Would be nice, currently I work around this by having a really high rank called "NO_OFFICER" or similar.
Yes, this trick may not work with the new way promotions work.
If I understand how the system works, I
think it can still work but you have to have a completely empty rank underneath.
So a rank system like:
N/A NO OFFICER
--- NO COMMAND
FM Field Marshal
GEN General
...
This should 'work' because the auto-promotion system will still only promote an officer by one rank at a time, and an officer can only promote if a suitable post is available. Thus, no officer will ever promote to the NO COMMAND rank, thus no officer will ever be available to promote to the NO OFFICER rank.
However this is still an ugly workaround and not very flexible if you want to add ranks later, so the suggested change is very much preferable.