Managing Large Personnel Files & Promotions

[johnboyjjb]

As I have spent the last 2.5 hours training my unit and giving out promotions, I was wondering what method others are using to manage their personnel.

I have ~2500 people working for me, mostly administrators, tank crews, and mechanics. I try to spend XP at the beginning of each month and go through handing out promotions. This is really time consuming. The spending of XP isn't bad with the mass training. But promotions is tedious. I built a spreadsheet that looks at some requirements but it is very basic. It looks at basic skills, tenure with the unit, and time in grade. This means that I end up with a lot of people being promoted in a weird imbalance (my last new tank is almost entirely run by Second Lieutenants, which seems a bit weird).  For a long time I ignored ranks and promotions, but MekHQ somewhat penalizes you for ignoring it. Both via leadership penalties on deployment and penalties during retirement rolls.

I was hoping to generate a reporting structure showing chain of command from top to bottom but I am finding it difficult to know what is reasonable. The dream scenario would be to have the system manage promotions for people who could be promoted in place (they can move up a pay grade without changing roles). And then as somebody gets promoted from a key position, either by a misplaced bullet or skill, being prompted with the leaders from the next tier down who are viable candidates. Windchild has implied (or maybe outright stated) that they have no time or intention to building a promotion module to MekHQ beyond what currently exists.

With that in mind, what does the general populace do to manage their staff?

[ThePW]

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Sorry, I've been watching lots of SCP vids lately.

There is no way to make it easier (besides the mass training mode) other than Keeping Things Simple(tm) and just operate a Company-sized force

[johnboyjjb]

This answer is what has prevented me from using either infantry or my own capital ships.

[Dr. Banzai]

Awards that are based on Scenarios (X Kills in the Scenario, Purple Hearts, etc.) are awarded at the end of the month.

Promotions and Retirement rolls are all at the New Year and all enlisted ranks are based on skills, Officer ranks are based on who I want to lead the lance/company/battalion/regiment (skills play a huge part in this, but they are also the "main" stars of the force). Ranks go from E0 to E13 for warrior ranks, E0 to E9 for non-combat, WO1 to WO5 (non-combat) and O1 to O5 (combat) for officers.

E0 to E4 are ranks for Astech and MedTechs - the Astech/MedTech skills go from Rank 0 to max Rank 4, each skill level determines their rank E0 = Rank 0, E1 = Rank 2, etc.
Enlisted (warriors) go start at E2's when newly recruited, then with the New Year's promotions go from E5 to E13 (skill ranks 0 to 9, calculated on average for Gun/Piloting when used)
Non-combat (Technicians, Doctors, and Admin) go from rank E5 to E9 (Primary Role skill Rank 0 to 4) and Warrant Officer ranks WO1 to WO5 (Primary Role skill rank 5 to 9)

Officers are determined by their hierarchy. I max out at O5 (Lieutenant Colonel in my ranking for Mechwarriors), so the leader of the force/group will be O5 (MechWarrior CO, Aerospace CO, Vehicle CO, etc. I run a merc unit, all the CO's have equal say in contracts and such, but recognize the Mech CO as leader among equals). There are officers among the Technicians, Doctors, and Admins as well, so my force has CO's from Mech, Aerospace, Vehicle, Infantry, Transportation (Jump- and DropShips), Technician, Medical, and Administration (8 on the board of CO's, Mech CO being the overall leader/face).

CO's are level O5, Regiment/Wing commanders are O4, Battalion commanders are O3, Company Commanders are O2, Lance Commanders are O1.
So, a company will comprise of 2 O1 commanders and their senior O2 commander.
Battalions are one O3 commander, two O2 commanders, and six O1 commanders
Regiments/Wings have a command lance with a O4 command (or an O5 command if integrated, a command lance/wing with an O5 commander if not integrated).

Non-combat CO's are that singular character chosen by the story.

[BATTLEMASTER]

I would love it if some of this stuff could be abstracted.  I hate playing MekHQ campaigns with infantry and large craft for the same reasons.  It's not exactly fun for me anyway.  People get paid to do this stuff IRL for a reason 

If anything, I would love it if there were MekWars-style abstraction rules for MekHQ covering skill improvement for pilots and unit repairs.

