Posted by: jiduthie
« on: February 25, 2016, 12:57:39 AM »Thinking about this more, I would like to see an overhaul of how officers get assigned. Currently, the auto-assign for general (non-fighter, non-survey) ships only applies to officers with a crew training rating. I'd like to be able to choose to assign officers who don't, to allow them to gain experience, and potentially a training rating.
Maybe its just me, I generally prioritize Academies and perhaps tend towards fewer larger ships, but this is never an issue for me. I would however welcome the ability to prioritize certain attributes for certain commands or promotion levels. Fighter operations, initiative, and training being the biggies. Crew training tends to swamp everything but political reliability in terms of promotion score, and while I want lots of training ability in my middle ranks, I'd like the top ranks to weight more towards fighter operations, initiative and just broader skills in general. Nothing quite like having a beam squadron hampered because it's S.O. has 400 crew training and 115 initiative. Or being tempted to assign an R3 to command your main task force because all your Admirals have nothing but huge training and reliability scores. Crew training is great, but eventually it caps out at 34%, so the returns on it diminish but it's effect on promotion score doesn't.
Frankly, I'd just like to make it so that even officers without training ratings get assigned if all officers with a ration have already been assigned and there are still officer-less ships.
Again, perhaps its just because I build lots of Academies anyway, but I've never had this happen to me. I more often see senior officers without commands because their juniors have better crew training ratings. A lot of officer promotion and assignment oddities have been solved for me by 1. building more academies 2. having a good balance of commands between the ranks and 3. learning that a lower number(rather than higher as implied by the tool-tip) in the class priority box means higher quality officers for that class.
In a conventional start. I've also taken to renaming my ICBM to "Officer Gunnery Range," even building more as my games progress. Cheap way to train up those R1s that start with only 25 training. It wouldn't even be much micro to assign otherwise desirable but lacking in crew training young officers to them either.