Well, semi-official. How about we start posting tips on good crew management as we learn more about our luverly new sim? I think that the way crew management is modelled in this sim, it will end up being as important as any other single facet.

As for myself, I'm still getting accustomed to the idea that I can even manage the crew. I'm used to SH2 where I mostly just maneuvered and fired. In this sim, I'm cruising along and suddenly my engines stop because I forgot about my tired diesel guys.

I have to do some reading on this. I hope there is a way to set up for proper watches without having to manually do a click fest for an entire patrol.

It does add a lot of debth of the game. This is an amazing simulation. Truely one of the best, if not the best simulation I've ever had the pleasure of trying. The immersion factor is off the scale.

This might actually have a shot at game of the year. It is a hands down lock for simulation of the year.

Extrodanary piece of programing.

I believe that at high time compression crew fatigue simulation is suspended.

That doesn't entirely avoid having to go through a click-fest, but it at least helps.

From what I can tell there isn't a way to automatically rotate crew in and out.

I notice that it takes a fairly long time for them to regain endurance.... I've stuck them in crew quarters and done nothing (both submerged and surfaced, in case there's a difference) and it takes a couple days for them to be ready for duty again! That seems a titch exaggerated: you shouldn't need more than 6-8 hours of rest to be fully ready for duty again in a wartime scenario.

That said, I love that this aspect was introduced. This morning I took my Type II out toward Scapa Flow (why on earth they assigned my green crew to patrol there I'll never know!). We encountered a small cargo ship on the way and sank it. A day later we encountered another. After prosecuting one failed attack (dud, and a miss) I simply didn't have the crew resources to pursue and had to let him go. It was frustrating, in a good sort of way.

I haven't even hit my patrol station and I'm down to 2 fish. Sigh.

After that failed attack, I had to spend two days essentially idling to get my crew ready to continue. Would love to hear tips about keeping your crew on their toes!

I'm glad I'm not the only one. I guess we're in this together. Anything usefull I discover, I'll gladly share.

Okay, time to get out there again.

I'm on the final Exam mission and it's a long one. I'm finding the crew management to be a real pain. It's taking up a lot of my time.

There are several pre-sets you can click on depending on your situation, but if your mission is a long one (many can be in a dynamic campaign), everything gets messed up. You literally need to micromanage every crew member.

Plus, you're not notified that Karl Doe is sleepy and needs to go beddy-bye. You WILL get a message if you don't have enough bodies awake in the engine room, but you will know that anyway because the engines will stop...

I haven't even tried a campaign yet. I hope it doesn't ruin it. Right now, on a lengthy mission, it's more like the Sims than a WWII submarine.

There needs to be some kind of automated crew system. Karl should know when it's time for bed without the Captain having to tuck him in.

Aviar

It is not you have to check them every 24hour at least-

LOL...I wish it was every 24 hours. I'm still playing that mission I mentioned and it's more like every 10 minutes (real time), not game time.

Have you played a mission that has gone more than 12 hours (game time)? Come back when you have...LOL

Aviar

Ok I will cut out some of my crew observations in my other thread about my first campaign. These snipits are from three differnt postings. It worked for me and micromanage like heck. If your crusing around why do you need people in the torpedo rooms, the battery room? stand them down let them rest untill you do need them.

I ordered the navagator to plot a course back to base. I stood down 50% of the crew and gave them thier first eight hour sleep! After the eight hours was up most of their fatige was back upto full value. One has to really pay attention because I was only leting them rest long enough to get the red >>>! off of them.

Rotating crews on about 12 hour rotation seems to be paying off as I have almost elimenated the red >>>>! from most of them.

Crew fatituge is almost non existant now.

But, if you are in a long drawn-out engagement with a covoy, for instance, it can really get messy. You can't sit down 50% of your crew.

Another issue I just ran into. I just put my Weapons Officer to bed and now I don't have access to some areas of the sub
(Torpedo Attack, Weapons Mgmt., etc.) because his icon is blank. I can't check my torpedo screen, for instance.

