Model Junior Officers or Make Officers Spawn In Older

[Borealis4x (OP)]

When I remodeled my officer ranks to start at Ensign and go all the way to Fleet Admiral, I had Ensigns taking command of 100 man 100,000 ton freighters which I don't believe would be possible without some junior officers. As far as I know, Aurora 4x is only meant to model officers at the upper end of the spectrum effectively and considers junior officers just part of the crew. Despite this, all officers spawn in their early 20s. I think it would be more realistic if they were in their mid 30s.

But what I would really like is for Aurora to model ALL officers; that means junior officers as well as seniors. Make it so certain parts like scanners or fire controls require an officer or two to operate. Would be nice for carriers as well as now you can have lower-ranked pilots which is more realistic.

[serger]

Second this.

Steve moves in this way with positions like execs, engineers and tac.officers, and there always was small craft (fighters, recons, VB team couriers) providing natural command positions for junior officers.
Still no option to use it properly, because auto-assignment function cannot separate small craft from light military vessels and large auxiliary ships.

I have proposed to implement race-level and empire-level parameters - racial ages of commission and aged retire, imperial minimal-rank-for-the-bridge-command, minimal-rank-for-the-1000-ton-unit-command and minimal-tour-before-promotion, and to adjust ship models and GF HQ levels accordingly.

If you have to use Ensign, Midshipman, Cadet, Officer Candidate and such ranks - there must be also one more parameter: max-rank-of-probation; if you have Ensigns (Navy) and Cadets (GF) only - you set it to '1', if there are also Midshipmen and some GF probational rank - you set it to '2', if there is no probation rank in your empire - you leave it with '0'.
It have to be so, because officers normally don't stay in these ranks more than year of two, and there are less ensigns in any navy, than there are lieutenants or lieutenant commanders. In Aurora, if you have no such probational-rank parameter - you'll have enormous quantities of 24-34yo ensigns. There also have to be some form of hidden assignments for them - there will be no command assignment, but there will be training assignments.

If you want to use simple pyramidal distribution of officer quantities by the rank, and to have histories of their assignments from the start of their career - lowest rank have to be Lieutenant or even Warrent / Flight Officer, not Ensign or Cadet. Those really are ranks for majority of potential-careered personnel in any tech-saturated armed force. I have used them as fighter pilots and squad commanders in my campaigns, but it's quite a lot of micromanagement now, so I have suggested repeatedly to implement those parameters.

And for those officers (and civillian and scientist admins!), that are spawned at responsible-level straight off - yes, their ages have to be smth like racial-age-of-commission + 2*minimal-tour-before-promotion + random(0..5)*YearLenght.