New Naval Organization Structure

[MoonDragon]

I really like this idea, I'd suggest formation count, and possibly sub-formations as well, (ie a small flag bridge lets you command 3 ships in 1 TG, a large flag bridge, lets you control 8 ships, in subordinate formations as well as your own TG)

Wait, are you saying I should not be able to put 3 freighters in a TG unless one of them has a dedicated flag bridge? Isn't that a bit silly?

Another thing to consider: how do all these commanders contribute bonuses? Is like like the relation between planet and sector governor? Where higher level staffs impart only smaller fractional bonuses to subordinate fleets?

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

If I understand it correctly, I really like number 4, especially if you make it range based (say 5-10 light seconds to represent speed-of-light delays).  Looking at the USN in the western Pacific, the Pacific Fleet and possibly 7th Fleet would be "Port Admiral" (Administrative?) fleets, while a CVBG would be a "Flag Bridge" (Combat?) fleet.  The big question I have is "where to put training (admin vs. combat)?"  After thinking about it, I think it should go in both, since both the administrative command and the actual TG commander can influence training.  Here's a different thought (I'm trying to think of ways in which admin admirals would be useful): what if admin admirals improved the chances for subordinate commanders to increase their skill levels?

The other reason I like this is the TG command ships - it gives a strong incentive to have enough flag bridges in the fleet to be able to control individual TG.

[pause while thinking about the cost of flag bridges and the rank required for a flag]

Here's a thought:  Do you want to have several sizes of flag bridge, e.g. 1, 2, 5, 10?  You could give bigger span of control (either in formation count or range) to bigger bridges, and permit lower-ranked officers to command smaller flag bridges.  The reason I'm thinking along these lines is (in WWII terms) the difference between flag accomodations on a battleship vs. a destroyer - I imagine things are a bit more cramped on a destroyer . Because task groups will not always correspond to branches of the org chart, we need to decide if the combat task forces (lets call them Flag Officers instead) relate directly to a branch on the org chart or a task group, because they can't do both. As their ultimate function is commanding ships in combat, my inclination is to link them to Task Groups. That creates a distinction between the org chart Fleet Headquarters and the real world Flag Officer, in the same way as the difference between the permament naval organization and the short-term Task Group.

Perhaps you select the available Flag officers on the org chart tab and attach them to a task group as you create it. You would need to select an officer with sufficient rank to command the task group you are creating. You could also assign flag officers directly to any Task group as it is all the same window. With regard to Flag Bridges, if we had different sizes you would need a Flag Bridge suitable for the size of the Task Group as well. Using a smaller flag bridge would reduce any bonus from the flag officer. This would also have the side benefit of making senior naval officers more useful as they can command larger task groups. If you detach ships from the main task group, you could assign a new TG commander.

Or going back a little on what I just said, you could attach flag officers directly to org branches so that if you create a task group from the ships attached to, or subordinate to, that branch, that officer is automatically assigned to that task group, assuming he is of sufficient rank to command the number of ships involved. He would still be TG-focused though as he wouldn't serve any function unless assigned to a TG. I would have to add some checks as well so that officers who ended up commanding task groups that were too large for them (due to changes in the composition of a TG over time), were flagged in the event log. I would also have to give some thought to a small staff for these officers as well. I guess a fifth tab for the F12 window could show the TG commander and his staff plus the effect they have on that TG. All of this would be optional and wouldn't affect anyone not using it.

How does that sound?

Steve

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

I really like this idea, I'd suggest formation count, and possibly sub-formations as well, (ie a small flag bridge lets you command 3 ships in 1 TG, a large flag bridge, lets you control 8 ships, in subordinate formations as well as your own TG)

Wait, are you saying I should not be able to put 3 freighters in a TG unless one of them has a dedicated flag bridge? Isn't that a bit silly?

The formation count would be the largest formation to which a given officer or flag bridge could provide a bonus. You could create larger task groups but they just wouldn't get a bonus - they would be just as they are now.

Another thing to consider: how do all these commanders contribute bonuses? Is like like the relation between planet and sector governor? Where higher level staffs impart only smaller fractional bonuses to subordinate fleets?

I haven't entirely decided yet . At the moment I am leaning toward TG commander adds immediate bonuses to his TG only. Plus perhaps John's suggestion where a senior officer provides a bonus to the chance of his surbordinates skills increasing over time.

Steve

[sloanjh]

I really like this idea, I'd suggest formation count, and possibly sub-formations as well, (ie a small flag bridge lets you command 3 ships in 1 TG, a large flag bridge, lets you control 8 ships, in subordinate formations as well as your own TG)

Wait, are you saying I should not be able to put 3 freighters in a TG unless one of them has a dedicated flag bridge? Isn't that a bit silly?

