1/3 Mandatory Crew Rotations . . . that would be great to have simulated in the game . . . I'd imagine the best Officers and CPOs would have been prized assets to any crew. I can imagine some crewmembers not liking one command environment, while loving others . . . trying to get posted to boat X for this reason or boat Y for another reason . . . this would make a great mod. Having to pay to keep certain crewmembers out of your renown pool, having to pay to get rid of certain "problem" crewmembers . . .

the ideas you've presented so far wouldn't do anything to bolster the feeling of actually having a crew that is an important part of the boat. A note in a diary about a birthday? Are you serious? This is nothing more than, to use your reference, a line on the spreadsheet.

If you want to create a feeling of actually having and caring about a crew, then the crew needs to have a greater impact on the operation of the boat. Crew skill levels need to be more important, such as having experienced men on the helm able to maintain periscope depth in rough water while a relatively green crew has you broaching from time to time in relatively calm weather. A good crew member should be able to give you pinpoint accuracy on sonar, while a greenhorn should miss the mark by several degrees. Needless to say that there should be very few top skilled men per boat, and most of them should be just above minimum during the early war period, with general crew skill growing over time. And it should take a long time for skills to increase.

Speaking of crew abilities, you shouldn't be able to recruit anyone at all, especially not top men. Members of your crew would need to be trasferred out after each patrol and replaced with a random skill level. How would you feel if your veteran COB was trasferred out after you had built him into a superman? What if an officer's replacement was worthless?

these are things that would foster an attachment to the crew.

Using voice command makes the crew seem a little more real - nothing like hearing an immediate "yes sir!" and sometimes a repeat of what you asked for, like an XO, when you indicate something specific. Sometimes it's slightly off though, which can be a little humorous:

"make your depth 100 feet"
"new depth 99 feet aye sir!"

eh close enough :)

Crew morale
 

As a side note, when exactly does crew morale ever change and what effect does it have?
None of the medal recipients have ever shown a change in morale (ie happy to be alive to to receiving the purple heart), nor have I seen anything other that "normal" as a moral status....I would have thought that they would show "slightly happy" at sinking a small merchant or "overjoyed" at getting an IJN carrier. But No not a flicker on the old emotion meter. Hell I am English and these guys seem stoic to me!

Rockin Robbins shootin off his mouth again! Dive!
 

Let's talk about real interpersonal dynamics in a WWII submarine. On a submarine there were three general groups of people.

There was the officer corps, a group who had some comraderie, however a very stratified one. When the captain made the decision to stay at periscope depth and watch that destroyer try to kill them all, he was god of his boat. Unless he gave specific permission for the XO to make suggestions, that was it. Some captains did reach out to their fellow officers, at least in a way that showed he cared about their well-being. I doubt he spent any time musing about someone's birthday, and he sure wouldn't have called him "Bob." It would have been Lt. Smith. The officers did talk among themselves to have good working relationships, but strict military discipline prevented any normal personal relationships. Captains had to make decisions that got people killed. Anything which interfered with that orderly process could not be tolerated. Officers and enlisted men did not talk outside of issuing and receiving orders. No birthday cards!

Then there were the enlisted men and non-coms. These were the grunts, never consulted for their opinions, drilled constantly to do their jobs automatically while the world flew apart all around them until something killed them. By and large they did just that. Among themselves, the crew were very informal and clannish. Practical jokes were rife and many were on a first-name basis with each other. Generally they resented the unbreachable gulf between the officer-gods and the crew, who often knew better than them what to do with the submarine. Don't believe it? Just ask em! They always have an opinion and they're always swapping scuttlebut. But not to officers: they're scum.

The third group was a group of one: the chief of the boat. He was the only conduit between the officers and the men on board. In reality, the chief of the boat was probably the most powerful man on board, the one who knew his boat best, and the one with the most skills of anyone, officer or enlisted. He moved in both worlds of the submarine, making them function together as a team. He was in charge of training and qualification of crew members for different specialties. If there was a rare time when the officers needed to pay attention to an individual crew memeber, it was the chief of the boat that brought it to their attention. If the officers didn't work well with the chief of the boat, the chief had a thousand ways to make them pay. If the crew revolted against the chief of the boat they'd be better off to cuss out the captain. At least then death would be quick and easy.

If you want to know about interpersonal relations aboard a sub, read "Torpedoman", by Ron Smith. Here is an excerpt from the liner notes:

The story begins with a young American as he prepares for war. As the story unfolds, we follow his personal growth as it was influenced by the ever-present spector of the war. The story moves into the real area of combat unique to submarines with its physical and emotional demands that challenge human endurance--where the desire to perform one's duty is in constant conflict with the desire to live. A near mutiny occurs as the crew struggles with the decision of sacrificing themselves by blindly following orders or disobeying and surviving.

