Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock/Officers

During the campaign, you will be spending Requisition Points to recruit various Officers for your fleets. Officers provide powerful bonuses, and allow for fleets to have a larger Fleet Point budget.

Officers will be assigned to an individual ship within that fleet, and will be killed if that ship is destroyed. Ensure the flagship of the fleet is well defended.

The screenshot on the right indicates information about each officer. From top to bottom:
 * The officer's name, currently uncustomizable.


 * The officer's experience points, out of how many points are required to level up. Promotions are described below.


 * The officer's Leadership skill, which influences Ship Posture


 * The current location of the fleet this officer is assigned to; in this example, Sagitteron.


 * The fleet point budget; in this example, the fleet this officer is assigned to can have 5000 fleet points.
 * A numerical and text rank.


 * Fluff information; the officer's birthplace and gender. This information cannot be changed.


 * The amount of RP required to promote the officer; in this case, the officer has enough experience to rank up for free.


 * The skills the officer has unlocked.

Hiring Officers
Each of the colonies, provided they are still in the Quorum of Twelve, will provide officers to the recruitment pool. Officers are not currently customizable.

To hire an officer, open the Officers screen from the map layer, then select Recruitment to see the list of officer candidates. A hired officer will be added to your list of current officers, and must then be assigned to a fleet. Selecting the officer in your list of current officers, and then selecting Assign, will allow you to select from your various fleets an individual ship for your officer to move his or her flag to.

Promoting Officers
Rank 1 Officers cost 50 RP each. Rank 2 Officers (officers with one promotion already) are rarer, and cost 150 RP.

Once an officer has gained enough experience, they can be promoted. Upon promotion, an officer will gain a skill point that can be assigned to one of three skills - a System skill, affecting the entire fleet; a Command skill, common to all officers, that expands the point limit of the fleet; or a Flagship-specific Captain skill, that affects only the ship the officer is on.

Officers can also be promoted early by spending additional Requisition Points instead of gaining EXP.

It is not possible to "stack" skills, and skill points must be distributed evenly across at least two of the three branches.

Officer Skills
Command Skills improve the number of Fleet Points available to the fleet. With each ship in the fleet costing a certain number of Fleet Points, choosing this skill will allow for larger fleets, to a fixed cap of seven ships. All officers share this tree.

Fleet point ranks become available at Ranks 2, 4, 6, and 8.

Fleet Skills improve a specific subsystem, for the entire fleet. Each rank adds +1 strength to that subsystem. CIC officers are the most flexible, and should be your first pick.

Fleet skill upgrades become available at ranks 2 to 5. These skills improve the system's effectiveness, not its health or resistance to enemy attack.

Captain Skills usually affect only the ship the officer is on.

CIC officers' experience gain is particularly helpful in reaching the other skills in the tree, and is always a good choice. The Decisive Leader skill, combined with CIC upgrades, can provide greatly enhanced stance bonuses, as high as +10 or +11. This allows ships to boost their sensor range (Defensive stance), or their weapon range and missile salvo size (Offensive stance) and is therefore the best option for dealing damage using Battlestars, Rangers, Minotaurs, and Adamants. Note that non-Rangers have their guided missile salvos upgraded from 4 to 5 missiles at +7 Offensive stance, which all officers obtain at level 9 but CIC officers reach much sooner.

CAG is an acronym for Carrier Air Group, and thus emphasizes squadrons. As all the bonuses apply to the flagship, however, the CAG is best stationed on a ship like the Atlas or a Battlestar with multiple squadron slots. Squadron accuracy can easily win small dogfights against Raider squadrons, while Squadron Max Speed can allow Vipers to escape from larger battles to dock and repair, although this isn't very reliable. Perhaps more useful is the +1% squadron evade bonus that comes with each Hangar level and applies to the entire fleet: when you start stacking 8+ fighter squadrons with a maximum level bonus, their 25% evade (instead of 20%) adds a decent amount of effective HP (which you will need when the Cylons start bringing 12+ squadrons).

Combat Engineers emphasize armor and repair. Their fleet damage reduction bonus is very small, maxing out under 10%, but it applies in every battle. The Subsystem and Squadron repair bonuses are additive, so their effect is most felt when the ship is in full Offensive stance: a ship set to +7 Offense has 92% Subsystem repair rate with a max strength Engineer leading the fleet, vs 72% without. However, you may not want to max out the fleet bonus in order to get the +20 Armor bonus on your flagship.

Explorers provide notable mobility bonuses, which can be quite effective for kiting larger fleets with missiles and fighter craft dealing damage. As your Flagship will often be a Battlestar, Leadfoot is not very useful but Spatial Awareness is extremely good: the Cylons have a nasty habit of starting the battle below you and shredding your Battlestars' bottom armor, and this bonus is the only way to get a Battlestar down to their elevation in time without flying away from the enemy fleet.

Technologists provide bonuses to the Tech Bay system, which emphasizes DRADIS range and Firewall capability. While the ability to identify targets at a distance for long range missile strikes sounds beneficial, the bonus is stymied by how it affects only the flagship. Scouting enemy fleets with your officer's flagship is extremely risky. The firewall benefits, while notable, are strictly defensive; the commanding officer's bonuses, by contrast, can use stance bonuses to provide similar firewall regeneration bonuses.

The Marine Colonel is effective at conducting boarding operations, but is most at home in repelling them. Bonuses to strength and marine armor take the teeth out of Cylon boarding parties, allowing you to all but ignore incoming Heavy Raiders and focus your point defense elsewhere. A CIC officer can also handle boarding parties by switching to Defensive posture, but the value of a Marine officer is the ability to keep the ship in Offensive posture and still maintain good Flak and Marine strength, rather than losing valuable turns of damage due to Defensive posture lowering your Battlestar's weapon range. The Marine Colonel also has access to the unique Demolitions Expert skill, which increases missile salvo size. This can greatly increase the damage output of a Ranger or Janus, but then you miss out on the Flak bonus for your Battlestar making it a tricky decision. Demolitions Expert does not improve the number of missiles carried by the ship, so a Celestra with resupply capability will be necessary to increase staying power.