Aurora 4x
C# Aurora => C# Mechanics => Topic started by: Steve Walmsley on November 28, 2021, 06:58:06 PM
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I've started to look at the idea of promotions being based on need, rather than a set ratio. For example, for naval officers that requires identifying the rank requirement for every position on every ship, plus the various admin commands. This will result in a list of ranks with the total number of officers required for each. That is the easy part :)
The question is what to do with that information. A simple option might be to setup a ratio system based on requirements vs available. For example, if there are a total of 500 officers needed and 800 available, then the number set for each rank would be Required x 1.6. Equally, if there were insufficient officers available - say 300 - then each rank would be Required x 0.6. Promotions would be made from over-subscribed ranks (those with more existing officers than Required x 0.6) to under-subscribed ranks.
However, if you have a ratio system and too few officers for everything, having a lot of freighters or fighters that need lieutenant commanders will reduce the number of more senior officers needed to command warships.
Another option is to fill the highest ranks first and then work down. Promotions would be made until the highest rank had the required number, then the second highest etc., but that may create a situation with minimal numbers of officers in the lowest ranks, which would look odd.
Perhaps ship classes could be excluded from having commanders (and being included in the required numbers per rank) until more are available.
At this point I am opening up the subject for debate to help me find a sensible solution. All comments and suggestions welcome.
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Perhaps ship classes could be excluded from having commanders (and being included in the required numbers per rank) until more are available.
I think this would be great! With the exception that if you manually assign a commander it would stick and they wouldn't be removed (sometimes I want this for RP purposes). But the system wouldn't try to assign commanders for them or include them in the calculations.
For example, I don't need commanders for all my sensor platforms, but I'd like commanders for my fighter leaders.
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I like the idea of having the number of officers at each level based on the number required instead of purely how many officers you have at the next lower rank.
I'd like to suggest an alternative way to deal with not having enough officers to fill all of the available positions. What if you implemented an "accelerated officer training" as a construction project? This would simulate an empire realizing "We need officers, NOW!" and investing resources to a one time push for extra entry level officers. (If you think that this idea has merit, I'll let everyone else debate over what the inputs and outputs of this need to be for it to be balanced.)
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While I'm on the record as liking the current system well enough, I do still have thoughts. ;)
I think it makes the most sense to start from the top and work down the ranks as a starting point. To avoid the problem of a lack of low-rank officers, some minimum rank ratio could be enforced - the current 2:1 (naval) and 3:1 (ground) would be fine IMO, but if you want to be more flexible for players 1:1 and 2:1 would probably be fine and I think most people would prefer this - even 1:1 globally would be okay just as long as some limit is in place so we don't have 500 generals commanding three colonels.
A ratio system would probably just be awkward and not entirely realistic. On one hand, I think most militaries tend to promote people if there's an important higher position that needs to be filled, like anything requiring an admiral rank for example, so if a race has not enough officers and admiral-level positions are unfilled this is not very realistic. On the other hand, for a very undersized rank structure using strict ratios could lead to having numerous jobless admirals "commanding" a navy of 5 ships in a conventional start. Thus, I think it is better to promote upwards as needed subject to minimum ratios.
The potential challenge I see is that you need to find the right balance between, essentially, commercial/auxiliary ships, fighters, and command modules (AUX, ENG, etc.) without unduly limiting how the players can set up a rank structure. Commercial ships are a particular problem because the relevant bonuses are often rare, particularly the Logistics bonus which is the only one needed for freighters, colony ships, transports, etc. which also tend to be the most numerous commercial classes - I wouldn't want a large fleet of freighters to throw off the numbers when I only have a handful of qualified commanders for them anyways. My first thought here is to fill all the military ship rank requirements first, then the commercial ships.
The tricky bit is then how to handle the auxiliary modules, because as things currently stand a commander will be taken out of a sub-command position if there is a ship command available for which they qualify. If we fill the requirements for military ship commands first, then (military) sub-commands, then commercial ship commands (and sub-commands I guess), we can have situations where the sub-commands will not actually be filled if some of the officers in those roles are pulled out to command freighters or whatnot. I'm not sure how big of a problem that would be in practice, though, especially if the minimum rank ratio is chosen reasonably.
I would also suggest after thinking about it having a rule that no more officers will be auto-promoted to a certain rank if there are already, say, 10% of officers idle at that rank. This will prevent an issue like the following:
- Rank structure starts at Lieutenants (LT) who are expected to command fighters, and advances to LCDR who are expected to command freighters, small military craft, and sub-command jobs.
- Due to large amounts of freighters, many LTs are promoted to LCDR who are then idle as they lack any Logistics skill.
- Player ramps up fighter production, and lacks LTs to command them while dozens of LCDRs stand around the water cooler complaining about their boring jobs.
That being said I am not sure if this rule would really fix a problem, or just create a new problem, so it may not be needed. I would say try the basic idea (fill from top, minimum rank ratios, fill military jobs before commercial) and then see if it needs tweaking.
For ground forces I think it is easier - fill from the top with a minimum rank ratio. Not having sub-command jobs or commercial formations makes this a lot easier to manage.
I would also appreciate being able to exclude ship classes from having commanders (and ground formations too!). Designs such as sensor probes/platforms, small rescue shuttles, etc. don't really need commanders and I'm sure there are other special cases players have come up with over the years.
I think this would be great! With the exception that if you manually assign a commander it would stick and they wouldn't be removed (sometimes I want this for RP purposes). But the system wouldn't try to assign commanders for them or include them in the calculations.
This is another good point, sometimes I don't want a commander to be removed from their role for any number of reasons, maybe they still receive the promotion but remain in their current ship command (obviously this wouldn't work for sub-command jobs).
I'd like to suggest an alternative way to deal with not having enough officers to fill all of the available positions. What if you implemented an "accelerated officer training" as a construction project? This would simulate an empire realizing "We need officers, NOW!" and investing resources to a one time push for extra entry level officers. (If you think that this idea has merit, I'll let everyone else debate over what the inputs and outputs of this need to be for it to be balanced.)
I am not a big fan, mainly as no matter how big you make the "FOR EMERGENCY USE ONLY!!" sign this is probably something that people will build all the time since academy output is usually an important bottleneck (especially once retirements are at full speed). I prefer to leave this bottleneck in place as it motivates interesting decisions about shipbuilding and class design.
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As a related problem, you can have ships without commanders even if there is a surplus of commanders, due to the remaining commanders not possessing a relevant trait. I find this mostly affects freighters, tugs, and colony ships because I might have 100 freighters but only 10 low ranked officers with the Logistics trait.
In principle the navy should recruit enough officers to fill the positions they have, and a little more. But only having a few more is no good if they don't have relevant traits to get an assignment. The way you build academies in Aurora doesn't really allow you to target the number of positions you have.
Maybe part of the problem is that the specialised command components aren't used on a wide enough scale, because the research and tonnage cost make them a low priority to obtain and a luxury to install (a science department costs 5k RP which is the same cost as the Grav sensors you need to do the survey at all, the CIC module is 10k RP).
Maybe you could have an automatic or toggleable slackening of recruiting/graduation standards to bring you up to full strength. So you could have academies provide 12 candidates per year if you have at least 10% unfilled positions, 10 per year while you have 9% unfilled to 9% excess, and 8 per year if you have more than 10% excess? Then provide some sort of penalty like -5% to a single trait to the officers recruited during the slack period.
Or could you manually input a target ratio for your officers?
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I'm going to quote my post from august:
3:Custome promotion Rules.
- This is admittedly much more complex then the previous two suggestions, but i think would be much appreciated. Some examples of custom rules would be the following:
--Limit the number of officers at certain ranks.
--Stop "auto-promotion" beyond rank X
Example would stop auto-promotions beyond CAPT.
