Bridge Officers

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

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.

[Haji]

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).

[bean]

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. 

[Zincat]

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.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

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#.   

[Garfunkel]

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.

[Frank Jager]

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

[DIT_grue]

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.)

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

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.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

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.

[schroeam]

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.

[Gyrfalcon]

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.

[IanD]

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.

[Frank Jager]

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 )
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

[IanD]

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 )
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.