From my point of view, the answer is "no, ships that exceed the span of control of a flag commander don't get to utilize their training levels, so have degraded reaction times etc".

Another thing to consider: how do all these commanders contribute bonuses? Is like like the relation between planet and sector governor? Where higher level staffs impart only smaller fractional bonuses to subordinate fleets?

I suspect that's what Steve would do.  That or the higher echelons would be needed for command-and-control (avoiding degraded reaction times).

Note that this (hierarchical flag formations) is probably too complex for 5.0 - the initial change would probably need some play-testing to see if this would be a good idea and to let things gel.

John

[boggo2300]

I really like this idea, I'd suggest formation count, and possibly sub-formations as well, (ie a small flag bridge lets you command 3 ships in 1 TG, a large flag bridge, lets you control 8 ships, in subordinate formations as well as your own TG)

Wait, are you saying I should not be able to put 3 freighters in a TG unless one of them has a dedicated flag bridge? Isn't that a bit silly?

From my point of view, the answer is "no, ships that exceed the span of control of a flag commander don't get to utilize their training levels, so have degraded reaction times etc".

Another thing to consider: how do all these commanders contribute bonuses? Is like like the relation between planet and sector governor? Where higher level staffs impart only smaller fractional bonuses to subordinate fleets?

I suspect that's what Steve would do.  That or the higher echelons would be needed for command-and-control (avoiding degraded reaction times).

Note that this (hierarchical flag formations) is probably too complex for 5.0 - the initial change would probably need some play-testing to see if this would be a good idea and to let things gel.

John

Sigh, I get beaten by John AND Steve

Matt

[sloanjh]

I think perhaps the Task Forces as they stand now could become the Port Admiral task forces and we call them something else, like Fleet Headquarters. They would remain on the org chart but lose a few staff officers. Besides being part of the Org chart they would provide non-combat bonuses to all shipping in the system in which they were based (and possibly training as well). That would be relatively straighforward

The task group commander is harder and Its going to be easy to get myself confused over this if I don't handle it right :-)  (I'm trying to indicate that the name doesn't have any significance in game mechanics.)  The commander and his staff would be assigned to the command group as they are now, through the F4 screen.

2)  Which ships and/or command groups are under the command of a command group?  This is the tough one in phase 0 of this fleet organization, because a TG is being interpreted as just a task group without any sub-structure.  In other words, if the entire 1st Battle Squadron were together in a single TG, there would presumably be at least 3 command groups embarked on the various ships: 5th Division, 6th Division, and 1st Battle Squadron.  I think that this is where your "attaching command groups to nodes in the org chart" comes in.  [Pause while working through various schemes for hierarchical command.]  Ok...How's this sound (note that by "level of command group" I mean division vs. squadron vs TF vs. Fleet - something that's specified on the TF screen, with penalties for trying to jam a high-level command group into a small flag bridge, plus minimum officer requirements):

A)  Command groups have a span of command, determined by some combination of level of command group, size of flag bridge that it's embarked upon, and rank of officer commanding (in fact, command span could be a new officer ability that could apply to ground units too - an HQ unit essentially becomes the ground equivalent of a ship with a flag bridge).

B)  A higher-level command group can control lower-level command groups, rather than controlling units directly.  For every lower-level group that it controls, its effective span of command is increased by the lower group's effective span minus 2 (in other words, a command group costs 2 ships worth of command span to command).  So if the commanders of 5th Division, 6th Division, and 1st Battle Squadron all had spans of 4, then 1st Battle squadron would be commanding the 5th and 6th Division command groups (using up its 4 points), resulting in an effective command span of 8.  Note that this is a very tricky definition, since in a multi-level hierarchy you only need to look one level deep at any one time (since you can assume that the sub-commanders will be saturated, you just need to see if you've got enough span to handle all the sub-commanders.

C)  There are two ways to determine the lower-level command groups that a higher-level group commands:

C1)  The "strict seniority" method: The officers within the TG are strictly ordered according to rank.  The top officer's command group will attach the next most senior officers' command groups or ships until its span is exhausted, after which (assuming there are still command groups present) his most senior subordinate will start attaching commands or ships etc.  If at any point a command tries to attach a different command of equal or higher level, the equal-level command is simply skipped as being out of the chain of command (but present as a "backup" command group if a flagship gets destroyed).  If you go through this procedure and haven't attached all the ships, then your TG exceeded your span of command.  (NOTE: this sounded complicated, but I think if you work through the algorithm it's pretty intuitive - it's just saying that you dynamically fill up an order of battle by seniority according to the command groups that are actually present, and that no command group can command a command group of equal level.)  You might also just drop the level requirements here (simply treat them as enhancer to span of command, e.g. +2 per level) and simply go by officer seniority.

