Aurora 4x
VB6 Aurora => VB6 Mechanics => Topic started by: Steve Walmsley on March 11, 2017, 08:31:58 AM
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In C# Aurora I am adding extra officer positions for ships. In addition to the commander of the ship, there will be up to four more officers depending on the size and role of the ship (XO, Chief Engineer, Tactical Officer and Science Officer). I may add more in the future depending on how well this works. Once I have sorted all the details I will post with the specifics of how these officers benefit the ship.
As a result of these changes, I am going to replace the current system for determining the rank for a ship commander. Each class will be assigned a specific rank for the commanding officer (rather than the current range of ranks). The automatic assignments code will only assign officers of that specific rank, although you can override manually with a higher ranked officer if desired. The other officer ranks will be based on the specified commanding officer rank.
For example, the required XO rank for a ship will be one rank lower than the commanding officer. The Tactical Officer will be two ranks lower. These are fixed and can't be manually overridden. I could have based this on one rank lower than the current commander instead (rather than the class) but that could lead to a lot of complications if you manually assign a higher rank commander with an XO one rank lower and then change the commander to a lower but still eligible rank. It will be far better for a consistency POV to have the officer ranks (below the commander) fixed.
If a non-commanding officer is promoted, he will have to leave his position and be assigned a new one (this will be handled automatically). You will be able to see his progression to more senior roles in the commander history.
So a question...
What ranks should I set the Chief Engineer and Science Officers in relation to the commanding officer? As currently setup, science officers can be added to any ship of 3000 tons or more that is equipped with survey sensors. Chief Engineers can be added to military ships (not necessarily armed) of 12,000 tons or more. XO is military 6,000 tons and Tactical Officer is military 18,000 tons.
I currently have science officer set as one below the commanding officer (as they would be important on a survey ship) and chief engineer as two below the commanding officer (so he one below the XO). However, there are reasonable arguments for the opposite to be true. One other factor is that setting the science officer 2 below the commanding officer means the survey ship would need the commanding officer to be a Captain to make a Lieutenant Commander eligible. While ships large enough to need a chief engineer are much more likely to have a Captain rank and therefore 2 below is fine.
Open to suggestions.
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To me this does seem to add some more arbitrary size restrictions with no explanation anywhere like we already have with FACs and fighters. Why should a small survey ship not be able to get such an officer? What about making a survey sensor of any sort the requirement? And damage controls for an chief engineer? Or maybe even just tickboxes in class design?
What is your idea behind these changes? What do these officers add to the game? Do you want to seperate different functions to different officers, so that the perfect officer does not need all the bonuses in one person?
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Reason for change is that it is has been requested a lot, plus it provide a better historical background for commanders and provides a use for all those low-ranked officers. The officers will modify the ship's capabilities. Currently I have the science officer adding half his survey bonus to the commander's survey bonus. Still deciding exactly how to use bonuses from the others.
Arbitrary size is based on not overwhelming the game with five officers for every ship.
Another option I just thought of (taking into account your comments), which would solve a few problems, is that the requirement for bridge officers is based on the required commander rank, rather than the size. So if the ship has a CDR as the required rank, it can also have a LCDR exec and a LCDR science officer if survey sensors are present. If the ship has a CPT or higher as the commander requirement, it can have a LCDR Chief Engineer if engines are present and a LCDR Tactical Officer if weapons are present, etc.
In this case, I don't have to worry about whether the rank offset will go below LCDR.
EDIT: I have changed the code to this rule. It is no longer based on size. Players can now determine if they want officers by setting the required commanding officer rank to the appropriate level. Higher provides more officers but makes it harder to find commanders due to the lower number of senior officers available.
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Spock & Scotty were both Lt. Commanders to Kirk's Captain. And 2nd & 3rd in line of command. So it looks like they are/should be -2 from the captain rank-wise.
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I really like the rank offsets. It should work quite well. Might end up with too many flag officers, or perhaps not enough LCDR (Carrier-heavy fleets).
Science officer could also be used for unemployed Scientists.
A Flight Ops Officer/CAG might also fit, unless thats intended to be reliant on the flag staff.
Brainstorms for officers:
XO adds half their skills to all subordinate officers
Engineers could give enhanced damage control. Perhaps something qualitiatively different, like an option to quickly repair a component @ 4x cost, or a chance to keep a destroyed component online (or bring it back up quickly).
Tactical Officers ....hmmmmm....... Perhaps would work well as a factor in an EW rework?
(Military?) Science officers have a chance to obtain scans of enemy classes
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Another option I just thought of (taking into account your comments), which would solve a few problems, is that the requirement for bridge officers is based on the required commander rank, rather than the size. So if the ship has a CDR as the required rank, it can also have a LCDR exec and a LCDR science officer if survey sensors are present. If the ship has a CPT or higher as the commander requirement, it can have a LCDR Chief Engineer if engines are present and a LCDR Tactical Officer if weapons are present, etc.
That makes sense to me more than those size constraints.
If ship of given class needs to be commanded by higher rank commander he/she is then capable of having more subordinated commanders then lower rank ones are. If the systems these subordinates would operate are present. Good.
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That sounds a lot better. :)
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As @TheDeadlyShoe said, the Science Officer position can/should be filled by a scientist rather than a military officer. As well as ships with large amounts of hangar spaces should be able to employ a CAG other than that of the fleet command position. However, I think they should require their own modules other than the bridge, such as a CIC for the Tactical Officer and/or CAG, Main Engineering for the Engineer Chief, Science Center for the Science Officer, etc (The XO can be on the Bridge with the captain). I also think the Bridge should be a bit heavier (100 tons) but also gains an important role as without the bridge you can't give the ship (other than FAC/Fighters) any orders until it is repaired. Or even adding in an Armored bridge which is heavier but a higher HTK. Also, maybe a chance to kill any officers in their modules if it gets destroyed.
Skills;
XO: Adjusts the skill rating of other officers. Modifies moral rating (good XO boosts moral while a bad one demoralizes). Also modifies crew experience gain rates.
Tactical: Required to get the bonuses for missile tracking. Grants slight bonuses to hit chance for beam weapons.
Engineer: Boosts DAC rates. Gains efficiency for DAC/maintenance material costs (use 5%, 8%, etc less MSP to repair/maintain a component). Possibly even slightly lowering the failure rating. Also, you could tie this officer in to the new logistical changes letting him reduce the time needed for a ship to perform certain actions (refueling, rearming, etc).
Science: Determine classifications of enemy ships or wrecks. Determine the ranges of enemy components (radar, missiles, beams, etc). Boosts survey point scanning (by a percentage or flat rate (two different skills)).
CAG: Boosts the performance of hangar actions, such as repairing, refueling, and rearming. Also boosts the speed of parasites assigned to the ship can perform orders.
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Another possibility for CAG: Fighters no longer benefit from Crew Grade bonuses; instead they get a Fighter Combat bonus from their CAG, or possibly the CAG's fighter combat bonus is interpreted as their Grade.
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As @TheDeadlyShoe said, the Science Officer position can/should be filled by a scientist rather than a military officer. As well as ships with large amounts of hangar spaces should be able to employ a CAG other than that of the fleet command position. However, I think they should require their own modules other than the bridge, such as a CIC for the Tactical Officer and/or CAG, Main Engineering for the Engineer Chief, Science Center for the Science Officer, etc (The XO can be on the Bridge with the captain). I also think the Bridge should be a bit heavier (100 tons) but also gains an important role as without the bridge you can't give the ship (other than FAC/Fighters) any orders until it is repaired. Or even adding in an Armored bridge which is heavier but a higher HTK. Also, maybe a chance to kill any officers in their modules if it gets destroyed.
