Medals

[Rich.h (OP)]

I have started to make more use of medals in my current game, but am somewhat lost on how to get the best use out of them. I know they each hold a promotion score, but how does that work? do the holders gain that much each year/tour/month? Also when using the realistic promotions how much do folks tend to assign to their medal promotion scores?

[xeryon]

The promotion number you assign to it will add to their promotion score one time and will allow that person to be promoted (more quickly) above other people when openings exist.  It is useful for pure RP purposes as you can assign no promotion value to it, or you can use it to strategically advance promising officers up the ranks more quickly than they otherwise might advance.

[Paul M]

I have only minted the one medal and I can't recall what I gave as a value exactly +50 to +100 (in that range).  I have seen that it certainly seemed to help but still the officer unless they are the recipient of many medals won't advance that much faster.  In principle, a better way to advance promising officers is to clean house regularily.  I use the following retirement criteria for the NCN:
Lt. Cmdr:  Age: 50, Health: anything lower than good
Cmdr: Age: 55, Health: anything lower than good
Cpt (or higher): Age: 60 Health: anything lower than fair

This tends to keep my officer corps moving upwards effieciently without letting a bunch of old wood accumulate at the top.  I apply the same thing to the ground forces but retire civil servents and scientists at 65.

I think the youngest Captain in the NCN is between 25-32.  That was an extremely fast tracking.

In general a +100 to +300 value for a major medal, so set your Victoria Cross value and then go down from there basically.  If you say ok "anyone who gets this medal should get promoted" then you want a value of +500 to +1000, again and scale proportionally downward from there.

[Barkhorn]

Do medals boost an officer's promotion score repeatedly, or is it only for one promotion?

By this I mean, if I give an officer a medal, will the medal continue to improve his score over the course of multiple promotions?

[Bryan Swartz]

The promotion number you assign to it will add to their promotion score one time

[xeryon]

The number is a static number.  There are things that change it but the number doesn't change when someone is promoted.  The number just determines where someones promotions will take them.