Help needed with Starting Races for New Campaign

[IanD]

Steve wrote
I would be interested. As to where to post it, that is a good question

I have posted the pre-TN campaign start in Fiction/Stories forum, not real the right place for it but at least you can see it

Regards

[Paul M]

The Draak are just closing in on being able to survey for JPs.  They are in 1319 (starting in 1300) and are about say 6-9 months behind where they could be.  They should be surveying for JPs right now but the yard that could produce the ships was expanding when sensors completed researching.  Their low neutronium availability has limited them to 1 naval and 1 civilian yard.  Currently the plans are to add another naval yard as soon as the latest base construction completes.  It also took a while to get a 40K civillian yard so they only just started insystem colonization.  But they are just starting Jump Drive Efficiency 3 so it will be about 18 months before they can design a engine.  However, now that they have 2 colony ships and 2 heavy lifters things are moving faster in their system.  I would still imagine it will be closer to another 3 years before they do their first jump.

But a conventional start from 500 Million with 800 conv. Industry and 10 research stations takes you at least a good 15-18 years to become fully TN and develope the majority of the "basic" techs you will need.  I have a few splurge techs for the Draak (internal armour, hardened electronics, and suppression systems) but still I find it matters more what you leaders tech skill is.

[schroeam]

How about a check while ground forces are engaged in combat to determine if commanding officer was killed in combat without the division having been destroyed.  This could also have an effect on the morale of the division.  The chance of death during combat would bring some additional reality to the game without taking away gameplay or adding any unnecessary micromanagement.

Adam.

[IanD]

Hi Steve

Now 4.26 is out I think you need a civilian source of Presidents, and governors. While officers of rank R6-8 may run for office it’s usually not until they have retired. To have your senior military commander running the whole planet means you always have to have a coup. I always replace my top rank with president or prime minister etc for “democratic” alliances, but still not ideal, especially when you intend it for extended role-play.

All   it needs is for a screen similar to the current officers screen you only need two or three “ranks” – President/Prime Minister, Minister/ Officers of State and senators/influential party members.  I am sure you can come up with more inventive names. From this pool you would select your planetary governors, while you get a president selected on a random basis from the entire pool, perhaps modified by their attributes. If you wanted you could even add ministerial positions e.g. minister of R&D, but it’s not necessary.

Regards

[welchbloke]

Hi Steve

Now 4.26 is out I think you need a civilian source of Presidents, and governors. While officers of rank R6-8 may run for office it’s usually not until they have retired. To have your senior military commander running the whole planet means you always have to have a coup. I always replace my top rank with president or prime minister etc for “democratic” alliances, but still not ideal, especially when you intend it for extended role-play.

All   it needs is for a screen similar to the current officers screen you only need two or three “ranks” – President/Prime Minister, Minister/ Officers of State and senators/influential party members.  I am sure you can come up with more inventive names. From this pool you would select your planetary governors, while you get a president selected on a random basis from the entire pool, perhaps modified by their attributes. If you wanted you could even add ministerial positions e.g. minister of R&D, but it’s not necessary.

Regards

Whilst I agree ith the reasoning and I would love to see something like this in Aurora I think that we are opening a huge can of worms.  Not everyone will want to run their player races as democracies so that means you have 2 pools that would have be available for use as governors (mil and civ).  I suspect the complexity of the code to support this idea would be pretty high and Steve probably has other things he'd like to work on first.

[IanD]

Not everyone will want to run their player races as democracies

I agree, but even dictatorships of whatever colour can use an able civil governor. It just seems strange for the "democratic " alliances to be headed up by a Skymarshal. For other types of Government with little or no civilian rulers you could just ignore it. But “former” generals run many dictatorships. Personally I would only want three slots, Governors and President and Sector Governors, when that slot opens. It also gives you an excuse for that coup you were planning .

I suspect the complexity of the code to support this idea would be pretty high and Steve probably has other things he'd like to work on first.

I don't have a clue about that, but hoped it could be a variant of the F4 Screen.

Regards

[Father Tim]

Whilst I agree with the reasoning and I would love to see something like this in Aurora I think that we are opening a huge can of worms.  Not everyone will want to run their player races as democracies so that means you have 2 pools that would have be available for use as governors (mil and civ).  I suspect the complexity of the code to support this idea would be pretty high and Steve probably has other things he'd like to work on first.

I think what you call your officers and how you pick "leaders" is entirely a role-playing decision and should be beyond the scope of the software. What I would very much like to see is a division of personnel like that in MoO2 - Ships' Officers and Colony Leaders.  I think the training that makes a good (space) navy officer is very different from that which makes a good planetary governor, and therefore there should be two pools:  The Research/Mining/Factory Prod folks should be separate from the Initiative/Communications/Ground Combat folks, with very little (if any) overlap between the two skill sets.

[Laurence]

We could just go further and ask him for a third pool for Army officers (and a pony!  

[Erik L]

Steve wrote
I would be interested. As to where to post it, that is a good question

I have posted the pre-TN campaign start in Fiction/Stories forum, not real the right place for it but at least you can see it

Regards

I created a Scenarios group and subforums, and moved Ian's post there. Ian - You might want to edit it and give it a better subject as the current is "Ian's Scenario"

[Erik L]

Whilst I agree with the reasoning and I would love to see something like this in Aurora I think that we are opening a huge can of worms.  Not everyone will want to run their player races as democracies so that means you have 2 pools that would have be available for use as governors (mil and civ).  I suspect the complexity of the code to support this idea would be pretty high and Steve probably has other things he'd like to work on first.

