Ranks & Promotions

[LordOther (OP)]

1. What determines what rank the game determines for a ship design. I have learned that certain modules will bump the top rank and will have science officer or similar of lower rank. But still is it tonnage, modules, etc.

2. What determines what rank the game determines for a ground formation. Cause I have copied a few designs from other posts on here till I better understand how the ground design works and the basic designs I've copied require my tier 3 Ground rank. I feel like I'm using wrong designs if my 2 bottom tiers are unassigned, unless they come into more use later in the game. https://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=13627.0
Like using the infantry brigade from the first reply in this uses T3 but it's supposedly the basic unit. Is it just cause it is such a big size, and if so what size corresponds to what rank.

3. What are the different promotion scores for each rank, cause I'm using medals and trying to figure out what score to give each and not wanting 1 medal to bump someone 2 ranks. And it may just be because I'm still early in the game but I have someone at Tier 5 Naval with 2.3k Promotion Score and yet my originally spawned Tier 6 Naval is only at 1.6k Promotion Score

[Jacen]

Answering these one at a time:

1. Check out this post for the full description of what determines the required commander rank for a ship design.

2. I couldn't find a specific list, but I believe it is based on either the unit size or the unit's HQ value. However, this isn't super important because you can override the default rank for a template and put whatever you want (use the "Change Rank" button). I tend to end up doing this for almost every design myself.

3. Promotions are done "on-demand" and promotion score is used only as a tiebreaker for multiple commanders with the same primary skill for the role seeking a promotion. Otherwise promotion score has no bearing on what rank the officer is. There is a "cooling off" period of one year between promotions, so officers will not promote multiple times in a row. See this post for details.

[nuclearslurpee]

2. I couldn't find a specific list, but I believe it is based on either the unit size or the unit's HQ value. However, this isn't super important because you can override the default rank for a template and put whatever you want (use the "Change Rank" button). I tend to end up doing this for almost every design myself.

It is both, as far as I can tell, but the default ranks are never right and I always change them manually. I think the first few levels go something like 5,000/10,000/20,000 tons (whether size or HQ capacity), which is just silly and useless when trying to mimic any kind of real-world force structure.

For ships, the rank cannot be changed manually, aside from the "Senior Officer" check box, but fortunately the ranks are usually sensible enough that this isn't a problem.

[LordOther (OP)]

1. Check out this post for the full description of what determines the required commander rank for a ship design.

Alright, this is helpful. After searching a bunch I found other things from the change list but Google never decided this post is worth showing me.

2. I couldn't find a specific list, but I believe it is based on either the unit size or the unit's HQ value. However, this isn't super important because you can override the default rank for a template and put whatever you want (use the "Change Rank" button). I tend to end up doing this for almost every design myself.

I've never gotten to the point in game where I've had weapons on ships or armies that weren't just suppression garrison. So since you're saying ground formation rank is pretty arbitrary since I can assign what I want now I'm curious if you or someone else could help me figure out what I should expect, or how you assign each rank.
For Naval and Ground
T8
T7
T6
T5
T4
T3
T2
T1
Like what do you try and have each rank do or correspond to, and when should I expect to use them in game cause I start the game with a T5 naval guy but don't think I'm gonna be using him anytime soon. I know I can do the game however I want but having a reference point I can build from and learn from makes this game more enjoyable for me.
And followup with ranks, what the hell are admin ratings. Like I have a rating 6 person but no rating 5 person. I had rating 3 person replace a rating 2 person as governor. I have basically equal amounts of rating 1-4. So what the hell is the difference.

3. Promotions are done "on-demand" and promotion score is used only as a tiebreaker for multiple commanders with the same primary skill for the role seeking a promotion. Otherwise promotion score has no bearing on what rank the officer is. There is a "cooling off" period of one year between promotions, so officers will not promote multiple times in a row. See this post for details.

On-demand being how promotion works makes so much sense now. Like I'm trying to use all the base game medals plus US medals and figuring out the score to give each and seeing how little promotion score the original spawns had made me think if I gave someone the medal of honor at what I had the score at someone would have bumped 2 ranks.

[nuclearslurpee]

2. I couldn't find a specific list, but I believe it is based on either the unit size or the unit's HQ value. However, this isn't super important because you can override the default rank for a template and put whatever you want (use the "Change Rank" button). I tend to end up doing this for almost every design myself.

I've never gotten to the point in game where I've had weapons on ships or armies that weren't just suppression garrison. So since you're saying ground formation rank is pretty arbitrary since I can assign what I want now I'm curious if you or someone else could help me figure out what I should expect, or how you assign each rank.
For Naval and Ground
T8
T7
T6
T5
T4
T3
T2
T1
Like what do you try and have each rank do or correspond to, and when should I expect to use them in game cause I start the game with a T5 naval guy but don't think I'm gonna be using him anytime soon. I know I can do the game however I want but having a reference point I can build from and learn from makes this game more enjoyable for me.
And followup with ranks, what the hell are admin ratings. Like I have a rating 6 person but no rating 5 person. I had rating 3 person replace a rating 2 person as governor. I have basically equal amounts of rating 1-4. So what the hell is the difference.

So, there is considerable flexibility here, and within a few game mechanical rules you can do nearly anything you want, although some things work better than others. I'll share what I typically do.

Naval
Ranks 1--3 are typically ship commanders or fill various sub-command roles such as executive officer (AUX component) or tactical officer (CIC component). Rank 4 are usually a mix of senior ship commanders and low-level naval admin commanders. Ranks 5+ are usually naval admin commanders. The naval administration hierarchy can be many layers deep, although usually 4 or 5 layers is plenty. You can see an early example in one of Steve's change log posts here.

A typical naval admin command structure could look like:

GEN Supreme Command (R8)
    NAV Naval High Command (R7)
        NAV Battle Fleet Command (R6)
            NAV Home Fleet (R5) - Home defense fleet and new construction
            PTL Expeditionary Fleet (R5) - Long-range deployments and patrols
        SRV Survey Fleet Command (R6)
            SRV Survey Fleet (R5) - Survey ships
            IND Stabilization Fleet (R5) - Stabilization ships
    LOG Auxiliary High Command (R7)
        LOG Shipping Fleet Command (R6)
            LOG Colonization Fleet (R5) - Colony ships and freighters for infrastructure
            LOG Heavy Lift Fleet (R5) - Freighters for installations and minerals, tankers, troop transports, etc.
        IND Industrial Fleet Command (R6)
            IND Fuel Harvester Fleet (R5) - Fuel harvesters
            IND Orbital Mining Fleet (R5) - Orbital miners
            IND Terraforming Fleet (R5) - Orbital terraformers

This is only an example. In some cases I'll have multiple admin commands at the same level that prioritize the same bonuses for fleet organization purposes. In other cases I may have lower-level admin commands with an R4 commander (especially for LOG and IND types) to create jobs for commanders with specializations that don't fit well in the role of being a senior ship commander.

A typical ground forces command structure could look like:

Army Group (R4)
    Army Corps (R3)
        Division (R2)
            Regiment or Brigade (R1)
            Regiment or Brigade (R1)
            Regiment or Brigade (R1)
            Regiment or Brigade (R1)
        Division (R2)
            ...
        Division (R2)
            ...
    Army Corps (R3)
        ...
    Army Corps (R3)
        ...

Basically, trying to mirror the high-level organization of real-world military forces usually works well, as long as you keep it to a fairly high level (trying to represent individual platoons, for example, is usually a bad idea and not worth the effort). Like real-world militaries, you can be pretty flexible, e.g., assigning extra brigades or divisions to an Army Group-level command depending on the mission profile.

I rarely find any use for ground forces commanders higher than R5 or R6, so I tend to make rank structures that look like this:
 R8   N/A NO_COMMANDER
 R7   --- --------------------------------
 R6   FM Field Marshal
 R5   GEN General
 ...
Then I use the R8 rank to mark formations that should not receive commanders (e.g., CMC garrisons, replacement units). The "blank" R7 rank prevents automated promotions from reaching R8, since I will never use the R7 rank for anything so there will be no opportunities for a commander to be promoted to R7.