Staff Officer Skill Increases/Education Options

[Paul M (OP)]

One thing that would be rather nice to see is an increased chance that a staff officer gains skill in the job they are doing.  This would make the position somewhat more useful, and also allow you to use the to make otherwise not so valuable officers at least somewhat more valuable.  I would suggest a something like (15-Current_skill) is added to the chance that the officer gains experience if their skill is <15.  Or a straightforward gain of 5% per year so long as the skill is <15%.

It would also be interesting to have a staff and command college/school which you could build and then send officers to that would give chances to gain additional skills.  Staff college would give them a chance to gain: operations, logistics, etc skills while Command college would give chances to improve initiative, training, and operations skill.

I would tied the schools to rank so you need R3 to go to the schools and you could only attend once.  Attending the school would also take 1 year.

It would also be interesting if you could appoint officers of R3 and up to teach at the regular academy.  This would give an increased chance that their skills are boosted for graduates.  The degree of the boost depending both on the skill in question and on the officers skill.  For example a officer teaching at the academy with a training over 100 would give a chance of 10% that a graduate starts with the ship training skill +25.  While an instructor with logistics 10% would have a chance of 25% of adding logistics at +5% to any graduate.  This might be too unbalanced though and possibly not really necessary.   

[Bgreman]

Having highly skilled officers be able to teach at the Academies in order to improve the crew grade of the CJO pool (though not as much as increasing the racian training level), as well as increasing the odds of new officers coming out with higher bonuses, would be something I'd strongly support.

[wobbly]

To a degree you can currently fake this by forming dummy task forces. Create a Task Force, name it Training TF, stick a R3 or above in charge & it will train the "staff" officers & Task Force commander in the skills related to each office.

[Aloriel]

That's actually what I do. I have no shortage of officers with +60% in one dominant skill because of this.

Typically, to maximize this, I will try to find a young (<25) officer with a higher bonus than others of his/her age. Preferably also at R1 rank. By the time they reach captain, they've got a +60%, and the commandant has 300+ crew training rating.

I call my task force: Sol Academy Administration. This way, it's as if they're just the administrators of the academy.

[Shipright]

This was sort of similar to my academy idea where you use officers officers/scientists/administrators to ungrateful an academy's ability to produce more or better quality leaders in specific fields.

This would be a good idea, but I would want it added to the auto assign function to cut down on micro management if you so which. Make it so officers go automatically upon promotion to a certain level.

There is no reason you couldn't expqnd this idea to other types of leaders, having power and propulsion scientists able to soend a year at an " advanced propulsion lab" for instance.

The more civilian infrastructure the better!

[Theodidactus]

or civilian or scientific leaders form corporations.