Aurora 4x
VB6 Aurora => Aurora Suggestions => Topic started by: Vandermeer on April 01, 2015, 07:58:22 PM
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It is normally not my type to suggest any development direction in private projects, so let's see this as mild stimulating exchange without any concrete ideas.
Also I can keep more officers in circulation.
This truly bothers me too. One of the reasons I now use some escort ships and much more fighter craft than before is to have training spots for officers.
I wish we could just assign more officers to our ships, for example like in this game, which I found really amazing in that regard:
(http://grogheads.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/SolarWar16-lets-hope-our-navigator-officer-will-get-us-out.jpg)
There you have 4 ranks in which you can place commanders.
1. A real commanding officer, which is just a lieutenant to commander in case of fighters, then I think at least commander for corvettes to destroyers, and later must be a captain or commodore for the different cruisers and the battleship.(was long ago, so my memory might be leaky)
The commander improves the performance of all the other officers by 1/10th of the skill he himself has in that regard (like navigation), and somehow leadership mixed in too.(don't remember. actually feeling like playing this again for this)
2. and 3. Are navigation and tactical. Navigation improves turn rate mainly, and a bit also the maximum forward speed. Tactical is only for to hit rate. Officers here can not outrank the captain, and must otherwise be between ensign and commander.(on later capital ships also captains)
4. Is engineering, which is only available on ships larger than corvette (..or was it frigate?). Must have something to do with battle repairs, or might even improve hp. Cannot remember. Same rank rules as 2 and 3.
Then there are also the fleet command postions, in which you can place anything from commodore to fleet admiral. These admirals distribute percentages of their skills to the fleet's other officers as well, while I think Rear Admiral and Commodore had reduced gains. The Commodore is just as in real life one waiting and emergency rank to clarify who has the command in case of the actual admiral being hindered. They have not completed training and bring near to no bonuses, but can at least be assigned.
I think Leadership is really important here, because it determined the maximum ship points that an Admiral could command. Also, the fleet admiral could be assigned to rule the headquarters and academy on earth, though I forgot what that did.
I fantasize that we could have something similar in Aurora too, with the added bonus that another officer could take over the command when the former C.O. died to some incident. How awesome would it be if we had a whole little staff on ships rather than just the captain, and everyone doing something?(http://www.greensmilies.com/smile/smiley_emoticons_herzen06.gif)
The current rank distribution has so many crudities. ...I feel like listing the ones I can think of.
- Real rank distribution is around 1:7 I think in real life. Aurora does 1:3 because there are not enough spots anyway, but with multiple officers per ship, quite a portion of that could maybe be solved.
- "I am Admiral of this F22!" problems, where ships get commanded by the most qualified officers around, which sometimes leads to high ranking officers leading ridiculous ship types if you are in the situation of having too many commanders. (Though I must confess that I haven't seen this so much anymore since around 6.3, so maybe there is now something preventing this.)
- Too many Admirals anyway, and too little positions to place them on. Let's face it, the Fleet Headquarters usually only have an Admiral in the lead, because you actually need some rank there, and also the TFT score. Other positions are only rarely occupied by real admirals (unless you role-play it). Usually there are young, much more talented officers that take the position and then stay there for the rest of their lives, mostly in the same rank of lieutenant or maximum commander. ..That at least is my experience when letting the AI handle it.
- Too many low ranks, and also nothing to do for them. Aurora seems to have adapted to start with Lt. Commander ranks over time, but I still like my lieutenants. Other than fighters, there is rarely some good position for these masses of low ranking people. Just one captain means that you will have to come up with 9+3 other ships to place all the corresponding Lt.Cdr's and Commanders on if you want full employment. These ranks (and lieutenants) normally wouldn't even command any ship other than maybe gunboats and corvettes, and their natural position would be in some sort of support leading position on another ship, just like in the game above.
..It seems so strange to have so many commanders unemployed, and eventually getting fired from inactivity, just because they cannot be hired into their natural positions.
- Too few captains. (this had to come^^) Normally you would want most of your ships to be commanded by a captain, and not an Admiral, and rarely commanders. ..But the span of captains is so little that they get completely overmanned by all the high and low ranks.
I have found myself inventing extra ranks by now to expand the span of officers who are "captains" in some sense. Captain, Senior Captain and Commodore are current, but I also thought about giving real naval ranks like frigate captain, or "captain to the see" depending directly on allowed class. This corrects the issue partially, because captains get now chosen more often, though you still have no idea what to do with all the 10 times more numerous lower ones other than parking fighter zoos.
If both lower and higher officers find employment elsewhere however, then captains would finally be the main rank to be in charge of ships, like they should be.
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Forgive my stupidity, but what is that screenshot from?
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Oh, no, forgive mine. I wanted to mention the name, but forgot. It is from the rather small unknown niche game Solar War (http://www.desura.com/games/solar-war).
The assignment mechanic is the best thing about it I think. The rest is ok, but nothing exceptional. Very similar to Aurora in matters of "space travel enabling trans newtonian resources" and still relatively slow travel. Officers have some detail about them and earn badges etc. (though you cannot personally assign any).
It is made by one guy it seems, and it shows in lack of, hmm, volume?
//edit: I should have mentioned it only plays in Sol sadly.
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This would make the game great, I have always spent time trying to think about who is on the bridge of my starships, and all the while wondering why I had hundreds of rank 1 officers doing nothing. I tried changing things around once by building academies until I reached a point where I could get 1 rank 8 officer. What I ended up with were well over 1000 rank 1 officers needed to support the top brass. I simply could not even fathom how long it would take my game to expand to be large enough that I would have so many ships to use these officers on. But having something like the op would be great, you could go back to basics and start with ensigns and assign them a bridge position in light of training them up for their first command years later etc.
