Staff Officers for Ground Forces

[Jorgen_CAB]

Having an optional system that promote based on demand seem like something I would get behind. I also think that this is like most military actually work in real life as well. In the real world we obviously have allot more staff officers than what we do in Aurora, but that is beside the point.

I also would like a junior officer corp as well as a crew that you train. The junior offices would be assigned to ships based on the starting experience level of the ship, that way you could decide that some ships start with more officers than others for a higher basic experience level. You spend these crew pools differently and could set every ship class individual how many junior officer they will use.

I also would like crew to be more of an actual resource so we have drafting periods, that is crew will eventually be replaced and retire... Every time a military ship comes in for rest some percentage of the crew is replaced with new crew, lowering experience and fleet training to some degree. The more officers a ship have the more you will mitigate this drop in experience and fleet training.

The academy train crew and the officer corp, as crew and officer are retired you then need to maintain it. The pool is the crew and officers you have available AND who currently serve on your ships. This would make crew a more valuable resource, especially highly skilled and trained ones. You also can have policies such as service time that impact the retirement rate but also impact the cost in wealth to maintain it. The cost increase probably should be a bit more than linear, but in a crisis you might raise the service time and in peace time you lower it to save costs, the same with training level of the officer corps.

Commercial ships probably should only use conscripted crews in this model and be exempted from the military crew and officer corp model. No need to know when these crew retire or are replaced.

Some problems that I have, especially in pre-TN games with low tech progression you build up such a vast crew pool it is NEVER ever going to be a problem, even at the highest training level. In my current campaign I have nearly 50000 crew and that is at level 5 training while I have nearly no military ships built yet as I play on rather slow tech and survey speeds. If my academies instead maintained a level or pool my crew would be maintained the same over time depending on the number of academies that I have.

[Vandermeer]

As it was part of the discussion: I was dreaming of control about officer promotion ratios since old Aurora. I would prefer 4:1 in general, but some of my games required a steep ranking throughput thanks to many sub ranks (e.g. starting with sub-lieutenant), while others were much more simple and could have gone with 7:1.(had a game with "7 divine generals" and one leader, Deus, modeled after Asura's Wrath's fleet. After that only lowly officers who didn't command much)

[Impassive]

Another feature in this vein of promotion based on need would could also be a toggle for a certain rank to not automatically be promoted into. I don't really have a need for 4 Grand Admirals in my OOB

Overall I would be keen for promotion as needed if it's not too complicated to adjust.

[Coleslaw]

Personally, I prefer the current rigid auto-promotion system as it gives the player an interesting challenge rather than simply bending to the player's will.

I personally find it less of a challenge and more of a nuisance, one which forces a player to adopt a command that they may not necessarily want to use, but this is a matter of perspective I suppose. 

it is a simple mechanic to represent the career ambitions of your leaders - in a real military, your LCDRs and LTCs are not content to remain at their rank for 20 years just because you as the player have decided that it would make your life easier, to use an extreme example. The rigidity itself is not necessarily realistic but as a force to push upward mobility even if the player would prefer otherwise I think it works quite well for gameplay - modeling political pressures very simply without requiring a whole new political minigame mechanic is good design IMO.

I believe this is what the optional political reliability bonus is intended to represent, at least in part - all factors, excluding skill/bonuses, that have no tangible effect on an officer's command that can still get them promoted to a higher rank.

IMO this makes the 4:1 ratio much more flexible and desirable for modeling a variety of rank structures, since you can have 4:1 formation command ratios which are not uncommon but equally well you can model 3:1 ratios and still have some extra commanders at most ranks who can be spun off for these more independent duties outside the main chain of command. With the 3:1 ranks I have always found it challenging to maintain a well-rounded OOB and also staff these more distributed commands without some rather convoluted structures.

I don't personally see how having to abide by a certain officer ratio is more flexible or desirable than officers automatically being promoted and assigned on an as-needed basis, which would quite literally accommodate any and all rank structures a player desires. If they have several formations requiring a certain higher rank, then good officers from the lower rank are promoted and assigned to fill the empty ranks. Realistically, they would find a competent and promising brigadier general and then promote them. Now, if a player wants to use the 4:1 ratio for whatever reason, that's fine, but they could still easily do so under a "promotions as officers are needed" model. The only difference is that promoting as needed, at the very least, seems infinitely more flexible to all players' needs and desires and, in my opinion, seems more logical - both in terms of reasonability, and, more importantly, fun. 

I will also note in passing that we do have the option to promote officers manually, which is additional micromanagement but is an option nevertheless. In this case you can probably just promote from the top of the rank list once or twice a year to cut down on how much checking-up you need to do.

I would argue it is unnecessary micromanagement, and officers promoted this way are oftentimes not replaced upon perishing. If I have a pool of 400 majors, 100 colonels, 25 brigadier generals, but I need a total of 150 colonels and 50 brigadier generals, assuming 4:1 and 10 officers a year for one academy, I'm going to have to wait 40 years before the ratio naturally meets my army structure. This means that, for 40 years, I would have to monitor and manually promote officers in order to maintain the desired ranks of officers.

Another feature in this vein of promotion based on need would could also be a toggle for a certain rank to not automatically be promoted into. I don't really have a need for 4 Grand Admirals in my OOB

Well, if you only have 1 assignment available to the Grand Admiral rank, then an "assign as needed" model would only promote one person to Grand Admiral and promote no one else to the role, as there will be no further available assignments.

This system would completely minimize "officer waste" where you get too many officers of any rank above the lowest. At worst, you'd have too few of the lowest rank as they're constantly being picked for higher ranks, though this could be prevented by requiring a minimum time in rank or something similar. For example, a new major would have to remain a major for X years before they're eligible for promotion to colonel, then X years before they're eligible for promotion to brigadier general, then X years before they're eligible for major general, and so on.