C2)  The "org chart" method:  this is your "attaching command groups to org chart branches" idea.  Basically, a higher-level command commands a lower-level one if the lower-level one is attached to a node in the org chart which is subordinate to the higher-level command's node.

I think that's all I had...hope it wasn't too complicated.

John

[Erik L]

I see two types of subordinate TG here. Ad-hoc and Permanent. For the Permanent ones, I'd want to assign officers to them myself. For an ad-hoc formation, I'd say "you three ships form a TG and go here." In that case, I would not want to mess with assigning officers to a formation that will only last a short time (Think HH's mission to Yeltsin in Honor of the Queen). This is the case where the senior ranking officer would be the TG commander.

[sloanjh]

Two more things:

1)  A really nice thing about the "strict seniority" method is that it sharply penalizes you for keeping officers of high rank in ship commands.  The reason for this is that (I forgot to mention) ship commanders go into the seniority-sorted list.  So if there were a Vice Admiral acting as e.g. captain of Neptune, then he'd end up in command of 1st Battle Squadron and wouldn't be able to attach any lower-level command groups to increase his span of command (I just remembered - that's why the rule that you can't attach a same-level command group is important).

2)  There's a technical/performance issue that you alluded to somewhere in this discussion, and that has shown up before: How to determine which TG are operating "together" and which just happen to be in the same system.  This is probably where (a new meaning of) TF fits in somehow - as a group of TG that aren't necessarily coincident but are in the same system - but I don't have any good ideas of how they would fit in without generating too-easy-to-pass-up exploits of putting two TF right on top of each other.  I suspect that this is all tangled up in hierarchical command groups.  I also suspect that the reason that I'm blocked on this is a subtle difference between how I'm thinking about these things and how you do:  I think in terms of penalizing ships or lower-level commands (e.g. the uncoordinated fire) for not being within a span of control that's able to coordinate an entire TF; I think you think in terms off applying a commander's bonuses to any ships which are within his span of control - the others are just out of luck.  The primary reason that this is important is detached escorts/pickets.  I don't think it's important enough to hold up 5.0, though - I suspect it will become clear after we've had a chance to play some under the new rules.

John

[Arwyn]

I really like this idea! This would make managing the navy a much easier endeavor!

Just as an aside, something to consider in the organization and flag bridge discussion. The current operational organization structure of the US Navy is something like this;

CNO (Chief of Naval Ops)
-CINCPAC (Commander, Pacific)
---7th Fleet (Fleet command)
-----Task Force (Battle, ASW, Logistics, MEU, SSBN, ect)
-------Task Group (Component of the Task Force, such as a Carrier Battle Group, Surface Action Group

Now, thats VERY abbreviated, and doesnt cover the horde of other organizational structures in the US Navy, but its a pretty good example. I think the WW 2 is even simpler.

A WW2 Task Force would consist of several combat divisions of similar class ships (destroyers, cruisers, ect) assigned to a Task Force. Example: Task Force 1, consists of a Cruiser Division of three cruisers, and three destroyer squadrons/divisions of four ships each.

Any component of the Task Force could be assigned to a Task Group, either as individual squadrons or as a group of two or more. The Task Force flag flew on whichever ship was hosting the TF commander. Task group commanders were often the captain of any one of the constituent ships in the group, and they were responsible for Task Group command as well as fighting their own ship. In most cases, these TG commanders were usually one of the squadron/division commanders. This was especially common in destroyer groups. Needless to say, most destroyers lacked flag bridges!

Flag Bridge facilities were common on large capital ships (example, the Royal Navy included flag bridge facilities on most battleships, and the US had them on all fleet carriers) but they were relatively rare on cruisers (more common on long range cruisers pre-ww2), and non-existent on smaller classes of ships. This was mostly due to size, since they were usually assigned to admirals which required large amounts of space for the commanders quarters plus room for all the admirals staff. I would suggest that Flag Bridge facilities would be a requirement for managing a Fleet or Task Force organization, but not necessarily for Task Groups or squadrons/divisions. Perhaps it would be more appropriate to apply a penalty to coordination if the numbers of ships involved in a combat situation if there were not Flag Bridge facilities?

As technology improved, CiC facilities cropped up, and they handled the fleet/force/group coordination more efficiently and faster (think Aegis cruisers), so perhaps flag bridge requirements could be met by CiC facilites as technology improves? If your assuming that command and control facilities are improving over time along with the rest of technology capabilities, than perhaps you could control/coordinate more ships with a Flag Bridge or CIC as the technology improved?

Perhaps as part of the Naval organization, there might be a requirement for "command points" required to sufficiently maintain the fleet/force/group/squadron based on the number of ships present? These command points are satisfied by Flag Bridge or CiC facilities, or by points provided by the commanders. Commanders organizational skills could be reflected by adding a command point bonus or skill, so you could potentially see a really hot destroyer squadron commander performing better than the competition, without the requirements of a flag bridge.

