[JScones]

Originally Posted by Graf Paper

It would be wonderful if you and Jaesen could get together and have him help you to intergrate the new ranks and awards into his SH3 Commander.

I'm sure that you can appreciate that as one of SH3Cmdr's main aims is to provide an historical wrapper around SH3, including something that sees Admirals cruising around in U-boats just doesn't fit well.

Plus, SH3Cmdr is, and will always remain, mod neutral. Assuming, therefore, that all players want to be Admirals cruising around in U-boats isn't appropriate either.

What I will do, however, is remove any modifications that SH3Cmdr makes to the rank labels in *_menu.txt. This means that the options to force ranks and medals to display in a specific language will go. SH3Cmdr will revert to reading and using whatever rank labels exist in the game, between numbers 170 and 179 (it will ignore 175).

But players need to understand that as this mod is merely text label changes, there is no way for SH3Cmdr to know whether you start as an ObLt, KptLt, or burger flipper, so if you adjust your rank in any way, it will create a hole in your Personnel File between your pre-SH3 career and your SH3 career. You can plug this by adjusting the ranks stored in SH3Cmdr_*.txt (removing Seekadett in the process), but as the pre-SH3 promotion dates are based on an SH3 start rank of Lt (after all, that is what the stock game starts with), they will no longer be reflective of RL conditions. But again, players can edit the dates in their SH3Cmdr.ini file if they really want to.

Personally, having lived through the "rank bumping" debacle two years ago and knowing the potential frustrations, I would see better value in combining the "classic" approach of starting as an Lt but changing the renown required to ensure that you get promoted to ObLt after your first patrol (as is current practice; chosen for a reason ), with the extra ranks that Tessa has added. Sure, this reduces the maximum rank to a mere Vizeadmiral, but...

Originally Posted by Graf Paper

This would also add realism by using his "random crew transfers" feature to reflect that your WO or CE got promoted to command their own u-boat, if possible.

Not with you here, as Tessa's mod only adjusts player ranks. Crewmen will retain the same rank as they do now.

Originally Posted by Graf Paper

Too bad there's currently no known way to promote ordinary crew and petty officers to officer ranks for replacing any officers that get transferred or promoted out. Then again, higher ranks for your u-boat commander wasn't supposed to work, either, according to common wisdom.

You can. It's common knowledge that from within SH3 you can promote from PO to officer and from crewman to PO, assuming of course, that the crewman has the necessary experience. SH3Cmdr doesn't support this though, because it didn't happen quite like that in RL.