Awarding medals with SH3 Commander?
 

I note that with SH3 Commander, it is easy to award medals even in unrealistic circumstances and this does seem to me to be a bit of a cheat since a highly decorated officer or seaman will not require to be 'rested' off-watch in the crew quarters. How do other players cope with this phenomenon?

I also note the SH3 Commander does not permit a seaman to be promoted to Petty Officer ranks or a Petty Officer to become an Officer yet the game does allow this and, in the game I have replaced lost Officers and Petty Officers (I have lost a few flak gunners and WOs) by promoting through the ranks from within my crew. Did the Kriegsmarine allow promotions through the ranks in RL?

I can't speak to the promotions, but awards in my opinion are more realistic. The game only allows one qualification per patrol, and in real life there is no such thing as an unqualified petty officer. It's what makes him a PO in the first place. For me a new career starts with a shakedown run, usually to the end of the harbor and back. After that first "patrol" I then qualify all my POs before starting the first real patrol.

Medals? I never give one out unless a crewman does something truly extraordinary. In fact Commander's random assignment sometimes gives me crew who already have medals - in 1939! I use it to remove those.

A nice strong cup of tea and a back rub. :)

I use SH to dole out promotions and medals, then SH Commander for all qualifications and correcting any medals that aren't actually available as of the date of the patrol. The entire crew has full qualifications after the 1st patrol. Not a navy in the world would set to sea without a full compliment of qualified crewman, unless we're talking Mchale's Navy, :D but that's a whole different matter.
:salute:

I use the stock award system to build my crew with qualifications and awards. I do not use Commander to do this.

I know it is realistic for all your POs to have qualifications but part of what makes the game interesting for me is the investment you make over a month or more building your crew into an invincible fighting force from green rookies.

It may not be a realistic analog to the way real life was, but it gives you the feeling of an inept crew when you start off in 1939 and you don't have enough skilled men to get maximum efficiency out of any of the compartments. And as the war goes on and you build up your crew you really feel attached to them and are less apt to risk them over nothing when you play "dead is dead" and have to start all over again.

It's a huge deal to me when I finally get the award for a crew member that makes him have no fatigue! My goal is to get all POs and officers so that they do not fatigue. Once I've done that I have an elite crew that operates at its maximum ability.

If you use Commander to dish all that out up front it kind of kills the growing experience of the crew, for me.

Steve

I'm very similar to Steve....all PO's have a qualification before going on their first 'war' patrol.

There are many instances of warships putting to sea with inadequately trained or qualified crews and the U-Boat arm was no exception. As their casualties mounted many sailors were drafted from shore establishments or the idle surface fleet with little or no training.

Even earlier in the war, well before Black May, allied interrogators were commenting on the low quality ('youthfulness' was the euphemism of choice) of some captured crews. The following is taken from the British report on the interrogation of the crew of U-131, captured in December, 1941:

"Many of the ratings had had very little or no previous U-Boat experience and were very young. Some of them confessed that they had undergone no training in school boats. One of the telegraphists stated that, had he returned from this cruise he would have been given charge of the wireless apparatus in another U-Boat. Three of the senior ratings could be considered to have the requisite experience usually necessary for the U-Boat service."

Source: U-Boat Archive. Full article here:
http://www.uboatarchive.net/U-131INT.htm

My father was sunk in May 1941 on the CAM ship HMS Patia off the Farne Islands in the North Sea by a German bomber. He told me that they had no trained AA gunners aboard as the crew had been hastily assembled from Chatham barracks only a few days prior to sailing from South Shields. The crew were nearly all raw recruits with little or no sea experience and none of the men in my father's mess had ever served together before. The ship was en-route to collect their aircraft from the Forth when they were sunk. It was her first, and last, 'patrol'.

The bomber was brought down by a lucky hit from an improvised AA weapon operated by the cook. My father wasn't sure if the ship had any purpose-built AA guns fitted. She probably did but he didn't know her well enough in the few days he was aboard and the armament details are incomplete. If she had, he didn't recall them being used. The cook's 'weapon' appeared to be the sole means of air defence for a 5,000 GRT ship.

