Should Fighters Need Commanders?

[Jorgen_CAB]

I do agree that you should be able to opt out of using commanding officers on small crafts in favour of other more important positions such as executive officer or commander of a CIC on a capital ship. Fighter should have the lowest of priorities followed by FAC and then as bridge crew of capital ships. It is is irritating when a fighter gets commanded before you get a CIC officer on your most important ships for example.

I thought it was already possible to do this by setting the Commander Priority of your larger ships to be higher than that of the fighters. Haven't tested it myself but doesn't this work?

Yes... but officers still prioritise commanding a vessel over commanding a secondary position on a capital ship. At least I'm sure that is what happens.

[Zincat]

Back to the main topic XD

I more or less agree with Jorgen here. In fact, I feel that the game may be TOO forgiving in terms of officers and such. The natural counter to that is building more academies, which you should do anyway. If it irks you to have unassigned commanders, you can imagine that they are occupied in training or low level administrative positions.

I am, however, 100% an RPer, so I can totally understand why people could want the possibility to avoid commanders in this situation.

So, after reading everything, I'd say my answer is:
Should fighters need commanders? Generally yes, within the confines of the mechanics Steve made. "Fighters" are actually pretty large and have a two digits crew in most cases, so having a commander, someone responsible for the ship, makes sense here

Could we have a toggable system where certain classes or sizes or whatever do not have a commander? (To roleplay automated crafts or whatever). I'm all for it if Steve is interested to code it.
But imo, it cannot be the default/only option, because the mechanics of Aurora imply that a fighter is a craft big enough and with enough crew that it generally makes sense to for it to have a commander.

I would not mind a more granular option for assigning commanders though.

[liveware]

A test fighter in my game for example need 30t living space for 20 people for a 3 month deployment operation... it would not be very reasonable to think that 30 cubic meters is anywhere near enough for that. That is what 15 square meters of space to live on roughly.

The bridge of most ships are about 50t which would be about 25 square meters or a 5*5 room, that is VERY small as you need all the equipment in there too... not just the people working there.

Submarine crews have been crammed into pretty small spaces for a few months at a time. 1.5 cubic meters per person would certainly be tight, but if you throw in hot-bunking it's probably possible. Well, provided you're ignoring food stores. Three months of preserved food is probably going to put that over the edge.

The bridge is easier - since (small) ships work without a bridge, most of the fundamental control equipment must not be coming out of the bridge tonnage at all.

Submarines are a pretty good example and even if they are cramped the crew don't live in 1.5 cubic meters... you don't only count their sleeping quarters but all living space on the ship. A fighter and FAC also include all of the working space as well into this space. It also include ALL the space for the equipment, bulkheads, water and life support machinery etc. So perhaps two third or as little as half of the space is actual space for the crew to move around in, tops.

I think I remember that Steve said something a few years ago about using submarines and living space as one of the measurements for the space needed for space ship in Aurora so he clearly have thought this through more than once.

Submarines have allot more space than 1.5 cubic meters for the crew to live and work on, even in a small diesel submarine.

If you are dedicated to determining the level of reality of Aurora, you might consider historical airship designs, such as those used in the early 20th century. In that context, the volume consideration based on liquid hydrogen is much more relevant and interesting than for submarines immersed in water.

I was thinking in terms of buoyant forces. Any ship would need to displace sufficient volume of the fluid in which it is immersed to be able to float. Buoyancy is the bridge between ship mass and ship volume and any equipment on board a ship will affect the overall ship displacement volume.  If one considers the vacuum of space to be extremely low density hydrogen gas instead of true vacuum, one might be interested in working out how large a ship would need to be to float on a hypothetical ocean of liquid hydrogen.

[Droll]

I do agree that you should be able to opt out of using commanding officers on small crafts in favour of other more important positions such as executive officer or commander of a CIC on a capital ship. Fighter should have the lowest of priorities followed by FAC and then as bridge crew of capital ships. It is is irritating when a fighter gets commanded before you get a CIC officer on your most important ships for example.

I thought it was already possible to do this by setting the Commander Priority of your larger ships to be higher than that of the fighters. Haven't tested it myself but doesn't this work?

Yes... but officers still prioritise commanding a vessel over commanding a secondary position on a capital ship. At least I'm sure that is what happens.

This is exactly what I am referring too. In one of my games as a way of handling PPV I would build 100s of these 400t missile defense satellites. Their commander priority was set to lowest which meant that every one of my important ships/fighters got their commanders but none of the capital ships were getting their bridge crews unless they were set to "senior officer" which means they had commanders fill bridge positions instead.

And no I do not want commodores captaining every ship either.

[SpikeTheHobbitMage]

I was thinking in terms of buoyant forces. Any ship would need to displace sufficient volume of the fluid in which it is immersed to be able to float. Buoyancy is the bridge between ship mass and ship volume and any equipment on board a ship will affect the overall ship displacement volume.  If one considers the vacuum of space to be extremely low density hydrogen gas instead of true vacuum, one might be interested in working out how large a ship would need to be to float on a hypothetical ocean of liquid hydrogen.

