My issues with the officer system

[bankshot]

I'm at 2045, so about 20 years in to the game, my naval command structure is as follows:

Race Navy (Admiral)
  Battle command (VADM)

  Industrial command (VADM)
    Gate Construction (CAPT)
    Mining (CDRE)
    Terraforming (RADM)

  Logistics (RADM)

  Survey (RADM)

For Terraforming - I have 28 ships divided into 4 fleets, I suppose I could create an admin layer for each fleet but even if I did that it would be a CDRE slot, I'd still want to keep LtCDR, CDR, and CAPT officers as ship captains.  The highest bonus officers were promoted to the admin commands, and just about every officer with a bonus is either commanding a ship.   My one officer with >20% bonus in both mining and terraforming is the commandant of the Naval Academy on Luna.  As I understand it to get an admin bonus I'd have to have all of the admin slots filled, so if I were to create additional layers it seems like it would involve even more management and make my current officer scarcity that much worse.   Construction of the 4th campus on Luna is in progress but will probably take another few years to complete. 

[Jorgen_CAB]

Could you please provide an example of how you would set an admin command structure for the OOB that was listed at the beginning of the thread?

I agree that the current system is not very flexible and sometimes will create odd situation as you might not find the leaders you need at different ranks... however you can most often deal with the system most of the times if you have enough officers.

I usually start at Lieutenant, Lieutenant Commander, Commander, Captain, Commodore, Rear Admiral, Vice Admiral, Admiral, Grand Admiral and finally the Void Marshal.

So... small commercial utility vessels get Lieutenants in command, regular commercial vessels a Lieutenant Commander and proper commercial military support ship can even get a Commander in charge depending on their importance and function. So I already have a good use of these commanders here.

Military ships and small structures are...

Fighters and FAC 50-1000t usually are Lieutenants, squadron leaders usually are Lieutenant Commanders (scout and/or sensor variants)
Corvettes and small utility crafts are Lieutenants Commanders
Small capital ships from frigates to destroyers/cruisers are Commanders with Captains as Squadron leaders (flag officer)
Large capital ships like Battleships, Fleet Carriers and Battle Carriers are commanded by Captains and larger task-groups (flag officer) are commanded by a Commodore

For Admin Commands

Commercial Admin Commands usually start at Captain and go up to Rear Admiral in rank sometimes higher.

For military Admin Commands the usually start at Rear Admiral as leaders of Task-forces and then up that chain of command.

I think that you do want some vacancies in jobs at most level as so some "unemployed" are OK... I generally assume they are staffed at HQ and other institutions.

The key is to give different levels of work for officers to both ships and admin commands so you can have the officers work in many levels and spread them out, this works relatively well but you always want some "unemployment" at every level for the system to work. I also don't assume they are unemployed as much as in re-training programs, teachers or administrators in higher commands. Sure it would be nice with work for them to do to say staff admin commands but then you would end up in the same situation or people complaining they can't fill the staff of their admin commands or they have still have too much officers as not everyone will meet the criteria to fill certain slots.

People in your hierarchy are never really unemployed but part of the the bureaucracy and administration machine feeding the more vital and sought after positions. When a ship commander is promoted and put at HQ he or she is likely given some important bureaucracy job or think tank that is as important as the job they had before. Just because there is not game mechanic does not demean the character in the game in my opinion, that is just the position of you as a player when you are "robbed" of someone with a good skill and you feel that you are left out on some potential gain. Personally I'm fine with this from a RP perspective especially if they are promoted for political reasons... they get more pay and don't need to risk their life on a ship any more... win win for them but not you as a player...

[kenlon]

Personally, my biggest problems with the officer system are a) No way to separate event messages by whether the officer/administrator is assigned or not and b) added ranks are put at the top of the list not the bottom, and you can't import pre-made rank tables when you start a new game. 

[skoormit]

Could you please provide an example of how you would set an admin command structure for the OOB that was listed at the beginning of the thread?

I nest admin commands, one branch for each admin type and purpose, one level for each rank.

Roughly like this (with rank requirements):

Code: [Select]

GENERAL Empire Command R1
    LOG Logistics2 R2
        LOG Logistics3 R3
            LOG Logistics4 R4
                LOG Logistics5 R5
                    LOG Logistics6 R6
    IND Mining2 R2
        IND Mining3 R3
            IND Mining4 R4
                IND Mining5 R5
                    IND Mining6 R6
    IND Terraforming2 R2
        IND Terraforming3 R3
            IND Terraforming4 R4
                IND Terraforming5 R5
                    IND Terraforming6 R6
    NAV Navy2 R2
        NAV Navy3 R3
            NAV Navy4 R4
                NAV Navy5 R5
                    NAV Navy6 R6
    SRV Survey2 R2
        SRV Survey3 R3
            SRV Survey4 R4
                SRV Survey5 R5
                    SRV Survey6 R6

If I don't have an officer available for any given command, I move it out of the structure until I do.
This structure allows me to maximize admin bonuses for all fleets.


Your destroyer fleets, having a Captain (R5) at the helm, would go in NAV Navy4.
Your FAC would go in NAV Navy6.

