Staff Officers for Ground Forces

[LuuBluum (OP)]

It's come up a few times across various suggestion threads (and it's something that I want as well), so I figured to give it a thread of its own.  Suggestion is to make some mechanism for ground forces so that, alongside the assignment of a commander, you can also assign various staff officers akin to the staff officers already available on ships.  Mechanically they'd operate the same as the ship equivalent.  There are two ways that I thought this could possibly work:

• Make it so that, alongside "headquarters" for a unit, it is possible to build similar things for those staff officers, like "logistics offices" or something.
• Allow the divvying up of a formation's total headquarters usage for particular officers; after the commanding officer is allocated using some number of headquarters points, allow dolling out the rest to other officers.  So, it'd work like a pool, with each officer (including commander) subtracting their required amount from the pool.

Personally I think the second would be the better-functioning, and not require redesigning ground force formations as they currently exist.

[Blogaugis]

It's come up a few times across various suggestion threads (and it's something that I want as well), so I figured to give it a thread of its own.  Suggestion is to make some mechanism for ground forces so that, alongside the assignment of a commander, you can also assign various staff officers akin to the staff officers already available on ships.  Mechanically they'd operate the same as the ship equivalent.  There are two ways that I thought this could possibly work:

• Make it so that, alongside "headquarters" for a unit, it is possible to build similar things for those staff officers, like "logistics offices" or something.
• Allow the divvying up of a formation's total headquarters usage for particular officers; after the commanding officer is allocated using some number of headquarters points, allow dolling out the rest to other officers.  So, it'd work like a pool, with each officer (including commander) subtracting their required amount from the pool.

Personally I think the second would be the better-functioning, and not require redesigning ground force formations as they currently exist.

Oh boy...
Imagine we have 5 different ground force HQ modules to choose from, all but 1 requiring research in ground control...

Frankly, with the way I go for smaller size ground units (1000 tons, for the lowest ranking commander), I'd run out of ground force officers even faster... And I already have problems getting enough ground force officers.

But, okay - maybe it's not as bad as I imagine..?

[LuuBluum (OP)]

If you're doing a full OOB all the way down to the platoon level (which in my mind is the lowest you can reasonably go, because anything lower and you're not even dealing with officers anymore), then you aren't actually having all of your platoons have all offices filled.  Generally speaking, the first level of the OOB that actually has any of these slots filled in is a company, and they only have an XO.  Additionally, most of the ranks assigned to these positions aren't ranks that would normally lead by themselves- a first lieutenant is generally an XO for a company, etc.  So if you have all of these officer ranks filled out in your officer hierarchy, you're mostly just gaining places to stick them all.

[Borealis4x]

It's come up a few times across various suggestion threads (and it's something that I want as well), so I figured to give it a thread of its own.  Suggestion is to make some mechanism for ground forces so that, alongside the assignment of a commander, you can also assign various staff officers akin to the staff officers already available on ships.  Mechanically they'd operate the same as the ship equivalent.  There are two ways that I thought this could possibly work:

• Make it so that, alongside "headquarters" for a unit, it is possible to build similar things for those staff officers, like "logistics offices" or something.
• Allow the divvying up of a formation's total headquarters usage for particular officers; after the commanding officer is allocated using some number of headquarters points, allow dolling out the rest to other officers.  So, it'd work like a pool, with each officer (including commander) subtracting their required amount from the pool.

Personally I think the second would be the better-functioning, and not require redesigning ground force formations as they currently exist.

Oh boy...
Imagine we have 5 different ground force HQ modules to choose from, all but 1 requiring research in ground control...

Frankly, with the way I go for smaller size ground units (1000 tons, for the lowest ranking commander), I'd run out of ground force officers even faster... And I already have problems getting enough ground force officers.

But, okay - maybe it's not as bad as I imagine..?

There is general agreement that Ground Officers have been in short supply ever since Ground Units got their overhaul. Previously they spawned at an adequate rate but now with the ability to make units as small as you want and many players modeling down to the company level its clear they should be spawning much more often.