-- Only Promote above Rank X when there is an open billet.
-- Custom promotion Ratios.
For example, say i wanted to do a Roman Campaign where Each Cohort is commanded by a Centurion, the First Cohort is commanded by a Primus Pilus, and the over all legion is Commanded by a Legatus. That would require 9 Centurions, 1 Primus, and 1 Legatus. So a Ration of 9:1:1 would be used as apposed to the current 9:3:1
In addition, does the commander priority apply to just the CO or also "bridge" officers? If the former, could the code be tweaked to fit the latter so that your most powerful ships (with the highest priority) gets first pick of officers, and the lower priority ships make due w/o if necessary?
I still like the idea of customizable promotion ratios, but having a toggle for "stop auto-promote at Rank X" or "Only promote to fill open billet" might be easier to code.
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I very much like the idea of promotions based on required posts, and would suggest including fit for the job into the requirements. My biggest annoyance comes from having a battle hardened Captain getting autopromoted out of the chair of my finest battleship just to sit idle not contributing anything because of an enforced ratio. This leads me to manually disable promotions ok certain individuals and essentially brings back a need for micro that defeats the purpose of the automation to begin with.
The "fit" portion of the requirement would combine with this, preventing a great logistics officer from being promoted out of a lower rank command to then not be able to take a military seat because he doesn't have any matching traits and once again sit idle.
So the outline of what I would like to see is.
- Fill posts top to bottom in rank.
- At each level of rank, the posts are divided by traits needed to be filled, minimum one match required (Tactical, reaction, etc).
- Commander gets promoted to fulfill only posts they are fit for that are open.
- Commanders can jump multiple ranks if needed in one go.
- Each rank should never have fewer members than the rank above it.
This way you can ensure close to "full employment" of your best talent, minimize idleness, optimize for the right Commanders in the right seat, and all with in a realistic way of upward mobility when opportunity presents itself
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Perhaps ship classes could be excluded from having commanders (and being included in the required numbers per rank) until more are available.
Even a simpler "exclude class from auto-assignment" button would go a long way to alleviate weird officer shortages though this solution would be even better as it would direct "overflow" officers into less important roles like freighters.
To give an anecdotal example, I use small fighter-sized weapon platforms for PPV. Due to their nature, I often built 100s of them to provide the needed PPV for large colonies in particular. Of course, this makes me run out of LCDRs for bridge crew and small warships very quickly. With this exclusion rule I can make it so that those defense platforms never receive officers.
I would also likely prefer to not have officers on my commercial ships. Sometimes it feels weird from an RP perspective to have commissioned military officers derping about in state-owned freighters. You wouldn't spend all that money training someone with naval strategy, tactics and complicated military maneuvers just to make them move oxygen tanks from earth to mars. (Though in irl space missions astronaut pilots were often former military pilots, emphasis on former).
There maybe some merit to designating such classes to be commanded by junior officers instead of just "no commander". Maybe a junior officer in command wont have any skill bonuses whatsoever but if they've been commanding a freighter for x amount of time they might pick up some logistics skill and potentially become the next recruit out of the academy with their new found logistics prowess + whatever they learned at the academy. This would get around exploiting the game to get infinite officers without an academy as your officer training rate is still capped on the academy.
More importantly it would introduce some form of decision around keeping around and maintaining very old warships/freighters as training vessels. You pay the resources for maintenance but in return get an improvement in officer quality. Is that a big enough deal for it to be a significantly meaningful choice? Maybe yes, maybe no. But I don't think aurora needs it to be a massive deal for it to be an interesting mechanic.
Edit: For military ships you could force the use naval training for junior officers to have a chance at gaining extra skills. This way you also have to pay the fuel cost, thereby not making academy commandants obsolete to such training.
Finally, this isn't relevant specifically to this but to the commander menu. When the game gets old and the player has around 4000+ officers in their roster, opening and interacting with the commander menu becomes very time consuming. This is because when opened, the game will automatically filter all naval officers from the lowest rank to the highest for crew training which as you might imagine, can take a while with 3000+ naval officers. Would it be possible to make it so that the filter is either manually activated, or more simply, have the filter options default to the highest rank, where there won't be nearly as many officers for it to run through. I don't want to filter commanders by crew training every time I open the commander tab.
Edit2: I notice that auto-demotions are not being talked here which might be an option to alleviate potential unbalance in the structure. Granted, you wouldn't want the rank system to literally be ad-hoc, with officers doing parkour across the entire hierarchy, so perhaps you can make use of promotion score averages for each rank.
Let's spitball and say that the officers who are in the bottom 10% percentile of their respective rank are eligible for auto-demotion. If and only if their rank is above the number of required officers as defined in the OP post and the rank below them has less officers than the defined requirement, then the officer is auto-demoted to the rank below.
A character who is a story character or marked as "no promotion" is excluded from auto-demotion. This might require some rebalancing on how promotion points are calculated (maybe not though?) but given how medals work it means that decorated officers aren't going to be randomly demoted even if their skills are less than most their peers, which I imagine is quite realistic.
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If it wouldnt be a coding nightmare Steve, there is something like this that plays out in real life.
In RL militaries, there are established rank structures for commands, and then Personnel is tasked with filling them. So for example 16 captain slots, but only 14 captains;
4 admin commands Priority 1
8 combat commands (ships) Priority 1
2 combat commands (fighter groups) Priority 2
2 logistic commands Priority 3
So Personnel is going to slot the 1st priority groups with the best rated captains, then the 2nd priority, and then 3rd priority. If there are no captains, the logistic slots go unfilled.
In RL, those logistics slots would be filled by the next rank available, say commanders, until an recently promoted captain becomes available.
So, from a game perspective being able to set a priority on an admin command or ship class may realistically slot commanders into open high value roles, and leave lower tier roles unfilled.
Also in RL, every officer has a performance review annually (good old Officer Efficiency Reports). The ones I was familiar with, OER's got tallied every promotion cycle and the promotion board filled open ranks based on the tallied performance scores. Then they added up any awards, citations, or medals that would affect promotion score. So, lower being better, any Commander with a score below threshold got promoted to captain. Anyone above threshold was passed over and they had to wait until the next promotion board cycle. Go too many cycles without promotion equaled retirement or dismissal. It was up or out.
During wartime or in large expansions that had lots of open slot, the threshold for promotion went way up (they needed butts in seats) so even marginal officers who would never get promoted otherwise, got a freebie.
Since Aurora doesnt have anything like OER's, you could look at a promotion score based on medals awarded + tonnage destroyed/ruins recovered/jump points discovered/ect since you already track them. Then you can look at slots available vs. number of officers and the more free slots, the higher the likelihood of someone getting promoted to fill the role. Conversely, if everything is filled, promotions slow way down. Rockstars and top performers still get promoted, but everyone else languishes.
Thats pretty much exactly how the real life military does it (vastly simplified). When things are growing fast or there is combat attrition, promotions come fast. During downsizing, reductions in force, or just stagnation, promotions only keep up with attrition and folks get pushed out of service early as surplus to needs.
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1. Make promotions as a part of auto-assignment procedure: if no suitable officer of the required rank found, make another run through the lower rank, promoting instantly if found (additional filter of "no less then a year in route" required here to avoid too quick sequential promotions, or we'll have permanently fleet admirals in their early twenties and strange sequences of one promotion-and-assign instantly after another). This way we'll avoid strange masses of autopromoted idlers while post are not filled until system is broken completely.
2. Use stop-ratio: no autopromotion run if there is more than say 2:3 rank ratio already reached, to save command pyramid.
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So, from a game perspective being able to set a priority on an admin command or ship class may realistically slot commanders into open high value roles, and leave lower tier roles unfilled.
