Navy Chain of Command

[Challenge]

I posted this, but it was in the wrong place. Now that I found the right place...

Compared to the Army Organization structure, the Navy is missing a level of command.

With the Army we have:

1. Field Marshals leading Corps of Armies;
2. Generals Lead Armies of Divisions
3. Divisions are collections of Brigades/Regiments.

With the Navy, the structure looks like this:

1. Admiral Commands Fleets mad up of task forces;
2. A task force is made of individual ships.

We're missing the upper level commander, i.e. CinCPac from WWII USN. For this discussion I'll call the rank Fleet Admiral.

One of the things this would do is allow the player to construct operational groups to better utilize the skills and traits of individual admirals:

• An Escort Command could be under an admiral with skills useful to the mission;
• Your Submarine Warfare expert would command SubOpPac;
• A Battle Group and its Patrol groups, and maybe some Convoy Raider flotillas are commanded by an Admiral with Ship or Fleet Combat talents.

All of that can then be grouped under a Fleet Admiral with Logistics or similar effectives to support them all, just as the Field Marshal does for his Corps.

I realize something like this appears simple, but I'm familiar enough with coding to know it doesn't always work out that way. It would, however, allow a better use of Admiral Skill Sets, as well as a more structured Fleet makeup.

As a last thought. I don't know if there is a suggestion thread. I couldn't find it and wanted to get this down before I got sidetracked and forgot to post it. If here is not the place, let me know where it's supposed to go, or move it.

 

[SeekTruthFromFx]

There is a suggestions subforum here.

 

[Anaraxes]

One of the things this would do is allow the player to construct operational groups to better utilize the skills and traits of individual admirals:

• An Escort Command could be under an admiral with skills useful to the mission;
• Your Submarine Warfare expert would command SubOpPac;
• A Battle Group and its Patrol groups, and maybe some Convoy Raider flotillas are commanded by an Admiral with Ship or Fleet Combat talents.

That's exactly how I organize my navy, using the current system. An admiral can command up to ten task forces (without penalty), which covers quite a lot of sea zones.

There's no need to assume that exactly one admiral has to be in command of all the ships in some geographic area. It's perfectly okay if Sub Admiral commands subs in the Med and up by the UK, while Battle Admiral is in charge of the strike forces in both those areas, and then there's a third Convoy Admiral running destroyer patrols. They can each be chosen for appropriate skills. You don't need an Altantic Admiral and a Mediterranean Admiral that each have Sub, Battle, Escort sub-admirals, thus forcing you to have two Sub, Battle, and Escort admirals just to slot into that hierarchy.

The main geographical push to having more than one admiral for a role is to avoid chunks of widely separated sea zone assignments that will cause ships to sail back and forth. Give Sub Admiral a sea zone next to Tokyo and also the North Sea, and his task force is going to waste a lot of time and fuel steaming back and forth. You really only need to split the admirals when you've got widely separated, disparate zones to cover.

The task forces all have admirals, of course, but they're just as invisible as the army corps and division commanders. Similarly, there's presumably an invisible admiral in charge of the theaters I create for my navy (or my army). But I haven't felt a need to pick one. He'd be a desk jockey anyway. The only reason I imagine someone would want a face stuck next to the theater bar is just for the joy of arranging the org chart and the ability to replicate the historical command structure to feel like you're replicating it. Or someone could want a system where the theater admirals benefited the mission admirals underneath him, as Army Group commands do for their Armies. But just as FMs have different skills than army generals, for that scheme you'd want broader administrative talents for your theater admirals. They'd be saving fuel and making repairs go faster and getting replacement airplanes on the carriers 10% faster. (In real life they'd be spending most of their time politicking and angling for procurement and keeping the shipyards running when they weren't writing the manuals that are covered by the doctrine trees, but in game, that's all already in the player's hands.)

 

[Challenge]

I understand what you do, I also put my ships under admirals that can give them bonuses, just as I do the Divisions of the Army. The Field Marshals; Rommel for the Germans, Eisenhower and Montgomery for the Allies, all add to that. They can improve logistics, speed, recovery rate, improve org, etc. in addition to the specific skills the general commanding the division has. I wouldn't consider the field marshal a desk jockey. And they don't have to be anywhere near their army either, iirc.

If I understand you correctly, you're saying that a system for the navy using the system the army already uses wouldn't be beneficial? I could see you taking that stand if you didn't use field marshals now, and I think it would be a safe bet to say that you do.

To give a RL example of what I mean:

At the Battle of Midway the USN had a Carrier Task Force With 5 Rear Admirals, each commanding his own Task Group -- either Carrier or Cruiser. The overall commander was Admiral Nimitz, CinCPac (not someone I would have called a desk jockey to his face, by all accounts). Nimitz would be the Fleet Admiral (Field Marshal equivalent) in this case and, as far as I know, was not in the Midway Task force. As commander of more Task Forces he would add his skills: fast, air power, blockade runner, whatever they would be, among them all.

In the context of the game, however, Nimitz would no more be CinCPac than Eisenhower as a field marshal would be Supreme Allied Commander Europe. That position would be the invisible commander you mentioned.