[maillemaker]

1. According to the manual, the medals you can award to your crew have effects, but it neglects to mention what they are. What do they do, exactly? How about the medals you can recieve yourself? Do badges do anything?

Medals help with fatigue. By the time you get the second-to-highest one (Gold cross?) the holder of the medal never fatigues again ever. I strive to get this for all of my officers, my mechanics, and radio/sonar operators ASAP.

2. Fatigue affects efficiency it seems. What does morale do? What causes it to increase and decrease? And "Resilience"? The manual mentions health, but I don't remember resilience.

I don't know what morale does.

3. What exactly does the experience bar do? What does the game track to determine jow much a crewman gets?

Experience determines whether or not a crewman is eligible for promotion.

4. The electric torpedo available at the beginning of the war is described as unreliable. Is it so bad that I shouldn't bother with it? It's also described as improving after Operation Weserubung. Is that modeled in the game, so that it's better around May 1940?

Aside from the random dud torpedoes, the only unreliability I have seen with torpedoes is when they are set to magnetic. The failure mechanism is that they pre-detonate. This is more likely to happen in rough weather, and is more likely to happen at ranges over 1000m.

Since magnetics are tricky to use in rough weather anyway (ship may buck in the waves and rise over the torpedo), it's best to go for impact in rough weather.

If you can fire at ranges under 1000m you are unlikely to have predetonation problems.

I don't know if the TII influence fuse ever changes during the war, but the TIII comes along and is said to be more reliable.

I carry electrics exclusively except for those stored in the outside storage compartments, which, historically, had to be steamers.

Late in the war it may be necessary to resort to the long-range capabilities of steam torpedoes in order to survive the attack.

5. Does having a better radioman, perhaps even possessing the "radioman" qualification, have any effect before radar and radar detectors (I assume he runs the detectors, too) are installed? Perhaps you can miss messages or something if he's bad at his job.

Having good, qualified radiomen increases the efficiency rating of the sonar/radio compartment (green bar). This makes your sonar man able to detect things better. Probably lets the radio man swap records faster, too.

6. There's a little cutout in the bottom center of the target bearing dial in the TDC with little two-digit numbers in it. The left number is red and the right is green, but they don't seem to go in any order as it turns. What the heck is that thing?

No idea.

7. Underneath the Fore Reserves are "Extra Reserves". What's different about them?

Functionally? Nothing. They are still stored "inside the boat". My guess is that they are stored under flooring or something and as such were harder to get to historically.

8. Somebody tell me where the "win" button is. I can't seem to find it.

Me either.

Steve