Hi Steve,
More on the subject of commanders:
I find I'm micro-managing commanders too much - every time I get a new one out of the academy with a decent bonus I'm sorting through already-occupied commands looking for someone to replace. It occurs to me that what I'd like to be able to do (most of the time) is filter on commanders who have had a full "tour of duty" in a particular command slot, and treat them as potential replacees. There several ways that I can think of that you could put this in - the bad news is that I think all of them will require adding a "date of assignment" field to the DB.
The first idea is a simple (optional) filter on the F4 screen that highlights any potential assignments whose commander has been assigned longer than X months as "unassigned" (grey). I would have said a third color, but it looks like you've only got two in the box (white and grey). :-) This lets you go through unassigned officers with high modifiers and decide who best to replace.
A complementary idea would be to allow the player (not SM) to set a tour length in the racial characteristics screen and then (optionally) send an event in the update cycle where a commander's time in command crosses the threshold. (Update cycle to avoid generating a ton of event interrupts.) This lets you notice that you've got an underperformer in a particular command slot, and allows you to replace him or her with a better officer from the pool. The problem with this one is that it will tend to generate an event per command slot per tour length, which could end up being hundreds of events per year.
In either case, you would probably also want to have a "Kirk button" - some way of giving a second (or third, or fourth, or ... :-) ) tour to an officer in his current command slot.
I also find myself having to micromanage officers so I have been thinking about various ways to handle your suggestion, especially as it overlaps a slightly different idea I have been considering, which is having Aurora handle most command assignments automatically. Your idea of a "tour" would help that idea because I was wondering how to handle in-post officers. Perhaps Aurora could regularly look at unemployed officers and try to assign them to either vacant command slots or those occupied by officers who have completed their "tour". Any officers who had to leave their command to make way for someone else would be handled in the next round (5 days later) of command assignments, or perhaps later in the same round (see below). The way I was considering handling this would be as follows:
1) Officers could be flagged as manually assigned, so Aurora would ignore them for automatic assignment (this covers the Kirk situation and a few others)
2) All ship classes would be ranked, probably by Rank Required then PPV, then cost.
3) Fighter Squadrons would be ranked by Rank Required and Fighter Cost
4) Ground Units would be ranked by Type: Heavy Assualt, Light Assault, etc.
5) Aurora would then follow a step by step process of assignment, looking at different assignments and finding commanders to fit them
One possible ordering would be:
1) For each vacant command slot (including those with an incumbent who has finished his tour) for a ship of R3 or above, a list of commanders with sufficient rank and a crew training above zero would be created in descending order of training rating. Assuming the highest available had a training rating equal to or higher than the existing commander, he would be given the assignment. Although perhaps that restriction shouldn't exist or some commanders might never move to a larger ship. As someone left a command slot, they could be included in the list of possible commanders for the next command slot (or more likely they should be excluded until the next round in 5 days in case they had been recently promoted and would be eligible to command a larger ship, which they couldn't do in the current assignment round because larger ships would have already been checked.)
2) Next the R3 fighter squadron commands would be handled the same way
3) Now the R2 ships
4) R2 Fighter Squadrons
5) Survey Ships, except this time the sort order is based on Survey Skill, followed by Crew Training
5) HQs for commanders with Ground Unit Training
6) Ground Units for commanders with Ground Combat
7) The various specialities (Terraforming, etc.)
8) R1 ships.
This wouldn't handle colonies, which have specialised requirements, or sectors. However, if you move someone into that type of command, Aurora would then find someone to fill their old job during the next round of assignments. That is a rough outline but how does that sound?
Steve