You can already set a commander assignment priority for different ship classes. It is on the Misc tab of the Ship Class window.
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IMO the key goals with improving the promotion system should be:
- Ensure that promotions happen to such a degree that you have higher officers for all "Reasonable" slots so your never have an appointment you can't assign anyone at all to due to lack of rank ( "Reasonable" here meaning everything except max rank slots created by intentionally making a huge naval admin command hierarchy ).
- A bit more flexibility so your not sitting with massive shortages of officers in one rank and then massive overflow in the next rank.
- Keep plausible promotion stories / paths working without requiring more micromanagement.
Edit: Something else to consider is if the academy graduation of naval vs army officers should be flexible and adapting depending on if your empire has a huge need for army officers but small navy needs or vice versa. ( Commendants already give some flexibility here but in extreme cases that might not be enough )
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I've added a 'No Officers' option at the class level. That should improve both the existing system and any new system resulting from this thread.
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I looked up the current number in each rank for the US Navy. The ranks from Lieutenant up to Captain have a progression that is not too dissimilar to the Aurora 2:1 progression and the same is true from Rear Admiral (LH) to Vice Admiral. The very noticeable gap is from Captain to Rear Admiral.
With this in mind, perhaps a minimum ratio of 3:2 should be enforced for each rank to ensure we don't end up with an odd structure. I think the top end will work itself out if there are only a small number of flag positions needed for admin commands.
(http://www.pentarch.org/steve/Screenshots/USNavyRanks2020.PNG)
https://www.statista.com/statistics/239345/total-military-personnel-of-the-us-navy-by-grade/
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One thing that I think would be good is if you could assign a commander even if they have a zero in a relevant skill but they are quite likely to aquire that skill if assigned in such a position. Say you need a commander for a cargo ship but there are no Logistics commanders. An available commander are still going t be assigned with a zero in that skill, over the course of a few years that commander should gain some skill in Logistics.
This way we can tailor our commander to some degree into the jobs we want them to have.
They should basically be weighted to gain some minimal skill in the relevant skill the less they have in it. But all commanders should have a higher chance to get skills in those areas where they are assigned.
This would also "fix" the lack of engineering officers that often is a problem for me... I like them on survey ships and larger military ships and I always seem to be lacking them allot.
A skill progression system like this would work better with a system that simply promote based on need as you can assign a commander with a zero skill in the needed skill but they will gain some skill in that area eventually over time. This way you don't need any large forced ratios and can keep that at close to 1:1 even.
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Another option I have considered is giving a minimal level (1%) for commonly required skills, such as crew training or logistics, to every naval officer that doesn't receive a higher level randomly.
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I think Jorgen's idea raises a good point, because as it stands currently this system will be tricky if it only matches ranks and not required skills.
I am thinking particularly of the naval admin commands, actually. If I have a hierarchy that requires 15 admirals of various levels, the proposed changes will ensure that I have 15 admirals of the appropriate levels available to fill those ranks. However there is no guarantee that I will have enough admirals with, e.g., Mining or Terraforming skills to command my Mining or Terraforming admins. So we end up with a situation where leaders are promoted to admiral ranks but don't have any job as they do not fit the auto-assignment criteria.
With the present system, although it is some micro-management I simply expand my admin hierarchy as I receive new admirals and adapt my hierarchy over time based on what personnel I have, or in some cases may leave a command empty until a qualified leader is promoted. To me it is interesting to tend this system over time and see it evolve organically and I have said as much on the subject but I understand that most people dislike the micromanagement involved.
With an auto-promotion system, I will only see new admirals if I create jobs for them or manually promote them, which is probably more realistic but is also problematic if those jobs won't actually be filled. At the same time, I don't want a system that promotes only a "qualified" leader for any unfilled command as then the officer system ceases to be interesting IMO; in real life the person who gets promoted is often not the person who should be promoted (which we have an option to simulate further with the Political skill, but even promoting the "right man for the wrong job" can happen), so why should Aurora be different? It is not unrealistic for a skilled battlefleet captain to be promoted to admiral and stuck into a Mining or Terraforming command which she is unsuited for, and I think it makes sense to allow for this to happen as long as there is some mechanic that this person will not just be a warm body in a chair (which might be realistic - but maybe too much so! ;) ).
Thus I prefer Jorgen's idea that even someone completely unqualified will get a job and develop the appropriate skills at a higher rate, honestly this makes sense anyways as learning by doing is a quite typical process in any field (although some people always will refuse to learn from their experiences...) and I'm unsure why it isn't already how things work at least for specialized commands. For admin commands as well as the specialized sub-command modules I think this makes sense; maybe for the generalized ship commands it is not necessary though, since these jobs have such broad responsibilities that the current system is probably fine in those cases.
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Another option I have considered is giving a minimal level (1%) for commonly required skills, such as crew training or logistics, to every naval officer that doesn't receive a higher level randomly.
I like this idea because as a former Army Officer, every officer at multiple points, received a baseline multi discipline education. I imagine there would be some auto assignment considerations if everyone has a baseline 1% but there probably is a solution to that in the algorithm.
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To be honest 0% or 1% really does not matter in the grand scheme of things in my opinion. Allowing officers to some degree acquire skills over time based on their station seem a bit more appropriate. It also open up the possibility for those players that might use a type of skill more than some other player do. Now, the only way to increase the amount of engineering officers is to train more officers you probably don't need instead of training them in the field and dynamically tailor your officer corps to your needs.
It means you have some control over the development and don't have to rely only on the random roll of development.
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I think Jorgen's idea raises a good point, because as it stands currently this system will be tricky if it only matches ranks and not required skills.
I am thinking particularly of the naval admin commands, actually. If I have a hierarchy that requires 15 admirals of various levels, the proposed changes will ensure that I have 15 admirals of the appropriate levels available to fill those ranks. However there is no guarantee that I will have enough admirals with, e.g., Mining or Terraforming skills to command my Mining or Terraforming admins. So we end up with a situation where leaders are promoted to admiral ranks but don't have any job as they do not fit the auto-assignment criteria.
With the present system, although it is some micro-management I simply expand my admin hierarchy as I receive new admirals and adapt my hierarchy over time based on what personnel I have, or in some cases may leave a command empty until a qualified leader is promoted. To me it is interesting to tend this system over time and see it evolve organically and I have said as much on the subject but I understand that most people dislike the micromanagement involved.
With an auto-promotion system, I will only see new admirals if I create jobs for them or manually promote them, which is probably more realistic but is also problematic if those jobs won't actually be filled. At the same time, I don't want a system that promotes only a "qualified" leader for any unfilled command as then the officer system ceases to be interesting IMO; in real life the person who gets promoted is often not the person who should be promoted (which we have an option to simulate further with the Political skill, but even promoting the "right man for the wrong job" can happen), so why should Aurora be different? It is not unrealistic for a skilled battlefleet captain to be promoted to admiral and stuck into a Mining or Terraforming command which she is unsuited for, and I think it makes sense to allow for this to happen as long as there is some mechanic that this person will not just be a warm body in a chair (which might be realistic - but maybe too much so! ;) ).
Thus I prefer Jorgen's idea that even someone completely unqualified will get a job and develop the appropriate skills at a higher rate, honestly this makes sense anyways as learning by doing is a quite typical process in any field (although some people always will refuse to learn from their experiences...) and I'm unsure why it isn't already how things work at least for specialized commands. For admin commands as well as the specialized sub-command modules I think this makes sense; maybe for the generalized ship commands it is not necessary though, since these jobs have such broad responsibilities that the current system is probably fine in those cases.