[Froggiest1982]

So I've built a small spreadsheet tool to actually understand what is going on and I've found out that we could sort a lot of issues with a quick fix. Then, of course, we still need a revamp but maybe Steve is watching and could do this small thing sooner rather than later?

So with current rules, the retirement age will not be a big concern (there are still some though) as long as all roles are assigned and officers are having something to do reducing the chance of early retirement. Then you need as many academies as possible to keep feeding the ranks.

The first thing noticed and I posted something in regard already (http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=11823.0) is that unassigned officers don't get a command even if there are ships available following the current rules. This should be fixed ASAP as it is impacting the retirement chances of many officers. If you have 300 ships and 500 officers the ALL ships MUST be manned providing the right amount of officers are available per rank required. This should include commercial ships.

With the above, we will already have more assigned officers avoiding early retirements and with the academies, we could refill the lower ranks and guarantee promotions. If you can have 40/50 new officers per year, assuming at least 1/3 are naval you will have 15 new officers or at least 100 within the 10 years of the first retirement (including sudden deaths and health issues, I considered a good 20%).

After a few simulations, I then think that we could tackle retirement through more occupation ending up with more and more officers staying enlisted with a higher chance of getting higher ranks consequentially due to higher requirement for retirement. In this direction setting up a proper chain for the first 5 higher ranks could be also beneficial as these will start with 30+ years of service by default before actually start thinking to retire also providing a natural "ageing" of the officers in the waiting list for high ranks which will not be available till at least 40/45 yo.

Through the spreadsheet, I've also noticed that you will need roughly 800 officers to properly fill all ranks from R10 to R1 but only 250 to fill ranks from R8 to R1. So this is also worth noticing as it could impact hugely your perception of how promotions are handled. Also, you need to keep these busy so that you can always have enough considering also you may require more captains of Majors and they will simply not get promoted if there aren't enough people in the lower ranks.

In conclusion, I may have suffered less this problem as I do create a lot of Admin commands and Academies from the start along with promoting people to higher ranks immediately. In doing so I may have unconsciously ensured a good refill of officers but I am sure I wouldn't have needed any manual promotions every now and then if all my officers were actually assigned to all my ships.

[TMaekler]

I don't know about the military of other countries, but here in Germany we do have a reserve system for officers. People who will be called upon if needed, but they normally work their day to day job outside of the military. So maybe officers who do an early retirement in Aurora could be put in a reserve database and be called upon if needed? How about that?

[Silfir]

I think officers that are available to the officer corps, but have no current assignment, are those reserve officers. They work civilian jobs that allow them to leave with little to no notice, or have teaching positions at the academy, or do any amount of temporary work. But after ten (or more) unbroken years without an assignment, they justifiably conclude that their military career is a dead end and they have to retire to concentrate on their civilian jobs full-time. That's how I interpret it.

It might be prudent to allow players to customize what percentage of officers they want at each rank. Right now you can design your hierarchy around the officer distribution, but if you have a specific idea for how the hierarchy works that doesn't fit you're stuck handling promotions manually.

[Kristover]

I think officers that are available to the officer corps, but have no current assignment, are those reserve officers. They work civilian jobs that allow them to leave with little to no notice, or have teaching positions at the academy, or do any amount of temporary work. But after ten (or more) unbroken years without an assignment, they justifiably conclude that their military career is a dead end and they have to retire to concentrate on their civilian jobs full-time. That's how I interpret it.

It might be prudent to allow players to customize what percentage of officers they want at each rank. Right now you can design your hierarchy around the officer distribution, but if you have a specific idea for how the hierarchy works that doesn't fit you're stuck handling promotions manually.

I was in the Army and most officers spend the majority of their careers not in command assignments but rather in staff assignments, working in training jobs, or doing other things to support the wider force.  I'm kind of like you, I've imagined all those other officers feeling those other roles and then making a decision to leave service if their career hasn't taken off with a Command assignment.  I did have an officer pop up as a Commander for the first time of one of my Battalions after like 20 years in so some of those guys do stick around the rosters for a long time - that was surprising to me.

[Jorgen_CAB]

I think that some changes to this system could be an interesting improvements.

One thing I would like to see is a cost to maintain your officer corps, you should pay some sort of wealth cost every year to support your officer corps. This will include academy training costs, administration and the cost of the officer. Officer in command could be more expensive than those in reserve.

Another would be a slight change to how their skills work... instead of just having skills when they graduate they should have even lower values but whatever job they take will generally give them skill while doing that job, so certain skills are more likely to increase than others depending on their position and what functions that command have.

In addition to this I would take some inspiration from Rim World where each character that is generated have a set of preferred skills they are "good" or "bad", this is more or less their overall motivation and/or talent in a specific area. They are more likely to want to take commands in those positions which they wan to work in if they can, even if they start with no skill in that area.

I think this would go well in hand with the role-play nature of the game if it worked more like this.

It would also mean that officers would get assigned even if they are not the perfect match for the position as they will eventually develop skills in that area anyway. I do agree that officers should be assigned even if they don't have a specific skill for it as they should be able to develop some skill in that area, even if they are "bad" at it.