Rebrand Flag Officers Into Squadron Commanders

[HitTheMan]

I’ve made this suggestion last year but I think it was drowned out. Suggestion can be found near the bottom, top is more context for making this suggestion:

I feel that currently with the shift of Flag Officers from ships to NAC where the “Fleet Admiral” leads the ship from the NAC, has cause the Flag Officer’s previous role, assignment and mechanic to become broken.

If you attempt to assign a Fleet Commander to a Flag Bridge, it’ll come back as “X assigned BB-01”, remain unassigned, also means the awarding of medal for Fleet Commander is also unfunctional

You can see above that you can no longer assign officers to Flag Bridges, due to the mechanic being shifted from the Officer window → NAC

This makes having Sub fleets in my opinion less useful besides organization, as you cannot have assigned a higher ranked officer to lead that sub-fleet besides a ““Senior”” of the same rank.

Normally in Squadrons or Sub-Fleet, you’ll see Admirals or Commodores leading them in a squadron of 5 ships (depending on nation and period)

Which is something me and my friends try to do in our game, where we got Sub-Fleets of 5-6 ships with a Assigned Flag Officer in each Sub to “lead” the fleet, or make certain ships have a “higher” rank ships so there’s always someone with a higher rank leading the rest.

You can see above the BatRon (Battle Squadron) consisting of 6 ships with captains ranked Captains sailing them, but with a Flag Officer assigned to the Squadron to lead them. Rear Admiral Mario Burnout7

The Suggestion I’d like to put forward after giving the context, is where the Flag Officer mechanic is brought back but renamed into “Squadron Commander”, where you keep the NAC Fleet Commander mechanic that was recently added (where if the flag ship of the fleet dies he dies with it), there Flag Officer is now a Squadron Commander, which you can assign to ships that has a Flag Bridge. Maybe a mechanic to limit Squadron commanders per sub-fleet but that could be too much work, so maybe work like the captains where if a Sub-fleet has multiple Squadron Commander pick the most senior. And you can assign any rank you want as long as it’s ONE Rank above the highest ship captain’s.

This way you can also have bonuses from a Squadron Commander to affect all its sub ships to simulate the Squadron Commander having an effect on their subordinates.

While also being able to reward medals to Squadron Commanders, maybe even just the whole squadron/subfleet itself.

This way you can now have f.ex a squadron (subfleet) of Destroyers being captain’d by Commanders, being lead by a Captain as the Squadron Commander

Or a squadron (subfleet) of Battleships being captained by Captains, now being lead by an Admiral as the Squadron Commander

or a Squadron of Heavy Cruisers captained by Captains, now being lead by a Vice Admiral.

This gives more meaning to higher level’d ranks, instead of purely administration duty at planet side (or lead fleets as a single rank), while in real life looking at 1800-1900s Navies, you had A LOT of Admirals, Vice Admirals, Squadrons, etc (Look at WW1, WW2), in large navies.

[Falryx]

Turns out assigning a command to a flag in the commanders window is a bug. The only way to are supposed to assign to a flag bridge now is to assign them to the associated naval command that you’ve made, centered on the flag bridge.

So, you can still do what you want with a nested NAC.

[HitTheMan]

Does not work as you cannot have subordinate NACs, I know you can add “One” NAC under and keep going but they wont give their bonuses to their squadron/sub fleet ships, and the organization will look extremely weird and a extreme pain to manage, but least of all it’s as per Steve’s patch note:

Bridges and Naval Admin Commands

The role of flag bridges is changing for v2.6. Previously, an officer assigned to a flag bridge added a reaction bonus to the fleet under his command. For v2.6, the flag bridge can instead host a naval admin command.

On the Naval Admin tab of the Naval Organization window, the potential location list for a Naval Admin Command now shows ships with flag bridges as well as populations with naval headquarters. These can be assigned on creation or via updating the admin command. Multiple admin commands can be assigned to the same flag bridge. Admin commands on ships function in the same way as admin commands on planets, with two major restrictions:

• They have a zero radius, so they will only have an effect in the same system

• They cannot have subordinate commands. This is checked on creation, update, drag-drop, etc.

Because the admin command is based on the ship, its commander may be killed if the flag bridge is hit, or the ship is destroyed. He may also end up in a lifepod and subsequently be captured by another Empire.

As you can see in the above image, you can continue to subordinate NACs in a 1 by 1 (Shouldn’t work, likely a bug as per patch note), but critically you cannot add “more” subordinates, as written in the patch note.

The Flag Commanders old method of assigning ships is still around and maybe a bug as you said, but the mechanic was incredible way to have as I wrote about before, make sub-fleets as Squadrons with Squadron Commanders to lead them.

Main hurdle was that the old Flag Bridge/Officer mechanic had a system where you can only have ranks that are 2 Above the ship captain be assigned, so likely an Admiral unless you add more ranks.

