Promoting Seaman
 

How do you guys go about promoting the seaman (Matrose) on your boats? I find it easy to distinguish when certain PO's or Officers show superior performance through various ways - my watchman (officer) seems to have been immune to fatigue (even from start in Aug 39') he could go a whole patrol w/o submerging and still barely be fatigued while the rest of the crew is keeled over from exhaustion. Though not very German I renamed him Lou Gehrig as he's nothing less than the real Iron Horse in terms of never missing a moment of action.

Your average crewman though how do you go about promoting them? Save those that are either exceptional with the deck or flak guns there's really no subjective way (ime) to judge their performance. After 9 patrols w/148 days at sea, 644,000 tons sunk so far I've only promoted my sonar operator, and 3 crewmen that have been like a sniper with the deck gun. Recently I dishonorably dismissed 4 PO's, 1 officer and 1 sailor after the last patrol for being dead weight or being combat ineffective by being fatigued almost 100% of the time (as in the case of the officer, he couldn't stay at the helm longer than 10 minutes before he couldn't stand anymore and had to sleep in the bunks for a few hours at least).

On the positive side it's nice having spots that are usually not open for promotion now free (though not realistic I don't believe in transfer unless they're deserved - like giving a Leutnant chance for command - I work hard to train these guys just like Patton would've and I'll be damned if I ever let some brass try and take away some of my best sailors; always make sure to have a friend in the Gestapo to dig up dirt on my CO to keep them under my thumb). Unless you have people that are intentionally avoiding promotion (more common among US enlisted soldiers than Germans) each crewmen will get the same amount of exp 95% of the time. Obviously the 5% that do manage to earn more exp than their fellow mates I promote but it happens so rarely to make it a reliable system. During combat promotions can go very fast, having a sailor sitting at E-1 for 2 years just wouldn't be right. So far my best patrol ended up with 128,993 tons (all merchant) sunk and another 100,000+ ton with 2 battleships sunk which irl would've probably earned the whole crew at least an IC2 each or promotion but being allowed only 4 promotions max such actions aren't feasible. Since we can't communicate with the PO's or see them in action how do others handle this dilemma?

Have you been using time compression frequently?

Even while in submerged or surfaced engagement...

"...food for thought..."

Use of TC largely depends on how far I have to go, if going from Kiel around Denmark (crash too often in the Kanal now) or am hunting for convoys usually its at 1024 or 512, 256 if things start to get sluggish. Save for the people that are resting, even with TC (unless its changed or had it wrong all along) it affects everyone equally. I know at slower/realtime speeds fatigue goes up faster, times I've travelled 1000km at 1024 and had almost little or no fatigue in any of the crew (though a few like that officer I described would almost drop dead while the guy next to him might be down 20% while he's only got 20% left).

Medals
 

At the end of good patrols you will see, in the crew management screen of the in-port segment, what medals are available to bestow on your crew. You can also have them take training.

Their morale goes up with medals and their value goes up with training courses completed.

Good point. With the stock SH3 fatigue model too much time between 1tc and 32tc will leave your whole crew asleep at the wheel.:yawn:

Do you have SHCommander? As anyone here will tell you, it changes the whole game. You can promote as many as you want and give medals to as many as you want. It also allows you to chose several fatigue options including 'no fatigue' which I use to simulate watch changes that my 1WO would be responsible for anyway.

SH3 Commander. You can promote any crewman any time you like.

SH3 Commander....never go to sea without it.

On the subject of fatigue...anything over x32 tc and it ceases to work.

I use Commander and have the 'no fatigue' option enabled.

GWX fatigue is great IMO. Stops you from patrolling too long as the men start to lose morale and endurance.

Have been playing the game since 2006, didn't learn about this site till a year later but am familiar with pretty much all the mods. As great as SHC is, currently its nuking some of my own personal mods when I launch a game with it so while I have it installed, all I use it for is to view crew data without having start the game up. As Jasun's said I love to make mods that break his SHC :DL

Think I need to more precisely define my question, my last patrol my tonnage was at 69,813 with 1 torpedo left. Just so I could hit 70,000 and get a RK for my crew I ended up using my last torpedo on a tugboat just to get the extra medal (deck gun ammo was fully expended already). The mechanics aren't the question here.

On a (real) boat as captain you would interact and see your crew in action every day; especially on a submarine its hard to hide yourself and be inconspicuous. During the patrol if a crewman performed some incredible action they might get a brevet, or at least at the end of the patrol get the formal promotion. Since we can't see the crewman/Matrose/E-1's or talk to their PO's about their patrol performance what criteria do you use to promote the lowly seaman?

Even if I get 4 promotions at the end of the patrol sometimes I don't even use them all as no one performed well or was deserving of one. SHC comes in with situations like Prien's Scapa flow mission where everyone on the ship got a IC2 (or IC1 if already had an IC2).