I've been considering something on these lines myself (CIC for Tactical and Auxiliary Control for the XO) but I hadn't thought about Main Engineering or the Science Centre. Good ideas. If these various systems are requirements for the various officers, they would serve to set a minimum rank for the captain of the vessel. I will try to make adding the locations a real decision in terms of costs vs benefit, especially for smaller ships. Main Engineering for example could be 2-3 HS, which would mean the benefits of a Chief Engineer (damage control, potential for instant repair, improvement in maintenance, etc.) would likely be less than an equivalent amount of engineering spaces on smaller vessels.
I will definitely add a check for casualties if the bridge, or any of the other locations, is hit. The idea of an armoured bridge is a good one too. If the location for the individual officers is damaged, any benefits from that officer would no longer apply.
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Hm, then what about a bridge being required to assign any officer? That way we could get rid of the magical threshold of 1050t ships absolutly requiring a bridge, but 1000t ships not. Then including a bridge simply gives the benefit of being able to assign a commanding officer, and the typical fighters and FACs simply won't have one anymore...or maybe making the bridge the requirement for any officer above the lowest rank?
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I've been considering something on these lines myself (CIC for Tactical and Auxiliary Control for the XO) but I hadn't thought about Main Engineering or the Science Centre. Good ideas. If these various systems are requirements for the various officers, they would serve to set a minimum rank for the captain of the vessel. I will try to make adding the locations a real decision in terms of costs vs benefit, especially for smaller ships. Main Engineering for example could be 2-3 HS, which would mean the benefits of a Chief Engineer (damage control, potential for instant repair, improvement in maintenance, etc.) would likely be less than an equivalent amount of engineering spaces on smaller vessels.
I will definitely add a check for casualties if the bridge, or any of the other locations, is hit. The idea of an armoured bridge is a good one too. If the location for the individual officers is damaged, any benefits from that officer would no longer apply.
Some random thoughts:
A less "all or nothing" (in terms of benefits) version of this would allow e.g. XO to be assigned if there were a bridge but no aux control, but e.g. with a reduced bonus. So the idea here is that, for a bridge, all officers are in one spot which could be armored more efficiently than individual control stations but knocks out all officer bonuses (and maybe kills/injures them as well) if destroyed vs. having individual stations.
On fighters/FACs: I still like the idea of having a "cockpit". Combined with the above, maybe this means that there are two types of individual stations: reduced and normal size. So for fighters, the command pilot would sit in a reduced size pilot station, while for FAC maybe there would be multiple reduced size individual stations or a reduced-size bridge, while for a DD there might be a full-size bridge and for a BB full-size duty stations.
This also brings up the point that for a fighter, you'd like the command pilot to handle both piloting duties (fighter ops bonus, which applies even to starships?) and command duties (CIC?). Can one officer occupy two stations simultaneously? It almost feels like the ship component here is a duty station that has attributes such as command station (CIC) or plot station (fighter ops which might morph into piloting). Of course this would probably make the assignment AI and micromanagement a lot worse.
Obviously the above is a bit fuzzy in my own head :) It feels like bigger ships should require more bridge infrastructure though. So what about a log scale:
<1000 tons: tiny officer stations
<10,000 tons: small officer stations (twice as big?)
<100,000 tons: regular officer stations (another 2x?)
<1,000,000 tons: large officer stations
You could also put a soft cutoff in place for the size restrictions above: one could still use a tiny station on a 1050 ship, it would just have the bonuses reduced by 5%.
John
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What if the bridge would become an automaticly scaling component like armor, changing size dependent on size of the vessel or the amount of crew members onboard?
Or the other way around, bonuses provided by officers are divided by vessel size or number of crew members. To compensate, one could install more bridge space, therefore providing space for more officers, whose bonuses add up? That way, huge battleships would house dozens of officers, and tiny ships just one, but on average, one officers gives bonusses to the same mass of ship.
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Or the other way around, bonuses provided by officers are divided by vessel size or number of crew members. To compensate, one could install more bridge space, therefore providing space for more officers, whose bonuses add up? That way, huge battleships would house dozens of officers, and tiny ships just one, but on average, one officers gives bonusses to the same mass of ship.
+1
You can rename Bridge to something like "Commanding terminal" / "Commanding post": on a small ship one or two terminals would be enough while big ships would need multiple terminals to keep all the info for commander ready so that his/her bonuses can properly apply.
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What if the bridge would become an automaticly scaling component like armor, changing size dependent on size of the vessel or the amount of crew members onboard?
Or the other way around, bonuses provided by officers are divided by vessel size or number of crew members. To compensate, one could install more bridge space, therefore providing space for more officers, whose bonuses add up? That way, huge battleships would house dozens of officers, and tiny ships just one, but on average, one officers gives bonusses to the same mass of ship.
I am going to add Auxiliary Control, Main Engineering, CIC, Primary Flight Operations and Science Department as new modules. Each one makes a different officer available to be recruited to the ship (XO, Chief Engineer, Tactical Officer, Commander Air Group and Science Officer) and will add 1 to the Control Rating of the ship. These requirements add the effect of larger control spaces while maintaining some variety. An officer can be killed if his station is damaged. I may also add 'temporary promotions' if the commander is killed, with the most senior surviving officer taking over as commander until relieved or promoted. The modules will also affect the minimum commander rank for the ship.
I am also going to change how certain bonuses are applied. The commander of a ship will only apply half his bonus for Crew Training, Survey, Fighter Operations, Engineering (new skill) and Tactical (new skill), with the appropriate officer applying his full bonus. The commander of the ship is now a jack-of-all-trades, applying a portion of his bonus while the specialists provide the larger bonuses. Larger ships gain an advantage as they can afford the space to accommodate the specialists, while smaller ships have to make do with the commander handling everything (at half efficiency).
A bonus from the Chief Engineer will only apply if Main Engineering is undamaged. A bonus from the Science Officer will only apply if the Science Department is undamaged. A bonus from the Tactical Officer will only apply if CIC is undamaged. A bonus from the Commander, Air Group will only apply if Primary Flight Operations is undamaged. Bonuses from the commander and XO will only apply if the ship has a control rating greater than zero (they can command the ship from any of the surviving control spaces).
If this works OK, I might add other officers in the future and modify other bonuses in the same way.
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Ooh that sounds really cool. If you only have a small warship and only have a CO, would that mean you get a penalty to initiave or is that unaffected? It seems like you might prioritize initiative for COs and then delegate other tasks to specialists.
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Ooh that sounds really cool. If you only have a small warship and only have a CO, would that mean you get a penalty to initiave or is that unaffected? It seems like you might prioritize initiative for COs and then delegate other tasks to specialists.
Initiative in C# Aurora is replaced by Reaction Bonus. A similar effect but percentile-based. As things stand, that bonus is based solely on the commander and is at full effect.
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I think your latest idea might work the best, as long as the modules aren't too massive so that people aren't locked into certain ship size expectations.
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I am going to add Auxiliary Control, Main Engineering, CIC, Primary Flight Operations and Science Department as new modules. Each one makes a different officer available to be recruited to the ship (XO, Chief Engineer, Tactical Officer, Commander Air Group and Science Officer) and will add 1 to the Control Rating of the ship. These requirements add the effect of larger control spaces while maintaining some variety. An officer can be killed if his station is damaged. I may also add 'temporary promotions' if the commander is killed, with the most senior surviving officer taking over as commander until relieved or promoted. The modules will also affect the minimum commander rank for the ship.
I am also going to change how certain bonuses are applied. The commander of a ship will only apply half his bonus for Crew Training, Survey, Fighter Operations, Engineering (new skill) and Tactical (new skill), with the appropriate officer applying his full bonus. The commander of the ship is now a jack-of-all-trades, applying a portion of his bonus while the specialists provide the larger bonuses. Larger ships gain an advantage as they can afford the space to accommodate the specialists, while smaller ships have to make do with the commander handling everything (at half efficiency).
