SE V Captain/Admiral Components

[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.

[AMF]

I would much prefer a less controllable system, perhaps one wherein that a ship that is already "elite" can occasionally spit out/create a "legendary captain" unit that you can move around at will and can be lost, etc...sort of like Star Fleet Battles had.

I just feel that if captains become producable then I'll just have them on every ship as a matter of course - and then they aren't anything "special." I just think there is a better feeling of "space opera" when they become a much rarer commodity...

[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.