Length of Service for Commanders

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

As for the first, for a long time I've thought that one way to get a realistic distribution would be to run the academies and promotions for 50 years or so during setup (long enough for the early officers to have all retired out) and take the final distribution as the start distribution.  I suspect this would be yukky to set up, or not performant, though.

A very interesting idea. Yes, it would be performance intensive but something along these lines would at least produce a realistic starting officer corps.

A few of random historical thoughts - I don't know if/how they should be applied to the game:

Governorships have also been drawn from the ranks of nobility and/or politicians.  This gives a large and different talent pool to draw from.  I don't know how to work this in terms of game mechanics, however.

I mentioned in an earlier answer about an option to override the normal promotion requirements for the higher ranks to ensure sufficient commanders were available. Your above comment suggests an alternative which is that perhaps senior civilian officals appear in the higher ranks without regard to the normal military command structure. Those senior civilian officials could be added to the command structure as needed when there are insufficient military officers to fill the available posts, or perhaps added anyway as an extra source of senior commanders. The civilian stats would be restricted to those applicable to planetary or sector government and they would follow a different "career path". Their terms would be much shorter, perhaps only a few years, before they moved on to other civilian roles outside the scope of the game. They would be placed in the commander window for convenience but would be flagged as civilian and would not affect the military command structure or the promotions of military officers. I would have to play around with the mechanics but how does that sound in principle?

Steve

[Father Tim]

I've always liked the Master of Orion split between 'Colony Leaders' and 'Ship Leaders', and hoped to see a similar split in Aurora - far more than I've ever wished to see a fleet/ground forces split in the officer system.

In reference to adding additional 'civilian' leaders, I'm curious whether they might be statistically 'better' at the job: that is, generated with an equal number of skills as military leaders but no chance of skills that are of no benefit to a planetary governor - say, Fighter Ops.  Of course, having civilians be better at the job is not neccessarily a bad thing, especially if they disappear after three years.  It simply means more turnover in the top jobs. Currently I appoint a few carefully chosen specialist to governerships, and then ignore them for thirty years (or more) until they die.  Occasionally I chastise my security troops for letting the scetor Viceroy participate in the sort of "training" that results in mortal acidents.

[sloanjh]

Those senior civilian officials could be added to the command structure as needed when there are insufficient military officers to fill the available posts, or perhaps added anyway as an extra source of senior commanders. The civilian stats would be restricted to those applicable to planetary or sector government and they would follow a different "career path". Their terms would be much shorter, perhaps only a few years, before they moved on to other civilian roles outside the scope of the game. They would be placed in the commander window for convenience but would be flagged as civilian and would not affect the military command structure or the promotions of military officers. I would have to play around with the mechanics but how does that sound in principle?

Sounds like a way to work the observation into game mechanics, which is why you're the game designer and I'm not

So it sounds like the proposal is to count the number of high-rank governor slots available (e.g. R4 or R5 and higher), and "flesh out" the population with civilans up to e.g. 1.5x the number at each rank.  I think I like it - it solves the "pyramid" problem.

Here's a more extreme thought - for governor slots for which civilian governors are being produced this way, require that any officer who's going to be the governor to retire out into civilian status (e.g. what happens in the Mote in God's Eye).  This would emulate a "civilian control of the military" philosophy, and presumably wouldn't apply to worlds in the more oppressive political states (e.g. those that really would have a military governor).  Also, you might want to couple it to government type (with switches to turn on or off for the "player race"?).  If you went down this road, I wouldn't want my favorite senior military officer, whose career I'd followed for years, to suddenly disappear though due to quick civilian retirement.

Another thought - a pair of government skills for quelling unrest, one through oppression (e.g. internal police skill) and one through popularity (e.g. charisma).  The oppression one could improve the productivity numbers at the expense of slower motion to the next political state (or even motion away), while the popularity one could move a population in the direction of rebelling against the empire (once you put internal political dynamics in place).

The "player race" switches comment above gave me an idea - why not change "player race" to a flag which adjusts the stats of the government type, rather than making it a government type of itself.  That way, there could be differentiation within the game (not just within the role playing) between running a democracy vs. autocracy vs. communist state.  This could be useful once you put political dynamics in place, or even if you want to assign advantages and disadvantages (beyond those during setup) to particular government types.

John

[sloanjh]

Another thought on the civilian governorship thread - have the senority be associated with political rating, and have some sort of penalty (unrest?) if a governor with high political rating goes to a less prestigious (determined by r-value) posting, or has no posting, than governors of the same rank with lower seniority.  What got me thinking about this was, again, the internal politics question "what would drive a population to rebel".  Once such thing would be a charismatic leader who felt slighted.  There could also be a risk of badness at retirement time of the governor, i.e. the governor is being forced out and doesn't want to leave his post.  The nice thing about tying rebellion to governors is that you could get an entire sector rebelling, if the sector governor rebelled.