Aviar

Um... yes, I have played a longer-than-12-hour mission. You can drop the attitude. Currently my T-II is cruising around Scapa Flow after having stopped in the middle of the ocean to rest up the crew. Believe me, it took much more than 12 hours to get from base to Scapa. :p

When I'm cruising on the open ocean at 1024x compression, my crew members do not seem to become increasingly fatigued. That's what led to my guess that fatigue simulation is suspended (shoot, it HAS to be -- no crew member could stay on the bridge for 24 hours in a row without fatiguing).

When I drop down to 'real time', so to speak, they fatigue quite quickly.

Yes. That part is slightly annoying. I put my CE to bed, and suddenly couldn't dive the boat. More worrisome, I couldn't even check the CO2 status on the boat. (There has to be a gauge for it somewhere in the control room, right? I just couldn't find it?)

Hfael.
I think that I have to agree with you on this one. Because only when I putt around in real time does it seem to make a diffence. But they seem to recover even when time is accelarated just not as fast. They do not seem to loose any fatiuge though at advance time. I will need to keep a closer eye on this.

It's not cruising time that concerns me. It's a long draw-out on-going engagement that is problematic. The micromanagement of your crew is not very pleasant.

I don't mind so much managing them in battle, but when it comes to their nap times, their are grown men, for cripes sake.

Aviar

The Captain sets the watch rotation. :p

I just went back from a Patrol in AM13, december 1939-

It took me days to go there, 3 days of patrol, and days to come back.. and off course i had to manage my crew, even at 1024 X-

Ok, I just did a 20-day patrol in my Type VIIB in October '39 through the channel, around Ireland, passed the Orkneys and sailed back to Kiel. Ah, and sank 26.000 BRT with manual targetting and duds enabled.

1.) Organize your crew

Your officers and NCOs have traits such as "watch", "engine" etc., use them accordingly. NCOs get one, officers up to three such traits. If you've got a watch expert don't use him to haul torpedoes. Experts (and especially officers) will greatly enhance the efficiency of the station they're in.

2.) Plan accordingly

It's good to have those specialists ready when you need them. So take care of them by resting them so that they're not dead tired when you need them. For example, I always use my best men for watch in bad weather and darkness. Nothing worse than a bunch of blind men in the conning tower who don't spot that DD that comes charging out of the fog...

3.) Decorations etc...

The U-Bootfrontspange improves the recipients'exhaustion, other medals are good for increasing morale etc...

Use traits to get specialists where you need them. There's no use for 5 medics when you lack engine specialists.

On my 20-day patrol I never had problems with my crew. Usually not more than 2-5 men were marked with the dreaded exclamation marks (out of 49) so all stations were adequately crewed all the time.

It said either in the readme or the manual that under a high amount of time compression, crew fatigue is suspended.

"5.1 Crew Behavior/Time Compression
Silent Hunter 3 allows high time compression for long distance navigation.
To avoid unwanted gameplay issues, the crew endurance and morale evolution is frozen when time compression values are higher than x32."

Borrowed from the SubSim form.

Well, I finally started my first campaign. It's a little slow until you get to your patrol area. After that, anything goes. I had a few episodes of incredible immersion. Anyway, back to crew management (CM).

Although it's only my first patrol, I think I have a good grasp on CM. It actually seems easier on patrols compared to single missions. For one thing, I took a full crew. I think those single\training missions hold back a few sailors.

You will see 6 icons below the bow quarters area. They are your friends. Use them. Each will light up when it's available, depening on your sailing state. They are called:

Damage Control
Submerged Attack
Submerged Cruise Mode

Surface Attack
Surface Cruise Mode
Surface Anti-Air Attack

When you click on one that is active, it will basically move the crew around in a logical manner. It will take tired sailors and move them to their quarters and put fresh bodies in the various stations. It's not always perfect, but sometimes there are not enough fresh bodies to go around. (You have to click on the icon every so often. It does not continuously move the crew around automatically.) Also, it does not move officers. You will have to do that yourself.