I think this thread is quickly demonstrating that a promotion system based on need is a lot more complex than it sounds :)
The reason that unqualified officers are not currently assigned is that the position is being left open for a qualified candidate. With no 'tour of duty' mechanic (as per VB6), you could end up with an unqualified person in a role for many years while newly promoted qualified officers remain idle. One option is to check newly promoted officers to see if they should replace an unqualified officer. That will have a performance impact though.
I think providing common basic skills to all officers (crew training, logistics, etc.) and perhaps increasing the frequency of other skills would solve the problem without the downside of using unqualified officers.
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To be honest 0% or 1% really does not matter in the grand scheme of things in my opinion. Allowing officers to some degree acquire skills over time based on their station seem a bit more appropriate. It also open up the possibility for those players that might use a type of skill more than some other player do. Now, the only way to increase the amount of engineering officers is to train more officers you probably don't need instead of training them in the field and dynamically tailor your officer corps to your needs.
It means you have some control over the development and don't have to rely only on the random roll of development.
1% means they will be picked up by automated assignment whereas 0% will not.
If you assign an Academy commandant with Engineering skill of at least 20%, it will increase the number of new officers with engineering skill. That is true for all other skills too.
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I think the "tour of duty" was a good mechanic as we would reevaluate commanders in regular intervals so they would change position even if they were not promoted. I would not mind being able to have a "tour of duty" system reintroduced as well if not too much work.
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I think this thread is quickly demonstrating that a promotion system based on need is a lot more complex than it sounds :)
Indeed. :)
This is why I do prefer the current system for all of its flaws and lack of realism, it is simple and predictable, and making small tweaks or QoL improvements does not risk upsetting a delicate balance.
I think the "tour of duty" was a good mechanic as we would reevaluate commanders in regular intervals so they would change position even if they were not promoted. I would not mind being able to have a "tour of duty" system reintroduced as well if not too much work.
I wouldn't be a huge fan of this as often for my RP I want to keep my commanders where they are. However if this was another checkbox just like auto-assignment is currently it would be fine. I don't remember if this was optional in VB6? I know it is in Quasar.
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To be honest 0% or 1% really does not matter in the grand scheme of things in my opinion. Allowing officers to some degree acquire skills over time based on their station seem a bit more appropriate. It also open up the possibility for those players that might use a type of skill more than some other player do. Now, the only way to increase the amount of engineering officers is to train more officers you probably don't need instead of training them in the field and dynamically tailor your officer corps to your needs.
It means you have some control over the development and don't have to rely only on the random roll of development.
1% means they will be picked up by automated assignment whereas 0% will not.
If you assign an Academy commandant with Engineering skill of at least 20%, it will increase the number of new officers with engineering skill. That is true for all other skills too.
That is true... most of my academy officers today are ground commanders though... but we will get more ground commanders in 2.0 so probably not as important anymore.
My only issue is that we randomly get these skill based on a ratio rather than what they are used for. Gaining skill based on station (or a weighted random) will reduce micromanagement of needed skill progression and would work fine with the ability to use academy commanders.
About Academy commanders... please make it easier to find who is an Academy commander in a particular place as well. I would like for them to perhaps be visible in the colony summary or something similar.
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It seems to me that 1% solution will lead to another issue I remember by VB version with Fighter Combat skills: it was likely to get it for any fighter commander, even if they have no such skill to begin with, and it wasn't good because there were hundreds of them with Fighter Combat skills between 1 and 10% quickly enough with my fighter-heavy fleets of the time, and it was hard to filter them off, they cluttered up all tables, it wasn't funny. It will be even worse for hundreds of 1-% guys.
So I think it will be better if autopromotion will assign 0-skilled officers in the lack of skilled ones and then there will be decent possibility that some of them will gain 5-% starting skill of the pool, relevant to this assignment.
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I like the idea of a minimum rank ratio to ensure some consistent structure in the system.
Regarding the likelihood of having the proper skills for the job, perhaps some sort of 'buffer' could be introduced? Instead of creating a rank system that matches available jobs completely, perhaps you could add a modifier to each rank (either a set number or rank number). That way you would always have a small number of surplus officers, which increases the chance of having the proper skills to choose from at the higher levels for naval commands. It could be something like this:
R1: Number of R1 jobs + 1
R2: Number of R2 jobs + 2 or R1 positions*1.5 (Minimum ratio of 2:3. Use whichever is higher)
R3: Number of R3 jobs + 3 or R2 positions*1.5 etc.
This also means that you won't have to wait for promotions if you create a new job at a high rank.
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My only issue is that we randomly get these skill based on a ratio rather than what they are used for. Gaining skill based on station (or a weighted random) will reduce micromanagement of needed skill progression and would work fine with the ability to use academy commanders.
This happens now. The skills you gain through experience are based on the type of ship to which you are assigned.
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My only issue is that we randomly get these skill based on a ratio rather than what they are used for. Gaining skill based on station (or a weighted random) will reduce micromanagement of needed skill progression and would work fine with the ability to use academy commanders.
This happens now. The skills you gain through experience are based on the type of ship to which you are assigned.
Ok... did not know that. So an engineer officer are likely to get better at the Engineering skill if assigned there, that is great. Then all we need to do then is to allow 0% commanders to be assigned... no need to give them a 1% skill as that will as said just clutter up the interface.
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I looked up the current number in each rank for the US Navy. The ranks from Lieutenant up to Captain have a progression that is not too dissimilar to the Aurora 2:1 progression and the same is true from Rear Admiral (LH) to Vice Admiral. The very noticeable gap is from Captain to Rear Admiral.
With this in mind, perhaps a minimum ratio of 3:2 should be enforced for each rank to ensure we don't end up with an odd structure. I think the top end will work itself out if there are only a small number of flag positions needed for admin commands.
(http://www.pentarch.org/steve/Screenshots/USNavyRanks2020.PNG)
https://www.statista.com/statistics/239345/total-military-personnel-of-the-us-navy-by-grade/
My only fear is that there are circumstances where you might want your bottom rank or two to be smaller. Let's say your officer structure is so that you want every basic military ship commanded by a commander, with a lieutenant commander as XO if the ship is large enough. You don't want lieutenant commanders actually commanding vessels, though; they just fill those XO positions. You're going to have far fewer lieutenant commander positions to fill compared to commander positions, but due to maintaining the 3:2 ratio, still always have more lieutenant commanders compared to commanders.
There's also the scenario where you have some particular, specific roles (fighter commanders or something) where you want low-ranked officers to fill those, but have fewer of those roles than you do roles for everything else above it. In that chart, it'd literally be as shown, where there are fewer ensigns than there are lieutenants. If the strict ratio was maintained, you'd never have enough lieutenants.
Maybe the ratio should only be maintained for flag officers and admin commands?
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The reason that unqualified officers are not currently assigned is that the position is being left open for a qualified candidate.
Yet it will be effectively the same with current or 1-% system, because a position can be filled with a commander with a minimal skill, that is not significantly differs from 0, and it's hard to struggle with, because even if you'll check your officers every say quarter to reassign those who were assigned in the wrong place (say 50% reaction and tactical with 5% mining assigned at mining station in the middle of the nowhere because of temporary lack of combat assignments) - even if you are stubborn enough to fix such strange cases, you'll make a clutter of unrealistically quick reassignments throughout your officer histories, while good realistic officer histories is one of the main goals of all this bustle.
One option is to check newly promoted officers to see if they should replace an unqualified officer. That will have a performance impact though.
I'll rather deal with slow turns - it's less slow then fixing all those rush assignments manually. So I'll cast a vote for tour of duty and an autoreplacement if there is an officer with no less then 2 times better main relevant skills sum.
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Maybe the ratio should only be maintained for flag officers and admin commands?
