Aurora 4x
C# Aurora => Development Discussions => Topic started by: Lazerus on February 24, 2018, 04:00:01 PM
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I'd like to suggest some changes to officer generation given the upcoming changes to officers and the additions of extra billets
While you've said that you want to limit the availability of senior officers to try and keep the amount of full officer crews low in most ships, and that would likely work to a degree, I'd like to make another suggestion based upon what I see as the real sticking point; that being that officers START at LTC, which is the naval equivalent of major in the army. However, with the introduction of all of those division heads on board a single ship, it is highly unlikely an officer that highly ranked would be heading all of those divisions, extremely so on smaller vessels or non-combat vessels. For example, the ChEng on most non-cruiser vessels would likely be a Lieutenant or a VERY junior LTC, and the TAO definitely would, or perhaps even a senior LTJG, as an example.
I would like to suggest adding in Lieutenants to the naval rank system as the rank at which officers spawn, as they are far more likely to be filling most billets that aren't XO on most ships, and would likely be the XO many smaller vessels. I feel this would also help with maintaining officer scarcity(which appears to be a goal of yours, Steve), as there would be yet another level of promotions needed to reach higher ranks.
This may require some rejiggering to the military academy spawn rates, however, or a change in the promotion metrics for officers so that it isn't a pure 1:3:9:27:etc ratio for all naval officers. One other suggestion I'd like to make, if you do introduce these changes, is that, if it is feasible, would be to reduce the amount of experience gain for lower ranking officers so that they don't become absolute monsters by the time they hit commodore or flag rank.
I feel this would also be more realistic for fighters, for example, as you'd probably see LTJGs or LTs in command of them, instead of LTCs or higher. LTs would also be more likely to be staffing actual staff positions in administrative roles along with LTCs, meaning that you would be able to compensate for the lower level of LTCs by employing more LTs in staff positions.
As an example, using the future rules and my own (near endgame tech) level DesRon, all vessels in said squadron are 12000 tons, and would likely have all relevant officer slots open (XO, CHENG, TAO). The problem being, though, that these are still Destroyers, and the smallest ships I deploy in a main combat role. They aren't commanded by Captains, but Commanders or Lieutenant Commanders. Under the revised rules, I wouldn't be able to fill those billets without inflating the ranks of my ship commanders, unless LTs were added or I built a whole bunch of academies to flood officers who would never be assigned anywhere to make up numbers, because I don't have a giant navy overall, and those senior officers are used in staff positions or commanding much larger vessels, which I find completely unintuitive and not quite in line with Aurora.
On the other hand, if you do want to keep officers solely at the "senior" level of LTCs and higher, then perhaps instead of requiring officers in all billets for all ships, have some kind of graduated size cutoff or checkbox for those modules, where instead of a named officer, a junior officer is the one in the position, with a flat (and low) bonus that never improves, unlike an actual named officer, or just go with directly tweaking the promotion algorithm to keep flag officers rare but increase the numbers of mid-level senior officers.
Another option, depending on the variables involved, as well, another but more complicated idea I had was that only the "promising" LTs would be available for actual assignments, instead of all of the LTs in the empire, but I'm not sure how well the code could handle only "promoting" the special LTs into existence for assigning to things rather than all LTs as the new bottom rank, with them being promoted to LTC independent of the normal promotion rules.
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In C# Aurora, You can add as many commander ranks as desired, assign them whatever names you like and specify which rank will command each ship class. The junior officer roles are based on one or two steps below the command rank.
You should be able to handle most of what you describe.
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Well that answers one of my concerns, however I was also wondering about others.
I'm concerned about new officer generation rate and promotion metrics. If it stays, for example, the same current 3 gets 1 promoted metric as it is now, and you have even one more rank, to get a single top rank officer you'd need something in the neighborhood of 2200 of the lowest ranked officer, and it only gets worse from there.
Would it be possible to tweak the promotion metrics? Or officer generation rate? I some concerns about the overall officer numbers in relation to where you'd actually need officers, for example. Or would you just need to build that many more academies and let attrition take it's course? Or would you be able to change the ratio of officers promoted?
