Required Commanders

[ArcWolf]

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.

[Density]

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.

[Garfunkel]

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.

[Sebmono]

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

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

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.

[Sebmono]

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.

[Foxxonius Augustus]

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.

[Migi]

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.

[dsedrez]

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.

[nuclearslurpee]

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.

[cdrtwohy]

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

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

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.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

I've made the changes discussed above:
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=12523.msg157362#msg157362

[nuclearslurpee]

Great Steve! Looks like 2.0 is done now and you should release it today!    

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Great Steve! Looks like 2.0 is done now and you should release it today!    

I think perhaps some testing of all the recent changes first