How do you define a flag officer? While I think having three ranks of ship commanders is probably the most common setup (it is how the ranks usually look by default), I have used four levels of ship commanders and I am sure some people even use just two levels of ship commanders if they do not care about sub-command modules or prefer to have a very large admin command hierarchy.
I would also note, the sub-1:1 rank ratios exist for junior officer ranks, which are rarely modeled in Aurora. Commanders in Aurora are just that - commanders, their jobs are to command something whether that is a ship, an admin command, a department aboard a large ship (sub-command module), a fighter/FAC, etc. While it's not impossible for an ensign or Lt.JG to have some command role on a small ship, this really doesn't show up much in Aurora as small ships lack the space for dedicated sub-command modules and larger ships would have more senior officers in those roles.
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Maybe the ratio should only be maintained for flag officers and admin commands?
How do you define a flag officer? While I think having three ranks of ship commanders is probably the most common setup (it is how the ranks usually look by default), I have used four levels of ship commanders and I am sure some people even use just two levels of ship commanders if they do not care about sub-command modules or prefer to have a very large admin command hierarchy.
I would also note, the sub-1:1 rank ratios exist for junior officer ranks, which are rarely modeled in Aurora. Commanders in Aurora are just that - commanders, their jobs are to command something whether that is a ship, an admin command, a department aboard a large ship (sub-command module), a fighter/FAC, etc. While it's not impossible for an ensign or Lt.JG to have some command role on a small ship, this really doesn't show up much in Aurora as small ships lack the space for dedicated sub-command modules and larger ships would have more senior officers in those roles.
Was thinking defining it as the ranks that occupy flag bridges or admin commands. You are right, though; there's not much point to trying to represent the lowest rung of officers by virtue of... well, not really having anywhere to stick 'em. It'd only be on, say, FACs or fighters, which don't need officers anyway since they don't have a bridge.
Will admit, sometimes I get a bit carried away by thinking on how deep one could make the officer structure, without realizing that it would rapidly stop being practical or useful.
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My only issue is that we randomly get these skill based on a ratio rather than what they are used for. Gaining skill based on station (or a weighted random) will reduce micromanagement of needed skill progression and would work fine with the ability to use academy commanders.
This happens now. The skills you gain through experience are based on the type of ship to which you are assigned.
Ok... did not know that. So an engineer officer are likely to get better at the Engineering skill if assigned there, that is great. Then all we need to do then is to allow 0% commanders to be assigned... no need to give them a 1% skill as that will as said just clutter up the interface.
I checked and I hadn't updated this for engineers, etc. So while you will receive appropriate bonuses for the ship type, that didn't include specifics for engineers or tactical officers. I've fixed that now.
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The reason that unqualified officers are not currently assigned is that the position is being left open for a qualified candidate.
Yet it will be effectively the same with current or 1-% system, because a position can be filled with a commander with a minimal skill, that is not significantly differs from 0, and it's hard to struggle with, because even if you'll check your officers every say quarter to reassign those who were assigned in the wrong place (say 50% reaction and tactical with 5% mining assigned at mining station in the middle of the nowhere because of temporary lack of combat assignments) - even if you are stubborn enough to fix such strange cases, you'll make a clutter of unrealistically quick reassignments throughout your officer histories, while good realistic officer histories is one of the main goals of all this bustle.
Yes, that is true. Good point.
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I think the table of IRL ranks shows that organisations don't promote based on a ratio, they fill the necessary ranks with who they have on hand. In Aurora you have huge flexibility in how you design your navy so I don't think your officers should be forced to fit a specific rank ratio if it doesn't match your needs.
The reason that unqualified officers are not currently assigned is that the position is being left open for a qualified candidate. With no 'tour of duty' mechanic (as per VB6), you could end up with an unqualified person in a role for many years while newly promoted qualified officers remain idle. One option is to check newly promoted officers to see if they should replace an unqualified officer. That will have a performance impact though.
I think providing common basic skills to all officers (crew training, logistics, etc.) and perhaps increasing the frequency of other skills would solve the problem without the downside of using unqualified officers.
Why did you remove the tour of duty mechanic? Based on the changes description it almost looks like it was the message spam ;D
Re-adding it would mean that officers without a relevant bonus could be assigned without them blocking qualified officers indefinitely.
You could have a setting so that 'unqualified' officers have shorter tours, simply put a flag on the ones who don't have a relevant bonus at time of assignment and check that subset more frequently. This can represent officers looking for a better career fit choosing to leave early.
A baseline 1% in core skills would mean you have minimally qualified officers blocking better qualified ones for a long time without re-introducing tours.
Could you set it up so that the player can determine which types of positions get filled in what order?
So the player re-arranges from high to low: Admin commands, warships, unarmed military ships, fighters, unarmed fighters, commercial ships and the positions get filed in that order.
If you assign an Academy commandant with Engineering skill of at least 20%, it will increase the number of new officers with engineering skill. That is true for all other skills too.
This requires you to have someone with that 20% level of skill and sufficient rank to run the academy, which is not always the case. The one person with the skill might also be needed for another role. For example at the moment I have ~50 officers of rank R7 or higher, and no one has 20% or more in communications or intelligence.
(speaking of which I can't work out who is running my academy, maybe they died)
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Could you set it up so that the player can determine which types of positions get filled in what order?
So the player re-arranges from high to low: Admin commands, warships, unarmed military ships, fighters, unarmed fighters, commercial ships and the positions get filed in that order.
Apart from admin commands, you can do this already using class priority.
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Why did you remove the tour of duty mechanic? Based on the changes description it almost looks like it was the message spam ;D
Re-adding it would mean that officers without a relevant bonus could be assigned without them blocking qualified officers indefinitely.
You could have a setting so that 'unqualified' officers have shorter tours, simply put a flag on the ones who don't have a relevant bonus at time of assignment and check that subset more frequently. This can represent officers looking for a better career fit choosing to leave early.
I would support a "limited tour of duty" mechanic (maybe a better name) which does not cycle every officer but just the ones with no qualification for their position, and replaces them with someone qualified who doesn't have a job already. Qualified officers stay where they are until promoted or a ship command opens up in the case of a sub-commanding officer.
Like in real life when the useless chair warmer is shuffled from place to place because no one wants him but firing him is too much hassle and paperwork. ;D
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Why did you remove the tour of duty mechanic? Based on the changes description it almost looks like it was the message spam ;D
Re-adding it would mean that officers without a relevant bonus could be assigned without them blocking qualified officers indefinitely.
You could have a setting so that 'unqualified' officers have shorter tours, simply put a flag on the ones who don't have a relevant bonus at time of assignment and check that subset more frequently. This can represent officers looking for a better career fit choosing to leave early.
Explanation on removal of tour of duty is here. The intention was to create a more organic assignment, promotion and retirement system.
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg104038;topicseen#msg104038
Checking to see if unqualified officers want to move on and free up space is unlikely to work because they probably won't be qualified for anything else either (as they would only be assigned to the current role if nothing suitable was available). If unqualified officers are allowed to take roles, then the only real option is for qualified officers without an assignment to push the unqualified officer from his role, but that could detract from the desired organic progression and have unqualified officers doing a series of short-term roles.
It's not a simple problem to solve.
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Could you set it up so that the player can determine which types of positions get filled in what order?
So the player re-arranges from high to low: Admin commands, warships, unarmed military ships, fighters, unarmed fighters, commercial ships and the positions get filed in that order.
Apart from admin commands, you can do this already using class priority.
That's true, I didn't consider how those systems interact.
I guess I didn't really explain that I was thinking in terms of determining whether people get promoted to fill open higher ranks or get kept in grade to ensure a position is filled.
So you look at a vacancy, find a suitable lower ranked candidate to fill it and check whether they are assigned to a higher priority position. If their current position is higher priority they get left in place, otherwise they get promoted to fill the position.
