Reduced Tonnage RUB/SH 3 Commander

[Beery]

Originally Posted by Observer

I can think of a couple of ways to do it, but perhaps the easiest is to change the renown requirement to "purchase" new crew members. It would force the user to go to the "barracks" to look for new crew members. What I'm thinking is perhaps a very nominal renown (0, 5, or 10) requirement, but the higher ranking officers would only have one specialty (i.e. watch, repair, torpedo). I'd think the same should be true for the warrant officers as well. I'll have a look at the files to see if it's possible.

The problem with reducing renown requirements is that it rewards lazyness. If you're not adversely affected by buying a high-level crewman there's no incentive to get your current crew promoted to take the place of a lost crewman, so you'll just buy a high level replacement instead of solving the problem with planning. This is very similar to the fatigue system, which, in the standard game, rewards the player for a lack of long-term strategy. Currently the replacement system is broken because there are virtually no crew losses so you simply don't need replacements at all. A system whereby high-level recruits were cheap would result in a crippled replacement system (this time because of a lack of incentive to keep replacement costs down). Only by keeping recruits expensive AND implementing transfers and promotions off the boat can we have a system that rewards forethought and punishes lazyness. Having said that, I'm not looking to impose a system that punishes players, after all, the player only has a certain amount of control over promotions, but one can (to a certain extent) 'groom' crewmen to replace crewmen who are likely to go. What I'm hoping for is a system that provides incentives to careful play, so that it makes the game richer for players.

In short, the replacement system is an area of the game where we can probably institute a positive 'work for reward' system, so that the game can become more interesting in terms of decisions made when in port.