Officer Auto-Assignment

[Rich.h]

Yes that is pretty much it, in my above example the rank of "Lieutenant" is a R1 officer. Howver that has nothing to do with the rank part of the design screen. The design screen has a drop down box to select the minimum required rank to pilot a ship. The box with the number then simply states how important this ship is so it can pick an officer provided:

1. They meet the rank required.
2. No ships with a higher priority rated for this rank (and skill set) are requested an officer.

So in my list if we for a moment forget about the skills an officer has. A colony ship wants and officer and there happens to be a single unassigned Lieutenant in the academy and so he is assigned to that ship. But if there was also a fuel harvester without a commanding officer then it would take the Lieutenant and the colony ship would remain without a commander, due to the number rating of importance.

Setting my officer requirements up like this has meant i tent to not get an issue like long time fighter pilots of R3+ (it does happen on occasion but hey if an x-wing was good enough for general skywalker.....). What tends to happen is my military ships take first pick of all officers which means i then have guys in a role gaining promotion points (I always use realistic promotions, and only tend to instant promote someone for a specific role such as admiral). Those officers then become eligable for promotion and thus now meet the rank minimum for selection to a next stage design, and the fresh folks out of the academy get selected for the now vacant roles in smaller/non military craft.

The numbering system is by no means required to make this work, but I find this way if I only have a small number of officers they do not end up flying freighters when more important military craft need them. A knock on effect of this is that military craft tend to have more chances to gain promotion points for their commanding officer and thus allow faster promotion to allow me to bring in more advanced design types that need a higher rank. The one downside to all this though is that you can end up with too many higher ranks sitting in roles for years when they would be better placed higher up, hopefully we will see an addition of a "maximum rank" box for the design screen so it will boot admirals out of freighters and such.

[MarcAFK]

I get what you're saying, perhaps a suggestion to reorder automatic officer priority for first what they're most skilled in, then military ships with heavier ships getting priority going dien tiwards smaller vessels, then fighters, commercial vessels once again size getting priority?

[Rich.h]

I think you could achieve all of those with just two additions to the design screen. If you had a "maximum rank" box this would ensure captains don't slouch about all the time in fighters and free them up for other craft. Then if a third box was there for lets say "skill required" or something, this would simply be a check so that a ship would look for an officer who fits the rank <- -> demands, and then takes one with the highest % of the skill you check. Combining that with the already existing number method to determine how important a design is within the rank as it stands you would get a system that should work like this:

1. Officers that are too high a rank for any ship are kicked into the academy and thus free for a new posting.
2. Ships request an officer from the rank group required to pilot them, starting with the highest required rank ships.
3. Ships with a higher number in the design screen are given first pick of the pool.
4. High number ships pick an officer from the pool who has the highest % in the skill specified on the design screen, until all ships of this hierarchy number have taken a pick.
4. The ships in the next hierarchy number down repeat from step #2 until all ships have a commander or the pool is empty.
5. The next required rank ships start from step #2.

This way it is still totally the players choice which ships get to cherry pick officers and so on, and can easily be done through just changing a few settings in the design screen.

[El Pip (OP)]

Not sure if you are missing his point or not.

I *think* what Rich is saying is that you make your fighters R1.  Everything else is R2 or higher.

That's what I thought he said.  It works but it pushes you towards larger ships as you can run out of R2+ officers.  Certainly you can't have a FAC force for system defence if you go that way (well not one with any officers for the FACs)

You also end up with all your R1 officers with fighter combat bonuses, not a big problem but it means on a long enough game every single officer at all ranks has a fighter combat bonus.  I'd like to imagine there is a way to get promoted up the fleet without being an fighter ace.   

[Erik L]

Ships don't need named officers. They function just fine without them. the perform a tad better with them

[El Pip (OP)]

Ships don't need named officers.  They function just fine without them.  the perform a tad better with them

I know that.  But a system where officers are crewing around the block to command obsolete fighters sitting in my Emergency Reserve Hanger while proper warships are crying out for a commander does seem like it could be improved.

That said it's not bothering me enough for me to start assigning several hundred officers by hand, so it's not that bad.