Required Commanders

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

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.

[nuclearslurpee]

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.

[Kristover]

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.

[Jorgen_CAB]

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.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

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.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

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.

[Jorgen_CAB]

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.

[nuclearslurpee]

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.

[Jorgen_CAB]

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.

[serger]

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.

[smoelf]

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.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

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.

[Jorgen_CAB]

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.

[LuuBluum]

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.



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?

[serger]

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.