Author Topic: Setting up rank and class priorities - how and why  (Read 1183 times)

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Offline Jovus (OP)

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Setting up rank and class priorities - how and why
« on: June 17, 2018, 11:38:42 PM »
If you're relatively new like me, it's entirely possible that, while you know what is on the DAC/Rank/Info screen, and you've even used some of it for design purposes, you've never really touched the class priority portion of the Minimum Rank and Class Priority section of the screen.

I'm here to tell you why you should care, and how to do so. At the bottom of the post I've included a screenshot with the area I'm takling about highlighted.

First, though, in case you've never used it: the Minimum Rank portion allows you to set the, well, minimum rank of officer you want to be able to pilot a given craft. If no officers of that rank or above are available when officer assignment happens, that craft will instead have no CO and therefore no bonuses from the CO that she doesn't have. So why would you set it to anything other than the minimum rank in your navy? Well, you might do so for roleplay reasons. I personally find Rear Admirals commanding FACs to be a little immersion-breaking, since in a real navy they'd never do such a thing. If you're not concerned with roleplay, it's also true that higher-ranked officers tend to have better and more bonuses than lower-ranked ones, so if you have some particularly important ships you might want to set them to require a higher rank of commander.

However, this allows you to set a minimum rank, not a maximum. So if you just set the Minimum Rank field, you could easily still get that Rear Admiral commanding a FAC. If you want the auto-assign mechanics to assign your officers sensibly (or at least a deal more sensibly than otherwise), you need to set the Class Priority.

Class Priority defaults to 0. Classes with higher numbers under Class Priority will get filled first, on down the list to the lowest priority. Negative numbers are accepted, and treated as you'd expect.

Pretty simple, all told. But now you need to figure out what a sensible priority setup looks like, and set yours accordingly.

In my game at the moment, I'm using a fair number of fighters and FACs, so I've set them to zero priority, so I don't have to change it in their case. However, I definitely want them filled pretty much last, as putting officers in your fighters is a good way to get them dead, so I definitely want my higher-ranking sorts put somewhere else instead. Here's what my current Class Priority Schematic looks like, from bottom to top:

Ship typePriority
PDCs-10
Shuttles & pinnaces-10
General Commercial-5
Fighters & FACs0
'Important' commercial (harvesters, miners)1
Frigates, explo carriers2
Destroyers3
Light cruisers, escort carriers4
Other cruisers5
Battlecruisers and Battleships6
Carriers7
Critical commands10

Hopefully a worked example helps you figure out how you want to set up your own class priority paradigm. Remember, the exact amounts more or less than don't matter, so exact numbers are up to you for ease of use and memory.

 
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