Why did you remove the tour of duty mechanic? Based on the changes description it almost looks like it was the message spam ;D
Re-adding it would mean that officers without a relevant bonus could be assigned without them blocking qualified officers indefinitely.
You could have a setting so that 'unqualified' officers have shorter tours, simply put a flag on the ones who don't have a relevant bonus at time of assignment and check that subset more frequently. This can represent officers looking for a better career fit choosing to leave early.
I would support a "limited tour of duty" mechanic (maybe a better name) which does not cycle every officer but just the ones with no qualification for their position, and replaces them with someone qualified who doesn't have a job already. Qualified officers stay where they are until promoted or a ship command opens up in the case of a sub-commanding officer.
Like in real life when the useless chair warmer is shuffled from place to place because no one wants him but firing him is too much hassle and paperwork. ;D
I didn't state it but I was expecting the player to determine the tour length so you could set the normal tour at 10 years and the tour length for the 'less qualified' at 3-6 months.
Why did you remove the tour of duty mechanic? Based on the changes description it almost looks like it was the message spam ;D
Re-adding it would mean that officers without a relevant bonus could be assigned without them blocking qualified officers indefinitely.
You could have a setting so that 'unqualified' officers have shorter tours, simply put a flag on the ones who don't have a relevant bonus at time of assignment and check that subset more frequently. This can represent officers looking for a better career fit choosing to leave early.
Explanation on removal of tour of duty is here. The intention was to create a more organic assignment, promotion and retirement system.
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg104038;topicseen#msg104038
Checking to see if unqualified officers want to move on and free up space is unlikely to work because they probably won't be qualified for anything else either (as they would only be assigned to the current role if nothing suitable was available). If unqualified officers are allowed to take roles, then the only real option is for qualified officers without an assignment to push the unqualified officer from his role, but that could detract from the desired organic progression and have unqualified officers doing a series of short-term roles.
It's not a simple problem to solve.
Pushing out unqualified officers is exactly how I was thinking it should work. Meritocracy at work!
Is it really that bad if unqualified officers do a series of short-term roles?
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The most "realistic" option is to just have a specific tour of duty defined by the player, say five years. Once the tour is over the officer are relieved of duty of their current assignment and goes into the pool and another officer is assigned (even if less capable). The old officer are likely to get a new assignment rather quickly after this if they are decently capable.
In addition an officer can also be promoted out of a tour and end it prematurely, but that should only happen if they go up in rank.
This way I don't think it would impact the games resources that much and you would get officers that rotate in and out and less skilled ones in a particular job will have time to earn some skills as well.
It should make the system work relatively well.
You could also opt into having unlimited tours which would be the same as permanent tours and only reassigned when promoted like it is today for those who prefer it that way.
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What I see, in terms of officers and their ranks - the player can alter their playstyle after, say, a decade - if previously fighters were not used, and the focus was on large ships, complete with bridge and all the auxiliaries, you need 1 higher ranking officer and several Rank 1 officers.
But, say, suddenly, player changed the strategy, now fighters are making up the majority of the military shipping. Such as 1 Large ship and 100 fighters. So, the ratio at this point becomes 1:100...
Do correct me, if officers provide bonuses when bridge is not present...
Either way, the 1:3 rule is... lacking.
The biggest gripe for me, is that only lowest rank officers can take auxiliary positions. If we had more liberty in assigning specific officers...
Or say, how about allowing scientists take the command of the science module on a ship? Though, I suppose that may have been relevant back in VB6, when we still had geological and other teams, with various officers...
I am not sure if ratio controls for player would... solve much. It kind of limits them, as in, makes them stick to an old doctrine... Although, if early game you made a ratio like 1:2, akin to low amount of auxiliary modules researched, then you change it to 1:10 after a decade, when the research of auxiliary modules and proper fighter modules are completed. I suppose this may be an option.
Or, how about setting the desired number of certain ranking officers manually, making the autopromote/demote try to fit the needs you set? I personally never made it to +1000 officers scattered across multiple systems, so I assign officers manually, but, if someone has a need...
Either way, commanders would be less of a problem, if I could assign higher ranking officers to auxiliary station positions (Engineering, CIC, etc.). Right now (V1.13) you can assign higher ranking officer to a ship itself, but not to the ship's auxiliary system.
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I'd like to add my vote in favor of reestablishing the tour-of-duty routine. That, together with posting priorities, should help a lot.
I have a few ideas that might improve this even more:
1. Minimum priority for filling through promotions: I might want my freighters assigned officers, but only if there's someone of the relevant rank available. If not, promoting someone just to fill the freighter posting might not be useful. Just let it be open.
2. Instead of a list of skills in order, I'd like to see a rating calculated from weighted skills: I'd rather have a 10% tactical, 10% reaction, 5% crew training Commander for my frigate than putting an officer with 15% tactical and no other relevant skills. So I could set weights 2-2-1 for these 3 skills, and the candidates would be rated accordingly. That would go a long way towards fixing most of my assignment problems. If that could be done to governors too, I'd finally be able to use it for most of my postings - I almost always prefer a balanced set of skills rather than a narrow specialist.
3. I'm assuming that all the postings are to be filled in order of rank and priorities, right? If there's no tour of duty, at a minimum it should be able to pick a higher-qualified officer in a lower priority job and transfer it to the higher priority one, opening the other for filling as well.
4. If that's done and you do have tours of duty, you could also do partial reassignments more frequently: each posting would receive a countdown marker: when it reaches 0 it'll be reevaluated in the next reassignment run. Non-qualified officers allocated temporarily would get a 0 marker at the start. So if you have a 4-year tour of duty, you could have yearly reassignments for around 1/4 of the postings, and I think it's an easier way to approximate RL.
5. To minimize message spam, only new postings would result in an event. If there's no need for promoting or reassigning that officer to a higher-priority job, and no one more qualified appeared, she'd continue in her posting and no event message is generated...
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What I see, in terms of officers and their ranks - the player can alter their playstyle
This is a good point, not only can players need different rank ratios between games, the rank ratios can change over the course of a game as you adopt new strategies.
4. If that's done and you do have tours of duty, you could also do partial reassignments more frequently: each posting would receive a countdown marker: when it reaches 0 it'll be reevaluated in the next reassignment run. Non-qualified officers allocated temporarily would get a 0 marker at the start. So if you have a 4-year tour of duty, you could have yearly reassignments for around 1/4 of the postings, and I think it's an easier way to approximate RL.
I think the way to do it would be to make a list of each officer sorted by the date they were assigned. Every construction cycle check if the oldest one is due for reassignment, if so cycle down the list until you reach an officer who is still 'in date'. When officers are assigned you just add them to the bottom of the list.
5. To minimize message spam, only new postings would result in an event. If there's no need for promoting or reassigning that officer to a higher-priority job, and no one more qualified appeared, she'd continue in her posting and no event message is generated...
You can hide events, I tend to hide most commander messages (which is probably why I didn't have an academy commander for like 5+ years).
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5. To minimize message spam, only new postings would result in an event. If there's no need for promoting or reassigning that officer to a higher-priority job, and no one more qualified appeared, she'd continue in her posting and no event message is generated...
You can hide events, I tend to hide most commander messages (which is probably why I didn't have an academy commander for like 5+ years).
You kinda have to late game, which is why I make a bigger deal out of the automation of the officer system than others might. When you've got an officer core of around 5000+ officers total, even if you only have the health and retirement related commander events active your event board will get spammed.
Granted I have not tried the event categories extensively because usually I want to see events in multiple categories but exclude one or two categories, which is not what the current categories allow for doing.
A sort of exportable "event filter preset" system might help with that as I would be able to define my own preferences once and never have to worry about getting spammed.