I also have questions about what can and can't be tracked for officers. Can time-in-grade be tracked, for example? While it isn't common, it is known to have a skipper and XO of the same rank, especially if the XO is promoted during his time on ship. If time-in-grade can be tracked, then it could allow for such things to happen, instead of immediately booting a good officer from a place you want him to stay for some time. I'm not even sure if exceptions like that could be added, however, but I did want to ask about it. It would also allow, for example, for a flag officer leading a fleet from a flag bridge to be subordinate to an officer in the admin command in charge of the fleet if they're the same rank, but the admin officer is more senior.
The reason I ask these questions is because, using again my current game as an example of what I would likely try to do, my current 1st Battle Fleet ( https://pastebin. com/1ByddQxD ) would need (Assuming 8 ranks in existence, with LT slotting under LTC)
1 Vice Admiral
4-5 Rear Admiral
4-5 Commodores
19 Captains
126 Commanders
129 Lieutenant Commanders
318 Lieutenants
As you can see, with the need for a full Admiral on top of this at the original admin command level, I'd need to somehow generate 2200 LTs, and even then, the rank distribution for any combat force that doesn't get wonky with assignments will by necessity either be short mid-level officers like commanders or captains (depending on assignment level), or have to deal with so many officers being generated a turn that it becomes a nuisance. And this only covers my first combat fleet, and not the second, as well as the other fleets which require far different officer amounts with different rank requirements, for example, my survey fleet, or my specialist fleet for oddball things like boarding or dropships and the like. And this is also not adding commercial ships into the mix (Although they would almost all be LTs and LTCs, so not as bad a problem)
I'm not sure what can be done about this in terms of player options or backend work, however, but I did want to bring it up as I can see a good idea behind the reformation of the current fleet/TF system, as well as a new way to use officers.
One other idea I think might help with ensuring there's enough lower ranks around would be to keep staff positions for admin commands, staffed by non-flag officers that would allow for, when fully staffed by officers with the correct bonus, some manner of extra benefit, such as an extra system of HQ coverage or some increase in the CO's effective stats?
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Academy commanders will change the distribution of trained special character types (civilian admin commanded academies will be more likely to generate civilian administrators for example), and the Academy commander's skill impacts the general skill distribution as well.
As most characters generated by an Academy are naval officers anyway putting a naval officer as head of an Academy will not have a major impact beyond expected skill distributions.
The ability to define promotion ratios would be nice, as would the ability to define how many officers you want at minimum at a certain rank. Promotion ratios would be more useful though.
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Academy commanders will change the distribution of trained special character types (civilian admin commanded academies will be more likely to generate civilian administrators for example), and the Academy commander's skill impacts the general skill distribution as well.
As most characters generated by an Academy are naval officers anyway putting a naval officer as head of an Academy will not have a major impact beyond expected skill distributions.
The ability to define promotion ratios would be nice, as would the ability to define how many officers you want at minimum at a certain rank. Promotion ratios would be more useful though.
While I agree that commandants would be useful, that doesn't fix the expected problems vis a vis admin command layout, overall senior officers needed, or the sheer number of officers you'd need to fill those slots that WILL be in short supply unless you build a LOT of academies and slow down the game by forcing it to get a few hundred or a couple thousand officers per year.
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Well that answers one of my concerns, however I was also wondering about others.
I'm concerned about new officer generation rate and promotion metrics. If it stays, for example, the same current 3 gets 1 promoted metric as it is now, and you have even one more rank, to get a single top rank officer you'd need something in the neighborhood of 2200 of the lowest ranked officer, and it only gets worse from there.
Would it be possible to tweak the promotion metrics? Or officer generation rate? I some concerns about the overall officer numbers in relation to where you'd actually need officers, for example. Or would you just need to build that many more academies and let attrition take it's course? Or would you be able to change the ratio of officers promoted?
I also have questions about what can and can't be tracked for officers. Can time-in-grade be tracked, for example? While it isn't common, it is known to have a skipper and XO of the same rank, especially if the XO is promoted during his time on ship. If time-in-grade can be tracked, then it could allow for such things to happen, instead of immediately booting a good officer from a place you want him to stay for some time. I'm not even sure if exceptions like that could be added, however, but I did want to ask about it. It would also allow, for example, for a flag officer leading a fleet from a flag bridge to be subordinate to an officer in the admin command in charge of the fleet if they're the same rank, but the admin officer is more senior.
