SE V Captain/Admiral Components

[Atrocities]

Military Academy

The concept behind this facility will be to produce Captains for ships that will over time gain experience through combat, duration in command, and training. An experienced Captain can be promoted to Admiral, and an Admiral, with enough experience, can be promoted to Fleet Admiral. A Fleet Admiral with enough experience can be promoted to Grand Admiral.

The idea is basic yet a bit complex to understand. Basically put the Military Academy will produce Captains. Captains will be assigned to ships, either by the player or by the AI. A Captain can only gain experience through command and once an Admiralship opens up, a Captain can be promoted. The AI will promote the Captain with the most experience points into any open Admiralship. The same goes for Admirals. They can be promoted to Fleet Admiral provided there is an opening and a fleet to command. There can only be one Grand Admiral.

Of course the rank system can be expanded if it is adopted for SE V.

What I had in mind was this:

Military Academy I
Produces 1 Captain every four turns.

Military Academy II
Produces 2 Captains every four turns.

Military Academy III
Produces 3 Captains every four turns.

Etc

Captains will be given a random name from a names text file similar to the way we currently name ship classes and star systems with the same option as planets to be renamed.

Each Captain will accrue experience points while in command of a ship / base. For the purpose of this post the following experience table will apply.

Standard Points, 1 experience point (Or EP) is earned every 10 turns
Combat Points, for every combat won 3 EP�s are earned.

This standard will apply to all Captains, Admirals, and such.

The EP�s will give Ship Combat bonuses.

1 � 99 EP Captain will give 1% Ship Combat Bonus
100 � 199 EP Captain will give a 2% Ship Combat Bonus
200 � 299 EP Captain will give a 3% Ship Combat Bonus
300 � 399 EP Captain will give a 4% Ship Combat Bonus
400 � 499 EP Captain will give a 5% Ship Combat Bonus

A Captain will have to have a minimum of 100 EP's in order to be eligible for Promotion.

Admirals
1 � 99 EP Admiral will give a 1 % System Combat Bonus
100 � 199 EP Admiral will give a 2 % System Combat Bonus
200 � 299 EP Admiral will give a 3 % System Combat Bonus
300 � 399 EP Admiral will give a 4 % System Combat Bonus
400 � 499 EP Admiral will give a 5 % System Combat Bonus

An Admiral must have at least 100 EP�s in order to be considered for a promotion to Fleet Admiral.

Fleet Admirals
1 � 99 EP Fleet Admiral will give a 1 % Fleet Combat Bonus
100 � 199 EP Fleet Admiral will give a 2 % Fleet Combat Bonus
200 � 299 EP Fleet Admiral will give a 3 % Fleet Combat Bonus
300 � 399 EP Fleet Admiral will give a 4 % Fleet Combat Bonus
400 � 499 EP Fleet Admiral will give a 5 % Fleet Combat Bonus

Grand Admiral (Only 1)
Gives a combat bonus of 5% combat bonus to all of your Fleets, Ships, and Systems across the board. Admirals and Fleet Admirals must have a minimum of 500 EP points in order to be promoted the singular position of Grand Admiral. The AI will appoint the highest level EP Admiral or Fleet Admiral to this position. (Ties are handled by who has less attrition time left. The player with the lest time is the one the AI will promote)

So if you have a ship in a fleet with a Captain that has 500 EP�s, an Admiral on a planet or base within the same system with 500 EP�s, and a Fleet Admiral in the same fleet you gain a 5% bonus across the combat spectrum. If this was the same system that the Grand Admiral was in, add another 5% to each. (Theoretically you gain a total combat bonus of 30%)

Again for example purposes, the ratio for the Command system would be:

10 to 1 for Admirals
20 to 1 for Fleet Admirals

In other words for every 10 Captains you have 1 Admiral. For every 20 Admirals you gain 1 Fleet Admiral.

The Captains and Admirals will have a built in attrition or retirement rate. Say a maximum of 100 turns. Attrition rate means that the moment a new Captain is created the timer starts. That Captain will exist for a maximum of 100 turns before he is retired automatically. Even if he is promoted to Admiral then to Fleet Admiral, and finally to Grand Admiral, s/he will only have 100 turns total. This guarantees that the new Captains coming out of the Military Academy will have a chance to be promoted.

The AI will automatically carry this out however the player will also have the option via the COMMANDER MENU or TAB, to promote, demote, assign, rename, kill, retire, or court marshal any Captain or Admiral they so choose.

To assign a Captain to a ship or base you simply open the COMMANDER MENU or TAB find the Captain you want, click on him, and from here you can manually assign, promote, demote, rename, kill, retire, or even court marshal him.