Sorry, I know I rambled all over the place on the subject. I think the new screen is a great idea, and I do like the idea of tying in flag facilities and command and control into Aurora more.

[ZimRathbone]

Here's a thought:  Do you want to have several sizes of flag bridge, e.g. 1, 2, 5, 10?  You could give bigger span of control (either in formation count or range) to bigger bridges, and permit lower-ranked officers to command smaller flag bridges.  The reason I'm thinking along these lines is (in WWII terms) the difference between flag accomodations on a battleship vs. a destroyer - I imagine things are a bit more cramped on a destroyer  It also occurred to me that if we have combat flags at multiple levels of the org chart, then it will quickly become difficult to fill up all those staffs, which might mean going lower in the rank barrel for flag officers.  The reason I said "formation count" above was I was thinking about the commander of a fighter or FAC squadron - they're likely to have a high count of ships, but not require a lot of admin overhead for said ships (since the ships are parasites).  Maybe FAC should cost 5x less in ship count and fighters 25x less?

John

I really like this idea, I'd suggest formation count, and possibly sub-formations as well, (ie a small flag bridge lets you command 3 ships in 1 TG, a large flag bridge, lets you control 8 ships, in subordinate formations as well as your own TG)

I think range is probably going to introduce too much in the way of micromanagement, making sure your TG are together, I'd say leave the control range to a system like it is now, and allow more ships controlled per bigger flag organisations (hmm possibly restrict the number pf classes for smaller ones?)

Mattt

I'm with Matt on this reagrding control range - and given that there is effectively zero-lag infinite bandwidth comms within systems, I'd say there was ample justification to say that the Admiral could exercise command  regardless of range

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

I still haven't reached a decision on this (too many possibilities!) and I don't want to rush it so I think I am going to release v5.0 with the org charts and no changes to TFs. This means you will get all the org chart functionality I mentioned in this thread, ships will have a individual TF but that won't have any real game effect (for now) and TGs will still be attached to TFs, which will provide the same benefits as they do now.

To summarise for v5.0
Naval Organization as explained at thread start
Ships are assigned to whatever TF hierarchy they are in on the Org Chart
TGs are assigned to TFs in the same way as now with the same effects and bonuses, which means TGs and the ships within them may have different TF.
No training point penalty for changing TG
All TF bonuses and other effects will apply to TGs, not to ships.

None of the above will have any effect on anyone who doesn't want to use the org chart.

I will add the greater TF detail in the next version, once I have had chance to do it properly.

Steve

[Journier]

I still haven't reached a decision on this (too many possibilities!) and I don't want to rush it so I think I am going to release v5.0 with the org charts and no changes to TFs. This means you will get all the org chart functionality I mentioned in this thread, ships will have a individual TF but that won't have any real game effect (for now) and TGs will still be attached to TFs, which will provide the same benefits as they do now.

To summarise for v5.0
Naval Organization as explained at thread start
Ships are assigned to whatever TF hierarchy they are in on the Org Chart
TGs are assigned to TFs in the same way as now with the same effects and bonuses, which means TGs and the ships within them may have different TF.
No training point penalty for changing TG
All TF bonuses and other effects will apply to TGs, not to ships.

None of the above will have any effect on anyone who doesn't want to use the org chart.

I will add the greater TF detail in the next version, once I have had chance to do it properly.

Steve

 

[Aldaris]

May I suggest an extra function for the org chart next version?
A 'Place all ships in branch in new TG named after branch'. So, for example, if I have a branch named Mobile Battle Group A all ships in the branch (Not sure if sub-branches will count.) will be placed in the TG Mobile Battle Group A. It might also be possible to have sub-branches assigned as escorting TGs.
If the problem of different parts of a TG in different places comes up, a dropdown list of where you want to create the fleet would be handy. The relevant ships would be detached from any existing TGs and set a course to the rally point, and assemble into the fleet there.
I don't know how much work this would be, but it seems like something the Org Chart would benifit greatly from.

[MoonDragon]

A 'Place all ships in branch in new TG named after branch'. So, for example, if I have a branch named Mobile Battle Group A all ships in the branch (Not sure if sub-branches will count.) will be placed in the TG Mobile Battle Group A.

I don't know much about the org chart, as I haven't put a lot of time into it, but last night, I had 5 freighters under "Freight" branch. After selecting a branch and clicking on the create TG button, I ended up with a TG called "Freight" that contained my 5 freighters in it. So it seems the org chart already does what you need it to do.

[Aldaris]

Then I can only congratulate Steve on thinking out his features well.