics, but different kinds of ships with distinct roles, already developed in Thoughts on the Athenians based mainly in Morrison's book (and others, of course). In fact, all that system had in mind the implementation of boarding as it's being discussed right now.