Now, there are some quirks here for sure. As you may know, if you use MORE than 32x time compression, the crew attributes are frozen. This is both good and bad. They don't get weaker but they also don't get any stronger. You will have a real juggling act, no matter how you look at it.

Personally, my big concern was my 5 officers. I wanted to keep them fresh for battle. This is not easy because there are only two sleeping quarters. As you can see, the numbers are not on your side. When the two fresh officers are ready to take their watch, there are three tired officers fighting for two bunks. This is a little gamey, but we are stuck with it.

If you are on patrol, most of your time will be spent on the surface. So, you will find yourself using the Surface Cruise Mode most of all. I would use 32x speed to rest up some crew members and then go to a higher speed. The problem is that I still spent too much time on the crew management screen. This is still one area that the dev team should look into. I would really like the option of having a fully automated crew.

Aviar

Another thing - following a patrol you get to hand out a speciality to your crew. Since the diesel engines and bridge watch seem to tire people out quickest, it may be worth bulking up on those specialities first, esp. if you have a Type II and so don't really need deck gun or other skills.

thats true, but if you run at 1024x for 36hours, and than you go back to 1x suddenly all your crew turn to RED !!! soooo....

This is a great thread. Giving it a bump.

I wanted to mention that it seems like the crew assigned to the diesel room gets tired a lot quicker than the others.

The good news is that you don't need many people in there to run it so if you keep it half manned, and the other half in quarters you can do a half on/half off duty system quite easily.

I try to run my crew on a six hour watch schedule while I'm crusing, and I have two officers in bunks and rotate the other ones through the navigator, watch officer and chief engineers position so I always have relativly fresh crew. I like the crew management a lot in this, it adds a whole new dimension to the sim.

I like the idea of crew management also, but I think it could have been made a little easier.

Why couldn't you just assign crewman a shift, as they probably did in real life. Something like 12 hours on and 12 hours off. They would do this automatically. Only in certain circumstances, such as a running battle or lost crewmen would you need to micromanage the crew.

Aviar

Another interesting thing I found out reading the manual, you don't have to move the crews individually. If you right click on a compartment name and then left click on the other all the crew from the second will be transfered to the first.

Or the other way around.

Trait linking:

Bridge watch officer. Give him either flak or guns as well as watch and then torpedo. This sets him up to be very useful on the surface and once submerged he can pick up the forward/aft torpedo rooms or the weapons officer position.

(For the bridge also try to get one crew member to have watchmen as well. If you do this you can keep 80% watch with only the two up top)

Engine room officer. Give him mechanic, repair, helmsmen. The mechanic/repair work hand in hand. He runs the engine rooms when in combat and out of combat the boat stops and you repair. I gave him helmsmen so he can pull a shift on the control room as CE or NO.

CE. Helmsmen, mechanic/repair combo again.

NO. Helmsmen, watch, flak/deck. Same applies as the bridge watch except this combo is meant to stay in the control room after you go under.

WE. Helmsmen, torpedo, watchmen. (if you can get two of the three officers on the bridge helmsmen then you can run your 3 crew in that compartment to the bone with no fear of adverse effects) The torpedo skill comes in handy for his plotting and the watchmen helps him to id/range etc for his solutions.

Ok... just finished playing an 8 hour patrol (real time) and I am bushed... so I am nt even going to attempt to spell or correct my selling/grammer for this post...

Give this one a bumb as it is GOOD info!

On my next patrol, I'm gonna order a couple more bunks so all my officers can get a good night's sleep.

Aviar

Before your 1st patrol get all the crew you can and Hot bunk them. Fill up ever slot with the needed men, Sailors cost you next to nothing and Petty officers a little more and so on. People forget you really start your career with a skeleton crew. Use that renown and fill it up, you'll get more renown throughout you career.