The reason I ask these questions is because, using again my current game as an example of what I would likely try to do, my current 1st Battle Fleet ( https://pastebin. com/1ByddQxD ) would need (Assuming 8 ranks in existence, with LT slotting under LTC)
1 Vice Admiral
4-5 Rear Admiral
4-5 Commodores
19 Captains
126 Commanders
129 Lieutenant Commanders
318 Lieutenants
As you can see, with the need for a full Admiral on top of this at the original admin command level, I'd need to somehow generate 2200 LTs, and even then, the rank distribution for any combat force that doesn't get wonky with assignments will by necessity either be short mid-level officers like commanders or captains (depending on assignment level), or have to deal with so many officers being generated a turn that it becomes a nuisance. And this only covers my first combat fleet, and not the second, as well as the other fleets which require far different officer amounts with different rank requirements, for example, my survey fleet, or my specialist fleet for oddball things like boarding or dropships and the like. And this is also not adding commercial ships into the mix (Although they would almost all be LTs and LTCs, so not as bad a problem)
I'm not sure what can be done about this in terms of player options or backend work, however, but I did want to bring it up as I can see a good idea behind the reformation of the current fleet/TF system, as well as a new way to use officers.
One other idea I think might help with ensuring there's enough lower ranks around would be to keep staff positions for admin commands, staffed by non-flag officers that would allow for, when fully staffed by officers with the correct bonus, some manner of extra benefit, such as an extra system of HQ coverage or some increase in the CO's effective stats?
Here are the actual numbers of US Navy ranks for the last three years. There are about 2100 Lieutenants per Admiral. However, it is interesting that from Lieutenant upwards, each rank is about half of the previous one, except there is a massive drop off after captain. With Aurora it is much more smoothed out, although the top and bottom distributions are similar.
I could modify Aurora to be more on these lines, but that would require the player to designate which is the first flag rank. Maybe I just change to a smaller rank divisor, such as 2.5 or 2.0. While I could add something to allow changing the rank divisor manually, I still need a reasonable default. Although having said that, I still don't have a good idea how the commander assignments with look with all the new junior officer positions and naval admin command positions. I need to run a test game to see how they look in a real situation.
I would prefer not to use time in grade. Aurora does track that already as part of the promotion mechanic, but it would get complex around designating ranks for each role, when that is very clear at the moment in C# Aurora.
(http://www.pentarch.org/steve/Screenshots/USNavyRanks.PNG)
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Thanks for the update, Steve.
I'm looking forward to seeing how the test works out. I definitely think there will need to be a tweak to promotion rates, but I don't have any way of testing it in C# aurora and I know my usual games and organization isn't the norm from what I can tell.
Sorry to hear that the time-in-grade thing won't be that useful though, I thought that would be an excellent way of keeping some commands or ship complements together when promotions happen, or to keep flag officers in line by arranging them via seniority.
Another couple questions I have that I didn't notice an answer to have popped up in my mind though.
With regards to fleet flag officers and admin commands, would the flag officer have to be a full grade lower than the admin officer, or would they be able to be equal rank?
As well, I know that you intend to have ship commanders only apply half their bonuses to crew on their own. How will this apply to commercial ships? Will the commercial related bonuses like minings and factory production apply at full or will there be sub-modules and officer slots open for those as well?
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Another couple questions I have that I didn't notice an answer to have popped up in my mind though.
With regards to fleet flag officers and admin commands, would the flag officer have to be a full grade lower than the admin officer, or would they be able to be equal rank?
As well, I know that you intend to have ship commanders only apply half their bonuses to crew on their own. How will this apply to commercial ships? Will the commercial related bonuses like minings and factory production apply at full or will there be sub-modules and officer slots open for those as well?
Below is the rules post for naval admin commands. Each one is commanded by a naval officer. The rank required for the admin command is based on the ships assigned to that command, rather than the reverse.
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg103849#msg103849
Ship commanders will still apply their full bonus for anything that isn't covered by the new command and control modules (so everything except Crew Training, Survey, Fighter Operations, Engineering and Tactical).
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg101818#msg101818
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Below is the rules post for naval admin commands. Each one is commanded by a naval officer. The rank required for the admin command is based on the ships assigned to that command, rather than the reverse.
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg103849#msg103849
Ship commanders will still apply their full bonus for anything that isn't covered by the new command and control modules (so everything except Crew Training, Survey, Fighter Operations, Engineering and Tactical).
