v2.0.0 Changes Discussion Thread

[Destragon]

Overhauls and Movement Orders

For v1.14, you can set movement orders that follow overhauls in the order list.

When a fleet is in overhaul, any existing movement orders will be ignored. Once the overhaul is complete, the fleet will begin following the orders. If an overhaul is abandoned, the fleet will begin following the orders but with the penalties for an abandoned overhaul.

When a fleet completes an 'Overhaul' movement order and moves into an overhaul state, any additional orders will remain in the queue, awaiting completion of the overhaul.

If the cycle orders flag is set, the completed 'Overhaul' movement order will be adding to the end of the movement order list. The Repeat option can also be used for order lists that include an 'Overhaul' movement order.

I have a question about this change. Will there be problems if the fleet contains one or more commercial ships? Would it for example be possible to give a tug cycling orders that tell it to 1: move to and start tugging a military base, 2: drag that base to a maintenance place and begin overhaul, 3: after the overhaul is done, bring the base back to its previous guarding location? Or would the overhaul order break, because the fleet contains a non-military ship?

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Overhauls and Movement Orders

For v1.14, you can set movement orders that follow overhauls in the order list.

When a fleet is in overhaul, any existing movement orders will be ignored. Once the overhaul is complete, the fleet will begin following the orders. If an overhaul is abandoned, the fleet will begin following the orders but with the penalties for an abandoned overhaul.

When a fleet completes an 'Overhaul' movement order and moves into an overhaul state, any additional orders will remain in the queue, awaiting completion of the overhaul.

If the cycle orders flag is set, the completed 'Overhaul' movement order will be adding to the end of the movement order list. The Repeat option can also be used for order lists that include an 'Overhaul' movement order.

I have a question about this change. Will there be problems if the fleet contains one or more commercial ships? Would it for example be possible to give a tug cycling orders that tell it to 1: move to and start tugging a military base, 2: drag that base to a maintenance place and begin overhaul, 3: after the overhaul is done, bring the base back to its previous guarding location? Or would the overhaul order break, because the fleet contains a non-military ship?

I think that would work. The tug would either not overhaul or complete its overhaul immediately, but the fleet wouldn't move until every ship had completed its overhaul.

[Aloriel]

OMG! The changes list for 1.14/2.0 is damned impressive and has me beyond hyped! Can't wait!

[Tunsku]

Changes to 1.14 (2.0?) are looking great. However, the old officer promotion system is personally the one I would prefer to use, instead of the new proposed one.
I enjoy the mechanic of promotion based on promotion score. The political intrigue factor counts into it, all the leader's bonuses count into it, and most importantly my cherished roleplay medals count into it. I enjoy having my most decorated officers progress through the promotion tree. Also, with how the new system apparently only uses one main bonus when looking for officers, it would lead to officers with rarer/secondary skills not being "appreciated". I would want my admirals to be well-rounded, decorated *and* politically competent.
Also, often, especially earlygame, my empire doesn't have nearly enough posts/ships to fill out my officer corps. This, combined with the great increase in the amount of naval commanders we will be getting in the future, will lead to a huge surplus of officers sitting in the lowest rank. The old system automatically allowed people to go up the ranks, and I would have a list of experienced admirals to pick from for my new grand command, instead of having to pick a random captain and promote him all the way up. You can see how this would break the immersion.
Obviously the new mechanics have their benefits, and will be included in the new update. But I wonder if it could be possible to implement the old system alongside it, as an optional game setting? Maybe with the game still using the "search for suitable guy from lower ranks" to find an officer if none are available in the required rank.

[nuclearslurpee]

Personally, I think it is still not a perfect system, but it is overall much better and perfection is really only possible by manual management as every player wants something slightly different.