I did that before I left port the last time. Sailors that are raw cost you nothing. Same with no experiance Warrent officers.

Also for everyone to know that the boats didn't patrol 24 hours a day.

When you get to the point where everyone is tired send every1 to quarters except the bridge crew, radio and sonar crew, fill both officer quarters slot, only 2 in bridge. Make sure your battery and air is good then dive to about 5 meters off the floor. Shut engines off, send those sailers to quarters, then time advance 6,8,10 hours then bam everyone is back to 100% except those on duty, just switch them out with fresh bridge crew and return to patroling.

Also you don't need a Weapons officer until you get into battle

Ok i read down half of these and you guys are confused.

The crew DOES NOT get tired at 256 speed and up. So there is no need to micromanage.

Dont worry about having tired crew, swap them out when it becomes a problem. You only have to micromanage if you start wanting a full 45 complement of wide awake crew (Thats not how it works)

Also lots seem to complain they get tired in battle. Thats the point though, they are supposed to tire, and you have to swap them around. Move your important men to rest when there is no need for them to be loading ect. It only takes about an hour to recover them half up. Set time to 32 and watch the stats in crew management, you can see them rising.

I hope all this helps, today i am going to try to make a hint page on my website, if i have time.

Here is my crew after a battle mid patrol, while i am searching i have my best crew, then when i have finished i will swap over crew if need be.

It is possible to edit your basic.cfg file so that noone ever gets fatigued or looses moral. I edited my officers so that they can not be fatigued and I am testing it in a career missions to scarpaflow. If it works I will post how to do it.

They should have implemented a feature called,
"Boats", aka the Chief.

You can easily disable fatigue with a small edit to the basic.cfg I edited it so my officers would not get fatigued and ran a 2 week mission with a 12 hour convoy hunt on the surface in a huge storm (managed to get 50k tons).

My regular crew were ALL fatigued at the end but none of my officers were showing signs of fatigue.

Example: Edited Crew
Example: Original Crew

Well, that is a bit of a cheat, isn't it :p

Anyone know if officers can rest up if we just put them in the aft torpedo room alone or something with nothing to do?

The interesting thing is that fatigue is not modelled for the skipper - now that would be a b*tch...gues I would rather let my CE have a nap in my bed

They don't. But I also noticed that the watch station on the bridge makes them tire faster (seems realistic).

I always put two officers resting at all time during cruise. At 1024x compression they do not seem to recover fast, but at 32x they recover in a few minutes. After a bit of shifting in 32x you will have all your officers fairly rested. Then go to 1024x. One drawback: the regular crew seem to tire very fast this way.

I enjoy the crew managment. Heck it just adds more demention to the game.

Had a thought about something that might make crew management a bit more...well...manageable. I don't know about y'all, but I remember faces much more than I remember names, especially crazy German names. A small, unique portrait for each crewman that is displayed on his stats page and enough of them so that on any given cruise, each man aboard the boat has a unique face. This would really help me with keeping track of the men during rotations and remembering who to reward, etc.

Since this is basically an interface issue, do you think it could be modded into the game?

:D

Hey Wolfar, was the spelling of "dimension" an intentional pun? Very clever to make it be derived from the word "demented" when talking about crew management!

I started my first career yesterday evening at 100%. It was helpful to read these forums before actually getting the game so I kinda had a plan of attack before I got started.

I'd like to disable the 32x crew management option as I like checking on my crew, running a sweep, and getting a cigarette on the deck every 6 hours. Time compression screws with this plan though.

Before I launched I went over my roster and used up my academy renown points, I didn't add crew though, only replaced. I launched at 15:00 on a bright September day. The first thing I did was fill the fore and aft bunks and max load the engine room. I pulled all men from the aft torpedo room and battery room. At this point I was only concerned with engines, sonar/radar, and watch.

For the next 4 days I rotated crew on 6 hour intervals and everyone seemed pretty happy with it. Some positions could even last 12 hours without a care. I followed a few reports and the crew rolled with it just fine.

