People Management - damage control
 

In my experiment last night, noticed that in my people management screen, there's empty slots for damage control to be filled.

Do I take these people from their departments (i.e, someone from this department, that department) or do I take them from the far left side of the screen (or does it matter?)

If you wish, you can even add extra crew members who stay in the damage control section. I don't recall precisely what skills contribute to efficiency in the damage control section (it's different for every ship location and I don't remember the numbers, but it's someplace here on the site), but you can take them from wherever you like. If you are submerged, deck watch is always a good place (since they have nothing else to do at that time), and the same goes for the deck/AA guns if you keep them manned constantly. Otherwise, taking them from off-duty watches is good. If you're at battle stations, I'd recommend you never pull out so many men from any one compartment that it lowers the total compartment efficiency below 100%; for most of them you have some leeway at battle stations, where everyone is on duty.

So from what I read here and in some of the earlier postings (seems this is a hot topic), it's best to assign them once going to battle stations.

Or is it better to wait until you have damage, see what's broken, then pick the best people for the repairs and drop them in the DC slots?

I can't find the best stats for a damage control team... no idea where to look

Well, from what I could see last night, if you hover your pointer over each crewmember, you'll see what they're best at. I'd probably make my choices based on that. I assume mechanical and electrical skills in the higher numbers would be my best choices.