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg101818#msg101818
I believe that the OP was asking about this part:
This isn't as easy to achieve as it might seem as each of these Admin Commands will need an assigned commander or the chain will be broken. Also each superior Admin Command requires a commander of higher rank than the inferior Admin Command and any Admin Command with fleets directly attached requires a higher rank than the highest-ranked ship captain in those fleets. Therefore, large hierarchies are difficult to achieve. However, this does give meaningful commands for those higher ranked commanders that currently are used as the captains of major warships. It also means that if you establish the necessary command infrastructure required to support your fleets across your territory, it can have substantial benefits
Does "a commander of higher rank" mean A) "a commander at least one grade higher" or B) "a commander senior to", where a commander of some grade and number (e.g. 4th samurai) is senior to a commander of the same grade and higher number (e.g. 9th samurai)? I had the same question and concern when I first read this rule; if the meaning is "A", it will be VERY difficult to create long chains of command (pun intended). I've been operating under the assumption that the meaning is indeed "A", but didn't say anything because I figured you'd already thought of this and would not be interested in changing :)
John
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Steve, would it be possible for the game to tally duty stations at each rank and devise a promotion ratio based on that?
I mean, counting from highest rank to lowest one could have a ratio of 1.1 officers to duty stations at the highest level (which gives a bit of extra space for high level command), 1.3 officers to duty stations at the mid level (which is likely to see the most casualties and growth since you'd drop non-combatant roles on lower ranks) and 1.5 officers to duty stations at the lowest level (your strategic reserve of command personnel).
If it would then promote towards filling those ratios in the top first you'd probably end up with enough properly ranked commanders unless things go really badly wrong and/or you start a massive naval construction program without letting your Academies catch up.
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I believe that the OP was asking about this part:
Does "a commander of higher rank" mean A) "a commander at least one grade higher" or B) "a commander senior to", where a commander of some grade and number (e.g. 4th samurai) is senior to a commander of the same grade and higher number (e.g. 9th samurai)? I had the same question and concern when I first read this rule; if the meaning is "A", it will be VERY difficult to create long chains of command (pun intended). I've been operating under the assumption that the meaning is indeed "A", but didn't say anything because I figured you'd already thought of this and would not be interested in changing :)
John
It is A. C# Aurora is different to VB6 in that there are no longer a variety of possible ranks for ships. Each ship class has a specific rank (which can be set by the player), so you will no longer have senior officers commanding warships. If we assume the bottom rank is R1, Aurora will not assign any ship command higher than R3, although the player could override. The ranks at R4 and higher are intended for nested naval admin commands. This may or may not be a problem depending on how many officers are available in total and how much the admin commands are nested.
The more I consider it though the more I am inclined to lower the ratio for assignment to the next rank. If we assume 200 R1, then the current system will have (approximately) 7 R4, 3 R5 and 1 R6. Lowering to a 2.5 multiplier gives 13 R4, 5 R5 and 2 R6 (and perhaps 1 R7), while a 2.0 multiplier provides 25 R4, 12 R5, 6 R6 and 3 R7. Somewhere in-between (perhaps 2.25x) looks reasonable.
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Steve, would it be possible for the game to tally duty stations at each rank and devise a promotion ratio based on that?
I mean, counting from highest rank to lowest one could have a ratio of 1.1 officers to duty stations at the highest level (which gives a bit of extra space for high level command), 1.3 officers to duty stations at the mid level (which is likely to see the most casualties and growth since you'd drop non-combatant roles on lower ranks) and 1.5 officers to duty stations at the lowest level (your strategic reserve of command personnel).
If it would then promote towards filling those ratios in the top first you'd probably end up with enough properly ranked commanders unless things go really badly wrong and/or you start a massive naval construction program without letting your Academies catch up.
That is an interesting idea. With everything in memory, it might be relatively fast to calculate those ratios. That would adapt the promotional ladder to the player's preferred style. I'll give it some thought.
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It wouldn't even need to be kept live. Most ships take a year or more to build, so updating once a year would be enough.
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It is A. C# Aurora is different to VB6 in that there are no longer a variety of possible ranks for ships. Each ship class has a specific rank (which can be set by the player), so you will no longer have senior officers commanding warships. If we assume the bottom rank is R1, Aurora will not assign any ship command higher than R3, although the player could override. The ranks at R4 and higher are intended for nested naval admin commands. This may or may not be a problem depending on how many officers are available in total and how much the admin commands are nested.
