The Captains and Admirals

[chainsawjoe911]

So I would like to propose a possible idea, movable captains and have them promote to better increase performance in battles and events maybe. For example, you have a captain start as a young ensign on CVs, and slowly over his career he becomes the expert of CVs for your nation. He could help give insight to carrier ideas and technology, or buff performance in battle, or maybe give your fleets an advantage (IE captain Halsey uses his intuition and you might have a favorable outcome on a battle start). If the ship goes down he has a chance of perishing, which can be improved if you pick up survivors (giving an even greater importance of doing so) Maybe you could capture enemy admirals? Who knows? You could make this as complicated or simple as you want. Id be interested to hear all yalls ideas.

[AiryW]

I find that leader systems in wargames tend to be gimmicky and/or distract from gameplay. Sid Meiers had the "covert action rule" which I think applies:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sid_Meier%27s_Covert_Action#Development
RTW is a game about naval doctrine. You design ships and see how they perform. A leader system in only tangentially related to that.

That said, I think a very minimal system can be a nice little bit of flavor to add to the game. My notion is this, you have a list of officers which to the player is nothing but a list of names, ages and ranks. Officers are randomly selected from this list to captain ships corresponding to their rank and are replaced after a random amount of time. At a certain age for each rank they have a random chance to retire every month during peacetime. If there aren't enough at a higher rank, an officer of sufficient age is promoted. The only mechanical difference that the officers make is that about one in ten of them have a secret "hidden talent" flag which improves the quality of their crew by one level. This has no effect on promotion or retirement. Hidden talents can be discovered, giving the "talented" flag which is the same except that it is known to the player. They have a 50% chance of being revealed if they command a ship when it gains a battle star and a 5% chance of being revealed every month they command a ship with an elite crew. The player can assign talented officers to command ships appropriate to their rank. Ships with talented commanders will take precedence for leading squadrons. Talented officers who retire get added to the list of ship names of the ship class corresponding to their rank.

Something like that I think would be nice. It isn't necessary to simulate all the career choices and personalities and whatnot. It's just a little bit of flavor for the player to turn into a narrative. The player isn't forced to pay attention to what hundreds of officers are up to.

[fightingflattops]

I suggest a military Naval School Graduate program. Not single leaders but "The year 1899 graduates" leaders.
Each year you have a new stack of leaders, new leaders are more likely to adopt new strategies/technologies, old leaders are more likely to give the experienced bonus to the crew, plus leaders that fought wars are more likely to give the experienced bonus to the cres. Competition between new and old leaders. ;-)

Bonus
You could fund the Naval School Accademy (as an addition to "night fight, etc.." training, have your historical naval school and training ship.

[alexbrunius]

Having to invest into Academies to provide high quality commanders and crew to the ships seems like it could be an interesting direction to expand the game in.

[akosjaccik]

While I am generally all for more complexity / less randomness, for example, I entertained the idea of operational planning, supply, maintenance, auxiliary ships etc. warmly; I do have to admit that in my - very subjective and debatable - opinion this would bring nothing to the table. As I sometimes see it on YouTube, people often tend to use destroyers as some sort of "throwaway-ships" for the lack of a better word (at least at my english level :\ ), now imagine if you have to manage 30-80-200 captains as well, who chances are would not be much more than some randomized names with a few stars. I just don't see the point, I can't imagine having any more connections with those than the player already has with the ships themselves.
Of course, one can simplify this, but then again, training is already in the game. With that said, a bit more fleshed out version of it - academies, fleet excercises (as we are waiting for it in RtW2), even maybe some tech like sub-caliber training rounds (not sure if that's the proper term, again) - in short, a bit more options regarding crew experience overall would be fun and interesting no doubt, but captains? Iiiidon'tknow.

