Hero Abilities Question?

[CapnBlood]

Just started playing v1.5 and its definetly different than 1.4. Anyway i have about 8 green passives on my boat and 4 yellows 2 are torp upgrades 1 for repair and 1 is stalker ability. The prob I am having seems the passives move my yellow abilietys over to the right where i can not click on them. So is there a max # of abilitys u can have or is there a way to slide that bar over b/c the speed scale covers 1 up. Or is there another screen to access these abilities. Any help would be appreciated.

[Seminole]

Hey ..welcome aboard and enjoy your tour of duty here .

I never encountered your problem of having too many abilities so I don't have a solution for what to do about it. Sorry.

I could suggest,however, that maybe you could move the crewmwn with the ability you need to employ to a different compartment where the abilty could still be used and is also accessible. Does that make sense?

For example: I have a crew member with perfect pitch but he isn't in the sensor compartment. When I need him, I have to move him there and then back to his regular job after the action is over.

Possibly someone else will come along and add to this.

Good luck.

[aanker]

I have been curious about this too 'CapnBlood' but haven't experienced it yet.

All of my crewmen with special abilities have passive abilities and I do what 'Seminole' does. My best gunner is a radio specialist for example so I just temporarily move him for comms when needed.

I understand that there are active abilities a crewman can get that only last a short period of time however I don't have any of those so I don't know what you do to activate them. My row of crew abilities icons also extends past the fuel gauge since it is Mar 45 now.

Does he trigger if you move him to the active watch in the correct compartment... or do you need to actually click on the button to activate him? <--- (edit) - just found out they need to be 'clicked' to activate.

I'm thinking if that's the case I would dismiss 2 of my 3 propulsion experts and 2 of my 3 watch experts etc to make room to click on one of the active crewmen?? Don't know.

I did a Google forum search on this with 5 pages of results without a whole lot of luck... lol

Happy Hunting!

Art

[CapnBlood]

Basicaly i've been playing with it all day and i figured this out i think. Passives fill your list up first and as far as i can tell you can only have 9 abilities on screen at a time so if you want to use activate only hero abilities you must keep your passives down to a resonable level. If you keep 6 passives up in base you can use 3 other abilities. But also in patrol u can recieve abilities and mess that system up. I'm going to finish playing through this career for fun it's july of 43 but it takes away the sim part so i think i'm just going to keep rotating them out of my crew next career if it doesn't kill my crew stats to much. P.S I tried the search also and couldn't dig up any answers.

[Seminole]

I have never assigned much priority to advancing the crew. Mine seems to function just as well when they are beginners as they do when they become experienced old hands.

So if I had reason to kick one off the boat to make room for a needed special ability I would not hesitate for an instant.

[SteamWake]

Hes absolutly right, if you have too many passive skilled sailors they will extend past the interface buttons where you cannot access the active ones.

Only way to deal with it that Im aware of is to 'retire' some of those passive. Why one would have a dozen diving specilists aboard at one time is beyond me.

Anyhow while in port swap them out for untrained or trained in other skills.

Now if someone could mod the UI so that the actives are listed first the problem kind of goes away.

[Orion2012]

I wonder if the way the are assigned could be modded, perhaps, allowing you to choose what was learned, like giving medals.

[banjo]

As an addendum to the above, my main gripe with 1.5 is that it limits the number of officers and CPO's on board. I can never add any valuable rated ppl because it always says I have 'too many'. Completely negates my ability to upgrade my crew. Or is there a way around this I haven't discovered--other than dismissing my crew members to add new ones I mean.

[SteamWake]

Originally Posted by banjo

As an addendum to the above, my main gripe with 1.5 is that it limits the number of officers and CPO's on board. I can never add any valuable rated ppl because it always says I have 'too many'. Completely negates my ability to upgrade my crew. Or is there a way around this I haven't discovered--other than dismissing my crew members to add new ones I mean.

Dissmiss one of the CPO's with a redundant 'skill' then you can 'hire' one with the skils you desire.

[CapnBlood]

Don't need 9 diving specialist but if you have 6 engine specialist and stalker activated you can hit 28+ knots and out run destroyers what a joke

[Brenjen]

The crew & crew management has always been my #1 gripe about SH4 & it seems that it's gotten worse instead of better in v. 1.5

I'll freely admit I don't understand it at all; I was just grasping the "crew management" job v.1.4 & now in v.1.5, the number of crewman in the pool to choose from is a lot fewer, their skills & abilities aren't as good as what's already on my boat ( I found one guy on the first patrol in the pool that was a better choice ), the new abilities that some crewmen are suddenly shown as having are confusing me all to hades & back!

Ubisoft needs to do a major rework of the crew management system & write a decent explanation of how it's implemented imo........or some of these talented modders could whip something up maybe :hmm: ......if someone ( someone who really does understand crew management) could just do a detailed write up w/screen shots of how to efficiently manage the crew as it is now, that would help a lot of people out I think. I'm about ready to make my entire crew walk the plank & I'm only in summer of '43

[SteamWake]

Well start with the fact that they let you cram more sailors on board than you would be able to do in real life, have them 'aquire' magical skills while at sea and the basic premise is fubar.

But its a game.

Its up to you the player to fill every single slot (a dedicated damage control team ) if you want.

Its a game.

Throw all the CPO's off the boat and start with scrubs for the lot.

Its a game.

So its up to you the player to 'control' the crew makeup and quantitys, play it arcade, play it 'realistic' its up to you.

[Brenjen]

That's just it; I don't think there is a way to play it realistically the way the crew management/placement/ability system is set up. I think the way Ubi wrote the basic structure is fubar'd. Of course that's my opinion, but I feel the crew part of the game is the worst modeled part & garners the least attention from all the modders. Granted, I like the realistic medals modded into RFB (& maybe others) & I understand why Ubi couldn't do it themselves because of the copyright issues or whatever it was but that's not the basic layout I'm talking about, that's more immersion eye candy stuff.

For instance I have maybe 20 men to choose from in the "pool" & only one of those had better abilities than someone on my crew. After several cruises I have a boat full of dive specialists (yeah, like everyone else lol) & I go to the pool & I see exactly the same guys still there after two years! And not one of them has gone back to school or shipped out on a hurtin' boat. The stooge swabbies are still sitting there with skill #'s of 4 - 6 & the officers are just sitting sippin' joe & looking at posters of Betty Grable waiting for some of my crew to sleep with the fishes.

[SteamWake]

Well trying to cram in a role playing aspect into a simulation at the last minute and this is what you get.

In some ways its 'better than nothing' in other ways nothing might be better.

I have mixed emotions about the whole crew thing. But having the 'active' ability crews scrolled off the board is a real SNAFU.

[CapnBlood]

Just dump some of your crew and load up on seamen and after a couple of patrols they'll have thier stats up and might even get u some usefull abilities.

This system of dumping crew after every patrol is working for me at this point so you can load up on engine specialist and cruise around at 30+ knots or if you can get your hands on 2 rhinestone torp specialist and 3 fast torp loaders with increased torp speed you can have torps that are as fast as an "exocet" ,hit like an H-bomb, and reload faster than u can shoot em.

After this tour of duty I'm going to collect/recruit nothing but useless passives like 20 medics and just play the game.