Staff Officers for Ground Forces

[nuclearslurpee]

I think it is likely to come Soon™. 

Reason being, the ground commanders rank ratio was changed (from 4:1 to 3:1) along with the ship commanders rank ratio (from 3:1 to 2:1) in the move from VB6 to C#. For the ship commanders the rationale was that there are now command modules for junior officers to serve in, however for ground units the rank change was made without the corresponding command "modules" being added.

The parallel makes me hopeful that Steve would consider doing such a thing, otherwise why make the change at all? Certainly as it stands the 3:1 GC rank ratio makes no sense compared to the previous 4:1, actually even 2:1 would be better but we are stuck with what we have for now.

[LuuBluum (OP)]

Apologies for bumping my own, rather old thread, but given that we now have (for 2.0) automated naval command positions, could this possibly be looked at as a possibility? Even if it is something as simple as providing an XO position to HQs a particular size greater than their minimum size necessary for the divisions under them.

I know, it isn't something looked at too often, but I think it would be a great boon— coupled with increasing the number of ground officers in general— to have ground forces officers with a bit more of a similar structure to naval forces.

[Blogaugis]

Apologies for bumping my own, rather old thread, but given that we now have (for 2.0) automated naval command positions, could this possibly be looked at as a possibility? Even if it is something as simple as providing an XO position to HQs a particular size greater than their minimum size necessary for the divisions under them.

I know, it isn't something looked at too often, but I think it would be a great boon— coupled with increasing the number of ground officers in general— to have ground forces officers with a bit more of a similar structure to naval forces.

The 1:3 ratio of officers problem (that with autopromote option on, once the amount of lower ranking officers reaches 4, 1 of them immediately gets promoted) gets in the way... I already have a shortage of officers. If such a feature were a thing, we'd need to turn off automatic promotions.
Another thing is - I've heard reports that even now (at least, in 1.13 version) the higher ranking officers do not provide their bonuses to formations assigned below them. Adding yet another type of officer position, while the main one is not fixed is... well... WHYYY??!

If these issues are fixed in 1.14, I could see a point in that.
Other than that, ground forces still needs at least a minor rework...

[LuuBluum (OP)]

Fair. Hopefully Steve's next campaign is ground forces-focused.

[Steve Walmsley]

I'm going to double the number of officers produced by academies for v2.0, as there are a lot more positions available now. I'll keep the number of admin and scientists stable, so the increase will be in naval/ground.

In regard to the ground forces ratio, I am tempted to go back to a 4-1 promotion ratio, but happy to take suggestions.

[Droll]

In regard to the ground forces ratio, I am tempted to go back to a 4-1 promotion ratio, but happy to take suggestions.

I prefer the 4-1 over the current 3-1 as it fits my current and probably future OOBs much better.

However I think for ground officers it might be a good idea for the player to configure the officer ratio to a limited capacity. Eg. having options in the race menu ranging from 2-1 to 5-1. Similar configuration could also be applied to naval officers as well. It's probably exploitable but it would grant people more freedom to play around with fleet and army hierarchies and overall structure.

[LuuBluum (OP)]

I'm going to double the number of officers produced by academies for v2.0, as there are a lot more positions available now. I'll keep the number of admin and scientists stable, so the increase will be in naval/ground.

In regard to the ground forces ratio, I am tempted to go back to a 4-1 promotion ratio, but happy to take suggestions.

I don't know how much work it would be, but I've seen it usually be a "X percentage of rank should be promoted each Y years". I don't know to what extent you could make that player-configurable per rank (including having ranks have no automatic promotion at all, if we so chose?), but I think at the very least having a configurable ratio, if not outright a configurable ratio per rank, would be ideal.

Icing on the cake would be the ability to specify the ratio to promote and how long they should serve before being promoted. Truly the best, most over-the-top would be ratio to promote, how long they've held that rank, and how long they've served overall. That would probably be a lot of work, though. Even going by rank might be too much.

[nuclearslurpee]

In regard to the ground forces ratio, I am tempted to go back to a 4-1 promotion ratio, but happy to take suggestions.

