Command and respect
Rank says who commands. Respect decides whether it works.
The ladder
The colony runs on a formal command ladder, but nobody hands out ranks. A person's grade is earned automatically — it grows out of what they know, what they have lived through and how long they have served, and it can never be granted, bought or taken away. What you decide is not the number but the career: people move by being seated into functions — work positions, department leads, civic offices, command of a team in the field.
Every team has a commander, and how many people one person can effectively direct is limited — grow past a commander's span and performance frays at the edges. Seating someone into a function the crew does not rate them for is always allowed; the game marks the mismatch and lets the consequences do the arguing. Authority handed to someone the crew does not rate is authority resented.
When a commander dies — and commanders die — succession matters. Who steps up is shaped by grade, standing and the relationships already in place, not by a menu you pick from after the fact.
A chain turned over
Succession, reassignment and appointment can all leave a senior person reporting to a junior one — and so can simple growth, because grades rise on their own: a subordinate can quietly outgrow their superior without anyone deciding anything. Nothing forbids the arrangement — a mayor of modest grade genuinely commands the officers under them, and their orders carry. But it costs both people, every turn it stands.
The one who was stepped over loses satisfaction and carries the strain of living with it, the more so the better educated they are. The one commanding them leads on undermined footing: their edge behaves like a deficit even when their respect is fully earned, which drags on the work of everyone under them and raises the odds of something going wrong. When the arrangement forms, it damages the relationship in both directions at once, and the crew files remember why.
The fix is structural, not moral: reseat one of them so the chain reads the right way up.
Respect is personal
Respect is not a single score — it lives per relationship. A subordinate respects their commander based on what they have seen them do: proving competence under command earns it, visible failure burns it. A leader whose authority lags their standing can still close that gap in the field, and the crew remembers when they do — though a fast-growing grade can drift back into deficit faster than command is proven.
Careers write feelings of their own. People notice the gap between who they are and the seat they hold, an ambitious few feel it far more sharply than the content, and every appointment leaves a wake: gratitude in the one who rose, envy in those with the stronger claim who watched the seat go elsewhere. Traits earned in a person's history change how they lead and how they are led, and an appointment that looks right on paper can be wrong for the people involved.