Presumably if Steve goes back over GUs and adds staff officers for HQs he'll adjust Ground Officer spawn rates accordingly. In my opinion they should be the most numerous of officers spawned; the Army IRL doesn't requires as high a test score as the Navy or Airforce and the space forces you command in Aurora are more complicated than all those branches combined.

[RougeNPS]

Lets be clear here.

We are separating NCOs and COs right?

Not everyone who has an officer position is an commissioned officer.

[Froggiest1982]

There is general agreement that Ground Officers have been in short supply ever since Ground Units got their overhaul. Previously they spawned at an adequate rate but now with the ability to make units as small as you want and many players modeling down to the company level its clear they should be spawning much more often.

It is obvious that here lies the rub. Overhauling the ground forces was not followed by a spawn overhaul of the ground officers. However, if you think about it, you'll run into the same issue if your fleet is fighter based. Following the new structure you are going to require an officer per fighter and it could be "expensive" especially at the beginning of the game.

2 Things have been said many times:

Restructure of the amount of officers generated
Restructure of the ratio for promotions

I personally manual intake officers from time to time (liquidating all scientists and civilian administrators) so I am not bothered nor consider it cheating as I know each government decides the amount of officers and soldiers are subjected to be recruited every cycle, so why wouldn't I?

[LuuBluum (OP)]

Hell, it'd be particularly nice if we could specify the promotion ratios, even.   "X percentage of this rank should be promoted in Y time. "

That, coupled with having some form of staff officer arrangement for ground units, would make this game perfect to me.

[nuclearslurpee]

There is general agreement that Ground Officers have been in short supply ever since Ground Units got their overhaul. Previously they spawned at an adequate rate but now with the ability to make units as small as you want and many players modeling down to the company level its clear they should be spawning much more often.

It is obvious that here lies the rub. Overhauling the ground forces was not followed by a spawn overhaul of the ground officers. However, if you think about it, you'll run into the same issue if your fleet is fighter based. Following the new structure you are going to require an officer per fighter and it could be "expensive" especially at the beginning of the game.

2 Things have been said many times:

Restructure of the amount of officers generated
Restructure of the ratio for promotions

I personally manual intake officers from time to time (liquidating all scientists and civilian administrators) so I am not bothered nor consider it cheating as I know each government decides the amount of officers and soldiers are subjected to be recruited every cycle, so why wouldn't I?

It irritates me that the ground officer rank ratio was changed in the same way as naval officer rank ratio - ground officer rank ratio was reduced from 4:1 to 3:1, naval was reduced from 3:1 to 2:1. However for the case of naval officers this was compensated with staff officer types of roles, but for ground officers no such change was made. Then why make the change anyways?

[Density]

At this point, I don't know how many times I've start and abandoned a post to sum up my thoughts on this topic. So I guess it'll be easier to actually get something readable if I avoid the ongoing problem of ground officer shortages and go back to the first post:

It's come up a few times across various suggestion threads (and it's something that I want as well), so I figured to give it a thread of its own.  Suggestion is to make some mechanism for ground forces so that, alongside the assignment of a commander, you can also assign various staff officers akin to the staff officers already available on ships.  Mechanically they'd operate the same as the ship equivalent.  There are two ways that I thought this could possibly work:

• Make it so that, alongside "headquarters" for a unit, it is possible to build similar things for those staff officers, like "logistics offices" or something.
• Allow the divvying up of a formation's total headquarters usage for particular officers; after the commanding officer is allocated using some number of headquarters points, allow dolling out the rest to other officers.  So, it'd work like a pool, with each officer (including commander) subtracting their required amount from the pool.

Personally I think the second would be the better-functioning, and not require redesigning ground force formations as they currently exist.

In short, I disagree.

The second option may be more appealing to some, but I can't get behind a rewrite of the ground headquarters mechanics at this point. Certainly not on that scale. Steve's time is limited. There are always bugs to track down and fix. There are plenty of unimplemented features (like genetic modification) still on the backburner. And he certainly has other things to do with his free time than work on the code.
The first option is more reasonable. It's already been implemented for ships, so it should (in theory) take less effort to implement for formations. But I still don't like it. Since ground officer shortage is a more common experience than ground officer surplus, being able to assign multiple officers per formation feels like a niche interest, for those that commonly make very, very large formations. But if the option exists, I fear it could lead players unaware that it's only viable in that case to expend time and effort into building staff posts into all their formations only to find they won't ever have the officer pool to fill them.

