Length of Service for Commanders

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Although Aurora has health problems for commanders that will eventually limit their term of service, I am tempted to introduce a maximum length of service for the lower ranks. This is for several reasons. Firstly, realism as officers in the military don't usually sign up for life. Secondly, there are many low-capability officers that never have a command and just take up space in the officer structure. Thirdly, higher ranking officers with limited ability currently hold back younger and more capable officers, possibly because of high political ratings or perhaps because they were created during race setup. Finally, the officer structure just grows to huge proportions eventually even with fairly small academies.

I am open to advice on what the term of service should be. I am considering a couple of options. The first option would be a standard term of service, perhaps twenty years, after which an officer would retire if he was still in the bottom three ranks (maybe bottom four). HIgher ranks would stay until they retired through ill health or accident. The second option would be terms of service based on the current rank. So a bottom rank officer would leave after maybe ten years, whereas an officer currently at rank three officer would leave after perhaps 16 years and an officer currently at rank 5 after 24 years of service, etc. Exact numbers to be determined. I would like to hear some comments on the idea in general, on the options I have mentioned and any other options that you can suggest.

As this will result in an officer corps that does not increase anything like as fast once the first retirements kick in, if more officers are required overall then the size of naval academies can be increased to create a greater throughput or recruits

Steve

[schroeam]

Having the same thought after merging two pre-TN races and creating an officer corps of over 300 first rank officers, my "Fleet Admiral" instituted a mandatory retirement limit based on age consisting of the following:

Commander - 40 years
Captain - 45
Commodore - 50
Rear Admiral - 55
Vice Admiral, Admiral and Fleet Admiral - No limit as they would probably be looking at poor health in the future, would be retired as the result of some "incident", and are few in number anyway.

The first time I did this I reduced the corps by 1/3.  I go back every two years or so and weed out those who have passed their limits.  If I run across someone who still has usefulness, I will just promote them to the next level.  Making this automated will definitely raise the realism, as well as keep down the overhead.  A few "random" retirements due to family death, business venture, scandal, etc. before the age limit would be useful.  This way officers just don't disappear without dying or coming close to dying.

Also, is there a way to have an entry made into the officer history stating that he has joined a team, and maybe list the team members in the team section of the F2 screen?  

One more thing, what is the arranging method for the No-longer-active officers?  I've noticed during the random purgings that when I retire an officer he just goes into that list in some "random" position.  I'm sure the program ranks them somehow, but chronologically by date of retirement or death would be useful.

Thanks,
Adam.

[Erik L]

Maybe have the bottom rank with a fairly steep retirement percentage, as they would be the most likely to sign up for the minimum term. Possibly also have the minimum term user configurable like the re-assignment period.

[welchbloke]

There are several different methods in use around the world. The US uses an up or out methodology where if you aren’t a certain rank by a certain age then out you go (I believe this is currently being relaxed due to the overseas commitments).  The British Army has a similar system where captains and majors that are going nowhere are ‘encouraged’ to retire at their exit point.  The system I am most familiar with is the RAF one.  There are 2 types of commission, short service and permanent.  Short service lasts 6 yrs (9 if you are aircrew) and permanent takes you to age 40 for all ranks.  If you make sqn ldr you are signed on to 55.  However, in order to keep specialists, it is possible to offer flt lts assimilation and sign them on to 55.  My suggested structure (basically and amended version of Adam’s) would be:

Commander – Age 45
Captain – Age 45
Commodore – Age 55
Rear Admiral – Age 55
Vice Admiral and above – Age 65

This still caps the time any officer can spend in the officer corps and gives 3 bands of officers; essentially ship COs, small task group COs and CINCs.

Alternatively, why not make the retirement ages a percentage of racial life expectancy?  Add a tech line for medical research and it would be possible to improve the life expectancy of the race (and your officers).  This might appeal to some races/players.

Welchbloke

[Randy]

Conceptually, an interesting idea.

However, in practice it wont work unless you change the ratios required for promotions.

Usually you need R3 for ship command, R6 for a planet governer, higher for sector commands. Eliminating numbers of the lower ranks then means you will have fewer high ranking officers available for these positions. If you change the ratios to 2:1 all the way up then you can have fewer low ranking officers, but that just feels wrong...

 The suggested solution of just building more training centres for more high ranking officers doesn't work. Thats merely just "fixing" the issue by re-creating the issue (more training centres means more officers - and thats just what you were trying to reduce...).

Note that at present there is some bug in officer generation in that you get about double the expected number of officers recruited every year...

Personally, I would not use this option because I need the high ranking officers and this proces will just seem to reduce the number available...

