Quote:
Originally Posted by Hanzberger
Do you ever get anyone experienced if you do realistic crew transfers. And thanks for your input mates. I am switching off fatigue, what a pain in the  . |
My experience is that you almost always lose. They will be less experienced, and perhaps have a useless skill (helmsman, medic).
I just came off an excellent 6th cruise (13 ships, 60K tons on what was supposed to be a milk run from Cadiz to Willy) and what do I get? I give my 1WO the German Cross, and he doesn't come back from leave. I give my Chief of Boat an Iron Cross 1st and he gets killed in a bar fight. Go figure.
The fatigue model is flawed, obviously. 1) in real life, the captain would not have to micromanage (as others have noted). 2) the models miss the progressive degradation of spirit and efficiency of long patrols/watches.
While I was never at sea, I had several periods of "12 hours on, 12 hours off" watches in the US Navy, lasting 10-14 days a stretch. Even with good food, clean clothes, fresh air, a beer here and there and absolutely no danger, that wore you down -- a lot! Take away all that good stuff, and put you in a WWII U-boat? You'd be stupidly weary after 14 days, almost a zombie.
So if anyone ever does work up a new fatigue model, I'd hope it is one that wears down the whole crew over time, with efficiency and skill dropping across the length of a patrol, and dropping according to a realistic algorithm. It would be nice to have my crew acting like saucer-eyed feral cats after 50-60 days at sea.