The more I consider it though the more I am inclined to lower the ratio for assignment to the next rank. If we assume 200 R1, then the current system will have (approximately) 7 R4, 3 R5 and 1 R6. Lowering to a 2.5 multiplier gives 13 R4, 5 R5 and 2 R6 (and perhaps 1 R7), while a 2.0 multiplier provides 25 R4, 12 R5, 6 R6 and 3 R7. Somewhere in-between (perhaps 2.25x) looks reasonable.
While I understand that, Steve, I was actually asking about a specific situation. That being, an officer assigned to a Flag Bridge in a fleet, any fleet, let's say he is a rear admiral. Would you be able to put a rear admiral in charge of the admiral directly in command of said fleet, or would you need to put a Commodore on the flag bridge and then ensure Captain is the highest rank commanding actual ships, and then carry it on down? In my example, using it again, that'd mean I'd then need 9 officer levels if I had to put Commodores on flag bridges instead of using seniority or postings to keep officers of the same rank subordinate to each other due to their postings.
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While I understand that, Steve, I was actually asking about a specific situation. That being, an officer assigned to a Flag Bridge in a fleet, any fleet, let's say he is a rear admiral. Would you be able to put a rear admiral in charge of the admiral directly in command of said fleet, or would you need to put a Commodore on the flag bridge and then ensure Captain is the highest rank commanding actual ships, and then carry it on down? In my example, using it again, that'd mean I'd then need 9 officer levels if I had to put Commodores on flag bridges instead of using seniority or postings to keep officers of the same rank subordinate to each other due to their postings.
Yes, good point. If there is also a Fleet Commander assigned, the naval admin command will require a rank higher than that of the fleet commander, so in that case could be an R5 for the lowest admin command (assuming R3 for the ship commanders and R4 for the fleet commander). I think I will have to change the multiplier for higher ranks. Just need to decide how.
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't the commanders we assign in-game actually represent exceptional officers, not just officers in general?
If this is the case, then I don't see why we should necessarily have all new officers start at the lowest rank. Why not have some spawn at higher ranks, with appropriate ages? This would help solve the issue of 2200 LT's for every admiral. Further, it'd fit in more with the fluff; some officers might not prove themselves until they've risen quite a ways up the chain of command.
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Yes, good point. If there is also a Fleet Commander assigned, the naval admin command will require a rank higher than that of the fleet commander, so in that case could be an R5 for the lowest admin command (assuming R3 for the ship commanders and R4 for the fleet commander). I think I will have to change the multiplier for higher ranks. Just need to decide how.
Ah. I was hoping that you would be able to have same ranked personnel in flag bridges and admin commands, at least for one step, as it is a vastly different billet.
Would it be possible to allow for officers of the same rank to occupy the admin command position and act as the flag officer of a fleet? I can't see any real fluff reason for this not to be possible given that they're all very senior officers, just with different jobs that means one is answering to another. I don't think it would add too much complexity, either, as it would only really come into play at the last step of an admin command chain, where you'd likely see 2 "junior" flag officers of the same rank. Another option I can think of to alleviate this issue is to allow for admin commands to be posted to flag bridges, thus acting as flag officers, but only applying bonuses to the system they are in, representing that they are actually commanding from a ship instead of a desk.
Actually, why can't that be an option? Admin commands already cascade, so couldn't you have admin commands at an HQ providing the multi-system bonus, and then subordinate admin commands below it able to be posted to flag bridges, allowing them to apply their bonus to the fleet they are superior to? Or is that one of those backend things that can't be done easily?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't the commanders we assign in-game actually represent exceptional officers, not just officers in general?
If this is the case, then I don't see why we should necessarily have all new officers start at the lowest rank. Why not have some spawn at higher ranks, with appropriate ages? This would help solve the issue of 2200 LT's for every admiral. Further, it'd fit in more with the fluff; some officers might not prove themselves until they've risen quite a ways up the chain of command.
Nope, it's all officers, every single one of a given rank. The current setup only allows what we know as O-4 equivalents for the navy and O-6 equivalents for the ground forces to be generated and all other ranks below that are counted as 'junior officers' that are simply numbers.
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except there is a massive drop off after captain.
Just a minor detail that might be interesting: The massive drop off is caused by the congress setting a hard limit on the amount of flag officers in the navy. Up to that point, you can be promoted based on merit when you have earned it, but past captain, the only way you get promoted is to be the best candidate at the time someone above you retires or dies. Don't know if this would be a good mechanic for the game (maybe allow max # officers in rank option for each rank you define, with 0 being unlimited?), but it's the system that is in use irl.