The Admiralty Courts' Martial proceedings into the sinking are held in the National Archive at Kew in west London. The loss of the ship was attributed to the captain failing to take evasive action when attacked (true) but that verdict also conceals the facts that the crew were inadequately trained, unfamiliar with the ship, its systems and each other, and the ship itself ill-equipped for it's own defence.

Having read the original document it seems that the board found it more convenient to blame a dead man than examine the Navy's own failings.

KH

Okay, I stand corrected. :salute:

And I disagree. I was just a 'rating', and I wasn't fully qualified either. But then I wasn't a petty officer either. I was a guy who went through Radio School, then got to the fleet and found that what I had learned was tthe basic bottom-of-the-barrel stuff I needed to know to have a vague idea of what was what. The 'non-qualified' group are represented by the common sailors in the game, who are indeed green. A petty officer only gets that way by service and by proving his qualification. There is no such rating as 'Petty Officer'. He is a Radioman 3rd Class. He is a Torpedoman 1st Class. He is a Machinist 2nd Class.

Just like the army. A soldier may be green or he may be more experienced than his officers. A sergeant isn't just another grunt. He earned those stripes. A petty officer may be the only qualified man in his division, but he knows his job. Otherwise he isn't a petty officer.

I was referring to wartime conditions, not post-war or peacetime when manning levels would not be under such stress.

I don't deny that there is a requirement for a PO to have a qualification as distinct from a rating. I didn't challenge that point or your service experience.

Many warships in WW2 were inadequately crewed by the standards of the day and my point was that it was incorrect to state that no vessel ever put to sea without a fully qualified crew when there is evidence to the contrary. I stand by what I wrote.

KH

I agree with Steve in that Petty Officers in most navy services were the 'Sergeants' - experienced, hard and usually 'to the book' so it makes sense to have them all qualified. I am quite comfortable about awarding qualifications in SH3 Commander but I feel uneasy about using the programme to dish out medals - even though in RL the Kriegsmarine were fairly generous with these awards, especially early on.

In the game, I believe that it makes good sense to promote an experienced Matrosenhauptgefreiter to the rank of Bootsmann - especially as a replacement for a crew member that has been lost but I do not know if this would have happened in RL

From the interrogation report:

One of the telegraphists stated that, had he returned from this cruise he would have been given charge of the wireless apparatus in another U-Boat.

We don't know the back story to this man but the report implies that his 'training' for his specialisation was incomplete and he was to be given additional responsibility on return, simply by surviving. That suggests to me that the arm was short of qualified personnel, however one wishes to categorise them.

In game, I promote or qualify my crew gradually, assessing their aptitude for each role before promoting or qualifying them into it. I've had my fair share of deaf hydrophone operators or blind watchmen in the past and now I take my time to grade them. I also weed out anyone with a squeaky voice...

I have noticed that an unqualified PO will still sport a 'badge' if you put him where you can see his left upper arm - like the third position in the control room. This seems to me to be a clue as to where his speciality might be or an area where the boat is deficient. Anyone else noticed this?

For example, I needed two more watch PO's and one of the candidates had a Radio badge on his arm when he held no badge of any kind. I qualified him as the game 'suggested' and the number of map contacts I had seemed to increase. Might have been my imagination but I think there is something in it.

The game is full of 'Magic' . . .

And you should. We may be talking at cross-points. I don't contend that ships put to sea with a fully qualified crew, just that certain crew members were qualified by definition. What constitutes "inadequately crewed"? Is it lack of qualification in petty officers, or lack of the POs themselves? I myself was never "fully qualified", but then I was never a first-class Radioman, just a sailor who had some school and was training in the Radio department.

There is a function in SH3C that helps regulate this. Open SH3 Commander/Cfg/SH3 Options. The very last option governs percentage of experienced crew by year. It's a simple text file and you can set it for whatever feels right to you. I don't know that it governs how many of your men are POs, but it does cover how much experience they have.

Both (and not just among the PO's), but my point is that it more about the quality of training they have had, their seagoing and combat experience and familiarity with their vessel and shipmates. I think we have a different interpretation of how qualifications are modelled and interpreted in the game - as opposed to RL. To emphasise my point, I describe my 'unqualified' and 'qualified' PO's and Officers as 'basic' or 'badged'.

