Jump to content

Promotion System


Recommended Posts

Okay, bear with me. This is long but I have been thinking about this for a long time and it really came to a head playing Enemy Unknown.

Goldhawk is making a game that although is fantastic in its scenario but also realistic in so many ways. In the interest of realism I would love for a game with a military element to have some sense of military rank structure and responsibilities. The idea of every rifleman/soldier entering into the officer ranks and having a small-team assault led by a colonel and manned with nothing but captains should scare the hell out of everyone involved.

Here is what I am suggesting. I think the easiest way to implement would be to have an OIC (officer in charge) and an AOIC (assistant officer in charge) role just like assault or sniper. Unlike other roles, for each mission there is one OIC and one (maybe two depending on how large your squad becomes) AOICs and whatever soldiers you give these roles to enter into the officer ranks. You are limited in the number of officers you send out. Soldiers who do not take the OIC and AOIC roles promote through the enlisted ranks, so instead of a chopper filled with lieutenants you will have two officers and six sergeant first classes, master sergeants (eventually). Even saying that makes me fell better.

I think this can be implemented simply enough that would in some way mimic the responsibilities of officers and NCOs. For instance you could have each officer provide a small bonus to everyone in the squad. This stat increase would be in whatever is their strongest attribute. For instance you have a Lieutenant whose bravery is their highest stat and they are sent out on a mission as an OIC so now every soldier in that squad gets a +1 bonus to their bravery. If that officer dies on the mission the bonus goes away the minute he dies. The size of the bonus scales to the rank of the officer. This adds a level of complexity to your mission management. What officers do you send out? What attributes do you want to raise? Does the type of mission change what attributes you want to boost? How will the officers complement one another and what areas are your soldiers deficient in that putting them in charge will help?

But wait there's more in my master design, so NCOs (non-commissioned officers) are incredibly important in the modern military. So as your enlisted men advance in rank they provide a different type of bonus. This bonus, like the officers, scales in rank so a sergeant major will provide a higher bonus than a sergeant first class. Unlike the officers, the NCO bonus is both greater as there is a larger stat boost than the officer's but limited in that it only affects those soldiers in proximity to the NCO. The proximity specifics is up for debate but my thought is that the distance be close enough to mimic the idea that the NCO can see what the soldier is doing and can provide spoken "advice". Once this proximity is broken or if the NCO dies the bonus goes away.

If correctly implemented, I envision the potential for missions to go pear-shaped very realistically. As it stands now if you have a tough mission and you lose two soldiers it is tough. But with the above changes if you lose your OIC and a senior NCO, now you not only have lost two shooters, but you start seeing the stats of your remaining soldiers drop.

If you are smart you will have more than two officers at your base in case you lose one in the field. Those officers don't have to be doing nothing. What if you could take an unused officer and put them in charge of your research or manufacturing division? These divisions could operate just fine without an officer, but having an officer increases their effectiveness and again this effectiveness scales with the rank. To prevent people from just moving a single high-level officer to different posts to get the research bonus and then putting them on an assault mission when it comes up I would have the effectiveness bonus only payoff at the end. For instance if you are researching something that would normally take five days given the number of scientists you put to the problem. Now lets say that having a colonel in charge of a division confers a 60% bonus so that what would take five days now takes three. If you take the colonel out of the division to go on a mission the effectiveness bonus goes away and no credit is given for time on the project(s). So if the research would have completed at three days and on day two, hour 23 you pull him for a mission, the research task goes back to five days. If you replace the colonel with a lieutenant for head of your research division the lieutenant's (substantially smaller) bonus would not apply to any ongoing projects. So removing your division heads can suck which again makes losing an officer in the field problematic.

Anyway, this is my idea in broad picture. I don't think it would unduely unbalance gameplay if a soldier's personal stat advancement is adjusted. The substantial bonuses I am talking about would come from senior officers and NCOs and they should only come later in the game. I think it adds a layer of complexity and realism that is lacking in many games. It also finally gets some love for the NCO ranks. Not every soldier dreams of one day putting on the silver crow.

Note: Throughout this post I use Army ranks but I only did this for simplicity sake. I love my master guns and master chiefs out there.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Although I don't know about putting military officers in charge of research I can certainly get behind assigning a leader on a mission and seeing it all go to hell with panic when he dies! This would add a very interesting layer of complexity to the game, the ranks being as they are seem rather meaningless - though I understand they do affect morale both ways already.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Copying from my post on one of those threads:-

Hi,

I'd prefer something like the following:-

Issues

- Avoid disconnect of having too many high ranks on ground missions

- Avoid having all of your troops at high ranks

- Provide a method of showing experience for veteran troops

- Allow some player control over officers

- Avoid endless micro levels of advancement

Suggestions

- Reduce Rank levels into something a bit more in keeping with ground combat.

- Reduce the chances of having every soldier of a higher rank. This works out much like Apocalypse.

[table=width: 500]

[tr]

[td]Rank[/td]

[td]Promotion[/td]

[td]Level of command[/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]Private (Pvt)[/td]

[td]New recruit[/td]

[td]None[/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]Lance Corporal (LCpl)[/td]

[td]After X experience[/td]

[td]None[/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]Corporal (Cpl)[/td]

[td]For every 5 Pvt/LCpl[/td]

[td]Fire Team[/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]Sergeant (Sgt)[/td]

[td]For every 4 Cpl[/td]

[td]Squad Leader[/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]Master Sergeant (MSgt)[/td]

[td]Sgt with most experience[/td]

[td]Squad Leader[/td]

[/tr]

[/table]

The current training of new recruits would see them exit as Lance Corporals, and not Corporals.

[table=width: 500]

[tr]

[td]Rank[/td]

[td]Promotion[/td]

[td]Level of command[/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]Lieutenant (Lt)[/td]

[td]For every 3 Sgt or MSgt[/td]

[td]Platoon[/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]Captain (Capt)[/td]

[td]For every 2 Lt[/td]

[td]Company[/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]Major (Maj)*[/td]

[td]1 per game (or perhaps 1 per base)[/td]

[td][/td]

[/tr]

[/table]

Beyond the rank of Sergeant/ Master Sergeant, the player gets to put the soldier through Officer Training, using the little used training option. This allows for player control over officer ranks. A 10 day course is used much like basic training.

*Possibly, even major is too high. A Staff Sergeant or a Sergeant Major could be used.

Combat Experience

In addition to the above, the soldier should also get a tag depending on the number of missions/ kills they have. This is pretty flexible, but some suggestions are:-

[table=width: 500]

[tr]

[td]Tag Name[/td]

[td]Requirements (Missions/ Kills)[/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]Rookie[/td]

[td]0/0[/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]Xenonaut[/td]

[td]5&1[/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]Veteran[/td]

[td]25&5[/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]Hardened[/td]

[td]50&10[/td]

[/tr]

[tr]

[td]Elite[/td]

[td]75&20[/td]

[/tr]

[/table]

Note – the requirements for the above are missions and kills. So you could have a soldier with 40 missions, but only 4 kills who would still be a “Xenonaut”

Medals are coming also (hopefully for for mission accomplishments)

Additionally, I'd still like to see the call sign expanded to enable you to put in a nickname for your soldier, without having to rewrite everything that's in the field.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I love the OG ranking system

Especially only one Commander for all your bases if you had 30 soldiers

4qx.png

Would love to see this in Xeno, and I wonder if this principal could be applied to the ground combat too.

This is good.

I think special forces have different rank structures and different entrypoints for rank, though.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

yeah , looks good.

I prefer more ranks though.

One of the main reasons I played x-com was the promotion system and the feeling to be there together whith your troops and follow there history.

If current promotion system does not change I will most probably not continue to play this game. I just don't want to fight a battle with a whole bunch of commanders ( that is totally unrealistic).

So, all for the ideas above (with addition of 2 more ranks if possible) and some small info screen on died soldiers.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm having to think back a bit, but wasn't the idea that the EU1994 game could be exploited simply by just hiring enough soldiers to boost the ranks of your most experienced troops and then fire them all again?