Mass*gravity, and buoyant forces simply don't exist in free-fall, which is what a ballistic orbit is.

I do agree that you should be able to opt out of using commanding officers on small crafts in favour of other more important positions such as executive officer or commander of a CIC on a capital ship. Fighter should have the lowest of priorities followed by FAC and then as bridge crew of capital ships. It is is irritating when a fighter gets commanded before you get a CIC officer on your most important ships for example.

I thought it was already possible to do this by setting the Commander Priority of your larger ships to be higher than that of the fighters. Haven't tested it myself but doesn't this work?

Yes... but officers still prioritise commanding a vessel over commanding a secondary position on a capital ship. At least I'm sure that is what happens.

This is exactly what I am referring too. In one of my games as a way of handling PPV I would build 100s of these 400t missile defense satellites. Their commander priority was set to lowest which meant that every one of my important ships/fighters got their commanders but none of the capital ships were getting their bridge crews unless they were set to "senior officer" which means they had commanders fill bridge positions instead.

And no I do not want commodores captaining every ship either.

This brings up another point:  Priority for secondary positions.  In many navies officers are expected to have XO experience before they are assigned their own command, so there is an argument for filling secondary positions before command of lower priority ships.  I think Steve didn't do that precisely so that fighters would get pilots, but a way to set those priorities might help some people.  The big question of course is how to set it up so that: A) it works and B) people can understand how it works.

[Droll]

I was thinking in terms of buoyant forces. Any ship would need to displace sufficient volume of the fluid in which it is immersed to be able to float. Buoyancy is the bridge between ship mass and ship volume and any equipment on board a ship will affect the overall ship displacement volume.  If one considers the vacuum of space to be extremely low density hydrogen gas instead of true vacuum, one might be interested in working out how large a ship would need to be to float on a hypothetical ocean of liquid hydrogen.

Mass*gravity, and buoyant forces simply don't exist in free-fall, which is what a ballistic orbit is.

I do agree that you should be able to opt out of using commanding officers on small crafts in favour of other more important positions such as executive officer or commander of a CIC on a capital ship. Fighter should have the lowest of priorities followed by FAC and then as bridge crew of capital ships. It is is irritating when a fighter gets commanded before you get a CIC officer on your most important ships for example.

I thought it was already possible to do this by setting the Commander Priority of your larger ships to be higher than that of the fighters. Haven't tested it myself but doesn't this work?

Yes... but officers still prioritise commanding a vessel over commanding a secondary position on a capital ship. At least I'm sure that is what happens.

This is exactly what I am referring too. In one of my games as a way of handling PPV I would build 100s of these 400t missile defense satellites. Their commander priority was set to lowest which meant that every one of my important ships/fighters got their commanders but none of the capital ships were getting their bridge crews unless they were set to "senior officer" which means they had commanders fill bridge positions instead.

And no I do not want commodores captaining every ship either.

This brings up another point:  Priority for secondary positions.  In many navies officers are expected to have XO experience before they are assigned their own command, so there is an argument for filling secondary positions before command of lower priority ships.  I think Steve didn't do that precisely so that fighters would get pilots, but a way to set those priorities might help some people.  The big question of course is how to set it up so that: A) it works and B) people can understand how it works.

The best way IMO to do that is add a checkbox "exclude class from auto assignment". This would prevent my defense satellite spam from being an officer sink.
Another way is to allow the player to set bridge officer priorities as well as commander priority in the misc tab of class design. If a ship has higher bridge priority than the commander priority of another ship then bridge crew is prioritized first.

[Thrake]

I do agree that you should be able to opt out of using commanding officers on small crafts in favour of other more important positions such as executive officer or commander of a CIC on a capital ship. Fighter should have the lowest of priorities followed by FAC and then as bridge crew of capital ships. It is is irritating when a fighter gets commanded before you get a CIC officer on your most important ships for example.

I thought it was already possible to do this by setting the Commander Priority of your larger ships to be higher than that of the fighters. Haven't tested it myself but doesn't this work?

Yes... but officers still prioritise commanding a vessel over commanding a secondary position on a capital ship. At least I'm sure that is what happens.

"I would rather be first in that little fighter than second in that deathstar" once said a famous Space Roman.

[SpikeTheHobbitMage]

I do agree that you should be able to opt out of using commanding officers on small crafts in favour of other more important positions such as executive officer or commander of a CIC on a capital ship. Fighter should have the lowest of priorities followed by FAC and then as bridge crew of capital ships. It is is irritating when a fighter gets commanded before you get a CIC officer on your most important ships for example.

I thought it was already possible to do this by setting the Commander Priority of your larger ships to be higher than that of the fighters. Haven't tested it myself but doesn't this work?

Yes... but officers still prioritise commanding a vessel over commanding a secondary position on a capital ship. At least I'm sure that is what happens.

"I would rather be first in that little fighter than second in that deathstar" once said a famous Space Roman.

True, but the guys on the star destroyers tended to outlive both.