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Just a minor detail that might be interesting: The massive drop off is caused by the congress setting a hard limit on the amount of flag officers in the navy. Up to that point, you can be promoted based on merit when you have earned it, but past captain, the only way you get promoted is to be the best candidate at the time someone above you retires or dies. Don't know if this would be a good mechanic for the game (maybe allow max # officers in rank option for each rank you define, with 0 being unlimited?), but it's the system that is in use irl.
A question occurred to me overnight. The US Navy has about 430 ships, many of which are commanded by a Commander. What does the Navy do with 3000 Captains?
Or are the stats wrong?
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A question occurred to me overnight. The US Navy has about 430 ships, many of which are commanded by a Commander. What does the Navy do with 3000 Captains?
There are rumors of a secret us space fleet... ;D
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Does any of the Navy's provide reasons as to how and why people get promoted? I would guess that in general somewhere there is a demand list and people just get promoted as the empty spaces need to be filled. Maybe Aurora can do the same. It simply summarizes how many people for each rank are needed and promotes as the needs are. Or at least do that for the higher ranks above Captain... .
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A question occurred to me overnight. The US Navy has about 430 ships, many of which are commanded by a Commander. What does the Navy do with 3000 Captains?
Or are the stats wrong?
My spontaneous guess would be 9 out of 10 are administrative functions. Need alot of people to turn papers back and forth to consume all those billion dollars of taxpayer money!
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A question occurred to me overnight. The US Navy has about 430 ships, many of which are commanded by a Commander. What does the Navy do with 3000 Captains?
Or are the stats wrong?
I'd bet a good chunk are airplane pilots for carriers. Counting rotation and such, I feel like that could be 1k at least.
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Most Pilots are actually at the Subaltern level. Ensign to lieutenant. Lieutenant commanders are usually executive officers for naval aviation wings and commanders fill the squadron commander role.
With regards to the Navy's 3000 Captain ranked personnel, I would theorize that 50-60% of them are non-line specialists. JAG, Medical Corp, Staff officers (Executive Assistant or senior operations officer to a flag officer). Then there's the commanders ashore. Mostly commanding naval stations across the globe, relevent to thier specialization. The very few that are left probably around 15-20% are commanding officers of warships. In the US navy this is a ship of cruiser size or above, or they hold a flag rank in a smaller squadron.
As I have done a bunch of research into the Marine Corps Expeditionary force I will list an accurate breakdown of the deployable elements of a Marine Expeditionary Unit.
If needed I can also list thier command slots.
Rear Admiral (Lower Half) - 1
Captain - 6
Commander - 20
Lieutenant Commander - 82
Lieutenant to Ensign - 300+
This accounts for most of the positions available on all ships not just the commanding officers.
With Just COs in relation to Aurora's current officer structure
Captain - 4
Commander - 4
Lieutenant Commander - 6
Lieutenant to Ensign - 30
Hope this helps.
Sources are Wikipedia, life experience and a bit of second hand chat with current and ex us navy sailors.
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A question occurred to me overnight. The US Navy has about 430 ships, many of which are commanded by a Commander. What does the Navy do with 3000 Captains?
Or are the stats wrong?
The stats contain some not currently active officers. However, yes, there are a lot more captains than there are ships. The Navy has a lot more of logistics/research/training positions that are filled with high-ranking officers than there are ships. Every admiral has a staff filled with captains who do all the detail work for them. They are often people who have already served on a ship, and are now basically waiting for a position to open up to be promoted into, doomed to do all the administrative work of the Navy until such date.
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The navy and air force need highly educated staff such as computer scientists to program the computers (the navy does quite a lot of that in particular) and technicians to maintain the equipment. The way payment works in the military, they need to bump their rank up to offer them acceptable salaries. I know of a rear admiral who is just an engineer working on railguns.
e: I should note, they are kindof quasi-high rankers, they don't generally have officer level authority of any kind, aside from being allowed to move around relatively freely.
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Upon more thinking, I've come up with some more ideas for officers and it kind of spills into the new modules as well, so you need to, split this into a new thread.
The way the current system will work is rather.. stationary and offers no real incentive to go outside your borders, which is bad. I'll admit it definitely helps by forcing you to actually employ more senior officers in various roles and keep some ships in certain areas to keep them working effectively, especially on the civilian side or for your defense fleets, but, I'm specifically referring to offensive fleets here.
