[RoaldLarsen]

I have been using SH3 Commander for 3 months, and I think it is wonderful. Until this week, I had only one minor problem with it, but that was cosmetic only: when using realistic crew transfers, the message announcing the need to replace a crew member always seemed to use the English rank, even though I was using German rank translations.

Now I have run across something that actually gets in the way of desired gameplay. According to uboat.net, U-69, a type VIIC, became a front boat in 7th Flotilla on Feb. 1, 1941. This was the first submarine command for her captain. I wished to emulate this, by starting a career in 7th Flotilla at the start of 1941 in a type VIIC.

I made sure that "SH3 Options | Career Options | Use historic U-boat availability dates" was checked.
I edited "SH3 Commander\Cfg\U-boat availability.cfg" to set 904_Month1=1 in the section [SUBMARINE1]
I even edited SilentHUnterIII\data\Cfg\Flotilla.cfg (by use of the static settings file) to make Month22=1, then checked the Flotilla.cfg file after a load to make sure that the change had been applied.

When I started SH3 Commander, I selected "Set up for a new career". I typed in a name, selected year 1941, month 1, and 7th Flotilla. When I tried to select a u-boat type, the only choice available was VIIB. It is not until 1941/06 that VIIC is an available choice. If I proceed to start the career in SH3, I get a type VIIB, though a type VIIC is available as an upgrade, but for something like 3000 reknown points.

As an experiment, I edited "SH3 Commander\Cfg\U-boat availability.cfg" so that 904_Month1 was set to 10, and ran through the same steps as above. Once again, type VIIC became available in the SH3Cmndr UI in June '41. If I turn off "Use historic U-boat availability dates", a type VIIB is the only option no matter what date I choose when setting up career start in 7th Flotilla.

It seems that, even though SH3 Commander allows you to tweak many things in SH3, it doesn't apply some of these tweaks to its own user interface.

One probably relevant observation: when playing around with availability dates, I would sometimes get an error diaog with the message "Invalid argument to date encode" while running the attempts described above. This would occur when restoring SH3Cmndr after exiting from SH3 after running SH3 from the "Set up for new career" screen.

If I set the u-boat availabilty in SH3Cmndr, then start up SH3 from outside SH3Cmndr, I can start a career in a type VIIC in January 41, but I have to use the stock crew.

I know I could get a type VIIC with a SH3Cmndr "realistic" crew quite quickly by starting a career in a type VIIB, running a very short first patrol, hacking the reknown in the patrol files, and then upgrading before my second patrol.

My questions are:
0) Am I doing something wrong?
1) Is there a more elegant way to start a career in a type VIIC in early 1941 in 7th Flotilla, which retains the SH3Cmndr "realistic" crew?
2) Am I right that the availability of sub types for new careers in SH3Cmndr is hardcoded into the interface?
3) If I'm not right about this being hardcoded, what do I need to do to start a new career through SH3Cmndr in a type VIIC in early 1941 in 7th Flotilla?
4) If the career start sub type availability, (and the rank displayed in messages about crew transfers) IS hardcoded, is there any chance of SH3 Commander being upgraded to use the data from its configuration files to affect its own UI?