John

[jfelten]

Is there some sort of primer on how the whole officer thing works in Aurora?  I've been kind of groping the dark with it so far.  I researched and built the sector HQ or whatever it is called, but did not see any new appointments appear to assign an officer to.  Also, I can't seem to assign an officer to the colony I built even though it is up to about 25m pop now.  Is that because I don't have any officers ranked high enough for those posting to show up as options?  

Is there anyplace that shows the actual benefit being derived from current assignments?  I see officers with skills such as +20% shipyards and I can't really tell if they are doing anything.  I suppose I could write down how long it takes to build the same ship with and without them, but that is quite tedious.  

In the "real world" if there is a slot, someone will be promoted to fill it.  They may not be great at the job, but they'll do it.  Perhaps for open slots for which there is nobody of high enough rank yet, a lower ranking office will be moved up as "acting _____" (perhaps based strictly on seniority/age), but will automatically be bumped when someone is promoted to that level, even if that newly promoted officer has lower ratings.  

I missed that option to limit rank per ship class.  That will help.  I was wondering why high ranking officers were getting stuck on freighters and such.  Is there any benefit whatsoever to having any officers on freighters?

[Father Tim]

Is there some sort of primer on how the whole officer thing works in Aurora?  I've been kind of groping the dark with it so far.  I researched and built the sector HQ or whatever it is called, but did not see any new appointments appear to assign an officer to.  Also, I can't seem to assign an officer to the colony I built even though it is up to about 25m pop now.  Is that because I don't have any officers ranked high enough for those posting to show up as options?

You might have to go to the 'Sectors' window and assign systems to your new HQ, but Aurora shoud automtically assign all systems in range that are not currently part of another sector to the new sector HQ.

Is there anyplace that shows the actual benefit being derived from current assignments?  I see officers with skills such as +20% shipyards and I can't really tell if they are doing anything.  I suppose I could write down how long it takes to build the same ship with and without them, but that is quite tedious.

Yes, right at the top of the 'Summary' tab on the F2 'Population & Production' window are two lines listing the planetary & sector governors.  If you meant showing the actual amount of increase, the production bouses (mining, factory, research, etc.) are already calculated in the displayed values, but  adding/removing the governor will show the changes.  The time-based bonuses (GF const speed, shipyard speed) do not show, but the 'expected completion date' will change (growing closer) with each 5-day increment.

In the "real world" if there is a slot, someone will be promoted to fill it.  They may not be great at the job, but they'll do it.  Perhaps for open slots for which there is nobody of high enough rank yet, a lower ranking office will be moved up as "acting _____" (perhaps based strictly on seniority/age), but will automatically be bumped when someone is promoted to that level, even if that newly promoted officer has lower ratings.

The nice thing is that an officer in a job will improve in the skills appropriate to do the job.  That is,  an officer assigned to command a ground division will increase in GFTR,  ground combat & political reliability bonus.  An officer in command of a ship will learn crew training, initiative, and perhaps suvey or terraforming (& political reliability).  A planetary governor will improve any of the 'governor' skills,  & political reliability.

I missed that option to limit rank per ship class.  That will help.  I was wondering why high ranking officers were getting stuck on freighters and such.  Is there any benefit whatsoever to having any officers on freighters?

The officers become better ship captains, and if they have crew training the ship crews become better.  A high initiative might just let a freighter escape from an enemy warship.  There are occasional discussions about adding some sort of carge handling skill to improve loading & unloading times.  Crew experience might also affect (un)loading times.

[jfelten]

There are occasional discussions about adding some sort of carge handling skill to improve loading & unloading times.  Crew experience might also affect (un)loading times.

That would make sense.  But cargo load/unload times is something else I have no good grasp of.  I can see it takes some time of course if I advance time in small increments.  Again, I could calculate it all out by observation if I wanted to invest the effort.  Currently I just include a cargo handling system on all freighters even though I have no real idea how much it helps, but I suspect that on trips of any decent length that adding another engine would be of more net value.  Same with the value of investing research in better cargo handling systems.

[Father Tim]

That would make sense.  But cargo load/unload times is something else I have no good grasp of.  I can see it takes some time of course if I advance time in small increments.  Again, I could calculate it all out by observation if I wanted to invest the effort.  Currently I just include a cargo handling system on all freighters even though I have no real idea how much it helps, but I suspect that on trips of any decent length that adding another engine would be of more net value.  Same with the value of investing research in better cargo handling systems.

It's listed on the F5 'Class Design' window, and again on the F6 'Ships' window in its own little slot under Capacities - Load Time (displayed as Days:hours:minutes).  The Basic cargo handling system cuts this time by five, the improved version by ten.  In short, a five-hold cargo ship takes ten days, ten hours to load without CHS; two days, two hours with CHS; and one day, one hour with ICHS.  I find the basic CHS essential to any freighter or colony ship, but the ICHS not so much and the ACHS mostly irrelevant.

[jfelten]

Thanks.  Do they help with loading colonists too, or do you mean you put cargo holds on your colony ships?

