Beery, I read your reply and explanation about crew fatigue system in your RUb (I'm a new user of your mod). I understand your idea, but could you explain me some problems:
1. I'm on my first patrol now (5 days, 2 sinked ships, in half of road to patrol grid) and all my crewmen are fatigued now. My sonarman doesn't hear merchant from 700 m. How can I accomplish my mission with totally fatigued crew?
2. I think that my crew (totally green now on first patrol) will be experienced on next patrol and elite on 10th patrol - is it right? After, for instance, ten patrols my crewmen won't be fatigued at all?
3. When I'll use qualifications for my crew, fatigue have no effect on them. But what about seamen (matrose) - they haven't any qualifications.

You have to keep your crew (even your best sonarmen) in the rest areas to prevent fatigue, and you need to cruise at 64x time compress until you're in combat. If you do that, you should be able to last a month even with a completely green crew.

The NCOs and officers are the only ones you'll need to get qualifications for, and it will make a big difference. Start with torpedo qualifications so that you don't need to waste crewmen on torpedo duty (which is the most arduous duty on board), and keep your seamen in rest areas as long as possible between attacks. As your career goes on you'll find that you spend less and less time managing the crew.

Also, remember that fatigue itself is relatively meaningless. What's important is compartment efficiency, which is shown by the green bar above each compartment. As your crew gains experience you'll notice that you will easily be able to keep compartments at full efficiency even with a fully fatigued crew, as long as you have enough qualified NCOs in their proper compartments.

I usually cruise at 128x or 256x time compression beyond combat. Should I use only 64x for minor effect of fatigue?
Is it possible to return to standard fatigue system or not?
Except this (and deck gun reload time :D ) I like RUb very much.

Fatigue is either on or off - 32x and below it's on, and 64x and above it's off. There's no minor effect possible.

It's certainly possible to go back to the standard fatigue system (I believe there's a mod out there that does this). But the only reasons I can think of that anyone would want to would be that they haven't been getting qualifications, or they never progress beyond patrol #2, or they're insisting on playing at low time compress even for cruising. Unless players insist on playing the game with one of those three things going on, RUb's (or SH3 Commander's) fatigue system is much less frustrating than the standard system.

Personally speaking, I prefer the combat fatigue system and do not want to go back to the micro management system of SH3. :up:

Edited as the rest of this was designed for another thread; been up too long. :roll:

Actually, crew rotation was handled by the Exec, NOT the Captain.
Since the player is the Captain, the AI should do the honors with
crew rotation. Lets keep it realistic guys.....


JIM

Beery wrote: "...you need to cruise at 64x time compress until you're in combat" and "Fatigue is either on or off - 32x and below it's on, and 64x and above it's off."

How can I understand it? If I cruise 32x or below fatigue will affect my crew and if I cruise 64x or above it won't?
What time compress should I use for cruising? 128x or 256x isn't good?
Sorry, it maybe stupid for RUb users, but I'd like to know it and enjoy.

Yes.

It really doesn't matter. I use 2048x because I don't have much time for playing. For the crew it's all the same - they experience everything at 1x, so the simulation aspect isn't changed whether you cruise at 1x or 64x or 2048x. It's just a matter of what feels best for you. The only factor that does affect the crew is the fatigue system, and that is supposed to simulate the effect of combat on the crew, so technically the game system is meant to be played at 64x or more when cruising, just so that fatigue works properly.

Beery, thanks for reply!
What about medals and ranks of crewmen? Does medal or new rank affect on fatigue of crewman in your fatigue system?

Medals and ranks affect fatigue in the same way as in the standard game.

:up:

Speaking of torpedo qualifications... I typically always have a torpedo-qualified Officer as part of my crew. However, uboat.net mentions nothing about U-boats having a specially qualifed torpedo officer on board. So, with that said:

1. Is it right to have such a specially qualified officer as part of the crew? Would it be more appropriate to have this as a skill assigned to the weapons officer?

2. With a full complement of officers, this makes for 5 officers on board the boat! (I don't count the Navigator, since his positon was an NCO one). So, shouldn't the maximum number of officers for the Type VII and IX be 4, not 5?

If anyone has some sources that could resolve the above questions, I would be very interested to see what they say.

The IWO is technically the torpedo qualified officer on board. In RUb he doesn't come to the boat pre-qualified for the torpedoes. Basically that's a play balance issue. Players who value realism should probably add the following qualifications when they get the chance:

The IWO should have a torpedo qualification as well as his standard issue watch qualification.
The IIWO (the guy who starts the game on the bridge) should add two gunnery qualifications to his pre-existing watch qualification.
The LI comes with a repair qualification, but since he's very knowledgeable about all aspects of engineering it wouldn't be unusual to see him qualified on guns or torpedoes.
The extra officer starts out the game completely unqualified, but he could perhaps be given a navigation qualification or a medical qualification.
If players purchase another officer, they should try to buy a completely unqualified guy, just for the sake of realism. Avoiding the best-qualified personnel goes against the grain somewhat, but if realism is your thing, this is the way to do it.