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4. If that's done and you do have tours of duty, you could also do partial reassignments more frequently: each posting would receive a countdown marker: when it reaches 0 it'll be reevaluated in the next reassignment run. Non-qualified officers allocated temporarily would get a 0 marker at the start. So if you have a 4-year tour of duty, you could have yearly reassignments for around 1/4 of the postings, and I think it's an easier way to approximate RL.
I think the way to do it would be to make a list of each officer sorted by the date they were assigned. Every construction cycle check if the oldest one is due for reassignment, if so cycle down the list until you reach an officer who is still 'in date'. When officers are assigned you just add them to the bottom of the list.
I think it best to make a list of the positions, not of the officers. Why? Because it's the positions that get priorities and ranks and criteria: you choose officers for positions, not the other way around.
I don't think you should *necessarily* reassign a good officer after a given time. I'm not sure how it happens in RL, maybe there's a maximum time on a given position, but it'd likely get solved in the game anyway, in most cases, because the officer, if she's good enough, will probably get promoted, and if she's not, she'll retire or be dismissed. Maybe, in RL, she may get assigned command of another ship of the same or equivalent class. But in the game, if it won't make any difference in practical terms, I wouldn't bother with it.
Maybe there's value in letting officers rotate around assignments to get a more balanced practical experience. Myself, I'd rather stick the best at my top-priority jobs and that's it. If the algorithm doesn't do that, I'll probably resort to micromanaging it and setting them to "do not promote or remove", which in my opinion is way worse.
Also, I must emphasize: if the better officer for a given posting is right now hauling cargo elsewhere, then remove her from her position and place her in command of my shiny new fleet support vessel that gets top priority! If she has to wait the end for her tour of duty, when it ends there's someone else, not as qualified, in command of my FSV, and she'll get another freighter... Awful, and another reason to resort to micromanaging it all.
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maybe an option to manual set a max number of officers for each rank? If i know i only need 40 captains, than the game will not auto-promote anyone else to captain until a slot frees up. If you go on a building spree and now need 50 Captains, it promotes until it reaches the new max.
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Personally, the thing I'd love to see more than anything else would be if, when a post is available, the game checked not just unassigned officers and those in secondary posts (tactical, etc), but also officers of the proper rank who already have CO posts in lower priority ship classes. ("Lower priority" being the same player-set commander priority field that already exists.) This way, if you have your freighters at a higher prio than your fighters, and a good logistics officer shows up when the freighters are full and gets stuck into a fighter pilot job, later when a seat in a freighter opens up that officer could automatically get reassigned.
Also going to necro an idea (that isn't mine) related to this topic that's been floating around the forums for a while: player-assigned priorities for ship classes, in the same way we have them for colony govenors. If for no other reason than so players who think that Reaction is a much more important skill than Crew Training on combat ships can set things up to have auto-assignment reflect that. (Although in both the cases of ship classes and colonies, I'd prefer the first thing to be "primary bonus" instead of "required bonus.")
I checked and I hadn't updated this for engineers, etc. So while you will receive appropriate bonuses for the ship type, that didn't include specifics for engineers or tactical officers. I've fixed that now.
Does this change affect COs of ships with those command modules, or just the officers assigned to those modules?
Edit: just rescanned some of the recent posts and saw that Migi also came up with a similar idea to my first point:
So you look at a vacancy, find a suitable lower ranked candidate to fill it and check whether they are assigned to a higher priority position. If their current position is higher priority they get left in place, otherwise they get promoted to fill the position.
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Another option I have considered is giving a minimal level (1%) for commonly required skills, such as crew training or logistics, to every naval officer that doesn't receive a higher level randomly.
Perhaps every commander should have 1% in every skill so that they can get better while working. Currently, as far as I know, naval commanders cannot learn new skills while civilian administrators can. Or alternatively, make it so that all types of commanders can learn all possible skills via on-the-job-training. So a lieutenant commander without logistics eventually becomes an expert logistician if he captains a cargo ship long enough, and a major learns ground force training while her formation is at peace & training, and so on. Then the only tweak needed would be that auto-assignment gives priority to commanders with the right skill but if none are available, they assign whatever commander is available, while honouring of course the priority system.
EDIT: should've noticed there were bunch of more posts. So all commanders can now learn all skills, as long as they are position-specific? That's good to know.
I would then vote for return of tour-of-duty, length of which player can set, combined with promotion based on open positions. No need to for qualified officers to push out unqualified officers until the tour of duty is over. That way the impact on performance is smaller as it'll only happen once a year or once a decade or whatever. And as long as we can keep using the priority system, it should work out. Plus, of course, the tick box for specific commanders to not get promoted or auto-assigned.
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For the sake of simplicity and not attempting to implement an overly complicated solution right off, I still think the most important element to target is minimization of officers (regardless of quality) getting promoted into in ranks with nothing to do. This is the main situation caused by fixed ratios that I think we would all like to minimize.
So if we only promote someone directly into another empty position, then it will minimize idleness at higher ranks, even if it results in the 'wrong man for the job' getting the seat. I'd take that inefficiency, and more than happy to RP it away mentally, for having the most generally experienced officers adding some kind of value (even in the case of a combat vet being assigned to an Admiral position overseeing Logistics fleet), at least they won't be jobless. Added bonus if they can learn new skills they're using in the new seat, even when they start with 0.
So I propose simply:
- Promote only when a seat opens up.
- Prioritize on matching traits from next lowest rank
- If no match, then just pick the officer with highest promotion score in that rank.
- That's it; no shuffling or reassigning, or worrying about tours of duty, just FIFO straight line up the chain with priority given to fit if available.
edit: LIFO -> FIFO
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For the sake of simplicity and not attempting to implement an overly complicated solution right off, I still think the most important element to target is minimization of officers (regardless of quality) getting promoted into in ranks with nothing to do. This is the main situation caused by fixed ratios that I think we would all like to minimize.
So if we only promote someone directly into another empty position, then it will minimize idleness at higher ranks, even if it results in the 'wrong man for the job' getting the seat. I'd take that inefficiency, and more than happy to RP it away mentally, for having the most generally experienced officers adding some kind of value (even in the case of a combat vet being assigned to an Admiral position overseeing Logistics fleet), at least they won't be jobless. Added bonus if they can learn new skills they're using in the new seat, even when they start with 0.
So I propose simply:
- Promote only when a seat opens up.
- Prioritize on matching traits from next lowest rank
- If no match, then just pick the officer with highest promotion score in that rank.
- That's it; no shuffling or reassigning, or worrying about tours of duty, just LIFO straight line up the chain with priority given to fit if available.
I think that would work well. It would make promotion demand-driven rather than process driven, but without any complex rules. I could also make some skills more common, such as crew training, to make it easier to find suitable candidates.
One other question is how to handle the starting officer core, before you have built any ships or created any admin command. Maybe that does start at the 2:1 ratio then the above rule is followed thereafter.
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One other question is how to handle the starting officer core, before you have built any ships or created any admin command. Maybe that does start at the 2:1 ratio then the above rule is followed thereafter.
I think this is a reasonable starting point and still allows players either path of allowing promotions to naturally work themselves out over the first few years based on their initial setup structure, or manually promoting a select few individuals to populate the highest ranks of admin commands and letting the system take care of the rest.
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I think that would work well. It would make promotion demand-driven rather than process driven, but without any complex rules. ~snip~
An added benefit of officers being promoted to fill vacancies is that it can quickly give rise to emergent gameplay and RP. At the same time, it leaves plenty for the player to micro manage if they want to maximize the potential of their officer corps.
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One other question is how to handle the starting officer core, before you have built any ships or created any admin command. Maybe that does start at the 2:1 ratio then the above rule is followed thereafter.