The big benefit for many players will be the ability to use automatic promotions to manage hundreds or thousands of officers, without being restricted by the arbitrary ratio of ranks. This is IMO a bigger deal for ground forces, but even for naval officers it is tricky to find the right balance of all the different ship types and command modules to maintain full employment of officers. Usually I end up finding difficulty when I try to use the command modules, as I have not enough officers of one rank (say, CDR) to staff all of my escort commands and executive officer positions, and too many excess officers of CAPT or LCDR ranks. Replacing rank ratios with on-demand promotions makes it much easier to build the fleet you want without arbitrary limits on your ability to manage officers.

It's worth noting that you still have promotion score factoring into promotion decisions, albeit mainly as a tiebreaker, and political bonus still plays a big role as it is added to the relevant skill score. If you need a new admiral to control a survey department, for instance, the CDRE with 30 survey score will lose out on promotion in favor of the CDRE with only 20 survey score but also 15 political score. I think it is different than before in a way which is better sometimes and not as good other times, but overall the same flavor is kept while the underlying mechanics are improved. There will still be a natural promotion pace of one rank at a time, so a reasonable career progression occur and you won't see LCDRs jump to VADM just because they are the only officer with a certain skill.

Personally I also see this system will lead to better "appreciation" for rare/secondary skills. Right now for example it can be hard to get a full staff of admirals with economic skills in terraforming, mining, logistics, etc. because these skills are not valued as highly for promotion as the military/combat skills. The new system will ensure that you see officers promoting upwards with these skills if there are jobs for them, so you can have a robust logistical and industrial arm of the admiralty instead of one guy with 15 Mining at a desk in the basement to manage your entire commercial fleet. With the ability to also choose what skill to emphasize for each admin command I think it will work very well in this regard.

[Migi]

I don't expect the new system will be perfect, but I hope it will be a substantial improvement over the current system.
I'm slightly disappointed that a political bonus can't cause someone with no relevant skills to get promoted, but anyway. (I think this would be highly realistic, but I'm probably underestimating how frustrating it would be).

Seeing as the old code is written, maybe Steve would add a game setting so players can still use the old system?

[Cobaia]

I actually think it's a better system since the demand for officer of certain level will be met, which empowers the usage of command modules to a higher level.

That said, in the past I tried to compensate by creating more MA and that slowed down my game during the officer update cycle, let's see what happens.

[Tunsku]

The big benefit for many players will be the ability to use automatic promotions to manage hundreds or thousands of officers, without being restricted by the arbitrary ratio of ranks. This is IMO a bigger deal for ground forces, but even for naval officers it is tricky to find the right balance of all the different ship types and command modules to maintain full employment of officers. Usually I end up finding difficulty when I try to use the command modules, as I have not enough officers of one rank (say, CDR) to staff all of my escort commands and executive officer positions, and too many excess officers of CAPT or LCDR ranks. Replacing rank ratios with on-demand promotions makes it much easier to build the fleet you want without arbitrary limits on your ability to manage officers.

Good point. But maybe the ideal solution would then be to have, alongside this new system , an option to use the old system, but with the addition of on-demand promotions. That way officer corps would by default grow in the ratio manner, but would auto-promote to shift into the different ratios of required jobs that the player has for them.

[armandhammer]

I think all these changes are plenty for a new release.  Just putting it out there.  Would welcome a 1. 14. 0 release. 

[Lornalt]

Good point. But maybe the ideal solution would then be to have, alongside this new system , an option to use the old system, but with the addition of on-demand promotions. That way officer corps would by default grow in the ratio manner, but would auto-promote to shift into the different ratios of required jobs that the player has for them.

I think the new system is a far better system when you consider how the ratio method works, I've had a game where I had too little upper level posts (CDRE and above) and too many Captain and below posts.

I could promote officers to fill those Captain ranks posts but this would cause more officers being promoted to flag rank making me having even more flag officers that I dont need, now I got a whole bunch of potentially useful flag officers who could be filling the captain posts but are now over ranked for them.

