Aurora 4x
C# Aurora => C# Mechanics => Topic started by: Lornalt on February 05, 2021, 12:06:31 PM
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So theres an mechanic that's never made sense to me. Currently flag Bridges are limited to 1 rank above the ship captain rank.
But generally if a division of battle cruisers are dispatched they might be commanded by a Commodore. Or a squadron of said battle cruisers should be commanded by a Rear Admiral.
However with the current system I'm limited to 1 rank above the captain's rank. I know admin commands exist but admin commands are just that admins. They deal with large picture issues where else the flag officers in a fleet command deal with the fleet issues. Admin commands are stationed at the rear, fleet commands are the fleet commanders.
I would like to ask that the current system of Rx +1 (where x is the captain's rank) be removed and flag Bridges be allowed to host any rank above captain's rank.
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This is actually possible, pick the commander you want to become fleet commander - demote him down to commodore, assign him, then re-promote him to his prior rank. He will stay on the flag bridge until he is reassigned with no issues.
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Sadly if you use auto assign for officers they will be swapped out with in a day.
Or will it... let me test that..
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Sadly if you use auto assign for officers they will be swapped out with in a day.
Or will it... let me test that..
As far as I know officers are only removed from a position when they are auto-promoted or if they are in a sub-command position and a ship command at their rank opens up, which will never happen for a RADM or higher.
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Yes, it worked! It a kinda roundabout way to do it but the argument in the first post stands.
I shouldn't have to promote and demote my officers in this manner just to get a higher flag rank officer into a position that was never meant for lower rank officers.
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I'm a bit iffy on the whole dead-set Rank + x System.
It bothers me that a ship with just a Bridge is commanded by a Captain, but as soon as a I add a CIC, which is a pretty standard thing for a warship, the CO needs to be a Commodore, which is a low-grade flag rank imo. Which also means that every lousy destroyer squadron suddenly needs an Admiral on the command ship's flag bridge.
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I'm a bit iffy on the whole dead-set Rank + x System.
It bothers me that a ship with just a Bridge is commanded by a Captain, but as soon as a I add a CIC, which is a pretty standard thing for a warship, the CO needs to be a Commodore, which is a low-grade flag rank imo. Which also means that every lousy destroyer squadron suddenly needs an Admiral on the command ship's flag bridge.
I always change my lowest command rank to Lieutenant so that Captain become the highest possible rank to command a single ship. Most warships will have a Lieutenant Commander in charge and a Commander with a CiC on it. You can then tick the box of senior commander and add one more rank to the command position.
I want Commodores to be the highest ranking officer to be with the fleet in person... every admiral rank is then usually an administrative rank in my setting. Commodores either are flag officers or academy officers.
Rear Admirals are usually leaders of whole task-groups while Vice Admirals are the leader of mission fleets, the Admiral are usually the head of regional naval forces, sectors or something like that.
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The same as Jorgen_CAB.
I also use small crafts (missile fighters, recons, small orbital platforms), light boats (patrol corvettes and missile FACs) and auxiliary vessels (tugs, ELINT ships and so on) without strict specialisations for their COs, that are just enough to make all those junior officers busy and to give them appropriate service history.
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Well the name of the rank doesn't much matter. The problem persists. I don't use "Commander" as a rank, at all. That doesn't change the fact that adding a CIC skips an entire rank, which just doesn't make much sense. I don't see why I couldn't have a Captain commanding a ship with a Commander as a tac officer.
For the purpose of this, there's three ranks that "matter" regardless of their name. Rank 0, 1 and 2, with 0 being the lowest, where all your new officers end up.
Rank 0 commands Fighters, Commercial Ships and ALL shipboard positions (Science, Engineering, Tactical, Air Group, XO)
Rank 1 commands warships without a CIC or other command and control components.
Rank 2 commands warships WITH command and control components
If I build all my armed warships with CICs (which makes sense in my opinion, it's a warship!) that basically renders Rank 1 completely useless, as there is nothing that needs them as commanders. I can "downgrade" them, as in: put them in positions for rank 0's, but that isn't the point. It means I need a lot more higher ranked people and inevitably produces a shortage of commanders.
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Well the name of the rank doesn't much matter. The problem persists. I don't use "Commander" as a rank, at all. That doesn't change the fact that adding a CIC skips an entire rank, which just doesn't make much sense. I don't see why I couldn't have a Captain commanding a ship with a Commander as a tac officer.
For the purpose of this, there's three ranks that "matter" regardless of their name. Rank 0, 1 and 2, with 0 being the lowest, where all your new officers end up.
Rank 0 commands Fighters, Commercial Ships and ALL shipboard positions (Science, Engineering, Tactical, Air Group, XO)
Rank 1 commands warships without a CIC or other command and control components.
Rank 2 commands warships WITH command and control components
If I build all my armed warships with CICs (which makes sense in my opinion, it's a warship!) that basically renders Rank 1 completely useless, as there is nothing that needs them as commanders. I can "downgrade" them, as in: put them in positions for rank 0's, but that isn't the point. It means I need a lot more higher ranked people and inevitably produces a shortage of commanders.
There always can be some ships that don't need a CIC such as scout ships or really large commercial stations and ships, I usually give them one higher command. Allot of rank 1 commanders should also be ship staff officers as well.
I also don't think that all ships need a CIC module if they are small enough so I would not put a CiC in a system patrol craft or the like personally who are mainly there to provide security. If you also put CiC in all ships you probably will struggle to find enough officers with tactical skills as well.
You also can require FAC commander to be rank 1 as well and keep rank 0 for fighter sized crafts only.
