Crew management

[Bilge_Rat]

very nice. No more having to babysit every sailor as in SH3.


Crews will rotate on their own every 4 hours, very navy like. Crewmen will sleep, if they are too tired.

You can still micromanage, but the AI XO will do it about 80% as well, so I let him handle it and just check the big board 2-3 times a day.

One nice touch, the crew gets more fatigued in rough weather, but you can recover quickly if you dive to a easy depth, say 150 feet and let them rest. Just watch your battery level at high TC.

one nitpick, It would be nice if you could tell at a glance the fatigue level of the crew, like the health, without having to click on each one.

[Razman23]

LOL, the best one I had with the crew was when my sub suddenly went dead in the water while surfaced. I showed full speed ahead but was only doing one knot.

At first, I thought that maybe I had engine failure because every time I tried to change speed, I got a 'not able to comply'.

So I went to the crew page and low and behold, my whole crew on watch was asleep! :damn: :shifty: :rotfl:

So I ordered and then canceled battle stations and that fixed it.

[JFL1]

So I went to the crew page and low and behold, my whole crew on watch was asleep!

So I ordered and then canceled battle stations and that fixed it.

Happened to me more than once!
A couple of times, it was even funnier (so to speak, as I was pi****): the whole crew was sound asleep!:roll:

[Bilge_Rat]

You have to keep an eye on your crew to make sure they get enough rest. I take a look at the board after every watch change to make sure everything is ok.

[con20or]

This is news to me! A nice touch!

But they can all go asleep?? Kind of dangerous.

What does battle stations do?

[Bilge_Rat]

When they reach 45-50 fatigue, they go to sleep on their own. Usually, its not an issue, since with the crew rotating, the most tired ones go to sleep, although I find I still need to tuck in a few recalcitrant sailors after every watch change.

In my current campaign, two weeks out of Pearl, all the crewmembers on watch are at 0-5 fatigue and the ones off watch vary between 10-30.

With battlestations on, you get increased crew efficiency, but no one goes to sleep until you turn it off, so you could wind with the whole crew at 100% fatigue.

Also rough weather will increase the fatigue weather, I just went through 3 continuous days of rough weather. After spending eight hours on the surface, I had some crewmembers with 60-70 of fatigue. I dove down to 120 feet and put the two offwatch to sleep, since the ones over 50 pretty much keel over anywhere.

After 6 hours underwater, everyone was refreshed to face the storm. Sometimes, I feel I am in charge of a kindergarden instead of a sub.

[con20or]

you dont have to help them go to the toilet do you:o

[Bilge_Rat]

So after going to the two extremes, namely from micromanaging the crew every two hours to basically letting the AI run everyhthing, I would say the AI runs the crew 85-90% as well as a micromanaging human. There is still an advantage to micromanaging, but the AI XO is good enough that you can let him handle things on his own.

That is a huge improvement over SH3 where you had to constantly micromanage the crew (if using the stock fatigue model) to just keep your crew from getting too fatigued on long patrols.

In SH4, the crews will rotate on their own and will go to sleep on their own. I still look in after every watch change however just to make sure evrything looks ok and to make sure my bridge and command room watch is fresh.

One advantage you can gain however is to review the roster at least once on the trip. The AI XO does a pretty good job, but I still moved around 20-25% of the crew, mostly to make sure my best watchmen were on the bridge crew and to balance the mix of officers/chiefs & seamen on every watch.