When I engaged my first target is when several of my crew just seemed to flake out. Considering that my crew are a bunch of noobs I think the fatigue model is spot on. My men are city folk and not corn fed, we'll see how long they last.

A few questions...

1. Do you guys cruise at 1/3rd or standard?
2. Can the time compression fatigue x32 limiter be turned off?
3. Do men in a engine room get tired if the engine is off? i.e. what rests up the crew the best?
4. Does the gramophone effect morale? (It sure does for the Captain!)
5. Do you keep 4 officers or more? How many total men are optimal?
6. How long should I stay at sea? I count every shell and I'm very frugal with petrol.

I'm into 3rd week of a patrol that looks like it will last another 3 weeks and have about 70% fuel left. The key with patrols is not to waste torpedos on things like warships and coastel merchant ships. I put 1 torpedo into the side of a c2/c3 ship and then shell the hull until it sinks. I only attack at night also.
To save fuel use your battries until they get down to 25%, then resurface. I cruise mostly at 1/3. Sometimes standard if I get a report of a contact from the radio thats' close by.

Also to make the stamina last make sure you operate fully, no empty slots in engine rooms, conning tower, torpedo room.

1) I like to cruise at 1/3 for better fuel efficiency (especially that first sub I got).

3) Yes, men get tired in the engine room with the engines off. I found this out when I had more men than bunks and had to leave some guys in the engine room while my sub was idling for rest time. I think of it as the engine room guys doing downtime maintenance.

5) I have three officers at the helm and one watch officer. Right now I'm limited to 4 officers, but I compensated for that by trading in my watch officer for an officer with three qualifications (torpedoman, machinist, and watchman). This guy has it all and great stamina.

Not the greatest speller here.

Thera,

"I'd like to disable the 32x crew management option as I like checking on my crew, running a sweep, and getting a cigarette on the deck every 6 hours. Time compression screws with this plan though."


"2. Can the time compression fatigue x32 limiter be turned off?"


Go to 'My Documents/SH3/data/cfg/main' and open the file. Look for the following:

-----------------------------------
[TIME COMPRESSION]
TimeStop=0
RealTime=1
LandProximity=1
CriticalDamage=1
CrewEfficiency=1
AirEnemyDetected=1
SoundEffects=2
CharacterAnim=4
EnemyDetected=8
RadioReport=8
Particles=8
PrayState=8
HunterState=32
3DRender=32 <----Edit This Number
Maximum=1024
-----------------------------------

Change the '3DRender' value to a higher number [64,128,256,512,1024]. Your crew will experience rest\fatigue up to that speed. You will also be able to use the higher time compression on all your screens, not just the nav map.

A higher number will most likely result in more micromanagement on your part. Whatever floats your boat, skipper.

Aviar

I have`nt edited my crew, but have a pretty good handle on my crew management now. When I end a patrol, I always get a rating for a Petty Officer you`re allowed one rating a patrol, usually get a machinist, gunner, I`ve got three good torpedomen, and one hell of a deck gun crew, they`re fast on target and deadly, I newver use my flak gun though, it`s just plain foolish to slug it out on the surface with aircraft, I always crash dive, go to 50 meters if I have the depth, and change course, seems to work fine, I have`nt been damaged by aircraft yet. On my third patrol I ran into a motor torpedo boat while on the surface at night, I took him on with my deck gun, aiming at his searchlight, knocked him out in short order. I had another surface encounter on my 6th patrol with a British corvette, I was recharging batteries after a long game of cat and mouse with a British destroyer which I escaped. I could`nt dive so I went to flank speed, put the boat in a tight circle, and hammered him till he sank, he managed to hit my flack gun tower, which was`nt manned. I don`t advise taking on surface ships unless they surprise you, or it can`t be avoided, I was lucky. So it pays to have the right people in the right places. I also go on patrols with my emergency plans already laid out, so far I have`nt lost a boat yet. Puts

Yep me too. I may speed up or slow down to time my arrival to a location... like so I hit Dover at dusk if I have to go through the English Channel.