A bonus from the Chief Engineer will only apply if Main Engineering is undamaged. A bonus from the Science Officer will only apply if the Science Department is undamaged. A bonus from the Tactical Officer will only apply if CIC is undamaged. A bonus from the Commander, Air Group will only apply if Primary Flight Operations is undamaged. Bonuses from the commander and XO will only apply if the ship has a control rating greater than zero (they can command the ship from any of the surviving control spaces).
If this works OK, I might add other officers in the future and modify other bonuses in the same way.
I like this solution. I do think, however, that there should be a bit of scaling for the modules.
I don't know how big you plan the modules to be. But I think it would make a lot of sense if the bonuses they grant would also be somewhat dependant on size.
Let us say I make a 300.000 tons battlecruiser. I hardly think that Main Engineering could be a 50 tons module. Because it does not make sense, and also in that case I can just add EVERY module at a minimal cost to large ships, without any effort at all.
In my mind there's 2 possible solutions to this:
1 - The necessary module size is based on ship size, as a percentage. In the above example, you add "Main Engineering blocks" until you've reached, say, 50 tons or 1% of the ship (whichever is bigger). This also result in some more crew (the officer's aides)
2 - You make multiple versions of each module. A "base module" that is small, a "large module" that gives a little bit of bonus, and a "largest module" that give even more bonus. This would encourage to build larger modules on bigger ships. And here too, the largest versions would need some crew, the officer's aides.
Personally, I would prefer solution number 2.
I understand this complicates things a bit, but I think it's necessary to prevent the abuse that would happen if modules had a fixed size. Where every ship above a certain size would have every module at full efficiency, without any kind of tradeoff
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I like this solution. I do think, however, that there should be a bit of scaling for the modules.
I don't know how big you plan the modules to be. But I think it would make a lot of sense if the bonuses they grant would also be somewhat dependant on size.
Let us say I make a 300.000 tons battlecruiser. I hardly think that Main Engineering could be a 50 tons module. Because it does not make sense, and also in that case I can just add EVERY module at a minimal cost to large ships, without any effort at all.
Wouldn't a more neat situation be if they also increased the total crew requirement of the ship by X%? ( In addition to the 2-3HS or 100-150 ton Steve mentioned as an example ).
That way the bigger the ship the bigger the extra total crew needed for the modules, and then we get extra tonnage which scale with size of ship, even if we only have a single module.
If you need for example 6% tonnage for crew for your 300'000 ton Battlecruiser and each module increase crew requirements by +10%, then in total 4 modules would actually require an increase in crew space from 18'000 ton to 25'200 ton (+7'200 ton extra).
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That sounds it can be problematic because if adding such modules raises the needs for crew quarters depending on some percent of the current size then adding those quarters raises the size which means now more quarters are needed and when those are added then again...
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That sounds it can be problematic because if adding such modules raises the needs for crew quarters depending on some percent of the current size then adding those quarters raises the size which means now more quarters are needed and when those are added then again...
Aurora already solved the same issue with armor, adding more armor increase the size of ships which would require even more armor to armor...
So I don't think it's unsolvable, just needs some consistent logic ( like a scaling factor for "crew needs" of 140% when you have 4 modules ).
The reason why I suggested crew needs is because realistically speaking command module crew needs would scale with total size of other crew. It's all about keeping a chain of command and being able to carry down orders to any crew at any part of the ship. It makes sense that Administrating/Commanding a bigger crew would require more crew in the command modules. This extra crew need would also scale with deployment time needs for crew, so it makes sense to put it as a % on top of current crew which is impacted by this, rather then as a % of ship tonnage.
If you want to get really fancy you could even call it all officer crew space and list it separately :)
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Instead of just scaling crew requirement of a module, why not scaling the whole module including crew requirement? Then, based on that size, one could even add a bigger command structure, e.g. at some size allow a third in command and second tactics officer and so on. That way, officer density on ships would stay roughly the same too, regardless of tonnage. Rather the impact of a bonus of a single officer should decrease on larger ships, as there is much more to coordinate, which could be offset by having more officers of the same type on board.
2 - You make multiple versions of each module. A "base module" that is small, a "large module" that gives a little bit of bonus, and a "largest module" that give even more bonus. This would encourage to build larger modules on bigger ships.
Don't think this is a good idea, why should a larger ship get a larger bonus out of the same officer? I would rather say it should require a bigger module to get the full bonus.
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Instead of just scaling crew requirement of a module, why not scaling the whole module including crew requirement?
Two reasons:
1.) No other functional modules in aurora automatically scale in size depending on ship size. ( That I am aware of at least ).
2.) What prevents you from having a full complement of bridge crew aboard a single seat 250 ton fighter? If they scale as a % of ship size they will need almost no space.
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Two reasons:
1.) No other functional modules in aurora automatically scale in size depending on ship size. ( That I am aware of at least ).
2.) What prevents you from having a full complement of bridge crew aboard a single seat 250 ton fighter? If they scale as a % of ship size they will need almost no space.
3) A 100k+ ton freighter doesn't need several hundred people in the bridge at all times ;).
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What about if the new modules have a set size added to the ship and then additional size that scales in relation to some other function of the ship. For instance main engineering could be a 200 ton module but also scale in size depending on the tonnage of engines maybe 50 more tons per 50hs of engine, CAG 50 tons per 2500 tons of hanger, CIC 50 per 2500 tons of weapons, science per 2500 tons sensors or any type etc. Basically having each module adds 250 tons and adds maybe an additional 2% tonnage overhead to the whole ship. It's not a large amount but it might be enough that you have to think carefully about whether to include any of the modules if a ship needs to maximize efficiency. Also taking into account the extra engine power needed for added tonnage, extra crew, extra armour etc it works out being more than just 2% overhead. Considering the large bonus you get from the extra officers it's still worthwhile. Also each module should add crew equal to maybe twice what that tonnage would give you for the associated system.
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What about if the new modules have a set size added to the ship and then additional size that scales in relation to some other function of the ship. For instance main engineering could be a 200 ton module but also scale in size depending on the tonnage of engines maybe 50 more tons per 50hs of engine, CAG 50 tons per 2500 tons of hanger, CIC 50 per 2500 tons of weapons, science per 2500 tons sensors or any type etc. Basically having each module adds 250 tons and adds maybe an additional 2% tonnage overhead to the whole ship. It's not a large amount but it might be enough that you have to think carefully about whether to include any of the modules if a ship needs to maximize efficiency. Also taking into account the extra engine power needed for added tonnage, extra crew, extra armour etc it works out being more than just 2% overhead. Considering the large bonus you get from the extra officers it's still worthwhile. Also each module should add crew equal to maybe twice what that tonnage would give you for the associated system.
I don't really see what the in game benefit to scaling modules is. The cost is increasing complexity and opacity, both already problems for the game.
And frankly, for a 300,000 ton battleship I really can't see a real world case where you wouldn't put a CIC in. Or why you should be encouraged not to add a CAG on a heavy carrier.
I think modules as Steve has them planned will already add plenty of decisions for smaller ships, as well as some extra color and career progression, and thats fine for me.
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This sounds fantastic. I really like the use of modules for this. Aurora often models things you see in real-world navies, in this case I suspect we'll see the cousin to export ships which have lots of guns but little in the way of command and control.
I will say that I'm not particularly in favor of the spaces scaling, although the idea of them adding crew because of them is not a bad one. Even on a battleship, the actual spaces in question are quite compact, but in the example of damage control, you'll have parties spread throughout the ship.
Will we see matched staff officers? And will the existing Operations bonus turn into Tactical?
One more module might be Logistics, for various transports.
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One past problem Aurora had was the crew were large compared to present day warships, where the crew is getting smaller as automation takes over. Steve has addressed this in the past. To artifically inlflate crew size seems a backward step.
In addition Aurora only covers one third of the crew of a ship, the officers, and then perhaps only half of them. Is there any reason that Aurora has only seven steps in rank?
