Mission accomplished.

Got the files merged, and all appears to be well. So I now have a realistic looking crew on my boat, and all 12 watchmen don't get wounded at the same time when a depth charge goes off nearby. Good stuff.

Now, if my crew could ever bring themselves to actually hitting something with a torpedo.....well, that would be cause for a real party.....but that's a different story. :doh:

Link to the updated version of this mod has been posted in my original post. Research has revealed that sailors selected for radar training were immediately promoted to Seaman First Class, and upon completion of their schooling they were promoted to the rank of Radio Technician Second Class and transfered to active duty.

Upon looking at this matter further, I think I need to make further tweaks to this mod. More research has shown the following:

-USS Cod, a Gato class boat, had a total of 11 junior enlisted sailors at the time of its commissioning in 1943. All but one were Seamen 2nd Class (the other was a S1c). Total number of enlisted personnel was 69.

-USS S-44 had a total of 8 junior enlisted sailors on board at the time it was sunk in 1943. Five were Seamen 1st Class, three were Seamen 2nd Class. Total number of enlisted personnel was 53.

Both of these are good resources to use, since they both come from the middle of the war and thus avoid any extremes that can come with using data from either very early or very late in the conflict.

With that said, the upcoming mod (which will hopefully be the last one needed) will have the following adjustments:

-Petty Officer and Sailor numbers re-adjusted.
-"Non-combatants" added in. These sailors will take up slots in the Damage Control team, to represent their place on the boat and usefulness when performing damage control. After all, all men selected for submarine service underwent thorough training in damage control before being sent out to sea.

Hopefully this all won't take too long and will have this knocked out before the end of the day today. I really want to get this done tonight, since I'm back to working my 24-shift job tomorrow.

Watch this space for more updates. ;)

Sounds great! Looking forward to even more realism here. :up:

Yep, this is going to look drastically different from my first attempt. By and large, the dev team did get the starting crew configs right. I didn't think there was such a huge amount of petty officers on board U.S. submarines, but apparently I was wrong.

Great stuff. Anything that makes this game more historically correct is a win!

Just a little update: I won't be able to finish all my changes tonight, but I should have it all wrapped up by the end of this weekend. I never thought that U.S. submarines carried so many POs as part of their crew, but the historical evidence was there for the seeing. The final result of this mod will be not so drastic as the first release but will be very close to historical reality.

Great! Looking forward to getting this. With this and my new names mod in place the crew is going to look perfect.

Great stuff!!! :up:

Do you think it would be possible to disable option to add, for example, officer to flak gun?

This Mod compatable with RFB Mod
 

LukkFF,
Your mod compatable with Berry's RFB mod?

Mudmarine,

Yes, the mod is compatible with RFB and is in fact already part of the mod. However, based on extensive research, I have found that the original setups I used were way off the mark. For instance, on average, there were only 10 junior enlisted sailors (the Seamen ranks), and they were (from what I've seen) all 2nd or 1st Class Seamen. My final version of the mod will take all of this into account.

Julius Casesar,

Sadly, no, from what I've seen there is no way to prevent an officer from using the flak guns. I really hate this, because the setup we have in SH3 works great. In that case we had limited numbers of officers, petty officers, and seamen, so it kept the balance of crewmen correct.

LukeFF Thanks
 

LukeFF,
I thank you for your reply. Is this compatable to Officer and enlisted rank mod?

If that's one of mine, then yes, it is.

Update: I've sorted out where all the crewmen should go, based on rank and rating. This will be the standard setup for the fleet boats, with small variations for boats that have fewer slots for torpedo crew, such as the Porpoise. The boat shown here is the 1944 Balao:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...-5-2007_23.jpg

In this photo you will notice four (should be five, actually) crewmen in the Damage Control slots. This is intentional and is intended to represent the presence of the Yeoman, Ship's Cook, and Pharmacist's Mate ratings. As these are all fall under "deck" ratings I drew these POs from the watch speciality.

The source for this setup was the crew list of the USS Corvina, a Gato class boat lost on its first patrol. Next up is the S-Class boats!

And the S-Class:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...7-5-2007_2.jpg

So, now that I have everything in order it's only a matter of time to wrap this all up. Hopefully I'll be done with it all in a couple days, due to work and the holiday weekend. :sunny: