NYGM fatigue modeling compromise

I play both GW and NYGM, and enjoy them immensely . . . for the most part. My only gripe is the fatigue system in NYGM. Not that I think it's wrong, because I don't. It's logical and sensible, but it's just too labour-intensive for me.

I gave it a good thinking-over and came up with what I believe is a workable and logical compromise. Instead of setting 3DRender to the same setting as Maximum (NYGM recommnds setting both to 1024) I've set the 3DRender setting to 128. And here's why:

Anything over a speed of 256 seems to make aircraft buggy. In case you've wondered why you can run on the surface during the mid-to-late part of the war and never see a plane, you're probably running at maximum compression. So I set my compression no higher than 256 (unless wa-aaaaaaay out in the Atlantic and heading for the US) when traveling to and from my patrol areas, or when on a target (usually convoy) intercept.

That serves two purposes: one is that aircraft encounters become more frequent (yeah, I know . . . like we want to have 'em dropping in on us for lunch?) and the other is that my crew do not suffer fatigue loss (or gain either; can't have your cake and eat it too yanno). I justify the no fatigue loss as simply being the crew rotating watches like they're supposed to do, all on their own.

However, at anything slower than 256 (i.e 126, 64, etc) fatigue does start coming into effect. So lengthy convoy interceptions --or the lengthier escort escapes-- do require me to pay attention to fatigue: which crew are on duty, who is getting tired, which ones are resting . . . sure doesn't pay to have your repair-qualified POs passed out just when ya need 'em!

So far this seems to work for me. I'd enjoy comments and observations from the rest of y'all fine Kaleuns out there if you'd like to pass 'em along though.

[Church SUBSIM]

I have 2 careers and one I run true to NYGM's standard settings and the other I do exactly as you have described. Either way I can play which career sets my play time when I sit down. I agree that anything over 256 compression makes the AI in SHIII less reliable and takes away from the sim. As you say, when you are way out in the Atlantic, you can afford to advance the compression (depending on year).

Good compromise.

[P_Funk]

The idea of having fatigue functional at all levels of TC would make for a very long trip to the American coast. Last night I started a drumbeat career and had a patrol grid set just south of Norfolk. Running at 1/3 it would take me 400 some odd hours. Imagine having to change crew a few times a day for HOWEVER MANY DAYS 400 HOURS ARE!

I've never used NYGM before. so could you describe how its fatigue works?

[Church SUBSIM]

NYGM and GreyWolves (TGW) projects are both outstanding .... you should really give both a go.

The fatuige model in NYGM is not all that unlike several of the options that you find in TGW. Basically the idea is that 3D rendering is equal to that of your highest compression for the hard core player, which in effect means that the fatigue model is in play all of the time. You can create a safe haven of no fatigue by having the 3D rendering set lower than the higest compression (in essence turning it off). For example, 3D rendering is at 125 and max compression is at 1024.

The downside of higher compression (and it effects all mods and the vanilla game) is that higer compression makes the AI forgo certain events (ie: air attacks and such).

Hope that helps.

[irish1958]

P_Funk
24X7=168
400/168=2.4 weeks
0.4X7=2.8 days
0.8X24=19.2 hours
0.2X60=12 minutes
:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:etc.
I hope this helps.

[kylania]

Originally Posted by P_Funk

The idea of having fatigue functional at all levels of TC would make for a very long trip to the American coast. Last night I started a drumbeat career and had a patrol grid set just south of Norfolk. Running at 1/3 it would take me 400 some odd hours. Imagine having to change crew a few times a day for HOWEVER MANY DAYS 400 HOURS ARE!

I've never used NYGM before. so could you describe how its fatigue works?

50 crew changes in 400 hours at sea. At least the method I play NYGM using.

Basically I have two shifts for most stations and three watch crews. Every 8 hours (0800, 1600 and 0000) I swap the shifts for each other and rotate in one of the three watch crews. By doing this my men are always around 75% fatigued and are fully rested by the time their shifts come back up. Problem is dragging 20+ lil dudes around the boat several times a minute at high TC really really sucks. :/

I believe you can probably go with just two shifts and run them 12 hours at a time. The problem comes in if you get into trouble. If during midshift, you'll have two sets of half exhausted crew members. With the 8 hour shift plan you've always got some leeway with who's ready for work or not. Remember too, reloading torps takes a long time for people to be stuck in the bow or stern and that runs them down even faster. So it's the difference between being reloaded with a half tired crew or being half reloaded and your entire crew is exhausted and can't reload anymore.

Really play around with it and find your own style. The trick mentioned in this thread about higher TC than 3D views works well, just remember you'll need to work in time to rest your guys up at low TC after the battle and while they are resting the remainder of your crew is getting tired on watch, so it's difficult to catch up sometimes.

I kinda guessed that having this moved from the main board to here was a death knell for this.

[Steeltrap]

I've tried fiddling around with these settings, but I've ultimately disabled fatigue.

I realism it's terribly unrealistic, but I got SOOOOO sick of the fact that I spent far more time moving my crew around than doing anything else in the sim....hell, they should've called it SHRIII - Silent Human Resources: the staffing challenge.

Having turned fatigue off, I no longer have the problems I had before:

- had to move bridge staff after 4 hours in heavy weather, and eventually they couldn't regain in the crew spaces the fatigue they'd got on lookout, so I had to dive for 12-18hrs regularly.

- moving crew every 8 hours - on 256TC that meant doing it every 10 minutes or so (it seemed).