I think what you call your officers and how you pick "leaders" is entirely a role-playing decision and should be beyond the scope of the software. What I would very much like to see is a division of personnel like that in MoO2 - Ships' Officers and Colony Leaders.  I think the training that makes a good (space) navy officer is very different from that which makes a good planetary governor, and therefore there should be two pools:  The Research/Mining/Factory Prod folks should be separate from the Initiative/Communications/Ground Combat folks, with very little (if any) overlap between the two skill sets.

I like this idea combined with Laurence's suggestion. The Research/Mining/et al skills are "civilian", the Commo/Survey/et al are "naval", and Ground Combat would be "army/marine". There might be some overlap. Diplomacy could be all three (and probably should), Initiative I'd see as both naval and army.

That brings up an idea of having ranks be allocated to each pool. R1 Lieutenant Commander (Navy), R1 Captain (Army), R1 Administrator (Civilian). You might also want something that says Civilian takes precedence over military ranks and vice versa. Or Naval ranks take precedence over Army.

Of course, this might (will be) a bitch and a half to code.

[Kurt]

Whilst I agree with the reasoning and I would love to see something like this in Aurora I think that we are opening a huge can of worms.  Not everyone will want to run their player races as democracies so that means you have 2 pools that would have be available for use as governors (mil and civ).  I suspect the complexity of the code to support this idea would be pretty high and Steve probably has other things he'd like to work on first.

I think what you call your officers and how you pick "leaders" is entirely a role-playing decision and should be beyond the scope of the software. What I would very much like to see is a division of personnel like that in MoO2 - Ships' Officers and Colony Leaders.  I think the training that makes a good (space) navy officer is very different from that which makes a good planetary governor, and therefore there should be two pools:  The Research/Mining/Factory Prod folks should be separate from the Initiative/Communications/Ground Combat folks, with very little (if any) overlap between the two skill sets.

I like this idea combined with Laurence's suggestion. The Research/Mining/et al skills are "civilian", the Commo/Survey/et al are "naval", and Ground Combat would be "army/marine". There might be some overlap. Diplomacy could be all three (and probably should), Initiative I'd see as both naval and army.

That brings up an idea of having ranks be allocated to each pool. R1 Lieutenant Commander (Navy), R1 Captain (Army), R1 Administrator (Civilian). You might also want something that says Civilian takes precedence over military ranks and vice versa. Or Naval ranks take precedence over Army.

Of course, this might (will be) a bitch and a half to code.

I like the idea of having 3-5 user definable "Officer Corps".  The player could name them Navy, Marine, Political, and so on.  All new officers could go into a pool until assigned to one area, and officers could jump between Corps, in certain circumstances.  I have mentioned this to Steve, but IIRC, he thought that it added too much complexity, or was too hard to code, for the added value.  

I still struggle to justify (or explain) why the "governor" of my civilian/democratic planet is a serving admiral.  

Kurt

[Paul M]

Well that was fairly common in the British Empire Colonies.  Quite often the colonial govenor was a retired military officer and in many cases not so retired.  It was equally true that in many cases they were not.  One thing you might want to do is impose fairly strict promotion restrictions.  Then you can give someone the the title "Ret." if you would like to keep them around and use them as govenors.  That way they are useful as govenors without being able to command ships.

I use R1&R2 Retire if (fitness<good) or (age>40), R3 Retire if (fitness<good) or (age>45), R4 Retire if (fitness<fair) or (age>50), R5 Retire if (fitness<fair) or (age>55), R6+ Retire if only if a combination of health, fitness and performance is not acceptable.  I have a lot of "Granted time in service discharge."  or "Due to poor fitness reviews granted a discharge." or "Due to poor health granted a medical discharge." in my retired officer pool.  The time in service people would then give you a pool of civillians you could place in civillian leadership roles by granting them the title Ret. rather than Retiring them.  You could also make the top 3 ranks somewhat political rather than military.  Basically the Hamish Alexander position from the Herringswine books.  So they aren't still serving on the front line officers.

[IanD]

I created a Scenarios group and subforums, and moved Ian's post there. Ian - You might want to edit it and give it a better subject as the current is "Ian's Scenario"

Many Thanks Eric
Regards

[IanD]

To avoid having "naval" guys commanding ground divisions.

Regards

[IanD]

I like this idea combined with Laurence's suggestion. The Research/Mining/et al skills are "civilian", the Commo/Survey/et al are "naval", and Ground Combat would be "army/marine". There might be some overlap. Diplomacy could be all three (and probably should), Initiative I'd see as both naval and army.

I also like this idea, but am less concerned with having "Naval" officers commanding Troops, read too many books in which the captain of marines is subordinate to captain of the ship.

Another reason for a civilian "corp" would be a risk that if you posted a governor with a low political reliability score to a colony then he just might foment rebellion. This could also be influenced by your Government type. Shame I will probably have to wait until v8.1 to see this

Regards