Fractal Softworks Forum

Starsector => Suggestions => Topic started by: Sinosauropteryx on September 17, 2019, 12:51:49 PM

Title: Promote Officers from Rank & File
Post by: Sinosauropteryx on September 17, 2019, 12:51:49 PM
While flying around looking for another aggressive officer, I started wondering why there was no one with the chops among my 20,000 crew. Isn't that the logical place to look for officer material?

My suggestion: Every so often (X number of game ticks/battles/events), some individuals from the crew are added to a list for potential promotion to level 1 Lieutenant, the number of which scales based on crew number. Personality would be randomized, so that a decently sized endgame fleet (10k crew or so?) should be able to procure 10 officers of the correct personalities over the course of months/years, without having to station hunt.
Title: Re: Promote Officers from Rank & File
Post by: Alex on September 17, 2019, 01:05:00 PM
I've actually got an item to look at doing this via story points :) Then you could "mentor" the officer (already a feature in dev), which would let you adjust their personality one level up or down if desired.

Not sure if I'll end up adding it, tough; want to figure out a nice UI flow for it, among other things, and not have it become the only/primary way you get officers.
Title: Re: Promote Officers from Rank & File
Post by: Sinosauropteryx on September 17, 2019, 01:37:47 PM
I'm glad this kind of thing is on your mind then! I think scaling potential recruitments to crew size, so officers are more of a rarity early on, would help give other ways of getting them a chance to be used.

As for UI, you could put a comm directory like the one at every station directly in the fleet screen. It would slowly fill up with potential officers that the player could then spend story points to promote.
Title: Re: Promote Officers from Rank & File
Post by: Wyvern on September 17, 2019, 01:42:06 PM
Personally, I'd think this would make more sense with a High Command - right now, there's not a lot of reason to upgrade from Military Base to High Command, but an ability to recruit officers from your fleets would make that absolutely worth it.

For promoting from your own crew - I'd tend to say this wouldn't be a thing you could just do whenever; maybe a small chance of the option being available after a battle in which you deployed an officer-less ship?  "Lieutenant-Commander Jenkins distinguished himself in battle, charging fearlessly at the enemy station; would you like to promote him to an officer's salary?"
Title: Re: Promote Officers from Rank & File
Post by: Alex on September 17, 2019, 02:45:07 PM
Yeah, that's roughly what I was envisioning - a chance to get an intel item post-battle that has a button that lets you do that.

Interesting re: high command, though it feels like if you're at that point, you're largely past the "officer-recruiting" stage. Although, that could actually be a "want to swap around officers but don't want to level up a bunch of new ones" feature... hmm. Since it wouldn't factor into the early/mid game.
Title: Re: Promote Officers from Rank & File
Post by: Wyvern on September 17, 2019, 03:35:49 PM
Interesting re: high command, though it feels like if you're at that point, you're largely past the "officer-recruiting" stage. Although, that could actually be a "want to swap around officers but don't want to level up a bunch of new ones" feature... hmm. Since it wouldn't factor into the early/mid game.
You'd like to think that.  In my current game, I have a solid self-sufficient star system running, a fleet with multiple capital ships... and I've managed to pick up all of three officers.  (Out of a maximum of 10; I'm an optimist.)
I've seen more than those three go by, of course, but they've been things like "A reckless officer with carrier skills", or timid personalities, or otherwise not actually anyone I want to use.  (And of the three I've got, two of them are going to get fired in the long run - but they are, at least, better than nothing.  In retrospect, I should've grabbed that reckless carrier officer and just not actually put them on a carrier, accepting that an officer with only four skills is -still- better than no officer at all.)
Title: Re: Promote Officers from Rank & File
Post by: Alex on September 17, 2019, 03:37:50 PM
... oh, ouch
Title: Re: Promote Officers from Rank & File
Post by: Wyvern on September 17, 2019, 03:41:52 PM
Or, put in other words: No matter how long the odds, if there isn't explicit streak-breaker code, RNG will eventually turn up a long string of zeroes just when you didn't want it to.  Having complained about this on the forums, I'm sure I'll find a series of good officers at the next five ports I stop at, because that's how these things seem to work.
Title: Re: Promote Officers from Rank & File
Post by: Alex on September 17, 2019, 04:30:08 PM
Ah yes, also see: testing a feature that requires a 50/50 roll to test and it going the wrong way 10 times in a row.
Title: Re: Promote Officers from Rank & File
Post by: Agile on September 17, 2019, 05:58:24 PM
Personally I think the RNG for officer and administrators should be changed.

For example, if all you have is a *** 200 hazard level 3 colony, no ones gunna want to get hired by you to be an administrator, or if they do, they are a administrator with 0 skills.

But if you have several colonies that are build up (instead of factoring in industries, structures, etc. you could base it merely on how much income the colony is making), every time you check comms you get better and better administrators showing up.

Officers would be similar; the higher your level and amount of ships (and would account for their tier; frigate, destroyer, cruiser, and capitals), the better officers want to get hired on to work for you. And story points would fix the issue of attitudes; you could fix their reckless / aggressive or even steady if you want the other way around.

Its just weird that when I have two capitals, several carriers and super freighters / tankers, and 2 colonies, literally no one good wants to work for me, not even when I check the comms listings for Level 8 colonies like Chizomatic
Title: Re: Promote Officers from Rank & File
Post by: Sarissofoi on September 18, 2019, 12:58:20 PM
You know that
there is a mod that increase amount of skills to choose from on level up?
http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=16544.0

Also I would support idea of lesser rang officers that have lower max level skills(like in the new system officers have max 7 skills so say 3 and 5 for lower ranks or even 1 for the lowest). Kind of like AI will have based on different core.
Allowing officers to have some support skills for lowering fuel/supply/deployment cost increasing secondary stats like storage/fuel tanks repair speed(fleet wide if on ship with salvage gantry), more salvage/survey bonus etc would also make nice touch for crewing with them support ships(that would get some personality with it).
Title: Re: Promote Officers from Rank & File
Post by: Zerellion on September 19, 2019, 10:25:28 AM
Is it possible to add-on a small rework of rank structure with lowest officer rank Lieutenant,  Lieutenant commander, Captain, Rear Admiral and/Vice Admiral, with admiral level able to be held in fleet or promoted to fleets of their own to protect colonies. Your character would be in essence Ruler and Admiral of the fleet, which they pretty much already are in truth.

Possible larger rework~These officers could also have a chance to die or be captured in battle with chances of capture held against their current ranks and/ size of their fleet for admiral lvl officers. Payment could also be reflected from their ranks and possibly faction diplomatic level at the time of parley. Maybe the faction holding the prisoner calls you after a period of time to arrange for transfer? Would flesh out the use of a military high command and add more flavor.  :)

And I'm totally on board with the OPs idea sounds like a great idea.