To take from something we all are very familiar with, Das Boot, imagine that you are in the situation where they sunk in Gibraltor. For the purpose of this question, ignore the actual characters from the movie and imagine it's your (SH3) crew. While everyone's actions were well above and beyond, the crewmen that plugged the leaks in the aft torpedo room saved the ship - had they been unable to do so the flooding would have become uncontrollable and everyone died. So as far as SH3 ingame is concerned, how do you decide who to promote in that kind of situation where it was a mix of PO's, Officers and Matrose. How do you single out which Matrose to promote? Since at the end of the patrol they'll all have the same amount of xp and there's no way of telling which ones perfomed the heroic actions.

After remembering the major events of the patrol, and the departments which stood out the most, I attempt to choose an individual. If I have no way of knowing which single individual did the most, I just "write the story" my way and pick one. If I can't be certain, I may as well pretend I know.

Same here... usually when I finish a patrol I take a look at how many promotions the game says I can dish out, and which crewmen the game says have met the requirements. If I have crewmen who qualify that are also on duty in some station that contributed something outstanding, they'll be the ones I promote. Otherwise I promote the qualified crewmen whose "scores" in terms of experience and time in service are the highest.

Since I use Commander's "no fatigue" option, I don't move crew around - so the guys who are in a compartment at the end of the patrol, are the ones who did the work there all along. Makes it fairly easy to dole out promotions on the basis of outstanding performance at a particular station.

But typically I only give out as many promotions as the game allots me at the end of a patrol, unless there is a huge number of crewmen who have met the requirements and it was a really outstanding patrol. Then I might make a note of any additional promotions that I think are deserved or long overdue and take care of them in Commander.

Generally speaking, though, I'm more likely to reward outstanding performance on a particular patrol with medals, especially if I'm getting one myself, than I am to give out more promotions than the game says I have to play with.

I hand out the U-boat war badges based on workload (engine room crews always get them first, I imagine they have the hardest job on the boat). Right now almost everyone has one so I'm just issuing them to the few who do not have one. As for promotions I base it off time and merit and make it even among the NCO and seamen rank. Officers can wait a bit lol. Just make sure you promote each seaman at least once, it would suck to go through 5 years of patrols and not rise above E-1.

I give out uboat war badges the way it was typically done in real life - anyone (including myself) who has completed two combat patrols gets one. From what I've read that was the only requirement, altho on rare occasions some commanders seem to have gotten them after one very successful combat patrol.

I'm not happy with the way the game awards them, since I typically start careers in August 1939 and finish the first patrol before the war even starts, the game usually gives me the war badge before I've done two combat patrols (and without any extraordinary achievements on the first one) so I just edit the relevant files after I exit the game until I've completed the second war patrol.

When it comes to the crew I use Commander to dole them out to each crewman after he's completed a second combat patrol.

And historically it wasn't reinstituted in WWII until mid-October 1939, so nobody should be getting it before that date... but I've never finished two war patrols before then so it's not been an issue.

Once I finish this career I plan to tinker with the config files again to see if I can fine-tune them to make the awarding of medals and badges more historically accurate, at the very least I don't like things being awarded in the game on a date when they shouldn't be available yet.

Regarding promotions, at some point it's going to get weird because I'm not transferring crewmen out at all at the moment... so at some point I'm going to have so many guys who are qualified for promotion, that if I promote them all I'll end up with far too many higher-ranking enlisted men compared to everybody else. But at some point I intend to use "realistic transfers" in Commander to alleviate that somewhat. And possibly I'll start dismissing the highest ranking dudes and recruiting more n00bs on my own just to keep things interesting.

Interesting to know, everyone on board U-123 has one now, we wrapped up patrol 9 tonight.

I'm a little stingy on promotions but I award them based on merit and workload so some will attain E-3 well before others. As for transfers it'll be hard to break up the crew after spending so many patrols together but I guess the Kriegsmarine's needs come first.

Yeah, one of my nit-pickier issues with decorations awarded in the game is with the way the War Badge, Front Clasp, and German Cross are handled. The game gives them out in a very unhistorical manner, which wouldn't matter to me if I didn't know that, but I do so it does. :O:

According to uboat.net:

The U-Boat War Badge was established on Oct 13 1939 and given out after two combat patrols, or on rare occasions after one very successful one.

The German Cross in Gold was established on Sep 28 1941 and "was awarded for outstanding achievements and bravery in combat" that were not quite worthy of a Knight's Cross. It was only awarded to those who already held an IC2 and IC1.

The U-Boat War Badge Front Clasp was established on May 15 1944 and was awarded "based on one of three criteria: the number of sorties against the enemy, or the risk factor relative to the sortie number, or personal bravery."

I'm still hoping to tinker with the files to get the game to deal with these in a more historical manner, or at least stop awarding them to me before it would've been historically possible to get them date-wise.