Yes it would be easier. In fact it's implemented in SH4. It's not possible in SH3.

It's possible to use a good fatigue model and some organization so that fatigue is almost never a problem, but still reasonably realistic.

I have a custom fatigue model that has crew getting the "!" fatigue indicator at 8 hours for most compartments in good weather. The torpedo rooms, flak deck guns fatigue faster, 2 hours or less. In bad weather the diesel engines and watch crew fatigue in 4 hours, and the torp, flak and deck guns more quickly as well. Fatigue is recovered in 4 hours for all crew. The "!" indicator happens at 45% fatigue so the engines do not quit running at full fatigue of 50% unless you're running a short crew. Max fatigue point is set at .5 for sailors and petty officers, and .6 for officers as in the stock game.

I have two complete crews for the engines, command room, sonar/radio and watch, and I swap them out on a schedule. Engines and command room at 8 hours, watch and sonar/radio at 4 hours (to keep them fresh) and one command room officer rotates out every 2 hours. In bad weather, the watch and diesels have to rotate at 4 hours, and given that they take 4 hours to recover, sometimes someone doesn't get completely rested.

I have the command room, electric engines and sonar/radio not affected by weather. In fact, the sonar/radio has a bug that if it has a bad weather effect set in the config file, it's in effect all the time, even in good weather. Damage control has no weather effect so I can put extra crew there without too much worry.

No one mans the weapons officer station or the torpedo rooms unless they're going to be used.

I've used SH3Commander to assign icons to each of the sailors so I know where they're supposed to be. This has no effect whatsoever in the game.

I've played several hundred hours with this fatigue model, mostly at 1x time compression, without problems.

Hook

personally I would like fatigue to happen on 1tc only, as during attacks I don't use TC is there a line that can be eddited for that?

If you want to limit fatigue to 1x time compression, look in SH3Commander time compression setting for "When in 3D view" and set that to 1. It defaults to 32. Fatigue does not accumulate at time compressions above this setting.

If you don't use S3Commander, you can edit it directly in the My Documents\SH3\data\cfg\main.cfg file, set 3DRender to 1.

Time compression will not go above this setting if you are in the crew screen. Keep in mind that fatigue will not recover above this setting either.

I have mine set to 256, because I want to be able to use a reasonably high time compression and still have fatigue.

Hook

Oh, ok so 3d view is essentially Fatigue then eh?

3DRender is the max time compression the game will go while rendering a 3D view. Fatigue is linked to this value. You should always be able to go faster in the map view, but the crew screen will limit time compression to the 3DRender number.

If you change the file directly, all the usual warnings apply: back up the file first. The numbers should be a factor of 2: 1 2 4 8 16 etc.

Hook

k thanks

How did you go about assigning icons to different crew members? The only ways I can figure this out is to add something to the end of their name that lets me know what compartment they should report to or give them badges, qualifications or medals.

In SH3 Commander you can assign an icon to any crewmember by giving him a qualification in a particular area of specialized training - machinist, radio/sonar, watchman, etc. This is done in Crew Management, the same place where you award medals and promotions. The yellow qualification icons are at the bottom of the crew management screen.

For crewman who are not officers or NCOs, assigning them a qualification has no effect on gameplay since the game doesn't recognize it - however the icons will still appear in the crew management screen in the game, which helps keep track of who's supposed to be doing which job.

Ah thanks. Didn't know that the qualifications don't count for anything if they're just seaman.