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Excellent suggestion.
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I feel like an implementation of this would be relatively simple as well. Officer assignments would be tied to ship modules. All ships get a CO. The total tonnage of military craft would determine the minimum rank. Each xx quantity of hull space for engineering spaces allows for engineering officers, same thing for tactical officers where xx amount of hull space in search sensors and fire controls allows for them. Any craft requiring more than one person to pilot it would get a navigation officer (co-pilot). An extremely large ship would potentially have several engineering officers, a large area defense destroyer with several fire controls and search sensors would have a few tactical officers.
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I think that most people would like such a feature.
For simplicity the sub commander role on ships could increase with the crew count on them. So a ship with for example 25-50 crew would have the captain and one sub commander. 50-100 two sub commanders 100-200 three sub commander. 200-300 four sub commander. 300-500 five sub commanders etc... with less sub commander for per crew members the further you go.
Instead of just giving bonuses you could make it so that if positions is not fielded you will get penalties... or some such.
I also think that you should be able to link fleet commands and have sector wide fleets above system fleets. Here chain of command could give some bonuses and at lest some purpose to high ranking admirals.
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I also think that you should be able to link fleet commands and have sector wide fleets above system fleets. Here chain of command could give some bonuses and at lest some purpose to high ranking admirals.
Technically, that is what task groups are for.
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I today tested that game again, and it seems after all the updates you cannot assign captains to aiding commands anymore, leaving me with around 6 wasted level 90 geniuses that I falsely promoted for their high skill.(http://www.greensmilies.com/smile/smiley_emoticons_wp-mad.gif)
Also I have the U.S. and China sending me their "highly skilled" replacement officers who are completely incompetent. A Commodore(!) with 0 leadership and highest skill 23, really?
Since you cannot fire anyone, I now have swift frigate "deathboats" who get commanded by such slacker officers to form a vanguard meat-shield.(http://www.greensmilies.com/smile/smiley_emoticons_ben_twisted.gif)
The posts above mentioned two times that the number of support officers could be dynamic. I don't know if that wouldn't be making things to complex later on, because I have no idea how bonuses would work in that regard. In the end a single really talented officer might not even matter anymore, as everything gets flattened out by statistical average. Maybe it could be so that there is still only one real leading officer for each sector, and then a continuous sub-staff who contribute only a bit, and might even get clipped in gains if the leading officer isn't competent enough. This would keep intact that Star Trek feeling, where many small officers may run around, but there are is still only one Lt.Commander or Commander who leads an area and gives it his fingerprint.
Alternatively, maybe sub-staff could even not give bonuses at all, but only influence if an increased failure rate happens or not with their skill degree.
Anyway, in theory that 4(or something) spot system would already be enough for me. Just something to do for the lower ranks at least.
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I today tested that game again, and it seems after all the updates you cannot assign captains to aiding commands anymore,
What is the rank of your TG commander?
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I think he's still talking about Solar War.
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Yepp, that was in Solar War. On the plus side you can now assign commanders to manage colonies, so they get at least something to do with their skills.
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Technically, that is what task groups are for.
The problem is that it does not work if the task-force is not in the exact same spot. TF commander should be able to control escorts slightly away or groups that is slightly split up.
Basically any ship that are designated as escorts or similar should still be part of the same TF.
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Basically any ship that are designated as escorts or similar should still be part of the same TF.
Task Force bonuses apply (IIRC) to all ships in the TF that are in the same system as the TF commander. Is that what you're asking for?
John
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Task Force bonuses apply (IIRC) to all ships in the TF that are in the same system as the TF commander. Is that what you're asking for?
John
Oh... I was talking about TG commanders not TF commanders... ;)
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If you are more liberal with your flag bridges you could do this to your hearts content and simply call TGs TFs...
But you hit a small issue with the ranks in Aurora...the lowest rank is Lt. Commander, that is generally speaking either a division head on a capital ship or else the first officer or commander of a smaller ship. That is the ground force equivelent to a captain. So a lot of what you are asking for is handled in the real world by Lts of various grades which aren't in Aurora anyway.
The academy is more "leadership school" or "staff officer training" then it is where fresh officers come out...that is Ensigns and the like. The age of the new officers is well younge...Lt. Commanders are likely closer to 31 years old then 21 years old. 21 is also very young for scientists and adminstrators...4+2+3=9+18=27 is minimium for Ph.Ds. and Admistrators are likely 18+4+1= 23 years old (MBAs).
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Yes... that is also what I usually do later on in the game. Larger groups of ships get their own admiral or Commodore.
I would just like to be able to link TF in a hierarchy as well and have some benefit or at least just a linked tree in the organizational tab for immersion sake.
I rarely find it problematic to find officers a home after nations start building a proper navy. Each fighter or recon craft get a Lt.Commander assigned, smaller ships a Commander and bigger ships get their captains and sometimes a commodore for very large ships.
Once the navy is developed I give Commodores the role of task-force leaders at the Flag bridge of a command ship. Rear Admirals in my campaigns are almost always system administrators and lead system defenses. So a Commodore is under the command of the system admiral unless a conflict warrants the presence of a Fleet Admiral.
I would like to assign Fleets with Commodores to the administration below Fleet Admirals in charge of Sector wide fleet operation where the Commodores are more of a tactical tool rather than a strategical tool.
The major problem I have with how TG work is that they are very strict and only ships in the same spot belong to them... a single scour craft is its own task-group.
It would be nice if there were some more defined way to do it with the Organizational tool in the game... perhaps assign leaders using that tool would be one way to do it.