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Again, depending on the service's personnel management rules, but probably not.

OK, have modified code so you only do boot camp once even if you leave and re-enlist.

Now I have another "funny". This program takes no prisoners with logic!

I generated one guy who qualified as an officer for one term of military service but then aging effects dropped his INT to C
He then signed on for another term of military service but he was demoted to PFC because he was too stupid now to be an officer lol (see output below).
So, the question is, could an officer be demoted due to aging? I seriously doubt it.

Age: 41
Abilities:
- - STR: C; AGL: B; INT: C; EMP: B; CUF: D
Skills:
- - Ranged Combat: B, Survival: D, Medical Aid: C, Stamina: D, Command: D, Persuasion: D
Specialties:
- - Biker
Background...
- - Childhood: Small Town
Careers:
- - Hustler, (6 years)
- - Combat Support, PFC (1 year)
- - Liberal Arts, (5 years)
- - Combat Service Support, 2nd Lieutenant (5 years)
- - Combat Service Support, PFC (4 years)
- - Combat Arms, PFC (2 years)

Log output...

In createCharacter method
Number of attribute increases rolled: 5
Increased AGL to level B
Increased EMP to level B
Increased INT to level B
Increased EMP to level A
Increased AGL to level A
Childhood Small Town: Gained Ranged Combat at level D
Childhood Small Town: Gained Biker specialty
Career Combat Support (boot camp): Raised Ranged Combat to level C
Career Combat Support: Gained Survival at level D
Effects of Age: AGL dropped to level B
Career Combat Service Support: Raised Ranged Combat to level B
Career Combat Service Support: Gained Medical Aid at level D
Effects of Age: INT dropped to level C
Career Combat Service Support: Raised Medical Aid to level C
Career Combat Service Support: Gained Stamina at level D
Effects of Age: EMP dropped to level B
Career Combat Arms: Gained Command at level D <---- bug. I think this is because program still thought he was an officer when in fact he was now a PFC
Career Combat Arms: Gained Persuasion at level D <---- bug. I think this is because program still thought he was an officer when in fact he was now a PFC

Executive decision. Once an officer, always an officer! Program amended to not drop officers back to the ranks if they no longer qualify for Officer.

I am thinking of doing something similar for Police careers, i.e. if you make Detective and do another term in the police, you don't drop back to Police Officer.

The player chose to reduce INT. I'm not sure that should shield them from not being able to continue as an officer.

Career officers (at least around here) have a reputation for gettin' dumber as they get older, so I think I agree with with Baldrick on this one, although RAW because you "choose" your career each term rather than "continue" in it, I suspect the official answer is "no more officerin' for you"

Interesting. As you say the AI player "chose" to apply their aging effect reduction to INT and then chose to continue in the military. How many real players would do this? Probably not many. The aim of this program is to generate a lot of diverse and interesting characters whilst also being somewhat smart and not doing really crazy stuff, but that's a fine line to walk. I think if the player was told they would no longer be an officer if they dropped INT, and they were intending to continue in the military, they'd decrease something else instead. I'll try to get that logic into the program.

Program amended now so that if character did a term in the military as an officer and no longer meets the requirements for officer, they muster out and continue their lifepath in civi street until war breaks out. In other words, they leave the services on a high note, so to speak.

Skill increases now implemented for all careers. Promotion check and gaining career specialties still to do. It's also too random at the moment so I intend to tweak the code so that characters with less than 3 terms have a higher chance of choosing Education, Blue Collar and Crime careers, and characters with 2+ Education terms have a higher chance of choosing White Collar careers. This will give characters a greater chance of gaining the necessary education for Officer, Doctor, Professor, etc. before war breaks out. For the first few terms, characters will tend to go into Education if qualified, or into Blue Collar or Crime if not. I may also weight these according to childhood, e.g. Street Kid, Working Class more likely to take Police, Blue Collar and Crime, Intellectual, Affluence more likely to take Education, and Small Town, Military Family more likely to take Military Service. Gradually the code will get smarter and produce more realistic outcomes.

I'm not military, but I was always under the impression that barring a dishonorable discharge (via court martial or the like), officers in the US military (at the very least) maintain their highest rank attained and, if reactivated, return at that rank. It's part of the lifetime commission thing. And retired US Army officers are subject to recall at their prior rank whenever the Reserves choose to activate them.

I'd say an Officer that goes from active service to civilian and back to active service keeps their Rank regardless of the inability to make prereqs. Enlisted folks wouldn't necessarily have the same situation, but I'd guess that the military, if reactivating or re-enlisting someone, would likely do their best to leverage prior skills/rank whenever possible.

I'm not military, but I was always under the impression that barring a dishonorable discharge (via court martial or the like), officers in the US military (at the very least) maintain their highest rank attained and, if reactivated, return at that rank. It's part of the lifetime commission thing. And retired US Army officers are subject to recall at their prior rank whenever the Reserves choose to activate them.

I'd say an Officer that goes from active service to civilian and back to active service keeps their Rank regardless of the inability to make prereqs. Enlisted folks wouldn't necessarily have the same situation, but I'd guess that the military, if reactivating or re-enlisting someone, would likely do their best to leverage prior skills/rank whenever possible.

This is generally the case, but recall is limited to age 65 except for certain general and flag officers. However, if the officer is REFRADed*, they may have to revert to an enlisted grade (the most junior one if they never served as an enlistedman), if they want to come back on their own.

Generally in the US, if you get recalled or you come back after retiring, it's at your previous grade. If you want to come back and you're enlisted, you may lose rank on reenlisting.


*ie, "cordially invited" to request RElease FRom Active Duty. aka, fired

I worked on the program some more last night and it's growing in complexity. I had to do a small redesign to allow for automated unit tests to be added, and will probably do another small redesign to move prerequisite tests for careers into the separate career classes to act as gatekeepers so that game rules are not broken. I want the AI player to make sensible choices and this is where the complexity is increasing. If I can get it working well it would be a useful tool for generating the stats of lots of pre-gen characters, which could be written up into a document similar to those "1001 Characters" style RPG supplements. This would be a nice thing to have as I can see T2K4 combat being pretty lethal to PCs and NPCs!