It is not hard to work with the system to be honest.
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Well the name of the rank doesn't much matter. The problem persists. I don't use "Commander" as a rank, at all. That doesn't change the fact that adding a CIC skips an entire rank, which just doesn't make much sense. I don't see why I couldn't have a Captain commanding a ship with a Commander as a tac officer.
For the purpose of this, there's three ranks that "matter" regardless of their name. Rank 0, 1 and 2, with 0 being the lowest, where all your new officers end up.
Rank 0 commands Fighters, Commercial Ships and ALL shipboard positions (Science, Engineering, Tactical, Air Group, XO)
Rank 1 commands warships without a CIC or other command and control components.
Rank 2 commands warships WITH command and control components
If I build all my armed warships with CICs (which makes sense in my opinion, it's a warship!) that basically renders Rank 1 completely useless, as there is nothing that needs them as commanders. I can "downgrade" them, as in: put them in positions for rank 0's, but that isn't the point. It means I need a lot more higher ranked people and inevitably produces a shortage of commanders.
I'm pretty sure you're wrong and rank 1 (which you're calling zero for some reason) only commands CIC and Engineering.
I use the same system Jorgen does and my science officers and xos are only one rank below the commander, not 2
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Sci +1, CIS +2, ENG +2
(v1.12)
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And XO isn't CIC, it's AUX.
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- It'd be nice to have an "Ignore Rank Restrictions" option for GameGen. :)
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A drop-down menu on the miscellaneous tab of the design screen of any design with a flag bridge would be ideal. This would allow the player to override the rank restrictions for these designs, but auto assignment would still function for the rest. The player could set a destroyer squadron leader to a lower rank, and a fleet commander to a higher by simply selecting the rank from the drop-down menu.
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Can't you use the Senior CO tickbox for your destroyer leader class? That way your DD's use rank 1, your DL rank 2, and your flag bridge (on board the DL) rank 3. You'll get even more spread if you use AUX for both classes and CIC for DL only.
I mean yeah, having full customization over the whole thing would be useful, don't get me wrong, but it seems that occasionally players create problems themselves because they are thinking too rigidly about how things "should be".
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Problem with Senior CO tickbox is, that your destroyer leader is commanded by captain if you want commodore in command of destroyer flotilla and your command cruiser will be commanded by commodore if you want admiral as fleet commander. I personally do not like when flag officers directly command single ship.
If we do not want to change how flag bridge works, then another possibility would be flag bridge variant that would work for admin commander, as admin command is automatically set to one rank higher that what is rank of the highest commander of subordinate fleet and can be higher if manually assigned.
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Both commodore and admiral used to be based in/at/on ships. It's a very recent change that such ranks only drive a desk in an office. If you want to closely mimic 21th century command structure then yeah, I see the problem but otherwise the current system works well enough. I guess another problem is that if you're wanting to build a multi-layered admin system, that you'll then run out of admirals both in ranks and numbers.
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- As someone with a 12 Rank System, I'd love for a way to simply use what ranks I want where I want to use them.
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Idk, wouldnt be easier to just make a variation of said battlecruiser and put minimal command of the ship as X and then the flag officer will have to be X +1, so your command variant battlecruiser will be the only one with a flagbridge on it, hence you will be able to control wich rank you want the senior officer to be.
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I'd really like to see the flag bridge integrated into the subfleet system.
So you'd have your fleet and it has an admiral who requires a flag bridge, like you do now. The required rank of that admiral must be higher than their subordinates, but also depends on the number of items (ships, or subfleets) within his fleet. Say more than 4 items and he needs to be 2 levels greater, more than 8 then 3, etc.
So in significant fleets, you'd need to group your ships up into subfleets in order to get the rank requirement to be sensible for the commanding admiral. But the system should then continue down into the subfleets. Each of these need a subordinate admiral who fulfills the same rules regarding their own subordinates, so you may need to group their ships into another level of subfleets, which again would each require their own subordinate admiral.
So you'd get a situation say where a fleet was commanded by a full admiral, and under him he has say his battleship division, cruiser division etc, each commanded by vice admirals. Then the battleship division is divided into BatRon 1, BatRon 2, etc. each containing 4 ships and commanded by a rear admiral.
I think this would feel more realistic - it would provide some jobs for all those admirals, and it would create an interesting problem of what ships to put flag bridges on to get the command structure working.
To avoid annoying people you'd need a way of opting out. Say if a subfleet doesn't have an admiral then it just doesn't count at all towards its parent's requirements. But it and its subordinates do not get any commander bonuses at all.
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I think this last idea sound awful. I'm sorry to the poster. But if Steve reads this I'd just like to point out that it is by no means a universal opinion.
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I think it would be fine if it was opt-in rather than opt-out. Similar to how admin commands work, lacking a commander at any level of an admin command does not as far as I know cause bonuses from higher levels to be lost. The problem with opt-out is that it forces the player to have a commander in every possible role or else suffer a loss of command bonuses compared to existing mechanics, and having mechanics which punish the player for not using them goes against how most of Aurora is designed.
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That's a good point. Just getting a small bonus of some sort from having the commanders in place would be enough incentive to use it if its something you want to bother with - I just want it because I want to set my fleets up with subordinate commanders, and have to worry about where to put my Rear Admiral Destroyers :)
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Similar to how admin commands work, lacking a commander at any level of an admin command does not as far as I know cause bonuses from higher levels to be lost.
An empty admin command does break the chain.
From Steve's post about admin commands (http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg103849#msg103849):
This isn't as easy to achieve as it might seem as each of these Admin Commands will need an assigned commander or the chain will be broken.