[pheonixstorm]

For me, people only get promotions if there is a position for it. So it the unit doesn't grow, and no one dies, everyone stays at the same rank. Add another company and the top Lt gets a promotion as do a few Sgts. I do account for people getting a bonus, but that is a given number of each rank. Rank A gets XXX per person so multiply person by XXX then move to the next rank. The pay stays the same though.

[dgorsman]

I try to remember to do it, like ransoming/freeing prisoners  .  Also depends on the current contract; things like recon or objective raids, I handle promotions after contracts are completed.  Longer term contracts like garrison work are done monthly along with the monthly supply order.

I completely skip the retirement part.  Most campaigns haven't lasted long enough for it to be an issue due to technical problems or too much 'same-ness', although lately I've started doing it manually.  Far too often the automated retirement just kicks out half the people in the entire group, unless I put in massive offsets (-8 or more) at which point there isn't anywhere near enough technical support and/or combat personnel to bother continuing (at one point, it retired everyone; I had to start over).  One of the parts of MekHQ that needs serious rework so it's reasonable rather than punitive, especially above lance size.  For example, make it based on age and injury, with reminders about personnel approaching retirement points and how likely they are to do so, so it can be planned for rather than a bolt out of the blue.

Infantry gets annoying, as I frequently end up with at least a half-dozen platoons from various means.  And I frequently end up with dozens of prisoners which I can't really justify handling without significant boots on the ground.  Plus the larger formations have a larger footprint necessitating more people spread out as early warning/tripwire forces and general hands-on-deck.  While it's not exactly standard, for now I have sergeants in command of most platoons with a lieutenant in charge of the company, typically fielded in reinforced companies so they stand a chance in scenarios.  Otherwise I get overloaded with lieutenants and it's not exactly obvious who's going to be the formation CO.  Too many problems with infantry captains being placed in charge of a larger formation even though there's more tactically competent ones leading armored forces who are intended to be the CO.  At least one corporal per squad, and newcomers are recruits until either a year in service or first combat when they're promoted to private.

I try to have vehicle commanders at least one rank higher than the rest for the sake of easily telling who's in command to help determine what the special abilities are when deployed.  Sergeants are typically in command of vehicles (although sometimes a corporal is necessary when expanding), with lance/company commanders as lieutenants/captains as normal.

Aerospace fighter pilots I'm treating somewhat more traditionally with them being at least officers.

Still working out a decent progression of selection of ranks.  Definitely not promoting people based solely on skills, kind of weird to have almost an entire unit of officers or, as noted, a whole tank crew.  Promotions above corporal are on availability so if a slot isn't open it doesn't happen regardless of time in rank.

DropShip crews are another point of confusion.  Who gets to be the Captain - 'crewmember', maybe, but who's chief engineer?  OK, how about their second in command?  What rank should pilots be - enlisted, officer?

[pfarland]

I usually handle ranks as skill with some extra (I use my own rank system based on the US Military with extra ranks tossed in. Mostly to sort out the ones with Tactics, SPAs, and/or Anti-Mech.

[johnboyjjb]

Analysis paralysis has set in. It has been 10 days and I've made no forward progress.

[pheonixstorm]

For the most part, is there really a need to promote support personnel? That would eliminate a lot of the headache alone. Even Dropship and Jumpship personnel don't often need promotions unless you have a lot of turnover (via RP or ATB).

[dgorsman]

This prompted me to do some testing and after a few tries I've managed to rebuild the custom ranks to handle at least a few of my requirements.

Infantry and vehicle crew ranks got a few steps back, so a Sergeant in an infantry or vehicle role is an E5 compared to the MechWarrior E12.  Some of the intermediate NCO/officer ranks such as Staff Sergeant and Sergeant First Class were added.  Officer ranks have something similar although less pronounced, and it matches up at O8/Colonel and above.  That all allowed me to update ranks in infantry and vehicle units to avoid some command conflicts i.e. I can have a MW Lieutenant in the command couch of a dual-seat Atlas along with a whole mess of infantry with 1st/2nd Lieutenants in charge of each platoon and there's no guessing who's tactical skill bonuses are coming into play for scenario generation.

Technicians got their own ranks structure with no officer ranks at all.  Top listed members are Warrant Officers.  Took a lot of fruitless searches trying to find a list of technical-sounding ranks that I swear was posted here at some point.

Because of the changes in actual rank level I had to spend an afternoon grinding through personnel to fix rank levels to match what they would have been, followed by another grind through to fix the "Demotion" entries in the logs (thankfully I could do that in the raw XML).