If everyone in the starting officer corps begins on the lowest rank, then the whole system should sort itself out after 8 construction cycles assuming you have all 8 ranks required and the system only promotes 1 rank at a time.
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For the sake of simplicity and not attempting to implement an overly complicated solution right off, I still think the most important element to target is minimization of officers (regardless of quality) getting promoted into in ranks with nothing to do. This is the main situation caused by fixed ratios that I think we would all like to minimize.
So if we only promote someone directly into another empty position, then it will minimize idleness at higher ranks, even if it results in the 'wrong man for the job' getting the seat. I'd take that inefficiency, and more than happy to RP it away mentally, for having the most generally experienced officers adding some kind of value (even in the case of a combat vet being assigned to an Admiral position overseeing Logistics fleet), at least they won't be jobless. Added bonus if they can learn new skills they're using in the new seat, even when they start with 0.
So I propose simply:
- Promote only when a seat opens up.
- Prioritize on matching traits from next lowest rank
- If no match, then just pick the officer with highest promotion score in that rank.
- That's it; no shuffling or reassigning, or worrying about tours of duty, just FIFO straight line up the chain with priority given to fit if available.
I think that would work well. It would make promotion demand-driven rather than process driven, but without any complex rules. I could also make some skills more common, such as crew training, to make it easier to find suitable candidates.
One other question is how to handle the starting officer core, before you have built any ships or created any admin command. Maybe that does start at the 2:1 ratio then the above rule is followed thereafter.
I agree on that: it'd solve most promotion problems. It's also simpler than my previous suggestion.
I'd add a simple additional change though: changing the checkbox "Do not promote" to "Do not Promote or Reassign": that would allow me to use the "Reassign Naval" button periodically to simulate tours of duty: I don't currently use that because it unassigns the carefully chosen officers I put on my ships for RP purposes.
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So I propose simply:
- Promote only when a seat opens up.
- Prioritize on matching traits from next lowest rank
- If no match, then just pick the officer with highest promotion score in that rank.
- That's it; no shuffling or reassigning, or worrying about tours of duty, just FIFO straight line up the chain with priority given to fit if available.
This seems reasonable to me. My only issue is that to prioritize promotion based on traits first, promotion score second seems to trivialize promotion score and limit the potential for "bad" promotions which are "realistically annoying" and I think some players want to see some amount of bureaucratic inefficiency. I would suggest that if the Political skill is active in the game settings (so it is an optional rule), perhaps 50% of an officer's Political score is added to their matching traits score allowing well-connected officers to leapfrog competent peers - for example, a Captain with 20% Mining skill may miss the chance for promotion to Admiral in charge of a mining admin command due to a fellow Captain with only 10% Mining skill but 30% Political score (net 25% score for the promotion).
This also I think makes the impact of the Political score a bit more tangible for the player which is a nice plus if they choose to use this option.
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I would suggest that if the Political skill is active in the game settings (so it is an optional rule), perhaps 50% of an officer's Political score is added to their matching traits score allowing well-connected officers to leapfrog competent peers - for example, a Captain with 20% Mining skill may miss the chance for promotion to Admiral in charge of a mining admin command due to a fellow Captain with only 10% Mining skill but 30% Political score (net 25% score for the promotion)
I agree with this, as anyone that was in the Military can attest the higher the rank the more political it becomes especially when at say the O-6+ level for the most part these people survived due to skill (plus politics) anyway, give that Political score a little more meaning
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So I propose simply:
- Promote only when a seat opens up.
- Prioritize on matching traits from next lowest rank
- If no match, then just pick the officer with highest promotion score in that rank.
- That's it; no shuffling or reassigning, or worrying about tours of duty, just FIFO straight line up the chain with priority given to fit if available.
This seems reasonable to me. My only issue is that to prioritize promotion based on traits first, promotion score second seems to trivialize promotion score and limit the potential for "bad" promotions which are "realistically annoying" and I think some players want to see some amount of bureaucratic inefficiency. I would suggest that if the Political skill is active in the game settings (so it is an optional rule), perhaps 50% of an officer's Political score is added to their matching traits score allowing well-connected officers to leapfrog competent peers - for example, a Captain with 20% Mining skill may miss the chance for promotion to Admiral in charge of a mining admin command due to a fellow Captain with only 10% Mining skill but 30% Political score (net 25% score for the promotion).
This also I think makes the impact of the Political score a bit more tangible for the player which is a nice plus if they choose to use this option.
It's a good point about the political bonus. However, as it won't be used for anything else, I should probably use the full bonus. I'll reduce the size of the bonus for newly generated commanders so the effect is similar.
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I've made the changes discussed above:
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=12523.msg157362#msg157362
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Great Steve! Looks like 2.0 is done now and you should release it today! ;) :P
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Great Steve! Looks like 2.0 is done now and you should release it today! ;) :P
I think perhaps some testing of all the recent changes first :)
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I've made the changes discussed above:
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=12523.msg157362#msg157362
How are promotions handled for admin commands? At the beginning, will the minimal rank for the main naval command will be very low, or the top Rank?
If it starts very low, will the the minimal rank increase and trigger a removed from office if we add sub commands? What will happen if it is already the top rank?
If it starts with the top rank, will the promotion skip ranks?
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I've made the changes discussed above:
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=12523.msg157362#msg157362
How are promotions handled for admin commands? At the beginning, will the minimal rank for the main naval command will be very low, or the top Rank?
If it starts very low, will the the minimal rank increase and trigger a removed from office if we add sub commands? What will happen if it is already the top rank?
If it starts with the top rank, will the promotion skip ranks?
Admin command required ranks were already updated for v2.0, so there should not be a problem. The admin command ranks will be based on the assigned ships and subordinate commands, even if they don't have commanders.
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=12523.msg156309#msg156309
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Steve really liking the Promotion changes coming, as someone that models the entire officer tree from O1 to O10 being able to actually have a full command staff is nice with out having a whole bunch of useless junior officers running around :)
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I've made the changes discussed above:
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=12523.msg157362#msg157362
How are promotions handled for admin commands? At the beginning, will the minimal rank for the main naval command will be very low, or the top Rank?
If it starts very low, will the the minimal rank increase and trigger a removed from office if we add sub commands? What will happen if it is already the top rank?
If it starts with the top rank, will the promotion skip ranks?
Admin command required ranks were already updated for v2.0, so there should not be a problem. The admin command ranks will be based on the assigned ships and subordinate commands, even if they don't have commanders.
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=12523.msg156309#msg156309
Note that we will also be able to set the minimum rank requirement for an admin command, which will be good when you have an admin command that doesn't have any ships assigned under it at the moment to make sure it doesn't accidentally eat a CDR instead of a CDRE.
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I've made the changes discussed above:
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=12523.msg157362#msg157362
Is this real? I have wanted exactly this since forever.(https://www.greensmilies.com/smile/smiley_emoticons_eek.gif)
2.0 looks like reboot into extra sharp by now. The Christmas mood is rolling in.
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May I suggest adding an option for how many officers you want generated at the game start, for every manually created empire/civilisation?
On the other hand, it is of little importance, since you can Space Master them out, if necessary...
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May I suggest adding an option for how many officers you want generated at the game start, for every manually created empire/civilisation?
On the other hand, it is of little importance, since you can Space Master them out, if necessary...
As stated you can just use SM to do this in two button presses, so I doubt it gets added.
However if you want to control this at the start of the game, you generate 100 officers per academy so changing the number of academies will accomplish this - and frankly I recommend doing this anyways as it is hard-capped to 2 academies and thus does not scale beyond 1b pop. When I do a 2b pop game I usually scale it up to 4 academies and as a side effect I have plenty of officers for the size of fleet I will build.