Not sure I understand the mechanics and importance of crew training

[Iestwyn (OP)]

Another post inspired by Steve's Imperium playthrough. I noticed that Auxiliary is often the first command module he adds to his ships. I honestly thought Aux was one of the least important ones, so I'm wondering if there's something I'm missing about crew training.

I know that Auxiliary modules and academies help, and that untrained crews are slower to aim. At least, I think I know those things. What else should I know?

Thanks in advance!

[TheTalkingMeowth]

There are two kinds of training.

The first and most important is "Crew Grade" training. This affects the crew grade you see in the fleet summary window. It's a percentage bonus to a whole bunch of things. Off the top of my head, it increases to hit chance for weapons, improves maintenance (?), improves damage control, and reduces jump shock duration.

The crew training level of your academy affects the starting value for crew grade (at training level 5, you start at 12%). The max is 22%. It increases over time based on the full bonus of your executive officer (assigned to an auxiliary control) and half your captain, plus a bit of the bonus of any admin commanders if you are in a naval or training command.

The second kind of training is fleet training, which starts at 0% and slowly increases to 100%. This is what affects order delays and stuff. It only applies if you have inexperienced fleet penalties turned on, and is also mitigated by the reaction bonus of the ship CO, the officer assigned to the fleet flag bridge (if any), and a bit of the reaction bonus of admin commands (I think naval and patrol).

Fleet training naturally accumulates according to the crew grade. It is ALSO increased by the crew training bonus of officers in a training command hierarchy, though ships in a training command burn fuel, deployment time, and maintenance life at an increased rate. It is NOT directly affected by the training bonus of the actual ship officers, though having high training bonus officers means you get to 22% grade bonus sooner.

Mechanics questions are best answered by reviewing the C# changes thread, which has the actual mechanics written out. There is a lovely table of contents here:
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=10666.0

I have it bookmarked.

The specific post about crew grade is here:
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg103818#msg103818

Fleet training is here:
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8495.msg109158#msg109158

EDIT: I never actually talked about the Aux, my bad. I haven't done the math, but I've noticed in my current conventional start campaign that my ships reach max crew grade well before finishing fleet training. This is with 4 stacked training commands with officers with 225+ crew training bonus. I haven't researched Aux yet. Since I'm not gonna deploy the ships without max fleet training anyways, I'm not sure the Aux is worth it. Especially since, once the crew is fully trained, the Aux and executive officer are dead weight.

Obviously adding the aux would make the ships "work up" a little faster, which could be useful in a pinch. But it's a fairly large investment for what amounts to getting a 7% bonus (8%/112% starting value) a little earlier. Especially with how hard it is to have enough officers for all your ships.

[Iestwyn (OP)]

Didn't know there was a table of contents; I'll have to keep that in mind. Thanks for the detailed answer!

[nuclearslurpee]

EDIT: I never actually talked about the Aux, my bad. I haven't done the math, but I've noticed in my current conventional start campaign that my ships reach max crew grade well before finishing fleet training. This is with 4 stacked training commands with officers with 225+ crew training bonus. I haven't researched Aux yet. Since I'm not gonna deploy the ships without max fleet training anyways, I'm not sure the Aux is worth it. Especially since, once the crew is fully trained, the Aux and executive officer are dead weight.

Obviously adding the aux would make the ships "work up" a little faster, which could be useful in a pinch. But it's a fairly large investment for what amounts to getting a 7% bonus (8%/112% starting value) a little earlier. Especially with how hard it is to have enough officers for all your ships.

Another good reason to have AUX modules is to give your LCDRs or other lowest-rank commanders positions. I'm not sure offhand if this helps them gain skill points faster, but it does keep them from retiring as quickly thus reducing officer corps turnover and helping skilled commanders who may not have bonuses in areas favored by the auto-promotion system stick around long enough to get promoted.

That aside, the value of AUX for crew training depends a lot on your overall fleet doctrines. If you tend to keep ships in service for a long time and use a lot of refits instead of scrapping and building new ships, your ships will tend to maintain a permanently high crew grade and the need for AUX is reduced. If you build a lot of brand-new ships that need to work up quickly, AUX modules help you do that. Note that if you play with slow research as many people do, your ships will likely stay in service for a longer time and the former case is probably true for you.

[TheTalkingMeowth]

My point about the Aux was actually that the reduction in workup time is negligible; like I said, even with an EXCELLENT fleet training setup, fleet training takes longer than getting max crew grade does even if you don't use Aux. Thus, all an Aux does to reduce time before deployment is it gets you to 22% grade faster, speeding up fleet training a bit. But I've had ships enter workup at the same time, some with COs and some without. And the ships with COs are only reaching max fleet training maybe a month sooner than those who stay permanently at 12% bonus. So the aux really can't save you much time on fleet trainign, either.

And as for giving LCDRs something to do...well, mine are all busy commanding missile pod fighters. And once you get other command and control modules, you need CMDRs for the executive position. Who could otherwise be commanding my destroyers.

[nuclearslurpee]

My point about the Aux was actually that the reduction in workup time is negligible; like I said, even with an EXCELLENT fleet training setup, fleet training takes longer than getting max crew grade does even if you don't use Aux. Thus, all an Aux does to reduce time before deployment is it gets you to 22% grade faster, speeding up fleet training a bit. But I've had ships enter workup at the same time, some with COs and some without. And the ships with COs are only reaching max fleet training maybe a month sooner than those who stay permanently at 12% bonus. So the aux really can't save you much time on fleet trainign, either.

It's hard to say how much information this tells us without knowing the crew training bonuses of the officers involved. Ships gain 50% of the CO's Crew Training bonus and 100% of the XO's bonus, so it's potentially a significant difference if you're using officers with 25 or 50 training versus 150 or 200 for example.

And as for giving LCDRs something to do...well, mine are all busy commanding missile pod fighters. And once you get other command and control modules, you need CMDRs for the executive position. Who could otherwise be commanding my destroyers.

That's exactly the kind of fleet doctrine which would not make use of the AUX and etc. Lots of options in Aurora as we all know.

[dsedrez]

This thread is a bit old, but answers the question I was asking, and found some answers for, so I'm following up here.

I'm trying a 50% research, limited research admin, conventional game with one NPR in a random stars setup with stable JPs. A slow game, but one I can stumble into the NPR (or they can stumble upon me) at any moment. In this I found that I had too few crew members trained in my academy, and building extra academies takes time and consumes valuable and scarce production capacity in the beginning.

So the solution I adopted was building very cheap low-tech (carronade) warships with AUX of a standard size (7.5kt destroyers) and setting them as conscript. When I'm ready to refit them to a more advanced and useful design, the crew is already trained so I can discard the AUX module in the upgraded (non-conscript) design. It also helps employ/train my officers before missile FACs become useful enough.

My experience is that in this setting, the fleet training concluded earlier than crew training (from conscript up), even with the AUX module, so it is really useful.

The cost of refitting is unavoidable, but is reduced by using the (now greatly expanded) production capacity to pre-produce the more expensive components, allowing the refits to run faster.

And as for giving LCDRs something to do...well, mine are all busy commanding missile pod fighters. And once you get other command and control modules, you need CMDRs for the executive position. Who could otherwise be commanding my destroyers.

That's exactly the kind of fleet doctrine which would not make use of the AUX and etc. Lots of options in Aurora as we all know.