Related topic: http://www.gamedev.net/topic/643014-personnel-strategy/

This is for a strategy game where you play as an emperor of a space empire. The personnel management is an important part of the game.

(ignore the stats on these "cards", there will be other ones)

You have fleet and army, each have 9 officers. Over time the older ones retire and new one appear (in the rank of Lieutenant). You can promote any officer (it is not a free action) and demote (very hard and limited, usually you need to stick with an imcompetent admiral until he retires). The exact rank is irrelevant, all that matters is in which row the officer is. You basicly want the best ones in the very top row and the imcompetent at the bottom (which not always will be possible).

I will probably give each one some "command" stat and it is multiplied depending on the row (x1,x2,x3). In addition, each officer will believe in one doctrine. It does not matter which doctrine, but you want all top (and preferably also middle) officers to share the same doctrine (then the military will work better together).

Questions/dilemmas:

- Do you think I should keep both branches on the same page (better for interface, less buttons) or maybe make a separate Fleet and Army pages (so instead of 9 there would be 18 officers per branch)?

- Isn't it a bit too aritficial? What you think overall of this? I have a feeling that the "court" in the first topic works much better and the military one is somehow broken... But maybe that's just my impression.

- Other related ideas?

Hmmm, let me ask you this... what is the impact on gameplay of these officers? I feel like the difference between the earlier post about the court and this one is that I could better imagine what the court members would do with respect to gameplay.

At a glance I would say that getting stuck with incompetant admirals and generals should, theoretically, be less of an issue than getting stuck with incompetant people in your court. Military organizations tend to be strictly hierarchical, and if you are playing the role of an emperor, once would imagine you must have a pretty firm grip on the military in order to have power. Of course, that doesn't mean the emperor wouldn't have to occasionally put up with the screw up son of one of his biggest boosters wanting to be in the army, but still, I feel like you should have more impact with regard to the military than you would at court.

Although, here's a thought. Historically speaking, in monarchies and dictatorships throughout history, high ranking military positions were often given to strong backers of the ruler as prestige positions. It might be interesting to have some interplay between the court and the military. Just a thought though.

There was an NHL Hockey game on Facebook that had a similar mechanic actually. I don't remember the name, nor the specifics, but it may be worth looking into, as I remember that had found a way to make it work efficiently.

Of course, the rules of hockey are very artificial (3 men on each trio plus two d-men) so this system fits better there than in an environment (war) that isn't regulated in regards to your actual staff.

I think this mechanic alone, devoid of its context, is hard to comment on. As Plethora stated, we'd need a better insight into your gameplay first.

The mechanic would be trivial, all these officers (and doctrines) add up their stats, and it all sums into one number. That number is the efficiency (tactics/leadership combat bonus) of the fleet/army.

If the purpose of this is just to work out a total bonus then made a tree structure would be better? With the supreme fleet commander at the top and then a couple of levels showing the key officers under their command.

Like this:

Or you could have segmented line graph showing the contributions of each officer.

But if I'm suppose to be able to do anything other then view the structure then I suppose I'd prefer the tree structure.

Will I be able to give boons and awards to distinguished officers or punish those who displease me. If Colonel Sanders loses my favorite planet can I ensure he never gets promoted or put him in charge of garbage ship for the rest of his career?

Well, I have only a vague idea how the whole military thing would work in that game. I just drawn a picture and invented some mechanic that I found consistent with the UI I'm planning. Maybe let's do it other way round, how would you do officers in a space empire game that is highly focused on personnel management and high level strategy (you are an emperor, you don't move single ships yourself).

Or you could have segmented line graph showing the contributions of each officer.

Segmented line graph? What's that?

Will I be able to give boons and awards to distinguished officers or punish those who displease me. If Colonel Sanders loses my favorite planet can I ensure he never gets promoted or put him in charge of garbage ship for the rest of his career?

I hope so... this would be cool :) But with the model I posted in the first post it would be not possible.

I have got a different idea...

Fleet and Army are separate pages, each branch of the military has 3 rows of 6 officers. Each row is a separate subbranch (High Command, Tactical Support, Line Officers).

Each row (subbranch) is made of up to 6 officers, sorted by the rank (Admirals on the left end, Lieutenants on the right), they all add to the strength of the subbranch (those on the right add more of course since they are more important).

You can promote an officer (which might or might not move him to the left), give a medal (if there are more officers of the same rank the one with most medals goes to the left of the queue), demote an officer (that one is very expensive to use), transfer an officer (move officer to another row without changing the rank, it will recalculate the row order of course).

In general, you want to have the best people at the left of each row or if not possible to have your prefered row to get the best ones. Each row/subbranch will have a bit different effect on the military forces.

Coup

Each officer has loyalty. When there is a coup event each ROW is checked separately if they revolted or not. If 2 or more rows/subbranches revolts, you are executed and the game ends :)

Note: I hate this "subbranch", do you know a better name for it?

Note: I hate this "subbranch", do you know a better name for it?

Branch?

Such as, a branch of the Navy is the marines. I don't know too much military lingo, though a quick search shows Division/Battalion as a likely choice for what you're after (though wether a Navy-level branch is a division or not would be up to you)

Should help you out here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_organization

Edit: Actually, just scrolled down on that 'right' after posting -> I think you're after a part of the military lead by a general? There's a nice table there on modern forces: Corps, Division and Brigade work nicely there too.