It can be argued that anything below the XO should be a non-executive officer, e.g. Sub-lieutenant or Lieutenant. Thus the rank structure could be one with twelve steps in it as below:
Non-executive officers
Ensign or Midshipman/Warrant Officer
Sub-lieutenant
Lieutenant
Executive officers
Lieutenant Commander
Commander
Captain
Flag rank
Commodore
Rear Admiral
Vice Admiral
Admiral
Administrative
Admiral of the Fleet
1st Star Lord
Sub-lieutenants or lieutenants could command small craft of 1000 tons or less. Above that an executive officer would be required. Lieutenant Commander could bridge between non-executive and executive ranks. Commodore could be a bridging rank that commands their own ship as well as a squadron. An Administrative rank is one normally associated with a sector command, Admiral would be the bridging rank between a fleet command and sector command. Even flag ranks could command their own ship (the Royal Yatch was usually commanded by a Rear Admiral) If twelve steps are too many then the Ensign, Admiral of the Fleet and 1st Star Lord could be omitted giving a nine step structure.
As I said earlier Aurora only covers one third of the crew of a ship, missing out the enlisted men and non-commissioned officers. If you want to expand the rank structure further consideration could be given to non-commissioned officers, e.g. Petty Officer, Chief Petty Officer and Fleet/Master Chief Petty Officer. Thus the crew of a 1000 ton fast attack craft could be a Lieutenant, a Chief Petty Officer and a Petty Officer (engineering). Alternately the FAC could be captained by a CPO. The NCOs could be "hidden in the woodwork" perhaps a FAC commanded by a CPO which destroyed a high value target could be promoted to Warrant Officer and thus appear on the promotion track.
That's my tuppence worth
Ian
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I think the idea is to hold down the number of officers you have to deal with, for performance reasons. Yes, IRL fighters would be commanded by more junior officers, but remember that each step is a 3-fold increase in personnel. A USN Lieutenant Commander is an O-4. Doing some basic math, the bottom level will make up 2/3rds of the officer pool. Each additional rank we add to the bottom is going to triple the size of the officer corps. So if we go to O-1s, we'll have 27 times as many officers as we do now. And most of them won't have jobs, because IRL they're division officers, and we don't have that level of granularity. The idea is that the bridge officers will appear only on larger ships where the relevant department heads will be of high enough rank to make it into this system.
Oh, and one other thing that springs to mind. Mining and construction platforms will have issues with this if we cut commander bonuses in half. For that kind of thing, where the commander has a specific job to do, and doesn't need to be a generalist, it might be best to just give full commander bonus on those traits and not allow bridge officers to get in the way. I'd also suspect that we may need to turn down the promotion bonuses on those traits, so we don't have issues with people being promoted into uselessness.
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I was pondering how this might affect the need for low end and high end officers, relatively. I came to the conclusion that its probably best experimentally determined, and in any case the demand for officers is entirely driven by fleet structure.
I suppose one might want to set the promotion ratios on a per-game basis, but 3:1 works decently, especially given that we will have much finer tuned control over slots in C#.
In addition Aurora only covers one third of the crew of a ship, the officers, and then perhaps only half of them. Is there any reason that Aurora has only seven steps in rank?
The ranking system in Aurora is entirely arbitrary in its labels and dimensions, much like ship designations.
I usually do five ranks of Lieutenant/Commander/Captain/Admiral/Fleet Admiral, or esoteric equivalents amounting to the same thing.
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I don't much like the idea to scale dynamically the modules, because it would make really hard to design ships so that everything "fits". Say I want to make a 12000 ton ship (so it has a fixed speed, equal to that of the other fleet elements) it would be hard to design it precisely.
I want to further expand on my idea of multiple, different sized modules which can be chosen for the various positions.
Don't think this is a good idea, why should a larger ship get a larger bonus out of the same officer? I would rather say it should require a bigger module to get the full bonus.
Consider this example, to explain my point of view. Also consider there IS a lot of automation in such a futuristic setting obviously.
Let us say we are talking about maintenance and repairs, so the module would be Main Engineering. There could be, say, 4 possibilities. All numbers are just placeholders.
- No module whatsoever. The ship doesn't have any special space and officer allocated. In case of problems, the commander does what he can at half efficiency like Steve said before, coordinating the various automated repair systems. This would be the default for most civilian ships, and maybe for grav surveys at the like. Fighters too.
- A basic Main Engineering small module, 100 tons and just the officer assigned to it. A small space where a dedicated officer can coordinate multiple systems, control the various parameters, organize the automated repairs and perhaps direct some repair robots. The default solution for most small military ships or valuable civilian ships.
- A medium Main Engineering module, 200 tons and 5 extra crew. A largish space where the officer and his aides continuously check up the state of the ship and coordinate repairs in case of problems, with better equipment at their disposal. The officer gets a +5% bonus to his skill because of that. Default solution for medium warships or important warships/civilian ships.
- A large, fully equipped Main Engineering module, 500 tons and 15 extra crew. The best possible accomodation, for large warships or very important and/or unusual ships. The officer gets a +10% bonus to his skill because of that.
I think a system like this would be enjoyable, and could lead to many varied and interesting designs. Plus, it would force you to make compromises on everything but the largest ships.
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I seem to be in minority but I really don't see why the modules should scale with ships. I think of those as merely control spaces, so main engineering for a 100kT battlecruiser is not the total sum of it's engineering capability, but rather control station for all the other engineering and propulsion systems the ship has. Same with science station. The station does not do science by itself, it merely processes data from all the sensors the ships has. As for this favouring larger ships, that is already true. Survey sensors are, for example, of the fixed size, as are electronic warfare systems, and that seems to work fine. In terms of space efficiency Aurora already favours larger ships to a certain extent.
If people really want scaling I see two options. The first one is to simply increase crew requirement of the ship as alex_brunius proposed. It's simple and logical solution as larger ships would logically require larger crews. The second option, proposed by Zincat, is to have similar modules of fixed size (like the fuel tanks) with larger ones providing bonus to the particular skill.
With all of that being done, there is one potential issue. I really think that a fixed 3:1 ratio of officer ranks simply won't cut it. Since I don't want to micromanage assignments, I'd really like the automated system to do it's best to fill the slots even if this means promoting officers. In short I'd like there to be no fixed ratio at all, to be replaced by a dynamic system.
I am assuming here of course that the automated assignment system will work with the bridge officer positions.
Speaking of officers and automated assignments, how will it work with the regional HQ thing you mentioned in other post? In the current Aurora the "commander - fleet hedquarters" position has to be filled manually, will that be the case with regional HQs as well?
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The main reason for scaling of 'station components' is game mechanic purposes, not any sort of realism.
If I'm making an 8,000 ton warship, taking 200 tons out for a station is a notable reduction in payload, fuel, etc.; it's a heavy tradeoff. It may not even be worth it, even assuming a highly skilled officer. For a 30,000 ton vessel, not so much; so for large vessels you arn't actually making any decisions in terms of including stations, since the benefits from their inclusion will presumably massively outmatch their tonnage cost. This isn't necessarily actually a problem: it removes a layer of decision-making, but if you want larger warships to naturally and easily have such positions, that's fine.
Another option is to remove that design decision and simply make the slots available according to existing components with a performance purpose: survey sensors (science), damage control (engineering), etc.
Hybrids are possible; the effectiveness of an officers benefits could scale with the # station components, similar to how engineering spaces effectively scale with a ships size/cost/etc.
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Another option is to remove that design decision and simply make the slots available according to existing components with a performance purpose: survey sensors (science), damage control (engineering), etc.
And tactical if you have a fire control, CAG if you have a hangar, and XO if you have a bridge.
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The more I think about it the less I like the idea of specialized components. It's already hard to design small ships but with those it will be even harder. And if they scale with the ship size it will be harder still.
The main reason for scaling of 'station components' is game mechanic purposes, not any sort of realism.
