Career start crew - them scurvy dogs (TEC)

[Sniper297]

The crew AI sucks because their programming is limited to basic things. How well they do those basic things depends on their skills. My first few times starting a career I made the mistake of casting off without looking at the crew, so they were frequently failing to do what they were supposed to, or doing it too late, or dawdling on the job.



Good idea to go to this screen - most petty officers will be OK, but look at all the non rates (boots, Seaman 3rd or Seaman 1st) carefully. 30 should be the minimum acceptable skill for the location, 40 is better. By compartment, skills that need to be as high as possible;

Deck Watch - Watchman
Engine Rooms - Mechanical
Torpedo Rooms - Mechanical and Guns
Conning Tower - Electrical
Control Room - Mechanical and Watchman
Deck and AA Guns - duh, Guns

Most places by default have rated petty officers, but the Deck Watch can often have blind lookouts who don't see a ship until it rams, and Torpedo Rooms frequently have some clutz with such poor Mechanical and Guns skills that he gets in the way so it takes 3 days to reload one tube.



Found these guys posted as lookouts on the Deck Watch, both have very poor Watchman skills and don't belong there. First guy has Watchman 25, but high Mechanical and Guns, so I move him to the torpedo room to replace someone below 30 in either skill. Other guy is a grass combing farmer who should have joined the Army, drag his pic to the far left to dismiss crew member. Highest skill he has is electrical, and even that sucks. Maybe he could peel potatoes without cutting his thumbs off, but I wouldn't bet on it.



After getting rid of the worst lubbers, I've spent starting renown on moving the deck gun from stern to bow, and changing AA guns (never been patched, once the career starts with a stern gun you can no longer change it) but all the 3rd class seamen don't require any renown points at all. And you can find some real gems among those Billy Bootcamp guys.

I drag the outstanding recruits over to the damage control section temporarily, then look at the lowest required skill in current crew, compare to the new recruits and replace the 27s and 30s with 35s and 40s until they're all used up.
I've actually seen Deck Watch with a Watchmen skill of 9, if I ever find the assignment officer I'll make THAT swab walk the plank.

Promotions take a long long long time regardless how much renown you earn during a career, so eventually even the ace seamen will be replaced with petty officers. One thing I noticed about the COMMAND petty officers (the ones with the helm symbol) sometimes they have two qualification badges in their profile, lookout (telescope on tripod symbol) and command. Since they need to have high Mechanical skills and high Watchmen skills, and the lookouts only need high Watchmen, as the career goes on between each patrol I replace plain vanilla Lookout POs with supercharged Command POs. Why? Same Watchmen skill levels, much much much higher Mechanical skills. What they need Mechanical for? When repairing damage you're usually submerged and trying to evade tin cans, so you don't need a deck watch at that time. Move the deck watch down to damage control, with the Command PO's high mechanical skill you don't have to rob the engine rooms of machinist's mates who are sorely needed when you're in trouble.

But it makes a difference on the first patrol if you start with a halfway decent crew instead of a bunch of stumblebums.