[atlanticghost]

Having a full list of captains would be overly-complicated for what it would add to the game, I suspect. Especially as the fleet grows and ships like DDs increase in size and thus rank of their commanders.
However, there might be something to be gained from tracking admirals, each of whom could apply certain modifiers to the behavior of a fleet they're assigned to, along with changing the odds of AI-controlled squadrons doing silly things like wandering off or failing to report contacts in a timely manner. The reason I'd suggest admirals might be worth tracking rather than captains is by that rank they are likely to have political connections, so how you treat admirals could have effects on other things like budgets, prestige, etc.
You might be faced with the choice of two admirals for a prestigious command, for example. One of them is in favor with the current political leadership, courageous and a skilled ship-handler, but is known to be rather lacking in imagination concerning uses of the latest naval technologies. The other is not so favored, but is especially keen (perhaps too keen) on the potential of the automotive torpedo, or the aeroplane, or whatever the latest weapon is at the time. So you're essentially choosing between more money and/or prestige, and fleet readiness. This sort of thing could even simply be one of those events that pops up with effects that last for a year or two, without further tracking.

[garychildress]

Admirals, maybe. However, to be honest, moving captains from ship to ship sounds like it could potentially turn into a tedious clickfest. As long as the feature can be automated or ignored by those who aren't interested in it, it's fine, though.

[tbr]

The one thing that does this well is Aurora:

aurorawiki.pentarch.org/index.php?title=Main_Page

There the process is very much automated with optional player input. It brings a nice set of flavor to read "CDR X promoted CAPT" etc.

But the question is whether this adds enough to the game to merit the time it takes Frederik away from more germane aspects of the game that make RTW unique.

[chainsawjoe911]

I should have been a bit more specific, sorry. I mean like only a very rare once in a while type thing. Maybe you had a CV thats been through some major fights or something like that. Nothing like every ship has a captain....good lord the amount of micro.....

[director]

I could support the (mostly) random generation of a few 'great man' leaders on the model of a Fisher or Cuniberti (constructor), Yamamoto (aviation), Somerville or Spruance (aviation), or Tanaka, Harwood or Burke (tactics). I'm only throwing out a few names as an example, not a real list - supply your own. If you had only a handful of these to deploy in different positions there wouldn't be a lot of hassle, and it might add some color.

I'd trade all of that for the ability to form my own flotillas, squadrons and task forces.

[garychildress]

Jan 15, 2019 20:23:49 GMT -6 director said:

I'd trade all of that for the ability to form my own flotillas, squadrons and task forces.

Now you're on to something. That would be a very cool ability in the game. Do you have some ideas on how to implement it. Might be worth a separate thread for that idea. 

[zedfifty]

Perhaps players should choose whether to allow engineers and aviators to command ships. Doing so may incur some penalty to ship-handling and prestige (grumpy old sea officers), but with a possible benefit in research, reduced random breakdowns, better aircrew and smoother carrier ops from being able to attract and retain better engineers and aviators. Also, tying aviators closer to the sea service should reduce the chance of the Air Force seizing control of naval aviation.

[vonfriedman]

Jan 15, 2019 20:23:49 GMT -6 director said:

I could support the (mostly) random generation of a few 'great man' leaders on the model of a Fisher or Cuniberti (constructor), Yamamoto (aviation), Somerville or Spruance (aviation), or Tanaka, Harwood or Burke (tactics). I'm only throwing out a few names as an example, not a real list - supply your own. If you had only a handful of these to deploy in different positions there wouldn't be a lot of hassle, and it might add some color.

I'd trade all of that for the ability to form my own flotillas, squadrons and task forces.

Alberto Da Zara, one of the few successful Italian admirals, wrote in his autobiography that only those ships with good fire director officers should keep active duty.

Seriously, I see a certain risk of micromanagement in all this.

[akosjaccik]

Jan 15, 2019 20:23:49 GMT -6 director said:

I'd trade all of that for the ability to form my own flotillas, squadrons and task forces.

Can't "like" this enough. Forming groups, assigning tasks, planning operations. ...i know, i know. Still, a man can dream.