At the moment only six components scale with ship size: armour, total engine size, total fuel storage size, total engineering area size, jump engines and cloak. Everything else has the same size and you merely put more or less of it, so the game is already favouring larger designs, especially when it comes to sensors and fire controls, which require some serious trade-offs when developing those on lower tech level for smaller ships. If those specialized compartments are added and the space they take is badly balanced we may arrive at a situation where fighters and gunboats become be all end all of space combat.
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The more I think about it the less I like the idea of specialized components. It's already hard to design small ships but with those it will be even harder. And if they scale with the ship size it will be harder still.
I concur with this opinion. However, Steve has already said that he is "going to add I am going to add Auxiliary Control, Main Engineering, CIC, Primary Flight Operations and Science Department as new modules." Could these at least be check boxes?
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I don't much like the idea to scale dynamically the modules, because it would make really hard to design ships so that everything "fits". Say I want to make a 12000 ton ship (so it has a fixed speed, equal to that of the other fleet elements) it would be hard to design it precisely.
Why would it be any harder then it already currently is when armor and crew quarters increase the size of your ship "dynamically" as you add other components that increase the ships tonnage or crew needs? Isn't that exactly the same thing?
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Initiative in C# Aurora is replaced by Reaction Bonus. A similar effect but percentile-based. As things stand, that bonus is based solely on the commander and is at full effect.
The main reason for scaling of 'station components' is game mechanic purposes, not any sort of realism.
If I'm making an 8,000 ton warship, taking 200 tons out for a station is a notable reduction in payload, fuel, etc.; it's a heavy tradeoff. It may not even be worth it, even assuming a highly skilled officer. For a 30,000 ton vessel, not so much; so for large vessels you arn't actually making any decisions in terms of including stations, since the benefits from their inclusion will presumably massively outmatch their tonnage cost. This isn't necessarily actually a problem: it removes a layer of decision-making, but if you want larger warships to naturally and easily have such positions, that's fine.
Another option is to remove that design decision and simply make the slots available according to existing components with a performance purpose: survey sensors (science), damage control (engineering), etc.
Hybrids are possible; the effectiveness of an officers benefits could scale with the # station components, similar to how engineering spaces effectively scale with a ships size/cost/etc.
Kind of a tangent, but... I've been thinking about escort ships lately, and how they don't have a ton of use in Aurora. Simply because if you can make a 5,000 ton anti-missile ship, you can make a 10,000 ton anti-missile ship that's at least twice as good (likely better).
Since these changes will be a further advantage to larger ships, what about giving ships a penalty to reaction bonus based on their number of command stations? Since reaction bonus is averaged through a fleet, this would mean a fleet that was a mix of large and small ships would react considerably better in combat, which can be valuable. It also makes sense to me that a fleet with better escort elements would have advantages in outmaneuvering the enemy.
It seems like that would encourage fleets with a few heavy capital ships (with the various command stations) and a few escorts with just a CO.
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Kind of a tangent, but... I've been thinking about escort ships lately, and how they don't have a ton of use in Aurora. Simply because if you can make a 5,000 ton anti-missile ship, you can make a 10,000 ton anti-missile ship that's at least twice as good (likely better).
Since these changes will be a further advantage to larger ships, what about giving ships a penalty to reaction bonus based on their number of command stations? Since reaction bonus is averaged through a fleet, this would mean a fleet that was a mix of large and small ships would react considerably better in combat, which can be valuable. It also makes sense to me that a fleet with better escort elements would have advantages in outmaneuvering the enemy.
It seems like that would encourage fleets with a few heavy capital ships (with the various command stations) and a few escorts with just a CO.
I'm not sure I follow this? Almost every fleet I see posted here includes dedicated anti-missile ships that are used to escort carrier groups, missile cruisers or energy weapon ships. Are you saying that you think those escorts are too big? I'm pretty sure in real life that if you decide you will need 10k tons of Aegis capacity you build a 10kt destroyer rather than 2x5k ones for exactly the same design efficiency reasons. I thinker multiple small escorts are more for tactical flexibility and/or screening/hunting submarines?
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I'm not sure I follow this? Almost every fleet I see posted here includes dedicated anti-missile ships that are used to escort carrier groups, missile cruisers or energy weapon ships. Are you saying that you think those escorts are too big? I'm pretty sure in real life that if you decide you will need 10k tons of Aegis capacity you build a 10kt destroyer rather than 2x5k ones for exactly the same design efficiency reasons. I thinker multiple small escorts are more for tactical flexibility and/or screening/hunting submarines?
I'm saying as designed it doesn't really make sense to use smaller ships; you're better off with, say, 5x 30,000 ton ships than 2 30,000 ton ships and 9 10,000 ton ships. This change would just make that even more so, since the command stations are an efficiency advantage for larger ships.
However, I think it's more fun to have a mixed fleet of both escorts and capital ships, hence my suggestion that escorts could contribute more to the reaction rating of a fleet, making it so the 11 ship fleet would be able to outmaneuver the 5 ship fleet of the same total tonnage as well as react quicker. This makes sense to me since screening and skirmishing are traditional uses of smaller vessels.
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There are actual tactically plausible reasons for small escort ships in Aurora. An area defense vessel can interpose itself between the battlegroup and enemy vessels to gain additional time to fire on incoming missile salvos. If it is small enough, it can do this without being detected in the process, letting it increase its effectiveness with little risk. There are numerous problems, however.
1.) The practical meta-game tonnage limit is 2000-2500 tons or so. NPRs go as low as resolution 60 for their main battle sensors and fire controls; once you get past that, you might as well keep scaling up, as you gain little tactical disadvantage from doing so. A detected escort in 'protection' position sacrifices much benefit from final fire PD, and is highly vulnerable in that regard.
In practice, some NPRs (or other player factions) may use much higher resolutions on their sensors, and you can get away with somewhat larger escorts.
2.) For anti-missile missile ships, this requires the AMMs to be much faster than incoming missiles; high performance missiles are however often faster than equivalent AMMs, which sacrifice engine space to obtain agility. It is worse than pointless if your AMMs are slower or barely faster than incoming missiles.
3.) Area defense beam ships can do this very plausibly. In many ways it is the only way for them to function effectively. However, area PD is unpopular for many valid reasons, and the tonnage limit is very rough on a beam vessel (as area PD demands a very expensive max-size fire control). Fighters can work, though.
The other reasons for small vessels are strategic. Namely shipyard capacity and maintenance basing.
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Good change!
I like the extra modules. I don't think they should scale with ship size because, as others stated, they are just the command element for the actual modules that do the work - whether those are survey sensors or engineering spaces or fire controls.
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Personally I don't think they need to scale, but I do think there should be increased crew requirements depending on how heavily a ship might take advantage of that system, like I already pointed out.
one Idea I have for bonuses is for the commander to apply his full bonus unless theres an officer at a station, then he only applies the half bonus on top of the station officers full bonus. Then you could still have flexible ship commanders. Also I think maybe officers shouldn't automatically be reassigned if they get promoted to a higher grade than a ship can handle, or to a higher grade than the ships commander. You should have an opportunity to get them home to shove a replacement onto the ship. Maybe if a promotion would cause a reassignment then instead of them getting promoted and kicked off their promotion is delayed untill they get reassigned, or after 2 years have passed (maybe), or the ship is sent in for overhaul. A manual 'promote' button might be handy if an officer has been held back, that would still cause the auto reassignment.
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Personally I don't think they need to scale, but I do think there should be increased crew requirements depending on how heavily a ship might take advantage of that system, like I already pointed out.
one Idea I have for bonuses is for the commander to apply his full bonus unless theres an officer at a station, then he only applies the half bonus on top of the station officers full bonus. Then you could still have flexible ship commanders. Also I think maybe officers shouldn't automatically be reassigned if they get promoted to a higher grade than a ship can handle, or to a higher grade than the ships commander. You should have an opportunity to get them home to shove a replacement onto the ship. Maybe if a promotion would cause a reassignment then instead of them getting promoted and kicked off their promotion is delayed untill they get reassigned, or after 2 years have passed (maybe), or the ship is sent in for overhaul. A manual 'promote' button might be handy if an officer has been held back, that would still cause the auto reassignment.