Why I’m suggesting a remake of the now defunct method, turn it into a “Squadron Commander & Squadrons” mechanic, where you as the player can dictate what level of Squadron Commander’s Rank can be used to lead Squadrons, Sub Fleets or Groups of ships within a Fleet. As how you’d organize fleets back in WW2, WW1 and in the past.

Here is the United States Pacific Fleet Organization in 1945, as you can see Light Cruiser Squadrons would have Captains leading the actual ships, with a R.Admiral as the overall Squadron Commander.

Here you can see Destroyer Escort Squadrons being Captained by Lt. Commanders, with a Commodore (Temporary Rank established 1943) leading the actual squadrons.

Suggestion I have is a mechanic to encourage/give bonuses for organizations like this, also gives A LOT MORE meaning to Sub Fleets and their use case.

https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/online-reading-room/title-list-alphabetically/u/us-pacific-fleet-organization-1may1945.html
Link above is for the US Pacific Fleet organization.

[nuclearslurpee]

I have wanted to be able to assign commanders like this for a while. However, if the new implementation of Flag Bridges gets too flexible, we risk making naval HQs pointless which I think is not the direction Steve wants to go in.

I do think there’s potential to eventually give naval HQs other functionality (like the new change where they are used to interrogate prisoners) so that they are worth having for other reasons. In that case, we could make Flag Bridges more flexible to support these kinds of hierarchies.

[HitTheMan]

Well I think the Naval HQs will still be the main thing as they are essentially Fleet Headquarters on a ship, I.E Flag Ship Bridge, allowing all ships to get the commander’s bonuses and RP elements

I personally would love to see the ability of the old system to be reinstated but changed where we can have officers in control of smaller groups of ships, without using NACs. Trying to use NACs to create Squadrons would be far too messy and weird and unwieldy in my opinion

Why I suggested the old system that uses the Commander Window to assign Flag Officers, so we can separate NAC with the new Fleet Commander Role, and the Flag Bridge officer assignment into the new “Squadron Commander” Role

[Droll12]

Being able to just designate the lead ship manually would also be a nice bonus.

But yeah it’d be nice if we could have officers also tied to sub-fleets and then maybe make the CAG fulfill something similar for squadrons. More opportunities to have higher ranking officers in the line of fire would make things more interesting.

[nuclearslurpee]

@HitTheMan

Well I think the Naval HQs will still be the main thing as they are essentially Fleet Headquarters on a ship, I.E Flag Ship Bridge,

Naval HQs are the installation which is based only at a colony/population.

The concern is that if Flag Bridges gain all the same capabilities as Naval HQs, there is no reason to build the installation. This isn’t insurmountable, we just need to be careful about it.

[AuroraSteve]

Could you achieve this by having the class ‘Senior CO’ checkbox at the ship level too? So you mark one destroyer in a squadron as a ‘senior ship’ and the appropriate commander would be assigned automatically.

Generating a command hierarchy treeview for a fleet, using the senior commander in each sub-fleet and fleet, similar to the example given, would be easy to do. The top level is either the senior commander in the fleet, or the admin command to which the fleet is assigned if the fleet has a flag bridge.

That generates something similar to the command hierarchy you propose, without affecting any existing mechanics.

[Droll12]

The CAG will probably still remain undercooked IMO but in all other respects its perfect. This way I can have control over which ship is the lead ship of the fleet.

The only thing I will say is that having subfleets can be rather finicky when subfleets either have their own subfleets or squadrons. With squadrons I’ve noticed that sometimes the parasites will end up outside of their squadrons on the treeview (but still docked to the mothership)

[HitTheMan]

Not quite, as the “Senior CO” is based specific on the ship design so you’d have Destroyer Lead that you’d need to make per squadron, meaning a dedicated slip just for the ship lead of a squadron and if the ship gets destroyed, no way to transfer the command to another ship.

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US Navy in ww2, most destroyers had a Flag Bridge compartment or the capability to just add one, so that the Squadron Commander be it a Commodore, Rear Admiral or above, can change their “Flag ship” in the squadron as needed. That way if a ship with the Squadron Commander takes heavy damage or sunk, and the Squadron Commander survives, he can change his ship to a new one and continue operations.

The other thing is that a Squadron Commander is a separate entity than a Senior Captain. The Captain already has the responsibility of maintaining his ship and crew, adding into it managing a whole Squadron with other ships adds a lot of responsibility to his plate.

Why you see and have Commodores, Rear Admirals and the like take charge so they manage the more Macro elements, while the Captains manage the Micro elements.

