Sailors and officers and experience
 

Is it so that sailors and officers gain experience and rank automatic or is that something i need to do? If so, please explain how :)

They all gain experience each patrol; I think it's a set amount (5 points per patrol? Don't recall right now). Promotions you have to give them. If you click on the icon of a crewman, details will show up in the screen in the bottom right hand corner. The bar at the bottom is the experience progress bar. When it's full, you can give them a promotion. Each class of seaman has a maximum rank, so each can get at most two promotions.

They gain experience whenever you:

1. Hit a ship with a torpedo.
2. Sink a ship.


That is straight out of the .cfg files, and you can edit that. I don't know if the ship's reknown has any modifier on it, and I don't know if neutral/enemy/friendly ship identification has any modifier on it.

Actually, provided you have space in the boat, you can promote a sailor to a PO and a CPO to an officer.

Not that I'm questioning your integrity, but is this true?

I have the maximum of five officers, 18 of 19 Petty Officers and 31 of 32 Sailors in my U-boat's roster. Three of the Sailors are at their maximum rank with experience exceeding the limit. The option to promote them to a Petty Officer doesn’t exist, so how do you promote them to become a Petty Officer?

Well, in your case you can't promote a CPO to officer as all five officer slots are taken. You can promote one of your highest ranked sailors to PO though.

Hint: Just because a man isn't highlighted when you click on Promotions in SH3 doesn't mean that you can't promote him, provided of course that his experience is high enough.

Trust me, I've spent a *lot* of time playing with the crew. ;)

BTW, don't you just love the "Not wanting to <whatever>, BUT..." qualification. LOL! This has been a topic of discussion in my office recently - there is someone that always says, "Not wanting to offend you, BUT..." and then promptly follows with an offence. We cut it off now at the "BUT..." by saying "well don't then".

I see, I'll try it when I get home (at work right now).

Thanks for the heads up, and good point on the "Don't want to offend you, but..." part!