[Father Tim]

They help with colonists too.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Is there some sort of primer on how the whole officer thing works in Aurora?  I've been kind of groping the dark with it so far.  I researched and built the sector HQ or whatever it is called, but did not see any new appointments appear to assign an officer to.  Also, I can't seem to assign an officer to the colony I built even though it is up to about 25m pop now.  Is that because I don't have any officers ranked high enough for those posting to show up as options?  

Possibly. Each assignment has an R value, which is the rank needed for an officer to fill that post. The more likely situation is that you need to click a checkbox under the assignment list which is "Assign to any Location". The default in Aurora is that you can only assign officers to commands in the same location as the officer. If you want to assign them to a far-off colony, you have to put them on a ship and take them there. I think the Assign Any should probably be the default instead so I'll change that for v3.3. Also, if you click on Automated Assignments (under the Empire dropdown), the program will assign everything for you and then you can manually override as you see fit.

Is there anyplace that shows the actual benefit being derived from current assignments?  I see officers with skills such as +20% shipyards and I can't really tell if they are doing anything.  I suppose I could write down how long it takes to build the same ship with and without them, but that is quite tedious.  

The benefit provided by the officer is built into the production figures of populations. If you want more detail about the calculation you can hover the mouse over the production amounts and a popup will give you the breakdown. For example, move over the Annual Production label for ordnance factories in the Industrial Production tab or the Annual Ship Building Rate on the Shipyard Tasks tab. For warships, the benefit is that their grade points will increase over time based on the crew training skill of the commander. You can see this on the Ship window. Grade points translate into a grade bonus that can also be seen on the fleet window. This is a modifier for combat. Other types of ships, such as Terraformers or Jump Gate Construction Ships will perform their tasks more quickly with appropriate commanders. If you switch automated assignments on, you will quickly see what type of commanders are best for different types of ships. When an automated assignment is made, the associated event show the skill that was used to determine the assignment.

In the "real world" if there is a slot, someone will be promoted to fill it.  They may not be great at the job, but they'll do it.  Perhaps for open slots for which there is nobody of high enough rank yet, a lower ranking office will be moved up as "acting _____" (perhaps based strictly on seniority/age), but will automatically be bumped when someone is promoted to that level, even if that newly promoted officer has lower ratings.  

That is one option I was considering, although I think I am going to go with John's suggestion about civilian leaders to solve that particular problem.

I missed that option to limit rank per ship class.  That will help. I was wondering why high ranking officers were getting stuck on freighters and such.  

That will still happen in v3.2 as you can only limit ships by minimum rank. Once v3.3 comes out, no officers will be assigned to ship class that has a min rank more than 2 below their own rank.

Is there any benefit whatsoever to having any officers on freighters?

Assuming the freighter is unarmed, the main benefit is to the officer rather than the freighter. Officers gain experience based on the current role so an officer commanding a freighter may increase his crew training or initiative attributes whereas an unemployed officer will never gain experience. Think of freighter commands as basic training and experience for future warship commands.

Steve

[schroeam]

The officers become better ship captains, and if they have crew training the ship crews become better.  A high initiative might just let a freighter escape from an enemy warship.

I started writing this to request a change to the task group initiative based on the senior officer's initiative, but I started wondering whether it should be based on one officer, or a multiple, or average of the group of officers in the TG.  Either way, I think the TG's initiative should be automatically changed based on the initiative of the CO's.  Opinions, yea, nae?

Adam.

[mavikfelna]

Assuming the freighter is unarmed, the main benefit is to the officer rather than the freighter. Officers gain experience based on the current role so an officer commanding a freighter may increase his crew training or initiative attributes whereas an unemployed officer will never gain experience. Think of freighter commands as basic training and experience for future warship commands.

Steve

Father Tim wrote:There are occasional discussions about adding some sort of carge handling skill to improve loading & unloading times. Crew experience might also affect (un)loading times.

You might look at also making freighter captains gain skill in Logistics, since that's a vital skill for any freighter or passenger ship captain. You might make that skill affect load/unload times too. Trade, Operations and Wealth Creation are also areas that might be improved if you want to expand it even more.

--Mav

[welchbloke]

mavikfelna said:
You might look at also making freighter captains gain skill in Logistics, since that's a vital skill for any freighter or passenger ship captain. You might make that skill affect load/unload times too. Trade, Operations and Wealth Creation are also areas that might be improved if you want to expand it even more.

This seems like a sensible suggestion to me.  This way a group of officers become logistics specialists just like you have survey specialists etc.  Modern militaries are extremely reliant on logistics and specialists are a necessity.

[Bellerophon06]

I like the idea of having a realistic service length for officers.  The current idea that has officers forced to retire after a certain period without promotion is good, but I am not fond of the idea of their being immediately moved in to "retirement" status where they cannot be used any more.  I think that it might be better to have officers placed in a "non-active reserve" status for x number of years before they are placed in retirement status.  This would more closely emulate some modern militaries that place personnel in the inactive reserve where they can be called back to duty if necessary.  It would be bad to get in to a war with a significant lack of officers when there are a number of them in a "retired" status and you cannot recall them to duty.