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For Aurora if we leave aside the Real Life examples, the main benefit that I see personally is:

• Seeing the old “Fleet Commander” and “Flag Bridge” being brought back and renamed into “Squadron Commander”, but more emphasis to keep a Flag Bridge in most ships to allow Transfer of Command.
• Enable more commander/character lore stuff for their history, while also make higher level ranks more useful besides NACs that is far fewer than ships. Larger navies have A LOT of Commodores, Rear Admirals, Vice Admirals and Higher Echelon of Officers in the hundreds. Aurora have like 10 maybe 15 depending on how many NACs you have and organization depth.
• Allow the Squadron Commander to share it’s bonuses for their assigned ships, I.E instead of a single individual that being the Fleet Commander from a NAC & the Captain, you’d have a Middleman between that gives a wider bonus to their ships, maybe make specialized Squadrons like Destroyer Escorts, Recon Squadrons, etc.
• More neater encouragement of fleet organization by utilizing Sub Fleet and making Subfleets be more relevant (Maybe renamed into Squadrons instead of Subfleets)

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This being how I’d personally see fleets being organized from a previous version (2.5.1), with Admiral Rayne Jhonson14 leading 2nd Fleet with Commodore Nina Tkachenko leading BatRon 02 from BB TCRS Irregular Apocalypse as their flag ship of the Squadron, while Captain Salem Sherminator is the captain of BB TCRS Irregular Apocalypse

Here’s the personal Record of Commodore Nina Tkachenko, where you can see they were a Captain previously managing to kill a lot of ship tonnage before being promoted and later given a Squadron to Command.

Here’s the personal Record of Admiral Rayne Jhonson14, they were a Squadron Commander previously, but as newer fleets came out they were promoted to R.Admiral and given a fleet, and eventually became a Admiral over one of the strongest and largest fleets.

To me in the end, my main enjoyment from the game is the endless story from the characters, where they served, how they handled it before either being promoted with their many deeds or simply die and recorded into history.

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Disclaimer, With how Fleet Commander system worked previously, you could only have a individual with 1x Ranks above the ship captain’s rank be the “Fleet Commander” or in our case, Squadron commander. So instead of me wishing I could make a Rear or Vice Admiral as the Squadron Commander, we were forced to make only Commodores the Squadron Commander, since the system did not allow us to force any other higher rank’d individuals from taking the role.

[AuroraSteve]

@HitTheMan

Not quite, as the “Senior CO” is based specific on the ship design so you’d have Destroyer Lead that you’d need to make per squadron, meaning a dedicated slip just for the ship lead of a squadron and if the ship gets destroyed, no way to transfer the command to another ship.

Please read the change log. You don’t need a different design if the Senior CO is at the ship (not design) level. You can change the lead ship with a couple of clicks.

[HitTheMan]

Just saw you changed it, that’s very very lovely, I wrote my thoughts about it in the discussion post

I still personally stand for the suggestion I’ve made, as I’d love to see a separate individual to take lead as you’d have a Flag Captain be in charge of the ship itself while the actual senior officer be it Commodore, Rear Admiral, Vice Admiral, Admiral or even Fleet Admiral take charge of the Squadron or Fleet (based on their current need and situation)

Also this to allow them to also be killed, eject into life pod or captured, making higher ranked individuals (Commodore, Rear Admiral, Vice Admiral, Admiral or even Fleet Admiral or above) be used elsewhere in more variety of roles besides NACs or Academy, and also be in risk of dying as well

[AuroraSteve]

You can have that. I’ll repost my response in the other thread here:

If you want a higher rank involved, you can use an admin command in conjunction with a flag bridge.

Generally, you might have a senior captain or commodore commanding a ship and assuming responsibility for a small squadron. A rear admiral wouldn’t command a ship. They would have a flag bridge that gave them command over a fleet, but the ship on which they were based would still have a commanding officer.

So you can have all the options

• Normal ship with a captain and no other responsibilities

• Normal ship with a commodore (Ship Senior CO), who would be senior to captains of other similar ships

• Normal ship with a captain who has no other responsibilities, plus a flag bridge with a rear admiral commanding the fleet.

• Normal ship with a commodore (Ship Senior CO), who would be acting as a flag captain, plus a flag bridge with a rear admiral commanding the fleet.

You wouldn’t see a rear admiral directly commanding a ship.

Its worth reviewing this post on flag bridges

[HitTheMan]

I wrote a reply to the Discussion as I think the point was sort of lost, You can find it here

[Garfunkel]

I believe I understand what you’re after but you can already kinda do it. You can have senior class destroyer leaders, heavy cruisers leading light cruisers and so on, and these can have the senior CO box ticked so that each ‘squadron’ has a commodore leading a group of captains. Then you can have battleships carry a flag bridge and you move a NAC of 1st Fleet to BB-01. Plus, remember that adding AUX/ENG/TAC to a capital ship pumps up the rank of the ship captain.

This way you can have an Admiral commanding all the ships in that system, Commodores leading specific squadrons, Captains commanding capital ships, Commanders leading escorts and so on. And if you really want to combine them all together, the officers do not vanish, just use the “Join Fleet as a Sub-Fleet” command.

True, you need additional slipways to build the ‘Senior CO’ ships but if you’re careful with your design, you can use the same shipyard. Or just build more - if you’re running fleets of hundreds of ships, you probably have more than enough shipyards.

It seems that the only thing missing is an in-game OOB treeview that would show all these leaders and their chain of command but you can do that yourself in Excel - the actual CoC does exist.