While I can't quite imagine ever getting enough Xeno-money to do such a thing, it would be really silly to have a commander who has barely got a few missions under their belt.

The Xenonaut system got pretty positive consensus as I recall.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm having to think back a bit, but wasn't the idea that the EU1994 game could be exploited simply by just hiring enough soldiers to boost the ranks of your most experienced troops and then fire them all again?

While I can't quite imagine ever getting enough Xeno-money to do such a thing, it would be really silly to have a commander who has barely got a few missions under their belt.

The Xenonaut system got pretty positive consensus as I recall.

I thought rank was only important if soldier was killed as the lost of morale?.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

having officers on missions also gave a nice morale boost though, so it should make soldiers less prone to panic etc.

It was a flaw that Xenonauts put some thought into correcting. And with a bit of slowing down (and some personal preference modding on the names) it probably has addressed it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

it would be really silly to have a commander who has barely got a few missions under their belt.

That's true. Also though it seems silly to have everyone be able to reach max rank. Who's orders do you follow if every soldier on the battlefield is a General? You can't have a rank structure if every soldier can reach max rank.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I love the OG ranking system

Especially only one Commander for all your bases if you had 30 soldiers

4qx.png

Would love to see this in Xeno, and I wonder if this principal could be applied to the ground combat too.

Forgot to add i loved this as well.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That's true. Also though it seems silly to have everyone be able to reach max rank. Who's orders do you follow if every soldier on the battlefield is a General? You can't have a rank structure if every soldier can reach max rank.

Seniority has always been the solution to that. The senior General is the battlefield commander. If all troops are at soldier rank, the senior soldier is the battlefield commander. The army has several rules to resolve equal-rank authority situations. The issue has not been uncommon during the wars. Commanders tend to die, in the battlefield, so the rules about command succession have been made very detailed.

Edited by ThunderGr
Link to comment
Share on other sites

That's true. Also though it seems silly to have everyone be able to reach max rank. Who's orders do you follow if every soldier on the battlefield is a General? You can't have a rank structure if every soldier can reach max rank.

oh, I agree. But I think that the new system is much more easily solved through simply changing the name of the ranks to adjusting the time taken before promotion is granted.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

oh, I agree. But I think that the new system is much more easily solved through simply changing the name of the ranks to adjusting the time taken before promotion is granted.

What is the current subtleties of the ranks system? I know that when you have high ranking officers close to your rookies that they panic less, or rather have more moral, tying the bonus to proximity is good so you can't leave your 1 general in the chopa while the rest of your rookies feel brave entering the alien ship.

No I ask if there is more, because I just don't see the above scenario, because in my last playthroughs I've never had a soldier panic, just because everyone on the team was high ranking, hence they all had moral bonus.

Seems there are two solutions to iron out the kinks

A) Under the current system, tweak the panic threshold very high, which might cause problems down the road.

B) Install a new system (sorry devs) that curtails having too many high ranking soldiers at any given time.

I think the OG had that figured out, except that the bonuses weren't tied to proximity of the officers.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

being in the army myself i do find the idea of everyone attaining the same rank very odd, if the men at the top are in rank for a period of time then it becomes as it was in EU this is referred to as "dead mans shoes" where you have to wait for promotion till the position above you becomes vacant through death or retirement.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

being in the army myself i do find the idea of everyone attaining the same rank very odd, if the men at the top are in rank for a period of time then it becomes as it was in EU this is referred to as "dead mans shoes" where you have to wait for promotion till the position above you becomes vacant through death or retirement.

Yeap, yours. :P

Sorry too much of a temptation to resist. As it is obvious from my other posts, I agree that the promotion system should come to par with the O.G. promotion system, which is closer to the actual way it works in real life.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yeap, yours. :P

Sorry too much of a temptation to resist. As it is obvious from my other posts, I agree that the promotion system should come to par with the O.G. promotion system, which is closer to the actual way it works in real life.

well i'd love to retire, not so keen on the death option though. it would make the game alot more enjoyable, i remember EU when i'd get annoyed when the guy i wanted to get promoted didn't.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...