Required Commanders

[nuclearslurpee]

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.

[LuuBluum]

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.

[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.

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.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

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.

[Migi]

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   
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)

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

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.

[nuclearslurpee]

Why did you remove the tour of duty mechanic? Based on the changes description it almost looks like it was the message spam   
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. 

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Why did you remove the tour of duty mechanic? Based on the changes description it almost looks like it was the message spam   
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.

[Migi]

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   
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. 

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   
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?

[Jorgen_CAB]

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.

[Blogaugis]

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.

[dsedrez]

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...

[Migi]

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).

[Droll]

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.

[dsedrez]

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.