As the war developed, it was usual to find one or even two midshipmen on board who would help the navigator or assist the other officers. Plus, commanders-in-training would often go on a final war patrol before taking over command of their own boat. Also, propaganda officers, photographers and other PR guys would often be assigned to a boat, and sometimes meteorologists. So a standard officer complement would be 4 (including the commander!), but often in practice it was 5 or 6.

You can find this info in the book "Neither Sharks Nor Wolves" by Timothy Mulligan.

Beery Wrote:I find the absence of a qualified engineer or machinist as the Engineering officer curious. Given that in reality the officer would apparently be a leutnant or oberleutnant (spelling :-? ).

I purchase an additional officer with just that qualification (sorry cannot remember the german name :oops: ). That officer spends all his time in the engine rooms and normally gains the greatest experience.

Also to be fair, he enables the engine room to function without problems on the initial patrols.

The LI was the engineering officer, but he would not usually be found in the engine rooms, which is why he has no engine room qualification in RUb. In "Neither Sharks nor Wolves", Timothy Mulligan writes:

Interesting :hmm:

Forgive my ignorance but who is Timothy Mulligan, and is he a primary, secondary or tertiary source?

How many other sources corroborate this detail?

Cheers :up:

:lurk:

Dr. Timothy P. Mulligan is an archivist at the National Archives and Records Administration, specializing in captured German and related World War II records. His official publications include several finding aids and guides to captured German records, particularly to those of the German Navy; personal publications include Lone Wolf: The Life and Death of U-Boat Ace Werner Henke (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing, 1993), and Neither Sharks nor Wolves: The Men of Nazi Germany's U-Boat Arm, 1939-1945 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1999).

Beery, I play RUb and think about your idea of fatigue system. It is interesting, but has one fault in my opinion - it doesn't simulate sleeping/relax time. In vanilla SH3 fatigued green crewman must go to bed and rest frequently, experienced crewman rarely, but must too. Player has to think how to manage his crew and replace, for instance, fatigued qualified sonarman with other crewman. It is like in real life - everybody must relax and sleep, nobody works all the time.
In RUb qualified crewman can stay at his station during all patrol and works. In fact, he will be tired, but player hasn't to replace him, because RUb fatigue system doesn't simulate relax time. In vanilla SH3 after rest he is relaxed and can go to his watch again.
I hope you understand what I want to say - after rest crewman should be little relaxed. I know that long patrol is very tiring and crew during patrol is more fatigued than at start time of patrol, but fatigue system should simulate rest time.
What do you think about it?

It has nothing to do with sleeping or relaxing. It's not supposed to simulate that.

RUb's fatigue system doesn't simulate day-to-day fatigue. This is combat fatigue, which is completely different. As I've said many times before, you cannot recover from combat fatigue by taking a nap. Combat fatigue is a psychological condition - an illness - that affects a person's ability to function in the long-term. It may not manifest in terms of 'fatigue' at all. In fact the afflicted person may appear alert, and even unable to sleep.

If the RUb fatigue system simulated tiredness you might have a point. But it doesn't. It never has. The standard game's fatigue system simulates tiredness, but RUb's system doesn't. The system has been completely scrapped and a new system has been put in its place, using the same mechanics to simulate a completely different phenomenon. Tiredness is no longer an issue - the crew is assumed to take care of tiredness automatically by taking rest breaks. We should not have to worry about that because good rest management is a simple matter of scheduling rest periods. Even the worst-run U-boat had proper rest periods scheduled. This shouldn't require player input, and the biggest problem with the standard game was that it required the player to micro-manage rest periods, which is in my view a ludicrous waste of the player's time and energy.

You'll have to excuse me for seeming a bit frustrated at this point. This must be about the hundredth time I've had to explain that RUb's fatigue system is not meant to simulate tiredness. I really just do not know why so many people still cannot understand the very basis of RUb's fatigue system. It's laid out as clearly as I can state it in the readme file:

"Patch Notes:

Fatigue: the new fatigue is based on a combat stress model. It is no longer fatigue."

I think what is frustrating people is that the level of combat stress seems to have too much of an effect on the crew at times. After a simple case of sneaking up on a merchant, launching two torpedoes, sinking the merchant, and then reloading those two tubes your crew may be at a high level of combat stress already and you might not even be two days out of port.

To me this action may have heightened the level of stress but should not kill the effectivness of the crew. In fact, they have gained valuable experience and such an action would probably have increased their zeal and energy, not damaged them psychologically. Even an inexperienced crew should not have their efficiency for the rest of the cruise cut in half just from loading a couple of torpedoes.

I like the idea of combat stress instead of regular fatigue, but maybe it needs to be tweaked a bit more. Thanks for the work you have already done on this system!