Questions and more questions
 

Just let me start this by saying I am aware that this game is early access for the sole reason to let players test the game and report bugs, more than just playing another game. That out of the way:

Having a few hours into this (b127 as b128 was a merry mess of bugs) I have a few questions I hope someone here might be able to answer:

Officers, schedules and sleep: Having read that sleep priority is 11, I have played around with the schedules and tasks and it occurs to me that officers will only go to sleep if you allow them to roam the boat freely. Schedule them for time off (red boxes) and they will never go to sleep. Only grey boxes will make an officer go to sleep automatically. Forced rest works but automatic rest is not happening on their time off. Even more confusing, this only works for non-radio/hydrophone officers. The radiomen never go to sleep automatically, period. Force rest is the only option. Any of you ever encountered that issue and did you find a way to make it work more sensibly?

Crew on the power/light switches: The crew will not touch the light/power switch even if I crank that priority up beyond 11. Is this a known issue or intentional?

Did you find a working schedule/task set for both crew and officers? If so, please share!

Other than that: This game has a lot that I wish SH3 have had and a few things that SH3 has that I miss. I understand the two games are totally different in that SH3 is a sim and Uboat is an action game with sim elements. Still, I would not be disappointed if mods could turn this game more towards sim territory, preferably well into sim territory. So far I do enjoy it a lot (confusion and game issues aside) but SH3/GWX is still my yardstick for sub games.

I'll be quite honest, i havnt tinkered much with the advanced crew management and find the game quite playable without it frankly.

interested to see if anyone can provide an answer on this

Revisiting b128 has been a bit overwhelming in that it consists entirely of reproducing bugs and bug reports and that is before the first patrol. Now I DID play through Daggerfall back in the day but b128 to me looks like an early alpha to be honest. I just hope and pray more testers are reporting and that the devs are keeping their heads above water to get this to a playable build in the near future. Right now it's utterly unplayable as a game but a real challenge if you want challenges as a project of testing.

Wind speed in excess of 10 trillion m/s is a bit much...

Alot of the issues regarding crew and the power/valves etc are solved (unintuitively) by actually lowering the number of crew per shift. I keep my crew shifts manned at 4 bodies.

I think this is due to if you want say 6 bodies on duty, AND you are often using crew as aides to the officers, there is no on left on shift to run the power tasks.

Hope that helps.

Hey, Lite_ly Salted! Totally appreciate your videos on this game. Helps tons.

Back to b127:
For the crew, I use the stock 3x8 hour shifts.
How does 4 work? It appeared to me that a skeleton crew would be
2 in the engine room
2 lookouts (double as dive plane operators)
1 at the helm

In addition, I can't get the boat cleaned up unless I have a guy working 24 hours mopping. 23 hours and sure enough I get the dirty boat penalty. So that's 6 men.

1 in the galley (I am totally not sure how many hours I need him there for) makes for 7 at a bare minimum for me.

Thanks Von Due!

I get your confusion. I had the same. Here's what I THINK is happening: the 2 personnel for the engines are actually only working them if your engineer is on task with his helpers. So let's set those two aside.

I constantly get a "no one at helm" alert whenever I dive or surface, so I don't THINK the game cares whether or not I have any dedicated crew for it, so let's that one aside.

The lookouts: they don't seem to actually matter. If you program no one to be on lookout at all ever, you still get a "sight bubble" around your boat.

SO

Seems to me like most of the taskings are just for show. I think the game only actually cares about having someone in the galley, and someone pushing the mop.

Again, just my experience, YMMV. But I can tell you for sure, that shifts of 4 personnel work for me just fine. I think the number are more like...um...there are X amount of people on shift and AVAILABLE to do whatever task, not so much that they are in fact doing it.

Experimenting here:I read the crew's hours would be 3 shifts 6 hours each for Work, misc work, rest so that's what I set up: 6 green, 6 grey and 6 red boxes so that 6 of 18 men would rest at all times (I have read that crew don't sleep or need any. Amphetamine must have done wonders for them huh)

Now with all officers off duty, I get 11 men working at all times, regardless:
4 lookouts (priority 10 but I hear you)
4 in the engine room (today was the first time I saw more than 2 but I shouldn't be surprised I guess)
1 helmsman
1 cook
1 cleaner

My 2 engineers are doing cruise work: Engines and radio, 4 hours on 4 hours off overlapping 2 hours work. Both have 2 assistents but the one on radio duty only uses 1.

Radio man is doing 4 hours on 4 hours off, overlapping the engineers to give me 24 hours radio and rest ing hours. No helpers for him.

Total crew working is now 12/18 but methinks the game design wants me to cut down on that else I want the galley to host 4 course meals every hour.

Yay for me huh! FINALLY managed to come up with schedule that leaves next to no wasted resting time. Seems to me that unlike the SH games (why should it be anything like those? Anyway...) work station has no bearing on fatigue rate so 4 hours staring at a map is as draining as being lookout for 4 hours in gale force, icy winds and:
4 hours work requires 3 hours and a little more to get fully rested so 4 greens, 3 reds and 1 grey seems to do the trick. Any better schedules you use then do share!

There is so much about this game to learn I really am starting to appreciate it to near the same level I appreciate SH3 and that says something, not to mention (which I already did) the bits that SH3 REALLY could have done well including, like wolfpacks, like these odd missions like finding lost boats. Now I kind of wait for modders to go crazy and add more types of these missions.

1 question: By dumb luck and a bit of misclicking, I might have found that other submarines in the near vicinity of your own can be ordered! I had no idea or rather, I HAVE no idea if this is indeed something you can do or if it's just a bug. Sometimes the boats do what I order them to, other times they completely ignore my commands. Is this intended and is this documented somewhere?

Anyone tested the b128 preview 10 yet? How many hours a day exactly does it take to keep the boat tidy and clean in this build?

Von Due: yeah it's a mechanic they call wolf pack. You can order their direction, tell them to attack etc. They introduced it in B127.

They are on preview 13 of B128.

Oh yeah, just got my hands on 13 and currently creating carnage in Cardiff. So far I haven't seen any bugs!

Finally got around to finishing off the Cardiff Attack mission (rather sucsessful it was too) and while I didn't spot any bugs that were obvious, I did see a short sunderland attacking me as I sailed past the southern RAF base. I dove, dodging the bombs/DCs but when I finally resurfaced, to my surprise, the sunderland laid belly up in the water, sailing on her merry way at negative 1 knot, dead as the proverbial dodo except for her urge to move out to open waters. It could have been she got caught in a storm while I was hiding, and crashed, or it could have been the only bug I encountered.

lol! Nice. I recently had a 3 ship of Sunderlands chase me down, one of which was flying upside down and weaving back and forth with smoke pouring out of it

Ok, taking a break from b128 altogether until the devs do something about them airplanes circling the home port or rather the player's boat in home port, and then follow the player's boat for days on end. One really would have tought La Rochelle had more AA capabilities than a single pea shooter on the player's sub. Where are those 88mm? Why did RAF send out a single spotter aircraft over a supposedly heavily defended port? Wouldn't they send in heavy bombers at least?

https://steamcommunity.com/app/49484...59549096821910


:salute:

Thanks for the heads up! Getting back home from work and saw preview 19 waiting so fingers crossed!