I don't think they need to scale with the size of the ship, and I don't think extra crew is required. The new modules were included as the hull cost of the ship in v7.1, no self respecting navy would be without a CIC or Aux Control position on any warship bigger than 1000 tons. The question is where is the Captain? I doubt he would be on the bridge navigating the ship much more likely to be in the CIC fighting his ship. In fact since you want your navigating bridge and your CIC in the safest place possible deep within the bowels of your ship and they use many of the same sensor feeds why not combine them and have the CIC component scale with respect to weapons and sensors, not simply the size of the vessel. Finally if you want anything armoured its probably the CIC component.
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I don't plan to scale the modules or add extra crew. That would add extra complexity and make designing ships more difficult. For small ships, most won't be used, and once you get past a certain size of ship, they will probably all be used. I am not trying to create a decision as to whether a battleship should have a CIC or Main Engineering, but rather to create meaningful choices for mid-range ships.
At the moment, the costs and sizes are as follow - this may change with play test.
Bridge is 1 HS and costs 20 BP.
Auxiliary control is 1 HS and 15 BP.
Science Department is 2 HS and 50 BP
Main Engineering and CIC are both 3 HS and 75 BP.
Primary Flight Control is 4 HS and 100 BP.
In comparison to reality, these are probably on the small side. Even so, they have to be traded against other systems (for example do want Main Engineering or more normal engineering spaces?).
Perhaps I should make them larger (including the bridge) and accept that the size of ships is going to grow if they want better command and control. Open to suggestion on module size, but I want to avoid any scaling effects.
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Personally I'd prefer to have CIC and Main Engineering both being 1HS on the basis that basically any warship will need them and 6HS is quite a lot (2 railguns, lasers, 6 anti-missile launchers or a couple of dozen box launchers). Science department size seems fine as it will likely be used only on specialised ships vessels.
I can't find exactly what effect the CAG will have but if he will add his bonus to the entire fighter group stationed on a given carrier, then the size is about right and may be even larger as carriers are usually quite big already and carry anywhere from a dozen to several dozen parasites, all of which will benefit from the bonus (I think).
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I don't plan to scale the modules or add extra crew. That would add extra complexity and make designing ships more difficult. For small ships, most won't be used, and once you get past a certain size of ship, they will probably all be used. I am not trying to create a decision as to whether a battleship should have a CIC or Main Engineering, but rather to create meaningful choices for mid-range ships.
At the moment, the costs and sizes are as follow - this may change with play test.
Bridge is 1 HS and costs 20 BP.
Auxiliary control is 1 HS and 15 BP.
Science Department is 2 HS and 50 BP
Main Engineering and CIC are both 3 HS and 75 BP.
Primary Flight Control is 4 HS and 100 BP.
In comparison to reality, these are probably on the small side. Even so, they have to be traded against other systems (for example do want Main Engineering or more normal engineering spaces?).
Perhaps I should make them larger (including the bridge) and accept that the size of ships is going to grow if they want better command and control. Open to suggestion on module size, but I want to avoid any scaling effects.
I wouldn't make the bridge larger, or if I did, I'd make it so the ship had to be bigger than 1,000 tons before it needed one.
As an aside, I love the fact that you're paying more attention to C2 systems. Those often get ignored in games, and really shouldn't be.
I did have a thought on scaling. I know you just said you weren't going to implement that, and I'm sort of thinking out loud, so don't take this too seriously. We already see scaling with engineering, and the design tradeoffs that entails. What if we replicate that with tactical systems instead of having mandatory scaling of command components? Increase ship response speed (and maybe application of commander bonuses) based on how many tactical systems components the ship has relative to either crew or weapons. Now it's the player's choice, instead of being something you have to build in.
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If you do not plan to add scaling, then I think three of those modules need to be enlarged. I would make something like this:
Bridge 2 HS <-- need space for all the monitoring, sensors and controls
Auxiliary control 2 HS <--- same as above
Science Department 3 HS <-- I imagine there would be a lot of extra sensors/computers, so make it a little bigger.
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Are these military components? Mostly wondering about commercial geosurvey vessels.
I think making the components is large is preferably personally, but for some it might be problematic.
The Science Department is particularly tricky. The nature of surveying somewhat works against it. In many cases, your ability to survey is more limited by your ship speed than your survey speed; any system with asteroids and comets will seemingly result in a lot more traveling than surveying, for example. Gravsurvey is more consistent than geosurvey - you never have virtually-zero cost survey locations - but there's also very rarely high cost survey locations, and the points are always very spread out.
A survey sensor is 5HS. So on a ship with 1 sensor the 2HS science department has to give a +40% bonus to be as beneficial/weight as a sensor - a tall order, given current survey bonuses in Aurora VB. (That of course is easily changeable - commander survey bonuses can presumably be scaled up and down fairly easily.) The percentage bonuses start looking much more attractive when you've added a 2nd sensor and consider adding a 3rd. However, thats when you run into the 'how much survey speed do you actually need?' conundrum as above. SD does have the benefit of increasing both planetary and gravitational survey speeds for hybrid vessels though - I expect to see it featured on those very prominently...
The more I think about it, the more i think its fine, if the tonnage concerns are going to be similar between VB and C#.
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Yeah, I would only put SD on hybrid ships that do both geo and grav or just on grav survey ships which mine tend to be on the larger side. Use small & fast geo vessels from a survey carrier.
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First up, Thank you to Steve, for allowing us input into your creation!!
I've a question about the Flag Bridges, mainly as I read the situation that they will replace normal Bridges.
Does this mean that the role of Flag Captain no longer exists? Traditionally a "Flag Officer" at the rank of Commodore or above would be assigned a staff akin to the VB6 Task Forces screen. Their purpose is to provide direction for a group of ships as a whole, not individually command their ship as well.
Serving under that person and directly in control of the Flagship I. E. the ship the Commodore chooses as their home, is the Flag Captain, who runs the actual ship, freeing the Flag Officer to execute squadron / task force / fleet level direction.
Could this not be implemented using the Admin Commands step that is now built into C# Aurora?
What I mean is that each ship is commanded by its own Commanding Officer, with as many or as little subordinate officers as the player wishes. With a Flag Officer providing direction from their flag bridge.
Something like this
Battle Taskgroup
Taskgroup Commander - Commodore J. J. Abrams
+ DD Bethany (Contains Flag Bridge)
Flag Bridge Officer - Commodore J. J. Abrams
Ship Commander - Captain James Kirk
Executive Officer - Commander Spock
+ DD Stephanie
Ship Commander - Captain C Columbus
Executive Officer - Commander L Clarke
Which would mean that CMDRE Abrams is on-board DD Bethany and should the Flag Bridge on that ship take a hit or the ship was destroyed then his bonus is no longer applied to the Task Group.
I like to RP down to the Division Level for warships, in VB6 I just have a Big Mess of Task Forces that sort of make a coherent whole at the moment, I would love to be able to simplify the idea.
Thanks
Frank
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Speaking of Flag Bridges...
7) Flag Bridge is 4 HS and 100 BP. A fleet that includes a ship with a flag bridge, commanded by the senior officer in the fleet, will improve its overall reaction rating by the Reaction Bonus of that commander. Minimum rank for ship commander is three above the racial minimum. There are no longer any task forces or staff officers. If a flag bridge is added, the normal bridge is no longer required.
For auto-assignment purposes, each ship class now has a specific rank requirement for its commander, based on its command and control modules. The rank requirement for the XO, CAG and Science Officer is one lower than for the ship commander. The rank requirement for the Chief Engineer and Tactical Office is two lower than the ship commander. You can manually assign higher-ranked ship commanders if desired but other officers can only be assigned at the specified rank.
Which seems to say that, for instance, the Chief Engineer of a flagship ought to be one rank senior to the Chief Engineer of any other ship in the formation. There is some tendency to look for elite subordinates, of course, but I'm not sure whether it should be a requirement. (Or I could be misreading it, in which case a clarification would also be nice.)
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First up, Thank you to Steve, for allowing us input into your creation!!
I've a question about the Flag Bridges, mainly as I read the situation that they will replace normal Bridges.
Does this mean that the role of Flag Captain no longer exists? Traditionally a "Flag Officer" at the rank of Commodore or above would be assigned a staff akin to the VB6 Task Forces screen. Their purpose is to provide direction for a group of ships as a whole, not individually command their ship as well.
Serving under that person and directly in control of the Flagship I. E. the ship the Commodore chooses as their home, is the Flag Captain, who runs the actual ship, freeing the Flag Officer to execute squadron / task force / fleet level direction.
Could this not be implemented using the Admin Commands step that is now built into C# Aurora?
What I mean is that each ship is commanded by its own Commanding Officer, with as many or as little subordinate officers as the player wishes. With a Flag Officer providing direction from their flag bridge.
Something like this
Battle Taskgroup
Taskgroup Commander - Commodore J. J. Abrams
+ DD Bethany (Contains Flag Bridge)
Flag Bridge Officer - Commodore J. J. Abrams
Ship Commander - Captain James Kirk
Executive Officer - Commander Spock
+ DD Stephanie
Ship Commander - Captain C Columbus
Executive Officer - Commander L Clarke
Which would mean that CMDRE Abrams is on-board DD Bethany and should the Flag Bridge on that ship take a hit or the ship was destroyed then his bonus is no longer applied to the Task Group.
I like to RP down to the Division Level for warships, in VB6 I just have a Big Mess of Task Forces that sort of make a coherent whole at the moment, I would love to be able to simplify the idea.
Thanks
Frank
Effectively what you are saying is that, rather than my proposed functionality, a flag bridge should instead allow the assignment of a officer to a ship who is senior to the ship commander.
I like that better than my idea :). I'll change the code to work that way and allow anyone of minimum rank + 3 or higher to be assigned in a 'Fleet Commander' role with the bonus as described.
EDIT: Made the changes and reflected them in the rules post.
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Speaking of Flag Bridges...
Which seems to say that, for instance, the Chief Engineer of a flagship ought to be one rank senior to the Chief Engineer of any other ship in the formation. There is some tendency to look for elite subordinates, of course, but I'm not sure whether it should be a requirement. (Or I could be misreading it, in which case a clarification would also be nice.)
That was what I intended. However, with the change I am going to make that will no longer be the case.
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That was what I intended. However, with the change I am going to make that will no longer be the case.
I still like the idea of fleet commanders having their own staffs in addition to the new ship specific junior officer roles. Macro vs Micro bonus applications.
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Going from the Honor Harrington series, it makes sense as well - the fleet commander's staff basically replicates the ship commander's staff, only their purpose is to serve as the battle-group wide voice for their department in the fleet commander's planning.
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I still like the idea of fleet commanders having their own staffs in addition to the new ship specific junior officer roles. Macro vs Micro bonus applications.
I too will miss the Flag Officers staff, they should at least have a Flag Lieutenant (general dogsbody), Fleet Operations Officer, Fleet Intelligence Officer (interrogation bonus?), Fleet Communications Officer (Extends range of other bonuses?) and Fleet Logistics Officer (replenishment bonus?).
For me they needn't provide a bonus but are really good for role-play and AARs. It would be unlikely any of these officers would be above Lieutenant Commander.
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What I would really like to see is Auxiliary Control not being a requirement for an Executive Officer, but instead allow the appointment of an Executive Officer anyway.
A Bridge would then become a special item of which each ship could only have one (similar to how there can be only one type of engine), typically housing both the Executive Officer and the Commanding Officer, meaning both can be killed in the event of a hit on the Bridge, where there is no Auxiliary Control present.
Where an Auxiliary Control is located on a class design then the Executive officer is present there instead for the purposes of damage calculation.
I would also like to see a 3 Ton (0. 03?? HS) component for FAC / Fighters that represents the cockpit of these crafts. (3 Tons to balance out the 2 Ton Crew Quarters, Fighter 8))
I would further propose that the class design doesn't have a default control rating of 1 but instead zero, and only after adding these systems can it rise, Bridge / Cockpit 0 > 1. Auxiliary Control 1 > 2. And so on.
Making it possible for ships to be unable to carry out orders without a Bridge / Cockpit or an Auxiliary Control when the Bridge has been damaged.
Having all of the control stations being able to be affected by microwave lasers, enabling a mission kill of the intact ship.
I too will also miss the Staff Component of Task Forces, but am more excited about the possibility of seeing my own bridge crews work first.
EDIT: A Tactical officer could then provide the ability for missiles and beams to target specific components of a ship, with an accuracy bonus related to his tactical skill. Allowing really well trained / experienced tactical officers the ability to target a ships engines with 70% accuracy on an observed class, and 90% accuracy on a known class (Thinking about alien ships, you could probably tell where the engines were generally versus ships you have reverse engineered / or salvaged wrecks of as some examples)
Thanks
Frank
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What I would really like to see is Auxiliary Control not being a requirement for an Executive Officer, but instead allow the appointment of an Executive Officer anyway.
A Bridge would then become a special item of which each ship could only have one (similar to how there can be only one type of engine), typically housing both the Executive Officer and the Commanding Officer, meaning both can be killed in the event of a hit on the Bridge, where there is no Auxiliary Control present.
Where an Auxiliary Control is located on a class design then the Executive officer is present there instead for the purposes of damage calculation.
I would also like to see a 3 Ton (0. 03?? HS) component for FAC / Fighters that represents the cockpit of these crafts. (3 Tons to balance out the 2 Ton Crew Quarters, Fighter 8))
I would further propose that the class design doesn't have a default control rating of 1 but instead zero, and only after adding these systems can it rise, Bridge / Cockpit 0 > 1. Auxiliary Control 1 > 2. And so on.
Making it possible for ships to be unable to carry out orders without a Bridge / Cockpit or an Auxiliary Control when the Bridge has been damaged.
Having all of the control stations being able to be affected by microwave lasers, enabling a mission kill of the intact ship.
I too will also miss the Staff Component of Task Forces, but am more excited about the possibility of seeing my own bridge crews work first.
SNIP
Thanks
Frank
But would not the Commander be in the CIC during combat? During the Falklands war that is certainly where the Captains were in RN ships. Thus you could have the Tactical fficer and the Captain killed in one hit on the CIC.
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In regards to the first question about what ranks should be used for Chief Engineers, I'd keep them to the Warrant Officer ranks. Plus, I think a limitation of Task Force organization should be that the CO needs to be a flag officer. Also, it is often not uncommon to have people with ranks usually found in infantry organization serving aboard military vessels as the XO, like Majors and (lt) Colonels. A notable example would be the USAF and Marine Corp. It is not unlikely that with the further advance of technology and integration of combined arms, that these spots will be filled by field grade officers, serving under flag officers.
Anyway, for my suggestion of ranks:
CO: CMDR up to CAPT
XO: LCMDR ... CMDR (OR, Major... Lt. Colonel (Colonel if on Flag Bridge))
CEO: Chief Warrant Officer can be promoted to the billet.
CSO: 1LT ... MAJ
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But would not the Commander be in the CIC during combat? During the Falklands war that is certainly where the Captains were in RN ships. Thus you could have the Tactical fficer and the Captain killed in one hit on the CIC.
I would have thought that the Bridge is a proper place for a Captain, its not just the place where you drive the ship from? and some classes may not have a CIC or a Tactical officer. Makes sense that the relevant information is carried to smaller (Read more focused) screens on the bridge, where one is present.
