Something regularly requested by players is splitting commanders into separate army and navy organizations and possibly into a civilian organization as well. I have decided to implement this for v4.7. Commanders, which I will refer as Leaders when talking about them as a whole, will be split into four different groups. Naval Officers, Army Officers, Civilian Administrators and Scientists. Each group will have a subset of the existing bonuses and a subset of the existing assignments, although in some cases these will overlap. Each leader type will have an increased chance of the bonuses that apply to that type. On the commanders window (now the Leaders window), there is a new dropdown above the rank structure list. This is used to change between the four different leader groups.
Naval Officers
Naval Officers will be the most similar to the existing commanders. The rank structure will be the familiar one for each theme and they will operate just as the current officers do with the exception that they can no longer be assigned to sector command, colony command or command of any ground unit. They can still be assigned to ship command, task force command, a staff officer position or as a member of a team. Because there is no longer any need to force higher level naval commanders for the purposes of colony command, the 3-1 rank ratio will extend throughout the naval rank structure and there will no longer automatically be an officer of every rank at game start. Their list of bonuses is as follows:
Communications
Crew Training
Diplomacy
Espionage
Fighter Operations
Initiative
Intelligence
Logistics
Operations
Survey
Terraforming
Army Officers
Army Officers have only four ranks. These are battalion commander, brigade commander, division commander and corps commander. At the moment there is no corps level organization in Aurora so the corps commander will function as a division commander for now. Each theme has its own names for these four ranks. For example, the US/UK is Colonel, Brigadier General, Major General and Lieutenant General; the French version is Colonel, Général de Brigade, Général de Division, Général de Corps d´Armée, etc.. These can be renamed as desired. When auto-assigning commanders, the program will assign them to the appropriate unit type, so only Colonels will command battalions, only Brigadiers will command brigades, etc.. The player can override this as desired. There are many types of battalion so the program will sort the battalion commanders by promotion score and sort the battalions by commander priority (Heavy Assault, Marine, Assault Infantry, etc.) and then match up the two lists. Because of the 4-1 ratio of battalion to brigade and brigade to division, plus the probability of independent battalions, the army officer rank structure uses a 5-1 ratio. Army officers can be assigned to ground unit command plus Espionage and Diplomacy Teams. Their bonus list is as follows:
Diplomacy
Espionage
Ground Combat
Ground Forces Training
Civilian Administrators
Civilian Administrators don't have ranks. Instead they have an Administration Rating which determines how large a population or sector a Civilian Administrator is capable of managing. The administration rating can rise through experience. A colony has an administration rating requirement equal to its thermal signature divided by 5000 (fractions rounded up). The maximum requirement is level 5. A Sector requires an administration rating one higher than that required for the largest population within the sector. Civilian administrators can be assigned to colony command or to Espionage and Diplomacy Teams. Their bonus list is as follows:
Administration
Diplomacy
Espionage
Factory Production
Ground Unit Construction Speed
Logistics
Mining
Population Growth
Shipbuilding
Terraforming
Wealth Creation
Scientists
Scientists don't have ranks. Instead, they have an Administration Rating which determines how many research facilities a Scientist is capable of managing. A scientist can manage a number of research facilities equal to his Administration Rating multiplied by five. Scientists can be assigned to Research Projects (more on this below) or to Survey and Xenoarchaeology teams. Even though Scientists (and Civilian Administrators) have only a single rank, you can rename that rank. So a Russian themed player may decide to rename Scientist as Academician for example. Their bonus list is as follows:
Administration
Research
Survey
Xenoarchaeology
The only place the four groups overlap in terms of assignments is for teams. A team can be formed using members from different leader groups, so you may have scientists and naval officers in a survey team or a mixture of naval officers, army officers and civilians in an espionage team. Only scientists have the Xenoarchaeology bonus so teams of that type will be scientist only.
Promotion Scores
Because of the changes, promotion scores will be very different and usually much lower than they are now. They will emphasise important areas for each type of leader, such as crew training for naval officers and ground combat for army officers. Some bonuses that used to be key, such as shipbuilding or research, no longer affect the promotion scores as they are restricted to Civilian Administrators and Scientists, neither of which have promotion scores. Senior naval officers will now be those best suited to commanding larger ships or task forces and will tend to have high crew training scores.
Research Teams and Research Projects
The way research is carried out is changing slightly for v4.7. At the moment, each colony uses all its research facilities on a single project, using the bonus provided by the planetary governor. In v4.7, planetary governors no longer have a research bonus. Instead, a scientist will manage each research project and a number of research facilities may be assigned to the project, up to a maximum of the scientist's administration rating multiplied by five. Each colony may have multiple research projects underway at once, each under the leadership of a different scientist.
The layout of the Research tab has changed to facilitate this. In a grid control stretching across the top is a list of current research projects, showing the tech system, the scientist leading the project, the number of research labs that have been allocated, the annual RP produced by the project team, the remaining RP for the project and the estimated completion date. Below this, is the Create New Project section where you select a Research Project, a scientist to lead it and the number of research labs you wish to allocate. The scientists are shown in a grid control with their name, research specialization, research bonus and the maximum number of research facilities they can control. The tech systems are now displayed by research area (such as Construction or Propulsion) rather than the v4.6 method of Background/Racial/Ship Systems
The Research Queue functions as before, except that a scientist will select the first project from the queue that is within the same area of specialization as the just completed project. This is to avoid projects being picked up by scientists with the wrong specialization.
[attachment=0:2ntsgmg7]NewResearch.JPG[/attachment:2ntsgmg7]
Steve
