Flag Bridge Rank Limitations

[Garfunkel]

Can't you use the Senior CO tickbox for your destroyer leader class? That way your DD's use rank 1, your DL rank 2, and your flag bridge (on board the DL) rank 3. You'll get even more spread if you use AUX for both classes and CIC for DL only.

I mean yeah, having full customization over the whole thing would be useful, don't get me wrong, but it seems that occasionally players create problems themselves because they are thinking too rigidly about how things "should be".

[Black]

Problem with Senior CO tickbox is, that your destroyer leader is commanded by captain if you want commodore in command of destroyer flotilla and your command cruiser will be commanded by commodore if you want admiral as fleet commander. I personally do not like when flag officers directly command single ship.

If we do not want to change how flag bridge works, then another possibility would be flag bridge variant that would work for admin commander, as admin command is automatically set to one rank higher that what is rank of the highest commander of subordinate fleet and can be higher if manually assigned.

[Garfunkel]

Both commodore and admiral used to be based in/at/on ships. It's a very recent change that such ranks only drive a desk in an office. If you want to closely mimic 21th century command structure then yeah, I see the problem but otherwise the current system works well enough. I guess another problem is that if you're wanting to build a multi-layered admin system, that you'll then run out of admirals both in ranks and numbers.

[xenoscepter]

 - As someone with a 12 Rank System, I'd love for a way to simply use what ranks I want where I want to use them.

[Agraelgrimm]

Idk, wouldnt be easier to just make a variation of said battlecruiser and put minimal command of the ship as X and then the flag officer will have to be X +1, so your command variant battlecruiser will be the only one with a flagbridge on it, hence you will be able to control wich rank you want the senior officer to be.

[mike2R]

I'd really like to see the flag bridge integrated into the subfleet system.

So you'd have your fleet and it has an admiral who requires a flag bridge, like you do now.  The required rank of that admiral must be higher than their subordinates, but also depends on the number of items (ships, or subfleets) within his fleet.  Say more than 4 items and he needs to be 2 levels greater, more than 8 then 3, etc.

So in significant fleets, you'd need to group your ships up into subfleets in order to get the rank requirement to be sensible for the commanding admiral.  But the system should then continue down into the subfleets.  Each of these need a subordinate admiral who fulfills the same rules regarding their own subordinates, so you may need to group their ships into another level of subfleets, which again would each require their own subordinate admiral.

So you'd get a situation say where a fleet was commanded by a full admiral, and under him he has say his battleship division, cruiser division etc, each commanded by vice admirals.  Then the battleship division is divided into BatRon 1, BatRon 2, etc. each containing 4 ships and commanded by a rear admiral.

I think this would feel more realistic - it would provide some jobs for all those admirals, and it would create an interesting problem of what ships to put flag bridges on to get the command structure working.

To avoid annoying people you'd need a way of opting out.  Say if a subfleet doesn't have an admiral then it just doesn't count at all towards its parent's requirements.  But it and its subordinates do not get any commander bonuses at all.

[brondi00]

I think this last idea sound awful.  I'm sorry to the poster.  But if Steve reads this I'd just like to point out that it is by no means a universal opinion.

[nuclearslurpee]

I think it would be fine if it was opt-in rather than opt-out. Similar to how admin commands work, lacking a commander at any level of an admin command does not as far as I know cause bonuses from higher levels to be lost. The problem with opt-out is that it forces the player to have a commander in every possible role or else suffer a loss of command bonuses compared to existing mechanics, and having mechanics which punish the player for not using them goes against how most of Aurora is designed.

[mike2R]

That's a good point.  Just getting a small bonus of some sort from having the commanders in place would be enough incentive to use it if its something you want to bother with - I just want it because I want to set my fleets up with subordinate commanders, and have to worry about where to put my Rear Admiral Destroyers

[skoormit]

Similar to how admin commands work, lacking a commander at any level of an admin command does not as far as I know cause bonuses from higher levels to be lost.

An empty admin command does break the chain.

From Steve's post about admin commands:

This isn't as easy to achieve as it might seem as each of these Admin Commands will need an assigned commander or the chain will be broken.