Were captains not in CIC because their ships were not moving put providing radar coverage for the air and ground combat elements. To my knowledge there has been no direct ship to ship naval combat since WWII. Captains were certainly on the bridges during that period.
Regards
Frank
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I would have thought that the Bridge is a proper place for a Captain, its not just the place where you drive the ship from? and some classes may not have a CIC or a Tactical officer. Makes sense that the relevant information is carried to smaller (Read more focused) screens on the bridge, where one is present.
Were captains not in CIC because their ships were not moving put providing radar coverage for the air and ground combat elements. To my knowledge there has been no direct ship to ship naval combat since WWII. Captains were certainly on the bridges during that period.
Regards
Frank
On modern warships, generally the captain will command the ship from the Ops Room (CIC in US usage) in combat, while the Bridge is primarily for navigational safety (ie. looking out of the window) and driving the ship, often under instructions from Warfare Officers in the Ops Room. The reason behind this is that the bridge needs to be exposed for visual navigation, and it also needs to be unlit at night for the same reasons - so not conducive to being heavily manned and stuffed with electronic displays. On Aurora ships, where visual navigation presumably isn't a factor, it would make sense to combine the command and navigation functions again into the Bridge, while using an Ops Room/CIC for picture compilation and situational awareness (i.e. processing the raw data to feed the Bridge's tactical display)
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In regards to the first question about what ranks should be used for Chief Engineers, I'd keep them to the Warrant Officer ranks. Plus, I think a limitation of Task Force organization should be that the CO needs to be a flag officer. Also, it is often not uncommon to have people with ranks usually found in infantry organization serving aboard military vessels as the XO, like Majors and (lt) Colonels. A notable example would be the USAF and Marine Corp. It is not unlikely that with the further advance of technology and integration of combined arms, that these spots will be filled by field grade officers, serving under flag officers.
Anyway, for my suggestion of ranks:
CO: CMDR up to CAPT
XO: LCMDR ... CMDR (OR, Major... Lt. Colonel (Colonel if on Flag Bridge))
CEO: Chief Warrant Officer can be promoted to the billet.
CSO: 1LT ... MAJ
No need to hard code ranks. Different nations and species and themes will use different ones anyway.
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No need to hard code ranks. Different nations and species and themes will use different ones anyway.
I think the idea behind all this is for specific roles to be one or two ranks junior to the ship captain, whatever rank he/she is. Since different species and nations use different nomenclatures we may as well just go with rank levels. I think most people start with LCDR or equivalent so that would be O-4. If the captain is an O-4 then there wouldn't be an XO or any other senior officer post on board. If the captain is an O-5, then the -1 slots would be available for officers at the O-4 rank. Then again if the CO is an O-6 the whole gambit of possibilities opens up. Leaving the minimum rank for a captain up to the player is a good thing, and allows for more variables as the game progresses. Setting limits based on class, size, loadout, etc limits some of the flexibility in the game.
Adam.
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Thanatos seemed to suggest that 1st rank (usually Lt.Cmdr) couldn't be a CO of a ship at all since he started with the 2nd rank (usually Cmdr). He also limited the upper range to Captain. That's what I meant by "hardcoding" restrictions.
I do agree that the bridge officer slots should be connected to the rank of the commander of the ship like Steve suggested - XO one rank below, others two. That's fine and logical regardless of the theme we use. But placing restrictions on what rank in general can do what is counterproductive.
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Just FYI, but here's how I currently play the game.
My fleet uses what we call a "Merit Based Command" system.
What this means is that:
--- I set the minimum rank for all of my ship classes to be the lowest (Lt Commander)
--- I put the officers on auto-assign
--- in my current game, I set the tour length to 6 months.
What I'm hoping this does is put the officers with the best skills into the commands. What I want for instance is for my best Survey commanders to automatically be assigned to the survey ships. I don't really care what their 'rank' is. I just want the best survey officers in command of the survey ships. The only time I try to assign officers to a specific job is when a Construction Batt is being sent to alien ruins, I will find an officer with good Xeno skills to command it.
For me, as Admiral of the Fleet and Grand Pooh-Bah of all Colonial and Space Operations, I've got other things to worry about than micromanaging where Lt Commanders are assigned. So, what I want is a simple, no-hands system that puts the right skills into the right places. Or, in game terms, I want my staff and subordinate officers to handle this and not to bother me with it.
I'm sure there are others who get more into this, and I can see where this adds flavor to the game. But I just want a simple, automated system that is flexible in putting the right skills into the right jobs. In my fleet, if the best engineering officer is a Lt Cmdr, then I still want him handling engineering on the fleet's most important ship. I assume there's some way to give him/her/it a temporary rank, or that in general that any complaints about his/her/it being of 'too low' a rank for the job are met with a direct command from the Grand Pooh-Bah of the fleet to shut up and deal with it and that any who complain or bug me about it are just telling me that they aren't really the officers I want in my fleet. :) :) ;)
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With further thought (and another re-read of the fantastic Honor Harrington series)
Flag officers and Admin commands
Would it be feasible to have the same officer assigned to both of these and just transfer them as needed.
Admin commands being static locations and flag bridges being the mobile variant. This way a flag officer can have his a training or a different bonus spread across the system, as an admin command is land / pdc / space station based owing to the fact it's a bigger installation or has a larger staff (or war room or communications disk), but only applies his tactical bonus from a flag bridge, simulating the difference between a front line squadron and a system defence or training one.
It would also make the difference between "war-fighting" Commanders and "Planning" Commanders. You could also have subordinate commanders on flag bridges assigned to the system you plan on getting the admin bonus from.
I'll embellish if anyone sees any merit to this.
Regards
Frank Jager
EDIT: Cleanup and structure.
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One past problem Aurora had was the crew were large compared to present day warships, where the crew is getting smaller as automation takes over. Steve has addressed this in the past. To artifically inlflate crew size seems a backward step.
In addition Aurora only covers one third of the crew of a ship, the officers, and then perhaps only half of them. Is there any reason that Aurora has only seven steps in rank?
It can be argued that anything below the XO should be a non-executive officer, e.g. Sub-lieutenant or Lieutenant. Thus the rank structure could be one with twelve steps in it as below:
Non-executive officers
Ensign or Midshipman/Warrant Officer
Sub-lieutenant
Lieutenant
Executive officers
Lieutenant Commander
Commander
Captain
Flag rank
Commodore
Rear Admiral
Vice Admiral
Admiral
Administrative
Admiral of the Fleet
1st Star Lord
Sub-lieutenants or lieutenants could command small craft of 1000 tons or less. Above that an executive officer would be required. Lieutenant Commander could bridge between non-executive and executive ranks. Commodore could be a bridging rank that commands their own ship as well as a squadron. An Administrative rank is one normally associated with a sector command, Admiral would be the bridging rank between a fleet command and sector command. Even flag ranks could command their own ship (the Royal Yatch was usually commanded by a Rear Admiral) If twelve steps are too many then the Ensign, Admiral of the Fleet and 1st Star Lord could be omitted giving a nine step structure.
As I said earlier Aurora only covers one third of the crew of a ship, missing out the enlisted men and non-commissioned officers. If you want to expand the rank structure further consideration could be given to non-commissioned officers, e.g. Petty Officer, Chief Petty Officer and Fleet/Master Chief Petty Officer. Thus the crew of a 1000 ton fast attack craft could be a Lieutenant, a Chief Petty Officer and a Petty Officer (engineering). Alternately the FAC could be captained by a CPO. The NCOs could be "hidden in the woodwork" perhaps a FAC commanded by a CPO which destroyed a high value target could be promoted to Warrant Officer and thus appear on the promotion track.
That's my tuppence worth
Ian
Gonna hop in here real quick. You can officer ranks. And i do the same thingn as mentioned. I use junior officers to fly my fighters, scouts, transports etc. which gives them a job and leaves senior officers for large ships
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I'm so excited to roleplay with bridge officers :)