The book is a somewhat fictionalized story of Ron Smith's career as a torpedoman. It is copyright 1990, and bears no publisher information, so this book may just have been distributed at the convention of the US Submarine Veterans of WWII convention of that year. It is inscribed "To Warren Watkins, Best Regards, Ron Smith" and dated 10-1-1999. If you can find it you will understand the crew interactions. They did not involve musing about "Bob's birthday."

We project ourselves and our comparitively utopian lives, motivations and values on men who did not share them. They were much more at home swapping stories about their common experiences with Mary Jane Rottencrotch. These guys had no future. They did not expect to return home. An encounter with Mary Jane and subsequent treatment for unpronounceable diseases caught from her were cause for bragging and laughter, ribbing and horseplay. Navy enlisted sailors are smelly, foul-mouthed, profane, crude, brash and a hell of a lot of fun. When you know you're going to die, nothing is important or meaningful but the moment.

Have you heard of Stateside poker? This was a poker game where all bets were IOU's to be paid when (if) the crew survived to go stateside. The astronomical size of debts owed showed that every man considered himself dead, betting money that would never exist. Every one of them had given up on life, but was continuing anyway. Das Boot was a bit surreal sometimes, but often caught this very real crew dynamic.

Are you sure you would be entertained by all that?

Rocking Capt. Robbin's,This is needed.
 

Your stories,& humor are quite,FUN ! keep up the good faith,Sir.

Keeping the faith
 

Just having fun while honoring the men who fought and trying to participate in helping other players understand and enjoy the game. And learning twice as much from all the great people here! Ain't that what Subsim is all about?:up:

Plus, crew skills should affect how reliable a piece of equipment operates. Anyone who's served in the military knows things break down at all times, good and bad. WWII submarines were no different. Engines and motors break down, they catch fire and they run louder than they should. Radar? An infant technology with bugs still being worked out. Bulbs burnt out, vacuum tubes broke, circuits shorted, etc. AA guns jam, barrels overheat, periscopes leak, buoyancy vents jam, etc. etc. As it is now, we have perfectly functioning boats that only break down upon suffering enemy fire or grounding. A realisticly-portrayed crew SHOULD affect the rate of these types of breakdowns and how quickly they can be repaired, if at all.

I did this and now she makes me hot bunk. :p
Now it's a true simulation:rotfl: :rotfl:

Just blowing ballast !! Thought you'll get a laugh
 

To:Officers thru Bilge seaman,hear this !
After 6 mo.of playing SHIV,The "Date line bug",never fixed. The "Domino Effect"{your dead in 30 seconds no reason}still exists. Modding is trying to push the envelope of graphics,past the art of the game engine.Scripted layers,are building planes in the middle of the ocean,& cargo convoys are scarce.Jan.1945
We are using T_M_1-6,not patched,because on patrol.We have smoke on the water,like we just sank something? following us around. We have no torp gyro off-set line on attack map. Ship.tga shape files not found on Nav.map. Having downloaded the patch,& waiting to return to port,Midway if we can dock,Pearl if we must,to start outside harbor,again Midway. To get torp trac back,hopefully? we have removed the zones.cfg from the mod patch,because 5 fish is a waste of ordinance/not much fun to sink something.
I wanted to elaborate on "Domino Effect",we just put two fish in a liner,she turned turtle, that was cool our first time to see real sinking. Crashed dived to thermal,went silent,full rt.rudder,speed 1 kt to 200 ft.,went to external cam,to ck out DDs Ops.,nothing within 1,000 yds. all of a sudden catastrophic domino damage,blackscreen you have had It ! 7%previous hull?
It's not a wonder,that this game does frustrate,even the salty Skippers. Thinking about aborting patrol,& patching,or going back to tested 1.5_T_M. Does anyone have a link to T_M_1.5,needed to reverse engineer missing files.Is it worth it ?(Unknown)
We need at least one genius file manipulating code developer committed to state of the art understanding of nodes,& file connections,or this baby will be sterial for life.The crew of automotons; IE.There are phrases for them to say in response to orders,that aren't connected. The game is so unfinished/not as intended by the dev team,that it makes one think it has cancer. The state of the art, perhaps has not come very far since SH1 10 yrs ago ! What a shame Bill Gates has made millions,so can game play in computers technology,again pleading for SHIV's success.>>Fan Buoy,Donut