Career Length

[BH]

I remember after 3 patrols in SH1 it would say that the average career length of a U.S. submarine captain was 3 patrols do you want to continue or Retire? I am sure that will likely not be included in the SH4, however it does seem from the research I have conducted that the average career length was 3 patrols and then either a training or desk job was assigned. It should be interesting to see what kind of tonnage numbers could be put up after 3 patrols.

[ReallyDedPoet]

Good question there. I am sure there must be a big difference between a U-Boat Career compared to the US Subs as well.

[tedhealy]

The crew turnover was huge too. Experienced men were constantly transfered to new subs. Hopefully this will be included along with an option for realistic career length.

[flintlock]

I'd be interested to know the facts on this too, great question. Anyone out there able to shed some light onto average patrol career length for US sub commanders during WWII?

[BellJack95]

Here is a link to the fleet submarine website that discusses WWII boats and skippers. http://www.fleetsubmarine.com/personalities.html As you scroll the list you will see some skippers were captain of more than one boat. Note for example: Hiram Cassidy, class of 1931 - he commanded the SeaRaven on patrols from June 1942 thru August 1943 and then went on shore for a bit before coming back to command Tigrone in 1945 for a couple of patrols.

In reading the Clay Blair Jr. Silent Victory book (p.551) it makes mention that a sub captain could be relieved for poor performance (a.k.a. lack of aggressiveness) and that in 1942 there was approximately 30% of the sub skippers were relieved and that shrank to about 14% in 1943 (25 out of 178 sub captains) but this lower number in 1943 was due mainly to the lack of qualified skippers available to take command to replace a poor performer - Adm Lockwood only began to reach down and promote men from the classes of 1933 thru 1935 during this year and was reluctant to promote (in his eyes) less qualified men as he was concerned with submarine loss rate, expecting it to rise if a younger, less seasoned commander was in command. It is also noted that he was reluctant to appoint reserve officers (even if they were fully qualifed) to command of submarines. So when faced with a small pool of qualifed commanders he was willing to overlook to an extent the lack of success of some captains.

It appears the length of tour a submarine captain had in the US Navy was based on how well or how poorly they performed on patrol. So I don't know if in Silent Hunter IV if our characters will have 3 to 5 patrols and then rotate to a 'desk' or sent to 'new construction' assignment that will last several months game time and then go back to sea with a new command. Doing so would be historically accurate but it would take away from the amount of time our character would be in action.

[Egan]

Although I am in favour of a realistic career length being included from the get-go, I'm possitive that there will be a new ShCommander type of thing that will allow this within a few months of release.

I really would like to see realistic crew transfers though. That one is very important to me (as is most of the crew management.) Sh3 was very much lacking in this regard but can be forgiven for simply having any form of crew management in there at all. Sh3 was good. SH4 must be better.

[flintlock]

Informative post, BellJack - thanks for that.

Personally I'd be happy with either historically similar (WWII US navy) commander/crew rotations, or a tweaked subset the developers deemed appropriate for gameplay purposes. I wasn't a fan of the stock crew management system that SH3 employed, though SH4 looks to have addressed this quite nicely.