We'll be using the 1st Battle Fleet I linked earlier, as well as a hypothetical cruiser task force that's much smaller.
The basic idea is that, to tie into the new admin command structure, new modules, and need for actually employing officers of successive grade, there's one other thing.
While desk jockeying is fine and dandy for day-to-day civilian or defense-oriented fleets, your actual battle fleets and their independent Task Forces and Squadrons often will NOT be in range of your naval HQ unless you game the system and build big, thus defeating the point.
My idea is to get rid of the current FMI-only bonus from sticking someone in your Flag Bridge, and instead, the Flag Bridge is where you can stick your Flag Officer for whatever you have under it. ie: Aforementioned cruiser task force can have a commodore on the Flag Bridge, commanding directly. This, of course, would give all (or some) of the Flag Officer's bonuses to the fleet, but to balance it, we could say it's limited to within the system the Flag Officer is in, or perhaps even lower for a Flag Bridge. This, I feel, better represents what you want to do with the new graduated commands system, where you have the old boys flying desks back at HQ while your more junior Flag Officers are actually risking themselves in the battle. This also cuts out that point of "Do I need to bump all my admin commanders up a rank so I can put someone in my Flag Bridge", since your immediate commander is on the flag bridge. This also, I think, properly emulates the idea of sending a fleet on a proper deployment away from immediate HQ contact but still with a Flag Officer aboard.
The next idea was a complement to that, in the vein of the new officer modules, that, in addition to the Flag Bridge, there would be a far larger, FAR more expensive option of a Fleet C3 Center, or something similiar, that offers similiar bonuses, perhaps to 1 system radius, with giant EM and/or thermal sigs to make it impossible to hide. This would then allow you to, I think, better choose between overall bonuses and campaign ability, as you can either have 1-2 Flag Officers at risk in your fleet, with no real other bonuses since you're outside of your HQ range, or you're in another sector, which I think most battle fleets would be, or to just stack bonuses as deep as your flag ranks go, in the case of things like civilian fleets that won't travel between sectors, defense fleets, and the like. This, I feel, would be a good option for larger "main" fleets, where you would likely have two levels of admin command above the ships. As an example, in my First Battle Fleet, as adapted for C# as it is, I would likely have multiple task forces related to their specific focus (logistics, main battle line, carriers, escort group), each with their own flag bridge equipped ship of some type, with a shiny new Commodore inside, and then, if this were real, a central CnC ship somewhere in the fleet holding a Rear Admiral who's the overall fleet commander.
The premise really boils down to, in my mind, making options for where you deploy those senior ranks to get the best bang for the fleet type, not just in a giant centralized naval HQ that never has to move because you built a level 100 one.
I think, as well, the Fleet CnC Center, if it gets made, should also require a decent amount of officers to staff it to properly apply the bonuses, with maluses to the range and/or effectiveness of the commander bonuses depending on the staffing, that way you also properly simulate the actual large staff you'd need to run a fleet in such a way. Perhaps also make it so you can only chain a Fleet CnC bonus through Flag Bridges?
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Personally I don't see why there should be any arbitrary level of promotion ratio, people should simply be promoted as positions are available to be filled.
There could be a 10% extra promoted for each rank of which could be assigned to administrative positions which could be a bit more fluent in what rank is needed such as flag bridge officers or junior officers on ships.
This way if you need 50 captains you would have 55 promoted, the five extra could take positions as flag officers. Flag staff officers could probably be of more than one rank type. Flag staff positions would not really unlock promotion opportunities but meant as use for that extra officer you get from each rank below the first.
Or something like this... I don't like to get an arbitrary number of each officer rank.
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Personally I don't see why there should be any arbitrary level of promotion ratio, people should simply be promoted as positions are available to be filled.
There could be a 10% extra promoted for each rank of which could be assigned to administrative positions which could be a bit more fluent in what rank is needed such as flag bridge officers or junior officers on ships.
This way if you need 50 captains you would have 55 promoted, the five extra could take positions as flag officers. Flag staff officers could probably be of more than one rank type. Flag staff positions would not really unlock promotion opportunities but meant as use for that extra officer you get from each rank below the first.
Or something like this... I don't like to get an arbitrary number of each officer rank.
I've been giving this some thought and the above is currently where I am heading. A naval organization is going to promote people to fill the required roles, rather than create roles based on the available people in each rank. Not sure on the mechanics yet, but I will sort this out before I start a test campaign.