The on demand system would ensure that if I had 300 captain posts I wouldn't need to fill 150 CDRE posts 75 RADM and so on.

If I had 50 CDRE posts it would only fill those 50 posts

[xenoscepter]

 --- Haven't militaries been more or less an "Up and Out" type of system since militaries were even a thing? Feudalism and the like notwithstanding of course.

[nuclearslurpee]

Even if so, Aurora isn't really a good game to model that at least in its current form. In the real world, if you promote an officer, you give them a job... even if it is a fairly pointless desk job, they must have something to do for the sake of earning their paycheck, a functional modern military (emphasis!) doesn't promote someone to General just so they can stand around and look pretty. If you look at the US military for instance you will see that pretty much every general/admiral holds a position...but some of these are deputy/vice/assistant positions, and others will hold multiple positions at once. And some of these positions are...well, let's just say that you're not likely to see a mechanical implementation for the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office (SAPRO) in Aurora, while certainly an important office it is decidedly not a "traditional military" command, yet you will find a MAJGEN in charge all the same.

But this is all about the "real world" and here we play Aurora. Mechanically, the main issue is simply that it is frustrating for players when the fixed promotion structure places rigid constraints on how their forces can be structured in order to provide adequate command & control for all ships, formations, etc. In real life militaries can be considerably more flexible than Aurora mechanics allow - you might find a Brigadier in command of a division if there are not enough MAJGENs to go around, or you might see a LTGEN commanding a corps subordinate to another LTGEN commanding an army. Aurora doesn't really play nicely with all of these real-life exceptions to rules, and I can only imagine that trying to program a robust, automatic promotion + assignment system which is as flexible as real life would be a nightmare for Steve. So instead, we have the fairly rigid rules about ranks and assignments, and a flexible on-demand promotion scheme may not be "realistic" but it will make the system work for most players at a mechanics level, and at a roleplay level of course we can do whatever we want as always.

[Andrew]

--- Haven't militaries been more or less an "Up and Out" type of system since militaries were even a thing? Feudalism and the like notwithstanding of course.

No.
It is at best a late 19th century thing. In the Royal Navy one of the first fully professional armed services compulsory retirement was only introduced in 1870.  It contained a provision that no officer who had commanded a ship during the napoleonic war period would be forcibly retired following the victory over USS Chesapeake Provo Wallis commanded HMS Shannon for 6 days , he died in 1892 not long before is 101st birthday as Admiral of the fleet without an active command but technically available to be called back to take a command. Techically he served for 97 years having gone on the books as a child although his first actual service was on board HMS Cleopatra at the age of 13

[Vivalas]

I always kinda headcanon'd that officers without a job were doing shore tours / staff type stuff, especially since staff jobs were removed after VB6. (Consequently, that may be a worthwhile thing to look back into now that we're constrained by only total officers now and nothing else for ranks, otherwise you could stack like 10 tiers over an admin command if you wanted to minmax: staff requirements would provide a cool rp tool while providing an actual coded disincentive)

But yeah the vast majority of officer billets aren't commands or department heads on ships. There's plenty of "off-screen" work for your officer corps in either system, but the current makes much more sense. You're typically only promoted as an officer if there's actual work for you to do and a spot for you to be promoted into (a billet), which is why the old system kinda peeved me.

On this topic some flexibility with ranks not mattering for at least the most immediately superior officer to another in a chain of command (with a max difference of only one rank or so) would be a possible addition that would help with QOL, I think. Billet almost always takes precedence over rank. As an example, a US Navy aircraft carrier has a LOT of people, so department head, a job which is usually an O-3 (Lieutenant) on a smaller ship is actually staffed by an O-6 (Captain). Consequently the CO is also an O-6, but he of course still is the boss of the other 6-7 O-6s assigned underneath him.

[papent]

Staff billets and ± 1 rank positions would be welcomed additions.

Additional something similar to staff positions or system governors for civilian administrators as I tend to end up with a lot of jobless admins.