The quality of training varies from one service to another according to the stresses placed on the system. Wartime training would, at first, be less complete than peacetime as large numbers of men had to be rushed through to fill the new boats and ships that were being built. Later on, that same training would be more comprehensive as it included new methods in the light of wartime experience. A pre-war long service PO in SH3 is exactly the same as a newly minted one given his badge after one trip to the 'end of the pier and back.':03: Suddenly he's the finished article? I'm not criticising that approach, each to their own, but I think badges are too powerful to be handed out like candy.

That is why the British interrogators in the U-131 report placed such emphasis on the lack of experience of the captured U-Boat men. This also inferred the quality of training (by RN standards) was sub-standard (excuse pun). One has to read between the lines to get all the nuances as the British are fond of under-statement. The comment on the captured wireless operator being given charge of the radio on another boat on return - after just one patrol - illustrates this. I can visualise the officer writing that report shaking his head in disbelief as he does so.

SH3 (bless it) over-emphasises the effect of qualifications, awards and promotions to create some sort of uber-crew who never need to go to the bathroom or eat or sleep. I minimise this by promoting and qualifying my chaps gradually (and running the GWX fatigue model). My guys don't do 24/7 on duty, the engine room crew don't serve anywhere else and the smutje never stands watch. I also submerge at regular intervals so everyone can get some peace and quiet and something to eat (including me) before rejoining the war. I use SH Commander sparingly to fill the occasional gap and badges are not routinely awarded until the recipient has enough sea-time under his belt.

In my view, the basic PO's in the game are qualified but haven't achieved perfection in their specific area yet. Training takes time and the trainee must demonstrate some sort of aptitude and ability for it to be worthwhile to continue. SH3 Commander gets around this by allowing 'instant qualified PO - just add badge!' Not for me. My crew have to earn their stripes. I consider them (and the officers) as partially trained 'specialists-in-waiting' with an aptitude for some technical area that hasn't been defined yet.

I also find the basic PO's to be very useful as they can crew any station at moderate efficiency while the badged PO's tend to be less than useful outside their speciality. Put the radioman on the bridge or a torpedoman in the control room and see how compartment efficiency drops. It would be better if the qualifications in the game were less decisive in their effect and there were more of them: torpedoman class 3, 2, and 1 for example, with each step leading to an incremental increase in efficiency. It's a bit odd that a Staboberbootsmann could be less qualified than a plain old Bootsmann. The oldest, and arguably the most important 'qualification' of all - discipline - isn't even modelled in the game! If it was the badge symbol could be a 'Cat o' nine tails'...

There is a profound difference between peacetime training of volunteer service personnel and wartime training of hastily inducted civilians. The U-Boat arm personnel had little significant experience prior to 1939 of course (except the handful of Spanish Civil War vets) and the massive expansion of the fleet from 1941-42 onwards created another strain which was exacerbated by rising casualties amongst the experienced crews needed to train the next generation. Training quality was reduced to maximise output which then led to higher casualties. It was a vicious circle.

Just to give a brief, personal, example, my father enlisted in the RN in April 1940. His skills were in mechanics and endurance swimming - so they made him an Ordinary Seaman, torpedo (3rd class in US Navy). He was told he was PO material but was too young and had to 'serve his time'. He had very little training in that speciality as the invasion scare blew up and he re-trained as a marksman (sniper) with the Chatham Naval Battalion to oppose Sea Lion. When he was posted to HMS Patia he didn't have any opportunity to familiarise himself with the torpedoes before she was sunk and later joined the Fleet Air Arm. He remembered the Patia's crew as being a collection of sweepings from Chatham barracks thrown together at the last minute with very few experienced or proficient seaman, PO's or officers amongst them. Their captain was a relic from the Great War. Apart from my father, there was one other rating with torpedo training aboard but no Petty Officer of that branch to oversee them. The ship was on its way to the Forth to complete manning and equipping but was not adequately crewed on leaving South Shields and was sunk accordingly.

And yes, we were talking at cross-purposes but never mind. Sorted now.:)

Thanks for the info on adjusting experience, I'll look into that as I prefer that indicator over the others.:know:

KH