How do you keep track of the lowly seamen you promote?

[Kaptan Tommy]

When you promote your warrant officers they get a little 'badge' next to them that indicates what they do best. But when you promote seamen up a notch, there's no indicator anywhere (that I know of). They just get lost in the shuffle. It seems they are able to perform better than those who have not yet gotten promoted but I can never find them in the shuffle. I'm not about to go through all the names on the roster looking for them. The same goes for medals. Unless I click on the specific person and his record shows up, how else can I find my best people when the chips are down and I want them in key positions? :roll:

[snowsub]

notepad and pen :up:

[Kaptan Tommy]

Yeah, but when you move them around to different stations (especially if you click on a compartment to fill it with 'fresh' bodies), even the pen and paper idea goes to hell... :damn:

[Trav_R]

I don't think there's a quick way to find a particular seaman without clicking each of them and looking at their rank, other than just keeping track of where you put them in quarters and where you put them to work. They will stay where you put them as long as you don't use one of the automatic methods like you mentioned before. Say, for instance, you have 2 chief seamen that you want to keep track of. Keep one of them in 1st position in the command room, and the other at the far bottom right position in the bow quarters. When one gets tired, drag him over to the other one. They will just swap. This way you've always got a fresh chief seaman in the command room, and another resting up to replace him when he gets tired.

The only thing that messes up your rotation would be surfacing and submerging, in which case the watch crew goes above or comes below automatically. I haven't checked to see how exactly the game manages that, (ie which guys it chooses to go up to the bridge for watch, and where it puts them when you submerge again) but once you figure that out, you can easily put your good guys where you want them and know that they'll stay there.

There's one other thing, you mentioned promoting warrant officers and how it puts a symbol next to their picture to let you know what they're good at. That's not promoting, that's giving a qualification. It would be like sending that guy off to a training school and then having him come back to your crew, specialized in something like gunnery, damage repair and so on. Seamen can't get qualifications. Warrant officers can have 1 qualification. Officers can have up to 3, depending on their rank.

For the most part, seamen don't make near as much of a difference on efficiency compared to officers and warrant officers, so if you're worried about keeping track of your best guys, the seamen don't make a very big difference anyway, at least from my experience. If someone has studied crew more than me, maybe they will say different.

[JScones]

SH3 Commander helps with the management of crewmen through its Crew Manager component. And, with Release 3, all medals and badges awarded via SH3Cmdr will have the same effect as if awarded via the game.

SH3Cmdr also allows for quals to be awarded to low ranking sailors. They are not effective in the game (yet), but players tend to find them handy markers for their crew so that they always know where they are. It's perhaps the easiest way to keep track of the lower ranks.

[Kaptan Tommy]

Thanks Trav_R and JScones.

I once tried putting my newly promoted seaman on the bridge to keep track of him but it was just as you said about submerging. I've no idea where he went. Maybe one of these times I'll write down everyone's name on the bridge and root around to find them after I dive. Interesting. And if I don't touch them, see if they all show up back on the bridge when I surface. Hmmmm.

Yeah, I realize my mistake in calling the warrant officer 'qualification' a promotion. And I was in the navy. I should know better. Nevertheless, I 'qualified' one of my guys as a flak gunner and I'll be darned if he didn't actually shoot down a couple planes that attacked me. Cool.

I've yet to install any of the mods, partly because I had such a bear of a time getting the game to work at all. I'm scared to 'touch' anything since it works so well now. You know, the old "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" thing. :yep:

[JohnnyPotPie]

When you are in the Personel Files and getting ready to give a man some rank it will show you which have already gotten one by not highlighting them.

[Trav_R]

While we're on the subject, I have a question that's very similar to Tommy's, so I don't think it will be considered thread-jacking. I think, if it gets answered, it will help us both out without changing the subject.

If you have, say, an officer and two warrant officers in the bow torpedo room, and between the three of them the efficiency bar is maxed out, is there a benefit to adding more guys in there? Or is it that, once the bar is maxed, that's it, you can't do any better than that.

[BettingUrlife]

They should give each guy his ownly uniquely mongramed and colour-coded hat!

[Trav_R]

Well, a different face at least would be a good start. It sorta brings me out of the game a little when I go up to the bridge and a team of quadruplets is scanning the horizon.

[gordonmull]

Agree with Trav_R. It would be cool to have a better variety of faces. My personal gripe is that every Chief I have tends to be of the same blonde, hatwearing, beard sporting variety...and I've had to take on three officers that look identical on my last boat because they were qualified with what I needed at the time. Makes it hard to distinguish between them at a glance (sometimes all the time you have) and takes away from the realism. This question should probably be asked in the Mod forum but how easy would it be to add new faces? I mean the little pictures of the officers in crew management and in the 3D models.

[Marhkimov]

We're streaking into the wrong board topic (read: Mod Workshop) but oh well...


The little pictures on the bottom left will always be the same. They are only pulled from a single TGA set. There's no fix for that, only a few faceless work-arounds...

But I am wondering myself whether it would be possible to include additional 3D facial skins. In other words, would the game be able to recognize any additional skins? And if not, would it be possible to make the game recognize them?

[Trav_R]

I'm not a modder, but from poking around in the Crew folder a bit, it looks like there's only so many faces in the game, and I doubt there's a way to make the game recognize more. Someone with skill could probably change the faces, but you'd still be stuck with the same total number of faces.