[Beery]

Originally Posted by mpugsley

So it would be nice to have the following implemented:
(a) Stress increased as combat or threatened combat or heavy U-boot damage situations occur.

Unfortunately I don't think it can be done. The fatigue seems to be hard coded to be instigated purely by time spent under a certain time compress setting. The only way to make it purely combat/threat/damage related is to do everything except combat/damage repair/preparation for combat at 64x TC or higher. It may be possible to have it purely triggered by combat, but in real life battle stress isn't always caused purely by combat, so I think that would be replacing an abstraction with a simplification, and I'm not convinced that the simplification would work as well as the abstraction, even if it could be done. After all, a patrol's duration has a marked effect on morale too, and poor morale increases the incidence of battle fatigue. Anyway, in the end, the boat still works with a fully fatigued crew, so the way the crew becomes stressed shouldn't be much of an issue, especially after a couple of patrols.

(b) Regeneration in crew's quarters when outside these situatiions, but limited to a new max, which is continually lowered as situations mentioned in (a) occur or continue. The effects of how the red-bar-max is limited are cumulative during a single patrol.

Firstly, there is no possibility of implementing lower maximum fatigue levels as the patrol goes on. This would require heavy duty reprogramming by the developers. Given that, if regeneration is implemented even at a low level, it will effectively break the system. Any level of regeneration tends to make the player try the short-term solution of regenerating crewmen rather than using the long-term solution of giving crew qualifications. RUb's battle stress model is a careful balance of the game's fatigue and qualification systems that drives the player into a positive 'reward for work' process. All aspects of the fatigue system are carefully balanced so that:
1. The first two missions require some crew juggling. Without this there is no incentive to get qualifications.
2. The boats can run with fully fatigued crews even in the first couple of missions. However, doing this is dangerous - loading torpedoes takes longer, and because of the necessity to juggle the new crew the boat is in a state where it is endangered. This simulates the inefficiency of a green crew.
3. Qualifications and promotions build crew efficiency and raise the crew's ability to work well when stressed.
4. After the first few missions the player will reach a point where the crew qualifications and promotions will effectively negate stress. All compartments should work at full efficiency even with a fully stressed crew. This means that your veteran crew can patrol for months without losing efficiency.

(c) The effects of long-term combat stress are implemented as per discussed in 3) above (bell-curve model).

This certainly can't be done without some heavy duty reprogramming of the sort that only developers can do.