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[TheDTYP]

It also adds an element of 'humanity' which is appealing to a lot of players. Losing a dear old officer would most likely generate an emotional response. Bungie made an RTS before halo called myth, which had units with personalized names that leveled up with each kill. Losing a skilled veteran really meant something in that game. I'm sure there are other examples.

I wholeheartedly second this, I think it would be awesome if Officers could die. It would do well to make the game more emotional (as emotional as a space sim could be) and sorta raise the stakes in battles

[DatonKallandor]

If they can die, this happens: They occasionally lose beloved officers, and have to replace them with new ones. This keeps things fresh, and it adds an element of jeapordy for high level players, who by that time are so powerful and wealthy that they can easily replace other losses. Engagement/combat becomes boring when you have nothing significant to lose.

That'd be great, but in practice this is what really happens:
If they can die - nobody fits battles where there's any chance of losing and if there's any risk of combat losses valuable officers aren't deployed. Because that's what currently happens already. Pitched battles have no increased reward to counter the increased risk and there is nothing but value in fighting only when you are 100% sure you'll win without any losses (you don't even get XP for losses anymore).

As for flag officers as was already proposed in here splitting them into a separate pool would probably be optimal. You'd have a certain amount of slots for staff officers (amount tied into leadership?) and everything that's fleet wide and not directly captaining a ship related goes into there. Your Fighter Commanders coordinating strikecraft use, your Master Engineers that repair quicker and salvage losses, your Savant Navigators increasing Burn speeds, etc.

Because for those kinds of Officers, it makes very little sense to assign them to a specific ship (except the Wing Commander I guess, which traditionally is located on the primary carrier of a fleet) and a lot to keep them in your flagship.

[orost]

The stakes are already very, very high. A big defeat can set you back hours of gameplay just in ships and weapons. If you add officers to that, it just gets worse. If anything is done that increases the stakes, it should be only after the player has more ways to insure themselves against loss and to recover.

[Gothars]

In the first screenshot, there is a Lieutenant Torres. Does the rang depend on the level of the officer? Or does it mean something else?

About officer death: How about if officers can't get killed, but severely wounded, so they need to be hospitalized for some time. Maybe you'd have to bring them to a stable planet and later pay their medical bill before you can employ them again. Basically the same that happens to the player character if the fleet is lost. That would be enough motivation to use them with care, but not so harsh you'd "have" to reload. (Maybe it could even justify hospital ships )

[Alex]

About officers dying/being injured, I'll just paste what I just said in the patch notes thread, since it came up there as well:

Re: officers dying/becoming incapacitated:
At the moment, no. There's no "greater good" to sacrifice them for. When there is (e.g., say you're trying to defend an outpost, and it's *worth it* to take losses) then these kinds of mechanics may make sense, and I'll look at it again then.

In the first screenshot, there is a Lieutenant Torres. Does the rang depend on the level of the officer? Or does it mean something else?

They're currently all lieutenants, and it doesn't "mean" anything in game terms.

[Megas]

I have been proclaimed the forum munchkin, and rightly so.  All I care about officers (for now) is how I can min-max and use them to make my fleet even more powerful.  I know others want a more immersive experience.  Just pointing out I am not one of them, much of the time.  Or rather, if immersion clashes with winning the game, I will pick the latter.

[Nick XR]

Regarding officer XP, I've always thought Mount and Blade did a decent job of it.  Everyone gets flat experience for being part of the group doing battle, then experience is rewarded based on kills.  To translate that here I would go with flat XP + % of damage inflicted normalized by ship OP, to ensure that small ships with limited damage capability that are doing their job 'well' are still rewarded.

But the current 80% solution works almost as well.

[Trylobot]

Regarding Officers and Fighters: You could apply some kind of bonus to fighters in the fleet if an officer is onboard a carrier ship (being any ship with flight decks), perhaps which scales according to how many flight decks are on that ship (which would lore-wise scale that ship's importance in the fleet with regard to preparing fighters for combat)

[gofastskatkat]

Wait, so does this mean that the officers are in the current build of the game? (havent had enough time to keep up with the updates XD)

[SafariJohn]

Wait, so does this mean that the officers are in the current build of the game? (havent had enough time to keep up with the updates XD)

No. They are planned for 0.7.

[Alex]

Regarding officer XP, I've always thought Mount and Blade did a decent job of it.  Everyone gets flat experience for being part of the group doing battle, then experience is rewarded based on kills.  To translate that here I would go with flat XP + % of damage inflicted normalized by ship OP, to ensure that small ships with limited damage capability that are doing their job 'well' are still rewarded.

But the current 80% solution works almost as well.

Hmm, yeah, basing it on kills might be fun. And more complicated!

Regarding Officers and Fighters: You could apply some kind of bonus to fighters in the fleet if an officer is onboard a carrier ship (being any ship with flight decks), perhaps which scales according to how many flight decks are on that ship (which would lore-wise scale that ship's importance in the fleet with regard to preparing fighters for combat)

I could see that being interesting, especially if there were, say, Combat skills that impacted fighters. Might require more explicitly tying fighters to specific carriers, although, as you say, scaling it based on the number of decks might work. But it'd raise some weird cases - i.e. that lone wing of Talons you have would get worse () because you bought a second Astral and it doesn't have an officer on it. Could be worked around, but that's starting to get messy.

[Tartiflette]

[...] Might require more explicitly tying fighters to specific carriers [...]

I would LOVE to see this (wasn't it the case back in 0.58? can't remember). Something like 2 wings per flight decks in the fleet could be kept active while traveling in hyperspace, the rest having to be mothballed. No longer a lone Gemini could causally haul 7 wings just out of a wormhole, if there is even a Gemini!
Flight decks are a bit common in non combat ships so the change wouldn't be that huge for dedicated carrier fleets, it would just avoid some weird situations like carrier-less fighter fleets. And the combat part could stay as it is...

But I digress.

[Aeson]

Flight decks are a bit common in non combat ships

They're really not. The Atlas is the only noncombatant that has a flight deck, unless you consider both the Condor and the Gemini to be noncombatants (despite the Gemini's claim that it's a freighter, it's at least as much an escort carrier or light carrier as the Condor and not nearly as much a freighter as the Mule).

As far as the fighter officers as fighter aces idea goes, I'm not terribly fond of that idea. I don't really like the thought of having this guy somehow teleporting from a fighter that just blew up into another fighter or a carrier that started building a replacement fighter; officers should be out of action if the ship they're on blows up, and that includes fighters if they're supposed to piloting one personally. I also don't like the idea that I'd have one superfighter per squadron with the rest of the group performing at the current level.

As far as the idea of tying fighter performance to carrier commanders, I'm not terribly fond of it. I'd tend to prefer that fighter wings had their own officers, rather than being the one unit type that depends on some other character for their performance. That being said, there could be skills for carrier commanders that indirectly affected fighters, say skills which boost the speed at which flight decks rearm, repair, or ready fighters (which would tend to be a carrier crew thing rather than a fighter thing). Direct performance enhancements, though, are something I'd much rather came from an officer assigned to the individual squadrons.

However, I could see tying the number of fighter officers you can have to the number and type of carriers you have. I don't like the officers as fighter aces idea, but that leaves the question of where fighter officers would go and what they'd do; putting them into the carrier seems reasonable since you'd expect the carrier to have something like an ATC, the size of which would likely be at least partially dependent upon the number of flight decks on the carrier (though you could have a nonlinear scaling, e.g. a Venture or an Odyssey might have a larger ATC than a Condor despite both vessels having only one flight deck), and keeping them in the carrier to staff the ATC explains what they're doing if they're not fighter aces.

[Gothars]

Regarding Officers and Fighters: You could apply some kind of bonus to fighters in the fleet if an officer is onboard a carrier ship (being any ship with flight decks), perhaps which scales according to how many flight decks are on that ship (which would lore-wise scale that ship's importance in the fleet with regard to preparing fighters for combat)

I could see that being interesting, especially if there were, say, Combat skills that impacted fighters. Might require more explicitly tying fighters to specific carriers, although, as you say, scaling it based on the number of decks might work. But it'd raise some weird cases - i.e. that lone wing of Talons you have would get worse () because you bought a second Astral and it doesn't have an officer on it. Could be worked around, but that's starting to get messy.

Maybe this would work: Any flight officer on board a carrier would grant his bonus to as many fighter wings as the carrier has flight decks. If there are more fighter wings than flight decks, the wings further up in the fleet menu get the bonus. If  there are multiple flight officers on carrier duty, the one on the carrier further up in the fleet menu grands his bonus first. Every fighter wing can only get a bonus from one officer at a time.  

If you introduce skills that boost fighters, officers on carriers could even be skilled to boost both fighters and their carrier at the same time (although weaker as if focused on one thing, of course).

  

[Megas]

If tooltips are to be believed, ships with higher CR crank out replacement fighters a little faster.

Gemini is as much a freighter as the Mule if we are using singular ship capacity instead of Logistics per cargo.  The former is important when configuring a tiny fleet that can dock at hostile bases (i.e., three frigates or destroyer and frigate).  Kind of wish a solo cruiser can sneak into bases.