If the desire isn't specifically for multiple officers per formation, but just a meaningful ground officer hierarchy of any kind, I'd rather see a top-end solution than a bottom-end one. That is to say, something that resembles naval admin command rather than ship command posts.



While I'm on the topic of ground hierarchy and unfixed bugs... my memory tells me that the original intent was for higher ranked officers assigned to superior formations to pass on a portion of their bonuses to attached formations, but that this never worked and was never fixed. And for the life of me, I can't find the posts referencing any of this. Did this happen? Did it ever get fixed, or officially moved from bug to feature? Did I imagine the whole thing? (These are not rhetorical questions. It would be appreciated if anyone who knows what I'm talking about could point me to the posts about this.)

[Droll]

The second option may be more appealing to some, but I can't get behind a rewrite of the ground headquarters mechanics at this point. Certainly not on that scale. Steve's time is limited. There are always bugs to track down and fix.

I don't like it when people use this as an argument against a suggestion, it's true that Steve can't just rewrite the whole game overnight but whether Steve decides to do something major that takes a lot of his time is up to his judgement when looking at a suggestion not ours.

While I'm on the topic of ground hierarchy and unfixed bugs... my memory tells me that the original intent was for higher ranked officers assigned to superior formations to pass on a portion of their bonuses to attached formations, but that this never worked and was never fixed. And for the life of me, I can't find the posts referencing any of this. Did this happen? Did it ever get fixed, or officially moved from bug to feature? Did I imagine the whole thing? (These are not rhetorical questions. It would be appreciated if anyone who knows what I'm talking about could point me to the posts about this.)

Honestly these are good questions because I wonder too, it seems to be such a minor or hidden effect that people will give you both answers and confuse you even more. I think at this point only Steve can really say whether or not there is any code that makes CO bonuses filter down.

In my experience though the answer is no, I say this because GC training does not filter down to any formations that are subordinate to the COs formation and I would expect the training to raise the morale of other formations if that were the case.

[Density]

The second option may be more appealing to some, but I can't get behind a rewrite of the ground headquarters mechanics at this point. Certainly not on that scale. Steve's time is limited. There are always bugs to track down and fix.

I don't like it when people use this as an argument against a suggestion, it's true that Steve can't just rewrite the whole game overnight but whether Steve decides to do something major that takes a lot of his time is up to his judgement when looking at a suggestion not ours.

That's a fair point, and I know I don't dictate to Steve anything he does.
And looking at what I wrote again, I see that while I meant what I wrote literally, the phrasing I chose is the same as phrasing that is often used passive-aggressively (or otherwise coded to a harsher intent). That was not my intent.

[Foxxonius Augustus]

So on one hand I hate it when someone tells someone else that they are playing a game wrong when what they are doing is playing it their way. On the other, I do feel like building out a ground OOB down to even the company level is missing the scale that aurora is working on. There was a reason that the standard unit size in VB6 was a battalion, that is, units smaller than that are not worth deploying on their own unless they have some specialist skills.

[LuuBluum (OP)]

So on one hand I hate it when someone tells someone else that they are playing a game wrong when what they are doing is playing it their way.    On the other, I do feel like building out a ground OOB down to even the company level is missing the scale that aurora is working on.    There was a reason that the standard unit size in VB6 was a battalion, that is, units smaller than that are not worth deploying on their own unless they have some specialist skills.   

For what it's worth, the suggestion here would apply regardless of what granularity someone's OOB is. 

If anything, representing things at the batallion level makes sense, if your units are companies (as in, literal units, making up a batallion formation).   That way your "headquarters unit" is literally a HHC. 

[serger]

As for me, the problem is that without staff officers we just cannot make any other ground force story except for some form of Warhammer-like "New Medieval".
But it's the setting Steve likes the most and nearly the only he likes, so it's absolutely understandable why he doesn't bother with GF HQ officers, and so I think it will be so for years.

[LuuBluum (OP)]

Well, I can always hold out hope at least.