Struggling with Hard mode.

[Phineas Elloway]

I know who I want my captain to be but I struggle to get him very far.
I like Exploring, Salvaging, Spying and patrolling. I generally avoid ship battles, avoiding faction warfare but In the end I want to be hunting xenos defeating bounty hunters sent after me. The honest battles... I like to follow the Faen quests up until you have to pick sides but generally go with valencia. Mainly in the hope she will pop up again in future updates. I felt that out weighed the benefits you may get with the others which rarely stood out. I also like doing the de Rivesh and Gladiator tournament as well as a lot of the side quests with More than monetary reward. I need to defeate xeno, smuggle rewards from exploring, be good at patrolling spying for Faen quests and be able to fight the odd Pirate and xeno I used to play a fighting captain. With a combat crew laid out.

CM/Dr/Mil
Exo/BH/XH
Swd/WC/BG
Swd/Zealot/BD Captain

The problem was when I had a really good Fighting team sometimes my ship ops would fall apart. I would have a space incident get loads of injurys and a mass moral wipe of the crew and I would lose skilled crew. Also xeno would wipe me even with a half equipped titan.

I have been considering a non combat captain CMD/MO/Exp.

A 30 wiz 30chr rest in resiliance
B 10 Tactics 3 Cmd 2Ex
C Galtak or Vindex
D Fixer Politician
E CMD
Faction usually SS for initiative perks, I like Cader for some reason but should try out others.

Effectively I want to help The Faens and keep the opposing side happy through spying and patrol.

Help for the coalition

Help in the plauge

Defeat Xeno its usually here I die in space combat even with well fitted titan.

I need help forming this. I usually upgrade by the end of the coalition and use that while I upgrade a titan, usually during plague.

I like my titan to dominate from a distance. I get lost in whether I should be using DPM Pilot or nav modules or using other more interesting bonus based attachments.
As for crew I aim for 200% but how many MOs or Cmd should you have

Any ideas where I maybe going wrong

[dragonspear]

The solution for keeping your crew from falling apart during space travel is saving talents among the crew. Make sure you have at least two save if you fail among ships ops, try to keep or hire a quartermaster (or similar) to get the talent to prevent desertions (it's worth it). And saves for all skill checks you can. It is possible to keep saves and have a good combat crew. That should help.

[brentaur]

Agreed. Skill saves (esp. Ship Ops) and the talents that prevent desertion are big. You can reduce the risk of sudden morale drops by avoiding sectors with high danger ratings (I believe you can check this in the atlas) and by using engines with higher safety ratings. I found that just slowing down my playstyle helped a bunch. Take the time to read things, look at numbers, and consider little decisions more (if this were my real ship and crew, I'd be a lot more cautious about, well, everything).

As for surviving xeno ship encounters, moar Command seems to be the way to go. Only the first 100% of dice pools are used in combat, the extra helps with the skill rolls when travelling, etc. Command is not limited by ship components, though, so the sky's the limit. More experienced players than I seem to favor using many MO crew to pump Command as high as possible. Nav components will help most with escaping and long range ship combat (as opposed to +pilot ones), but anything that boosts defense or range change are good also.

In crew combat high initiative is king. I would try a non-combat captain if you can get good stat cc crew. Your mix looks good, though I recommend an alternate to your XH for fights with humans. Removing enemy buffs and preventing/removing debuffs is very important against xeno. A really good melee fighter also does well against xeno. Check out the STF Discord channel for a ton of specific advice from the real experts. As a final bit of advice, I've learned a lot by playing on custom (non-permadeath) difficulty with the others settings set like they are for hard or above. The combat snd environmental challenges are just as hard, but you don't necessarily have to start all over every time you make a mistake/get unlucky. You can always go back to true Hard once you feel a bit more comfortable with it. Good hunting!