I may try this next patrol (4 officers). With only two bunks for 5 of them, it is inevitable that at some point - if the patrol is long enough - they will all fatigue.

U-1 (IIA), 2nd Patrol from Wilhelmshaven, Oct.1939.
Current position AN56; 27 crew, 22 bunks

1. On my first patrol, I once decided to dive, stop everything and to rest whomever could fit into quarters. Nothing happened for 12 hours. I surfaced and after fresh air filled the boat, the crew refreshed withing a few minutes. Even the watchmen felt better after they could smoke and pee into the seabreeze.

2. I have noticed several times that, after coming back from accelerated time, crew can tire or refresh within minutes. Since crew neither tire nor refresh during high accelerations, you could end up in a position where, back in real time, a crew could suddenly be exhausted within a few minutes of realtime. And those in quarters may have beeb so exhausted that they do not refresh as quickly.

3. I thus run 6 hour shifts, sometimes four hour shifts, with just two officers at stations, and resting the other two. As someone else above said, it is important to have the right specialisations for your officers. So you can get by with quality service from even a skeleton crew. I also take notice of some warrant officers and seamen who do double duty (like Seaman Viktor Beck and W.O. Gert Hartmann), so that I know who might get a medal or promotion. Hartmann I think will be my medic.

Good Hunting

OK, shoot me, but I don't want to have to manage my crew at all. I've got "The Sims2" for that kind of action.

I see the edit for the officers above, will this same edit work for the rest of the crew?

There is a new mod, No Fatigue Mod but it actually reduces fatigue doesn't eliminate it.
http://www.subsim.com/subsim_files/patches.html

Discussed here:
http://subsim.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=30783

Good find Harry , I've tried that out all day today, and haven't found any bad side effects yet. The men still wear out, just not 'unrealistically' fast. Maybe a little too slow, with the version "Church" has cooked up, but it's a 'work in progress'... .

Our own 'Dick Dastardly' mentioned this mod the other day.... ...I've been 'testing' it since.

Much better than turning 'Fatigue' off completely.

[FATIGUE_COEF]
;comp 0
RegularFactor00=0.0035
SpecificFactor00=0.005
BadWeather0=0.01
;comp1
RegularFactor10=0.0025
RegularFactor11=0.0025
SpecificFactor10=0.005
SpecificFactor11=0.005
BadWeather1=0.01
;comp2
RegularFactor20=0.0025
RegularFactor21=0.0025
SpecificFactor20=0.005
SpecificFactor21=0.005
BadWeather2=0.01
;comp3
RegularFactor30=0.0025
RegularFactor31=0.0025
SpecificFactor30=0.005
SpecificFactor31=0.005
BadWeather3=0.01
;comp4
RegularFactor40=0.0025
RegularFactor41=0.0025
SpecificFactor40=0.005
SpecificFactor41=0.005
BadWeather4=0.01
;comp5
RegularFactor50=0.0025
RegularFactor51=0.0025
SpecificFactor50=0.005
SpecificFactor51=0.005
BadWeather5=0.01
;comp6
SpecificFactor60=-0
SpecificFactor61=-0
;comp7
SpecificFactor70=-0
SpecificFactor71=-0
;comp8
RegularFactor80=0.0025
RegularFactor81=0.0025
SpecificFactor80=0.005
SpecificFactor81=0.005
BadWeather8=0.01
;comp9
RegularFactor90=0.0025
SpecificFactor90=0.005
BadWeather9=0.01
;comp10
RegularFactor100=0.025
SpecificFactor100=0.005
BadWeather10=0.01
;comp 11
RegularFactor110=0.0025
RegularFactor111=0.0025
SpecificFactor110=0.005
SpecificFactor111=0.005
BadWeather11=0.01

Sticky Please.

we all might as well live in trees and fling our crap at each other

So it IS about money after all then



Ming

bumpity-bump!