Realistic SH3Cmdr crew... Lower rank than my chief?!?
 

I'm playing GWX 1.03 and I thought I'd give SH3Cmdr a try. So I loaded a new career with it and set for realistic crew and for the randomizations of names etc. Well, everytime I get in the game, I am a Leutnant yet most of my officers are Oberleutnant. That is not realistic. How can I bump my rank up to Kapitänleutnant?

Goes to show what you know. ;)

I'm too lazy to type it out again, so read http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...86&postcount=5

Yes, later in the war this was true. But in 1939? No. Later on in the war with the loss of crews and the older commanders being promoted up to higher commands, U-Boat commanders were being brought in earlier and lower ranked, which is how it would be possible for another officer on the boat to be higher than the commander.

I think you should read up on German Kriegsmarine officer streams of WWII. ;)

The simple fact is that SH3 starts you off as an Lt. Most mods get around this by changing the renown so that you get promoted after the first patrol, making most of your concerns moot, or at the least, temporary. This is much better than "rank bumping" because it does not impact the game mechanics, just the timing in which things occur.

With this approach many players use the first patrol as a shakedown cruise and then start their first war patrol after being promoted. I do.

But if you want to play by your sense of realism, you need only make a few cfg file changes (lines 170-174 in *_menu.txt). Just make sure that you also edit the promotion renown (in Basic.cfg) in order to limit the likelyhood of future "front line" promotion to FregKpt; an unrealistic result of starting as a KptLt (don't want you complaining later, LOL ;)). Also accept that you'll start with nil previous command experience - again a somewhat unrealistic side effect of starting as a KptLt.

Oh, and uninstall SH3Cmdr - because rank bumping breaks things, SH3Cmdr doesn't support it. You also won't be able to install any major mods mid-career, otherwise you'll be demoted.

The only other alternative is to edit your crew config files so that none of your crew are ranked higher than Oberfähnrich (to avoid dramas around whether the other Lts are more senior than you, LOL!). Realistic? Nup.

Okay, I'm going to stop now, thanks for the advice then. I'm just saying... that there weren't all that many instances of this to my knowledge, but anyhow, who cares, its a game.