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I have a Question.
Is it possible to have more then one officer per ship?
Larger ships often have more officers, not unlike the structure you have in the flag structure, but also for some navies there are more command roles on board.
A ship Captain who sail the ship and has the final authority on the ship, and for the ships safety.
But there is also a Operations Officer or Officer in Tactical Command whom runs the show from the Operations Room.
While a Ship might not always need as big of an org as a flag level.
Maybe a solution could be that any ship above 1001 tons(just an example) should have:
CO (Captain of the ship)
XO Executive officer
And for ships above a certain;size, crew number, and/or minimum rank for command give them:
Operations Officer (if Missiles or larger than commerical beam weapons)
Fighter Operations Officer (If Hanger space above xxx size equipped)
Logistics Officer (If one or more of Collier/Supply/Tanker are used)
Intelligence Officer (If Both Passive sensors and active sensors and ECM/ECCM(programming the necessary ECM/ECCM programs against known Threats)
Communication Officer(If Flag Bridge or other type of command module like a Large bridge which might be used for TG lead ships)
Fighters or ships at 1000 tons and below:
Only one Officer can be assigned.
From my perspective this would solve some issues I have had during my playthroughs.
Commanding Officer on a ship dies while the ship is on a long tour/patrol there will be some officers whom can take command of a ship.
Skill gaining for officers whom will be placed in the Task Force staff later on. Currently some skills can only be trained in those positions which means they serve there until they die or retire and a Noob takes their spot.
You have roles for the lower ranked Officers to fill while they improve, and thus its more natural to have more Officers at a lower and fewer at the higher ranks.
It also grooms the officers to be of higher rank when they are good enough for Flag duties (other then the CO of course) which is more natural as well.
Also I do like the idea that promotions are depending on how many positions are available at each rank.
I believe many nations forces operate after this principle for Officers of O-3 and above (Major/Lcdr) while O-1 and O-2 are promoted by command/time in rank.
But there are 3-4 ranks in the O-1/O-2 ladder for most nations as well.
So if this was to be implemented maybe it would be a viable option that the player when he/she makes the rank structure tick of the maximum rank for promotion by time in rank/service and another tick mark for when Flag level begins.
Thus you could have three levels of ranks
The ranks which your Officers promote to with time until max achieved if nothing else happens
The Command ranks which has Officers filling certain positions needed to be filled (plus some more if you want to change them around)
The Flag Officers which fill the top level ranks for executing the command of the fleet.
Maybe this could be an option for ground commanders as well?
Also are there plans to have a hierarchy which takes the position all the way from Headquarters/Fleet Command or even Ministry of Defence(with both Ground and Fleet Flag Officers represented) which are commanding Task Forces which are commanding Task Groups and Units?
And will we be able to set a retirement age or will there be one standard?
I'm sorry if I seem blunt, but I just want to hear others thought on my ideas and I hope it might be a helpful contribution.
Also thanks for a really great Game :)
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What does the Navy do with 3000 Captains?
Fields the most in depth golf team the world has ever seen!
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I have a Question.
Is it possible to have more then one officer per ship?
Yes, see the following rules post:
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg101818#msg101818
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I love the idea of having automatic officer promotions based on the number of jobs available at each rank. The existing ratios would have to change in C# Aurora anyway as there will be more requirement for junior officers now without increasing the senior officer billets, so unless the ratios can be altered per rank then basing it on available billets makes more sense.
Another thing I would suggest would be allowing officers not assigned to a ship to only advance their political influence... That way if you have a lot of unemployed officers, your senior ranks will get dominated by the right sort of chap with the right school tie, at least until a bit of frontier arithmetic weeds out the more useless...
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I think having promotions being based on the sum of available billets per rank is a great idea.
A suggestion I'd like to offer: Reserve Officers. Every military maintains a large pool of reserve personnel. In Aurora it's really easy to run into critical manpower shortages if your shipbuilding outpaces your academy training rate; it'd be interesting to have a "mobilize reserves" option for time of emergency/war. Mobilizing would give you a pool of new officers and crewmen to assign. The downside would be: it costs a lot of credits, and maybe performance is lower or suffers over time if you keep them mobilized, due to declining morale.
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While Aurora doesn't have the option to keep a reserve, lowering your standards is a thing. This doesn't get you more officers but it does get you more enlisted over time.