I envisioned a system where there were three columns, on the left the list of Captains and Admirals (Sortable by each), in the middle ships and bases (Sortable by name), and on the right planets (Sortable by name.)

Simply find and click on the Captain or Admiral you wish and then click the Assign button and then the Ship / Base � or Planet you want them to be assigned to.

The way I figure it, Captains can only be assigned to Ships or Bases. Admirals can be assigned to Bases and Planets. And Fleet Admirals only to Fleets.

Captain, Admiral, Fleet Admiral, and Grand Admiral images can be generic images with separate rank insigne. Of course these can be modded to use different images.

Concept Component:

Name := Captain
Description := Commander of the ship
Pic Num := 1000
Tonnage Space Taken := 0
Tonnage Structure := 1
Cost Minerals := 0
Cost Organics := 20
Cost Radioactives := 0
Vehicle Type := Ship\Base
Supply Amount Used := 0
Restrictions := One Per Vehicle
General Group := Combat Bonus
Family := 1000
Roman Numeral := 0
Custom Group := 0
Number of Tech Req := 1
Tech Area Req 1 := Military Command
Tech Level Req 1 := 1
Number of Abilities := 1
Ability 1 Type := Ship Command
Ability 1 Descr := Provides a combat bonus.
Ability 1 Val 1 := 0
Ability 1 Val 2 := 0
EP Rate := 1
EP Generation := 10 (1 experience point per 10 turns)
EP Combat Rate := 2
EP Generation := 1 (2 experience point per 1 successful combat turn)
Max EP := 5000
Attrition Rate := 60 (60 turns)
Can Be Retired := True
Can Be Promoted := True
Can Be Killed := True
Can Be Demoted := True
Can Be CM�ed := True (Court Marsheled)
Weapon Type := None

To go along with this concept a new component should also be made available for Space Empires V.

The Escape Pod.

This component if so equipped on a ship will save the Captain of that ship in the event the ship is destroyed. He will be available for reassignment the following turn depending on how far out he is when his ship is destroyed. If he is 5 turns out from the nearest planet then he will be available in 5 turns from the time his ship was destroyed.

Escape Pods should be destroyable components as well. That means they can be destroyed on the ship like any other component, and once used can be targeted by hostile ships. This will allow for the added strategic option of Destroy Escape Pods in the fleet / ship strategy menu.

In other words a player can give the order to destroy any escape pod it finds. Players can use this as a diplomatic tool as well. If Escape pods and Captains are set to captureable then they can be captured and traded through Diplomacy.

Also players can make agreements to or not to target escape pods. It would add an additional level of realism and game play to the SE V.

I am sure there is a lot more that I have not covered as of yet, but I feel this should provide a strong idea to any who are interested enough in reading this. Your thoughts are always welcome and I have sent this concept to Aaron as well.

[ June 30, 2004, 07:41: Message edited by: Atrocities ]

[Paul1980au]

This is a expandable way to enhance the experience factor out of SE4 - should there also be a sub type applicable to specialised components or ship types and troops (WP department, Troops, fighter wings, satelite layers, warp point assult weapon commanders, mine layers, remote mining supervisors who increase say by 1-5% the amount of resources recovered, stellar manip supervisors)

Just a few more aspects to consider but yes the facility and training facility aspect of generation is good - how about racial types (psychic generating x amount per 10-20 planets colonized to - consider it naturally gifted tacticans who can be assigned to ships and fleets etc)

[Abdiel]

Originally posted by Atrocities:
Military Academy

To assign a Captain to a ship or base you simply open the COMMANDER MENU or TAB find the Captain you want, click on him, and from here you can manually assign, promote, demote, rename, kill, retire, or even court marshal him.

Urgh. you made me shudder to think about killing captains offhand like this. What would you want to do that for? Other than RPing a MEE... still, a scary thought.

But the overall idea is very good. I wish it could be implemented into SEIV somehow, perhaps just a standard bonus without the EP generation, tracking, and scaling. It'd just be an extra component, yeah, but better than nothing

Is there a way to mod global values? Like tracking how many captains, admirals, etc you have? It could then be restricted, based on time period (is this possible as well), to simulate the training time, etc.

Hope there is

Abd.

[dogscoff]

Nice idea.

The Captains and Admirals will have a built in attrition or retirement rate. Say a maximum of 100 turns.

This retirement age should be adjustable both pre-game and by tech research, so researching medical technology should extend the retirement age slightly- after all, better medical tech allows people to live- and work- longer.

This would make medical technology marginally more useful than it is.

Of course all this should be mod-on and mod-out able.

Personally I'd love to see ship crews counted . Every component would add a certain crew requirement, and the ship's crew quarters requirement would be adjusted as appropriate. Planetary populations would have to be counted individually (ie, population 10,987,345) and crewing a ship would reduce that number.
"Supremacy" on my Amiga used to work a bit like that. That was a fine game, in its time.

[Kana]

4 months to make a captain? Seems kinda quick to turn out a 'Ship Captain'. I would think that maybe a little more time invenstment might be required...but they do come out of the Academy with no EXP. Are you forseeing that each ship would have a said captain or such? Would it be requirement for the ship? Or are these 'special' captains?

Kana
Liking the idea of course...

[Atrocities]

Thank guys.

This was just a suggestion for SE V, and the values were for example purposes.

I like the idea of tieing medical tech to increase the life of the captains/admirals.

And yes this whole system should be modable.

[clark]

I'm all for this, but it seems a bit complicated (which can sometimes be an AI killer)

So how about it get's simplified a bit...

A cargo component (or some duch derivation) that allows for a "Captain's Chair". The only thing that can go into it is a "Captain/Admiral/President/Diplomat/Whatever".

Allow the cargo inside to have effects (not currently allowed in SEIV... but seems might be possible) when loaded into the cargo unit.

Basically, have a facility that can build the Special units (ie the Captains) at whatever rate you want to mod in.

If the Captain's Chair component get's destroyed in battle, well, anything inside would be dead too. By making it a cargo component, you would be able to transport/trade your captains between ships and other Empires.

To do this, it would require some code changes to allow cargo units to produce effects (such as sats that can produce intel/research, but they can only do it outside of a cargo bay).

You can mod in different limits on the number of Captain's by changing the production costs/time/ maintenance.

Allow for the units inside the cargo holds to gain experience (or not, simple flag) if they are in a battle within the cargo hold. Have the experience be another moddable flag that can be applied to Ship/Fleet/System/Global.

Have a line that defines how experience from combat is accrued to the Captain Unit- have it only work when the Captain is in the Captain's Chair (so you don't get the bonus with a bunch of Captain's in a cargo hold).

By allowing a "Captain's Chair" component, this will allow the modders to mod Admiral Chairs/President Chairs/Etc that can only allow predefined characters. It gives you options.

i like the promotion idea, but it might be too difficult to work within SEIV/V structure. The AI isn't the best, and if it can't use it, then it will probably be dropped. Not sure if "life time" can really be implemented either- better to try and think within the lines of SEIV and how things are set up- more likely to be included that way.

[Atrocities]

I agree that it has to be kept simple so I tried to keep it that way.

Whenever aCaptain / Admiral is killed or retired the AI will automatically fill the position from the available pool.

For Captains, the AI will automatically assign a new captain to a ship. If there are more Captains than ships then they are placed in the Officers Pool until a ship becomes available. (They do not earn EP's however the Attrition rate does)

When an Admiral is promoted, retired, or killed the AI will automatically promote the captain with the most EP's. In the event of a tie the AI will chose the Captain with the most amount of time left on his Attrition rating.

For Fleet Admirals, the same would apply except in the case of ties. In this situation the AI would pick the Admiral with the least amount of time left on his attrition rating. (This way the position will open up again soon and another captian can be promoted.)

Captains and Admirals will keep on earning EP's. There is no limit. The higher the EP's the more likely they will be promoted.

However the player can manually promote any captain, admiral they want so long as there is an opening.

The Military Acadamy will be good for 1 per empire.

EP's are needed in order to give the AI something to measure skill with. Also it gives the player a better idea of what captains are better than others.

Like I said the whole thing should be moddable to that you can add more.

Captains
Commadores
Fleet Captain
Rear Admiral
Admiral
Fleet Admiral
Grand Admiral
Vice Admiral
Commander And Chief.

Also don't forget about the Escap Pod Component or the the capture concept.

[clark]

Well, I think where I was coming from is that this mighe a greater chance of being included if it stays within the constraints of SEIV as much as possible. New stuff like this requires new coding, and play testing, and bug fixes, as this is a different level of stuff that interacts within the entire basis of game play.

Keeping it within the framework of exsisting code, with only minor tweaks, will increase the likelihood of it being included. The more Maflador has to change the primary code, the less likely it is to make the cut.

Maybe having a life span is doable- if so, that would allow for another level of customization on all parts of any mod (facilities that degrade, ships that give out, army units that muster out, etc).

it just seems that an officers pool might create a database headache that the AI may not be able to use very well. Now, we know what the AI can do with the current SEIV rules, so the more we constrain this goal to working within that framework, the more likely it will be included. That's really what i'm trying to get at.

But believe me, if this could be done, then I say, great. I would just rather see at least some element of this than nothing at all.

[Atrocities]

SE V is a completely new game though. So coding has changed and is adaptive so long as Aaron really is interested in using this idea.

I have my fingers crossed that he does use it.