[Sailor Steve]

Commander? It does a great many things:

Realistic career length, with retirement.

A complete biography for your captain, including place and date of birth and promotion dates.

Randomized names for your captain and crew (1.7 billion combinations).

Starting crew that are not all green.

Realistic crew transfers, both out and in.

Start any month of the war, not just at the first of the year.

Choose your boat type, number, and starting grid.

Start patrols at sea.

Select, or randomize, days spent in base between patrols.

Randomize gramophone tracks.

Choose fatigue model, including none at all.

Adjust water clarity.

Randomize u-boat crush depth.

Ship sinking details: name, cargo, crew and crew lost for each ship sunk.

Randomized malfunctions and sabotage (selectable - you don't have to use this).

Ability to control deck gun firing rate.

Ability to control wave height by season.

Adjust time compression parameters.

Write your own patrol logs, and then install them into SH3.

Hand out as many - or as few - medals and promotions as you want.

You can also add randomized mods to Commander, such as (just an example) my Randomized Loading Screens mod, which uses SH3 Commander to give you one of 100 different screens every time you boot up the game, plus 25 different randomized marches, so every time you leave home you'll hear the band play a different song.

SH3 Commander to me is just as vital as any mod you can think of. It is what keeps me playing SH3 more than any other reason.