- having to find space for the crew when I dived (carried full crew to cover fatigue, but there isn't space in VII for that level of crew). Also had the problem of people going to the torpedo rooms or overcrowding the engine spaces.

This is something they MUST get right for SHIV. We need a watch bill, and also a 'general quarters' crew position roster. Can set for surface normal, dive normal, and each of those for GQ.

Perhaps the fatigue lessens as your crew gains experience, but I just got fed up. They (the SHIII developers) cannot have tested this properly to have released it the way it is.

[Hitman]

I'd enjoy comments and observations from the rest of y'all fine Kaleuns out there if you'd like to pass 'em along though.

There are two things in Sh3 I really HATE, one is the lack of wolfpacks and the second the crew management.

The first one I solved by playing in those areas/eras where wolfpacks were not present, mainly the Mediterranean or late war campaigns.

The second one was an issue for just 1 second; that's the time I needed to realize that I was willing to play U-Boot commander and not U-Boot chief of the crew or U-Boot nurse. So I started disabling the fatigue, but then followed a user's idea (Kaa), experimented a bit and concluded that there was a reasonable way to use it: I set max TC to 512 and 3Drender also 512, but then I tweaked the fatigue in all compartments and the crew fatigue to have the crew be really tired in aproximately 60 days -or less if bad weather-. I.e. they do tire all the time at the same level, no matter if engaging the enemy or not, which might not be realistic, but the overall effect of having your crew tired after 2 months of patrol seemed reasonable. And I was more interested in that overall effect than in nursing the crew or playing U-Boot petty officer. You know, there is a war out there, we are loosing it, and as a Kaleun I had more important things to do

[Konovalov]

I share your view Hitman with regard to your two pet hates within SHIII.

I turned the fatigue off completely via SHIII Commander as I would prefer to devote all my attention to navigation, observation, maneuvering, manual plotting, manual targeting, and all the other wonderful facets that make up this great sim.

[irish1958]

I agree with about all of the above statements. The only realistic way to do this is to set watch crews at the start of the patrol, and have them automatically rotated when due. During stress times, even fatigue should not interfer with duty. During a convoy encounter or while being depthcharged is it realistic for a sailor to stop working because he is too tired? Perhaps reduced efficiency, but not complete collapse.

I can hear it now: "Herr Kaleum, I just can't run this engine anymore; It's tea time and I need my rest because all these booms have made me nervous"
Kaleun (drawing Luger) "Perhaps a little motivation is in order"
Bang bang
Suddenly the rest of the crew enjoy new vigor, and devotion to duty.

[Sailor Steve]

Not to mention the fact that even if the entire engine room crew fell asleep on the job the engines wouldn't stop. They wouldn't respond to orders, and the engines might start to break down after a while...
"Herr Kaleun, we're too tire to work anymore. Until you get replacements down here, we're shutting everything down".
"Fritz, get my pistol. I have to go talk to the engine-room crew."

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

Not to mention the fact that even if the entire engine room crew fell asleep on the job the engines wouldn't stop. They wouldn't respond to orders, and the engines might start to break down after a while...
"Herr Kaleun, we're too tire to work anymore. Until you get replacements down here, we're shutting everything down".
"Fritz, get my pistol. I have to go talk to the engine-room crew."

I guess that's the issue that frosts my flakes the worst. I'd be all right if, when I dropped to TC1 because of a contact or to 1-1 things, and went to change engine speed I was told I had insufficient crew to man the compartment. But constantly having my engines cut off is both illogical and doggone frustrating.

Originally Posted by irish1958

I agree with about all of the above statements. The only realistic way to do this is to set watch crews at the start of the patrol, and have them automatically rotated when due. During stress times, even fatigue should not interfer with duty. During a convoy encounter or while being depthcharged is it realistic for a sailor to stop working because he is too tired? Perhaps reduced efficiency, but not complete collapse.

I can hear it now: "Herr Kaleum, I just can't run this engine anymore; It's tea time and I need my rest because all these booms have made me nervous"
Kaleun (drawing Luger) "Perhaps a little motivation is in order"
Bang bang
Suddenly the rest of the crew enjoy new vigor, and devotion to duty.

:rotfl: :rotfl:

How about this as an idea? As fatigue increases, the time it takes to perform duties also increases (which some mods already do) but . . .

Once a crewman reaches 'full' fatigue, then passes that (i.e. forced due to circumstances to continue working), things start happening.

For instance, my idea would be that, once reaching full (100%) fatigue level, a crewman could be 'pushed' past that. Doing so would not only continue to increase the time needed to perform a task, but would add a chance of something being overlooked, or done wrong. Things like torpedo depths and pistols set wrong, or not at all. Engines being damaged because an oil leak was missed and it cracked a rod. Breaching the surface when meaning to go to periscope depth.

You could 'push' a crewman until 150% of max fatigue, at which point they would 'grey ghost' and stop functioning. Effectively passing out on their feet. It would take as long to recover back to full fatigue (go from 150% to 100%) as it normally does to completely recover (100% to 0%). So a passed out crewman would take twice as long to recover than just an exhausted one.

You'd get warnings that your crew was exhausted, but they'd still keep working, alleviating the abrupt engine stops and the like, which in turn gives you time to rotate them before things stop working.

I'd also love to see an ability to pre-set watch billets and action stations: who is on what watch, how long the watch is, which ones man damage control, etc. Sure that might take a while, but you'd only have to do it the once (except as you enlist additional crew over time, but that'd only take a moment).