Just a couple of questions still at this point while I'm out getting used to this on my second patrol with it. Is there anything that can be done about the weird extra-crew behavior when switching from diesel to electrics and back again? And was it necessary, to get the results you wanted, to disable the ability to select the engine room names and switch crew in/out by right clicking on the men or the room names, or was that just some unintended consequence of something that could be corrected without screwing up what you're trying to do here? I would like to try to get some sort of 2-watch cycle going but it would be a lot easier if you didn't have to actually drag each man individually into and out of the compartments.

Still only single ship contacts on this patrol in terms of encounters (actually got a task force and a convoy report fairly close but was unable to catch up with either one of them), so I haven't really had an extended engagement in which to assess the results of the crew fatigue model where I needed to keep particular men on station over any long period of time. Hopefully that will change when I get back out there later tonight.

The easy way to handle this is to only use Warrant officers in the Neutral zone. When you place seamen in this zone, SH3 will automatically place them in the operating engine room. This behavior cannot be changed.

Information about this behavior is in the "Crew Management - addendum.doc". This is the relevant section:


The double click feature was disabled because when SH3 auto fills the engine room, it fills all 8 spaces even though only 5 crew members are needed. You would have to drag and drop three of the crew members back out of the space. It's a matter of pick your poison.

If you don't like this behavior, you could try removing the changes in the menu_1024_768.ini made in section 4 and 5 of the "Crew Management Mod Menu_1024_768.ini Mod Instructions.txt" included in the mod package. You don't have to include any of the changes in this file. If you like just the hidden spaces, only make the changes in Sections 1, 2 and 3.

This is the text for reference:

Ahh - thanks for the reminder about that no-seamen thing.

I understand about the double-click method not working because of the over-filling issue you explain below. However, can you disable the double-click behavior without disabling the single/right click method? If you turn the double-click thingy back on and just don't actually use a double click, will it screw up the automatic switching back and forth between diesels and electrics as you dive/surface?

I guess I may try turning some of those things off to see if I can at least use the right click on individual crewmen method even if switching out the entire compartment at once won't work because of the over-filling problem - for some reason, especially at higher TC, it just seems easier to send a guy to the compartment by highlighting the room name and then right clicking the guy than by dragging him all the way over to the room (especially if you have 3 or 4 guys to do that with). I'll experiment a little with it tonight and see how things work.

Thanks again for the info.

Not the way I've done it. It's pretty much an all or nothing thing. The adjustments to the menu_1024_768.ini turn off the hotspot and replace it with text. In order to keep the one feature and remove another you have to change the code. The menu_1024_768.ini only changes the layout of the graphics one the screen, not the underlying code. If I could change the code to keep, say, the right click feature and remove the double click fill feature, I would rather (and it would be easier) to just change the number of slots in the compartment and eliminate the whole problem.

Ahh - well, I noticed last night that putting only warrant officers in the "neutral" engine room still didn't work - if there were seamen in the working engine room there were still problems upon switching engines - I think that stopped when I cut back so there were no more than 2 seamen in the working engine room (and none in the other room).

I did finally manage to find and sink something last night (after stalking a couple of destroyers for a while until I realized that's what they were, and then being dogged by an armed schlepper through several encounters and a couple of brief gunfire exchanges), but it was just a lone coastal freighter so I still haven't had a chance to see the effects of this mod during an extended encounter like a convoy or something.

So far though, I am liking the fact that the fatigue continues at higher TC and that it is possible for people to regenerate. And the fatigue rate seems to be much more reasonable than how I remember the stock game's model being (though it's been a while since I used that model), which seemed to have my guys getting really tired in just a couple of hours if I used low level TC. Just gonna take some more getting used to I guess to get the hang of how to set up some sort of reasonable shift rotation.

I've been experimenting with using SH3 Commander to give watchmen qualifications to my seamen so I can tell who are supposed to be on my watch crew shifts - I think I may try the same thing for the seamen I use in the engine room and the control room - I'm assuming that the game (and this NYGM mod) still doesn't give any effect to qualifications given to seamen, so doing this will just be for visual convenience and won't screw up the working of the fatigue model - is that correct?

[edit] Just cranked up the TC setting for 3D screens in SH3 Commander to 512 and tested it out in game - the fatigue does continue now at 512TC. And my watch crew did get exhausted after about 5-6 hours in heavy seas - very cool :)

Let me be a little more specific on how I use the neutral room. I'd post a screen shot, but I don't have one handy.

I've found the best way to use the neutral room on the Type VII is to only put warrant officers (not machinist qualified) in there. I use the hidden slots (three of them) for these guys, then have the following configuration in the working engine room:

1 machinist qualified warrant officer
4 seamen

When I surface or submerge, these guys will all switch to the other room, then I drag the three extra warrants to the other engine room.

If you'd like a screen shot I can post one up.

Interesting - but I see that even this way there wind up being people in the "hidden" slots that you have to move around each time (something I was trying to figure out how to avoid). I'll have to experiment some more to see whether cutting down to only 2 seamen in the engine room will keep working or whether I was just lucky a couple of times the other night.

As an alternative - is there any way to disable the fatigue drain in the aft torpedo room, to create that as a neutral zone? There's hardly ever anybody in there (at least on my Type VII) except to load the occasional single torpedo, which only takes maybe 10-12 minutes so how tired can they get in there anyway. That way you could stash your extra guys in the aft torp room and not have to have any extra guys in the engine rooms to keep dragging in and out - what do you think?

Putting guys in hidden spaces in the neutral zone doesn't really bother me because they are not doing anything. It's a neutral zone after all! :) I also recognize it as a limitation of the SH3 programming.

It is possible to create the stern torpedo room as a neutral zone, but I'll have to think on it before doing so.

While not a bad idea for the VII the IX has lots of rear torpedos :-?

Just wrapped up for the night - managed to find and sink a large cargo off the western approaches - first ship in forever that was actually zig zagging for no apparent reason - made setting up for the approach much more challenging and was really nice for a change. Anyway, somehow both torps in my first salvo missed, but I had given myself time to get second shot at her just in case and my next 2 torps both slammed home between the bridge and the engine room. Two very nice explosions, though no secondary fire or smoke or anything. However, she fairly quickly coasted to a stop and started settling slowly by the stern and listing slightly to port, and soon after I lost the ability to target her in my scope (I was trying to check the range before turning around to bring my stern tube to bear for a possible coup de grace and it wouldn't let me) - it was weird - just like she wasn't there (or was already sunk, though she was still well afloat at that point).

On a hunch, I checked my log and sure enough it was showing me as having sunk a large cargo, even though I had not gotten any indication from the crew about a ship being destroyed. Normally I would have waited around to see if she would sink without a coup de grace, but I figured since the game seemed to think she was gone already I might be waiting a long time for nothing. I decided to go ahead and hit her with my stern torp on the theory that I didn't want to stick around and that's what I would have done before heading off that soon, and I was rewarded with another nice explosion, a crew cheer and the sight of her finally going under as I headed away at high speed on the surface.

Anyway, back to the subject. No matter what combination of crew types I had in the engine rooms, if I put anybody in the inactive engine room I always had extra blue men to mess around with. I tried just sticking my extra couple of guys in the aft torpedo room, so I only had 5 guys in the engine room, and that worked great - they all just switched back and forth like a charm and I never had to worry about the blue guys. (Except for some reason when I had my machinist officer in the room - when he was in there things got all screwed up again when they switched engine rooms). Of course, the guys in the aft torp room got kinda tired that way, but I was just testing the theory.

Even if you decide not to do it for your official version, maybe you could let me know how it's done and I can just make my own aft torp room a neutral zone for myself?

I had pretty good luck setting up a 12-hour rotation between two shifts this time around, and with the TC cranked up on the 3D screens I could sit there on the crew management screen and watch the guys get tired instead of watching my sub icon crawl across the nav map all the time - I had never thought of cranking that particular setting up until I read the readme file for this mod - this whole mod test has been well worth it just for that little tidbit alone :)

Thanks, and keep up the good work!