My suggestion is, in no uncertain terms, to do exactly this.

[Steve Walmsley]

In regard to the ground forces ratio, I am tempted to go back to a 4-1 promotion ratio, but happy to take suggestions.

My suggestion is, in no uncertain terms, to do exactly this.

Back to 4-1 for v2.0. I may look at configuration options in the future.

[Coleslaw]

I wonder if just an option alongside auto-promotion saying "Auto-promote only as needed" would be useful. If I need a lot of lieutenant commanders but not many commanders, rather than the auto-promotion siphoning everything upwards into eternity, "Auto-promote only as needed" would only promote the couple of commanders to fill commander-required appointments and then cease. Likewise for ground forces. This, actually, in its own way would allow the player to specify their own "promotion formula", as promotions would only follow the available appointments in the player's OOB.

For example, let's say I have 4 battalions to one brigade, 4 brigades to one division, 4 divisions to one corps, and so one, then auto-promotion would effectively follow a 4-1 promotion formula. Whereas for another player who has, say, 2 battalions to a brigade, 2 brigades to a division, 2 to a corps, and so on, then their formula would effectively be 2-1.

[Droll]

I wonder if just an option alongside auto-promotion saying "Auto-promote only as needed" would be useful. If I need a lot of lieutenant commanders but not many commanders, rather than the auto-promotion siphoning everything upwards into eternity, "Auto-promote only as needed" would only promote the couple of commanders to fill commander-required appointments and then cease. Likewise for ground forces. This, actually, in its own way would allow the player to specify their own "promotion formula", as promotions would only follow the available appointments in the player's OOB.

For example, let's say I have 4 battalions to one brigade, 4 brigades to one division, 4 divisions to one corps, and so one, then auto-promotion would effectively follow a 4-1 promotion formula. Whereas for another player who has, say, 2 battalions to a brigade, 2 brigades to a division, 2 to a corps, and so on, then their formula would effectively be 2-1.

This would also allow for more complex OOBs. 4 battalions in a brigade, 3 brigades to a division, 4 divisions to a corps, 2 corps to an army and have officers fill in as needed. You could then manual promote lets say a general to an academy and next production increment their old post is already filled.

[Coleslaw]

I wonder if just an option alongside auto-promotion saying "Auto-promote only as needed" would be useful. If I need a lot of lieutenant commanders but not many commanders, rather than the auto-promotion siphoning everything upwards into eternity, "Auto-promote only as needed" would only promote the couple of commanders to fill commander-required appointments and then cease. Likewise for ground forces. This, actually, in its own way would allow the player to specify their own "promotion formula", as promotions would only follow the available appointments in the player's OOB.

For example, let's say I have 4 battalions to one brigade, 4 brigades to one division, 4 divisions to one corps, and so one, then auto-promotion would effectively follow a 4-1 promotion formula. Whereas for another player who has, say, 2 battalions to a brigade, 2 brigades to a division, 2 to a corps, and so on, then their formula would effectively be 2-1.

This would also allow for more complex OOBs. 4 battalions in a brigade, 3 brigades to a division, 4 divisions to a corps, 2 corps to an army and have officers fill in as needed. You could then manual promote lets say a general to an academy and next production increment their old post is already filled.

Yes, agreed, the 4-4-4-4 thing was just for easy visualization. I, personally, don't see a reason as to why a rigid formula should be enforced to be quite honest. Now, I am just a layman so I could easily be wrong, but in my mind no real, sane military would unnecessarily promote talented lower level officers to higher ranks where they might not even be used, depriving lower ranks of officers that they need, just to have a neat pyramid of officers when they can just skim the cream of the crop from each rank as needed.

[Droll]

I wonder if just an option alongside auto-promotion saying "Auto-promote only as needed" would be useful. If I need a lot of lieutenant commanders but not many commanders, rather than the auto-promotion siphoning everything upwards into eternity, "Auto-promote only as needed" would only promote the couple of commanders to fill commander-required appointments and then cease. Likewise for ground forces. This, actually, in its own way would allow the player to specify their own "promotion formula", as promotions would only follow the available appointments in the player's OOB.

For example, let's say I have 4 battalions to one brigade, 4 brigades to one division, 4 divisions to one corps, and so one, then auto-promotion would effectively follow a 4-1 promotion formula. Whereas for another player who has, say, 2 battalions to a brigade, 2 brigades to a division, 2 to a corps, and so on, then their formula would effectively be 2-1.

This would also allow for more complex OOBs. 4 battalions in a brigade, 3 brigades to a division, 4 divisions to a corps, 2 corps to an army and have officers fill in as needed. You could then manual promote lets say a general to an academy and next production increment their old post is already filled.

Yes, agreed, the 4-4-4-4 thing was just for easy visualization. I, personally, don't see a reason as to why a rigid formula should be enforced to be quite honest. Now, I am just a layman so I could easily be wrong, but in my mind no real, sane military would unnecessarily promote talented lower level officers to higher ranks where they might not even be used just to have a neat pyramid of officers when they can just skim the cream of the crop from each rank as needed.

Finally, I will also say that this stuff could also apply to naval officers, though the problems of rigid officer hierarchy is often less extreme than in ground forces they are still present on the naval end.

Though for naval the main thing I think is missing is control over bridge crew allocation. I have a problem where my commercial ships will have priority over bridge crew assignments on combat ships. (Honestly an exclude class from auto-assignment button would also fix this problem)

[nuclearslurpee]

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. This applies to both naval and ground forces. For naval commanders the automatic promotion ratio forces the player to consider how to balance the command ranks and number/types of command modules on their ship classes to maintain a well-staffed fleet. For ground forces this level of complexity is not there (and adding it would require some major rebalancing as ground commanders are currently a major limiting factor for ground forces unless you use really massive formations like 50,000+ tons) but we have the OOB feature which is not really present in the naval game. Furthermore, it is somewhat realistic IMO, not so much because real militaries are so rigid but because 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.

One thing to keep in mind is that you will not have neat ratios between ground force ranks especially for the lowest 2-3 ranks. When designing your OOB structure you have to account for various detachments - isolated garrison regiments, CON/GEO/XEN formations, STO battery commanders, and so on. Even at higher ranks you may have for example some independent Corps separated from the main Army or Theater HQs. 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 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.

The one downside is now I need to rework my planned ground forces structure for my v2.0 campaign... grumble grumble

Heed not the whinging of the grognard, for he actually likes this nonsense. 

[Droll]

Furthermore, it is somewhat realistic IMO, not so much because real militaries are so rigid but because 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.

IIRC that the US army uses this promotion points system (idk if they still do tbh). The whole point of which is to modify the difficulty of getting promotions based on demand. If there aren't enough sergeants for example, the required promotion points for corporals/specialists to get to sergeant goes up and vice versa. This results in many soldiers ending their military careers I imagine.

In aurora we don't use promotion points to this capacity so we can do something simpler and leverage the retirement mechanic instead. Officers who haven't been promoted in x-many years have a chance to retire which increases every year the longer they stay at the same rank. This means that your officer core will gravitate towards whatever structure you have organically and more realistically. You could make this less of a factor the higher up the command chain goes (or since we love micromanagement so much just use story character) so that generals leading armies aren't retiring because they are already at max rank and they want to go further beyond.

I'm not going to comment on the whole "challenge" aspect of officer (micro)management as clearly you enjoy it and I don't and there isn't anything to say besides that.

One thing to keep in mind is that you will not have neat ratios between ground force ranks especially for the lowest 2-3 ranks. When designing your OOB structure you have to account for various detachments - isolated garrison regiments, CON/GEO/XEN formations, STO battery commanders, and so on. Even at higher ranks you may have for example some independent Corps separated from the main Army or Theater HQs. 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 think there's been a misunderstanding here. No one here thinks that the 4:1 change is too flexible. I think we all agree that this is overall a good change, and so yeah the things you say here are accurate. The but the whole suggestion regarding "promote as needed" is an expansion of that which exemplifies all of the advantages you have correctly pointed out with the 4:1 change.