[welchbloke]

Randy raises a valid point about numbers of officers. I know he says that a ratio of 2:1 doesn't feel right, but in a real armed forces the ratio of the various officer ranks is normally around 3:1or greater for the R1 to R4 grades.  R5 and above can be subject to a lot factors but even they are at least 2:1 and generally higher.  Applying this to Aurora would just make the situation with the size of the officer corps worse.  The use of retirement ages would stop individuals from blocking posts; however a greater churn of officers would be required and hence in game turns more officers would be created and stored in the database.

Welchbloke

[Erik L]

Currently the R1 (not sure about R2 or R3) is a 3:1 ratio.

I've always found that after 5-10 years of gameplay, you've got a few hundred lower level officers that are just sitting there collecting dust. The auto-assignment works to some extent, but I've also seen the same officer posted to the same slot 3 or 4 rotations in a row.

Maybe something to add junior officers to ships. I.E. an armed ship needs a gunnery officer (or two or more), so that slot gets filled with a junior officer. The XO slot. I'm sure there are others I'm not thinking of. The same for engineering and communications. Maybe not have these slots have any gameplay effect other than having officers assigned to ships.

[IanD]

Usually you need R3 for ship command, R6 for a planet governer, higher for sector commands. Eliminating numbers of the lower ranks then means you will have fewer high ranking officers available for these positions. If you change the ratios to 2:1 all the way up then you can have fewer low ranking officers, but that just feels wrong...

There was a thread not that long ago about the possibility of separating the civil and military command structures. Thus you would not need your military officers for planetary governor positions. I would certainly favour retirement for the military combined with a civil command structure ranked according to what size of population you could competently govern, (but that bit doesn’t happen in real life so perhaps not! just a free-for-all with political influence having most effect).

Regards
Ian

[welchbloke]

I like Ian's idea of splitting Military and Civilian command structures.  I would like to see things go one further and have seperate Ground and Naval command structures.  I find something intrinsically worrying about allowing an Admiral to command an infantry division  :oops:

Welchbloke

[Sotak246]

I've always felt the same as welchbloke.  I know in WWII many of the small island attacks had an Admiral  in overall command, but even that wasn't a set rule. MacArthur never would have let an Admiral tell him how to run his part of the Pacific campaign.  It just never seems right to have the navy in charge of major army operations, such as planetary combat.  Maybe as a bonus for a  ground/space support component like forward aircontrolers...but that would be asking you to get into a lot of detail for just ground combat.
Mark

[schroeam]

You can always use the "Grant Title" button on the Officer Corps screen to give them an Army title.  I've used this for officers assigned as commanders of ground units.  They generally do not get assigned to ships.  The program likes to segregate them somehow.  You could set up your officer ranks as O-4 thru O-10 (assuming O-1 thru O-3 are the junior officers and the Naval Academy is actually some sort of command school) and grant the title based on their career path.  It would just be an awful lot of work to update whenever they got promoted.  

Adam.

[Erik L]

You can always use the "Grant Title" button on the Officer Corps screen to give them an Army title.  I've used this for officers assigned as commanders of ground units.  They generally do not get assigned to ships.  The program likes to segregate them somehow.  You could set up your officer ranks as O-4 thru O-10 (assuming O-1 thru O-3 are the junior officers and the Naval Academy is actually some sort of command school) and grant the title based on their career path.  It would just be an awful lot of work to update whenever they got promoted.  

Adam.

It puts officers into slots according to their skills, and modified by Political Reliability. So a survey ship will get an officer with a high (or any) survey skill. The same follows for other ships.

[schroeam]

It puts officers into slots according to their skills, and modified by Political Reliability. So a survey ship will get an officer with a high (or any) survey skill. The same follows for other ships.

Which is fine, it just gives you something to explain away as "needs of the service" or "due to his superior skills" or "blah, blah, blah..."  You know, write a little fiction to make it fit.  Survey officers aren't expected to be your first rate line officers anyway, so if they happen to come from the ranks of those who spend a little more time on the ground in the first place, meh.

Adam.

[Erik L]

It puts officers into slots according to their skills, and modified by Political Reliability. So a survey ship will get an officer with a high (or any) survey skill. The same follows for other ships.

Which is fine, it just gives you something to explain away as "needs of the service" or "due to his superior skills" or "blah, blah, blah..."  You know, write a little fiction to make it fit.  Survey officers aren't expected to be your first rate line officers anyway, so if they happen to come from the ranks of those who spend a little more time on the ground in the first place, meh.

Adam.

I was commenting on your statement of "it segregates them" which I probably misunderstood

[schroeam]

I understood what you were saying, and how the officers are auto-assigned, but I've also seen the program keep army officers as army officers due to the fact that by the time you get a survey ship going your officer corps is so inflated that there are plenty of officers without high ground combat bonuses that have high, or relatively high, survey bonuses, and a proportionally larger ground force.  Of course, I may just be seeing something that is not there.  I don't have any hard facts, just what I have noticed.

Adam.