Crew management is one of the most confusing and useful things in sh4 and it is poorly explained in the user's manual. There are volumes of threads about crew management and it gets even more confusing. It really takes some time to really get the hang of crew management. I'll try to explain how I understand and how I do it.
1. For game purposes, the crew is divided into three shifts, or watches. Two will be in black and white, the on duty shift will be in color.
2. Short answer is "Yes." You can click on each crew member and get information about the individual. You can see name, rank, health, fatigue, specialty, and skill level on the different skills. Suffice to say, the higher number, the better at the skill. This is important. You want to assign your crew members so they contribute best to the crew. High mechanical skill, you want in the engine room. High watch skill, you want in deck watch, etc. You will notice that the skills don't necessary match all the compartments, that's one of the things that get confusing. You'll notice there isn't torpedo, control room, or sensors skill. You want to put Mechanical skill in the torpedo rooms, command skill in the control room, and electrical skill in the sensors room (conning tower or whatever it's called). You will want to divide the shifts evenly according to the crew member's skill levels. At the top of each compartment, there is a bar that shows how well the crew in that compartment is working. If just the watch crew is on duty, it will show green in 1/3 of the bar or less. It shows the compartment is operating at 1/3 efficiency. Go to battle stations, the bar should be close to completely filled. The exact level depends on the skill level of your crew members. Take your time to set up your crew when you start your career, then after that, it's just tweaking. I like to arrange my crew members in order of skill level. It helps for deciding who to put where. It also helps when later on, you want or need to move crew members around. Once your set up, during routine patrol, you can ignore the crew, it takes care of itself. During an attack, you will want to go to battle stations.
3. For assigning damage control, you will want those with mechanical skill. Some say you want the better crew members. If available, I go for those crew members that have high mechanical and electrical skill. I don't know if it really matters.
4. Red means injured. I think a minor injury is pink and a serious injury is red. You can click in the individual crew member and see the health level, it should be 100%. As time goes, an injured crew member will heal, unless you have traveler's mod.
5. The crew members will automatically repair the damage in their compartment. The damage control team needs to be micro-managed. On the damage control screen, you have a list of items damaged and repairable (your deck gun is damaged and you're submerged, the deck gun will not show on the list). On the right side is a scroll bar, on the left are up and down arrows. Scroll through the list to find the item you want (bulkhead). Highlight it, then use the arrows to move it in the list. You want to fix the bulkheads first to stop the leaks, then use your judgement. As long as the water pumps are working, and the leaks are stopped, then water will be pumped out.
Good luck and good hunting.
