Post by mycophobia on Jun 11, 2019 16:44:57 GMT -6
This was an idea I believe briefly brought up during development, while I understand that the game have plenty of bugs and content that it needs to get through, I do want to revive the idea because I think its both very interesting and can potential resolve several other complaint we have about the game currently.
Players have brought up several versions of an officer management system in the Pre-release suggestion post, so I took some ideas I liked from those and threw in some of my own thinking after playing couple games of rtw 2.
What should the system do?
I believe that an officer system should help to add a more human aspect to the game, and give players an opportunity to fine tune the performance/behaviours of their ship. Further, it adds more progression and continuity to the current system of crew exp. Crew quality is very important in rtw as it was in real llife, but it is also not a field that we have very little direct management over. While I also envision a potential system for crew management/training regimes, it does risk getting a little too complicated so I will leave that idea for now.
With an officer system, the last thing it should do is to create a micro management hell by giving each ship their own unique captain. While cool, I feel it will add too much micro management labour to the otherwise fairly fluid pace of the game.
Officers can have a small effect on the performance of the ship, but crew quality should clearly be more important for most actions. What I think the officer system should address, is the limited control player have over ship behaviour and AI. Officer experience and personality should help the AI in being more aggressive/cautious, better judge enemy strength, and better carry out actions that require decision making ability, like carrying out torpedo attack or engaging enemy at night.
How should the system work?
I propose that we instead have "Distinguished Officers" in limited number that we may assign to any ship besides KE/AMC. Officers can be randomly generated as needed, and tries to maintain a constant number scaling with your fleet size. Officers can gradually gain experience and develop personality as they serve in the navy. (Can be simple like "Aggressive", "Cautious" or more complicated like "Night Leader" etc...)
Any ship that has an officer assigned will, as long as it show up in combat, serve as squadron flag ship of whatever squadron the mission generator place them in. Therefore, the officer can influence the behaviour of his squadron in addition to the player's order. If we want the DD screens to be more aggressive while screening the main fleet, we put an aggressive destroyer officer on the job. If we want the DD to not over extend in a flottia attack, stick close to the main battle line, we choose cautious officers for the job.
This should in particular have a impact with squadrons that went out of the player's command range. The officer's experience and personality should determine what option they take when acting independently. Experienced commander can send their own search patterns, navigate to last known location of friendly ships etc. While less experience commander may wonder around or go straight back to port like the current AI. Inexperienced officer/AI squadron will go straight for port when detached, while experienced officer will try their best to avoid areas of potential combat, etc...
To make raising your officer more rewarding without having to code highly intelligent AI, I think its fair to allow the officers to give the ships under their command some minor buffs to crew quality or performance in a specific area. AI should also benefit from the system, and their behaviour may represent that of their admiral. (Which can maybe even give player incentive to try to take out a particular capable enemy commander. We don't need full detail of enemy officer presence in a battle, but should be able to check in post battle screen/ with sufficient espionage)
In any case, this is not a high priority system for me, and might turns out to be a lot more work than what I imagined it to be(which is probably already a lot of work for the team). Nevertheless I thought I'd bring the idea back up since it does seem like an interesting one, and synergizes with the call for more intelligent player control/command over their fleet.
Players have brought up several versions of an officer management system in the Pre-release suggestion post, so I took some ideas I liked from those and threw in some of my own thinking after playing couple games of rtw 2.
What should the system do?
I believe that an officer system should help to add a more human aspect to the game, and give players an opportunity to fine tune the performance/behaviours of their ship. Further, it adds more progression and continuity to the current system of crew exp. Crew quality is very important in rtw as it was in real llife, but it is also not a field that we have very little direct management over. While I also envision a potential system for crew management/training regimes, it does risk getting a little too complicated so I will leave that idea for now.
With an officer system, the last thing it should do is to create a micro management hell by giving each ship their own unique captain. While cool, I feel it will add too much micro management labour to the otherwise fairly fluid pace of the game.
Officers can have a small effect on the performance of the ship, but crew quality should clearly be more important for most actions. What I think the officer system should address, is the limited control player have over ship behaviour and AI. Officer experience and personality should help the AI in being more aggressive/cautious, better judge enemy strength, and better carry out actions that require decision making ability, like carrying out torpedo attack or engaging enemy at night.
How should the system work?
I propose that we instead have "Distinguished Officers" in limited number that we may assign to any ship besides KE/AMC. Officers can be randomly generated as needed, and tries to maintain a constant number scaling with your fleet size. Officers can gradually gain experience and develop personality as they serve in the navy. (Can be simple like "Aggressive", "Cautious" or more complicated like "Night Leader" etc...)
Any ship that has an officer assigned will, as long as it show up in combat, serve as squadron flag ship of whatever squadron the mission generator place them in. Therefore, the officer can influence the behaviour of his squadron in addition to the player's order. If we want the DD screens to be more aggressive while screening the main fleet, we put an aggressive destroyer officer on the job. If we want the DD to not over extend in a flottia attack, stick close to the main battle line, we choose cautious officers for the job.
This should in particular have a impact with squadrons that went out of the player's command range. The officer's experience and personality should determine what option they take when acting independently. Experienced commander can send their own search patterns, navigate to last known location of friendly ships etc. While less experience commander may wonder around or go straight back to port like the current AI. Inexperienced officer/AI squadron will go straight for port when detached, while experienced officer will try their best to avoid areas of potential combat, etc...
To make raising your officer more rewarding without having to code highly intelligent AI, I think its fair to allow the officers to give the ships under their command some minor buffs to crew quality or performance in a specific area. AI should also benefit from the system, and their behaviour may represent that of their admiral. (Which can maybe even give player incentive to try to take out a particular capable enemy commander. We don't need full detail of enemy officer presence in a battle, but should be able to check in post battle screen/ with sufficient espionage)
In any case, this is not a high priority system for me, and might turns out to be a lot more work than what I imagined it to be(which is probably already a lot of work for the team). Nevertheless I thought I'd bring the idea back up since it does seem like an interesting one, and synergizes with the call for more intelligent player control/command over their fleet.