Crew Morale = Crew Performance

[Apocal]

Originally Posted by Donkey-Shot11

My question to people on this forum is: are there any other (ex) sailors, fishermen or navy men around here? Have you had simular expercience as far as morale is concerned? And for any (ex) military guys out there, how would a drop of morale effect the performance of your unit/vessel?

A little late here, but like Steve said, you haven't seen low morale until you have poor leadership that doesn't take care of it's people. At the same time, I haven't really seen the routine of deployment affect performance much, people just develop their own hidey-holes to get away from it all and use that to manage things. In my own estimation, fatigue was a bigger factor, measured in days from the last liberty port. You could try to mitigate it with any number of things, but bottom line was that at some point people needed to unwind. But poor leadership is a killer and if a boat sucks as a whole, just look at the chain of command.

And having relevant operational missions pulled from you. I don't know if it was just my experience but nothing felt quite like getting up for a big game and then finding out it was cancelled. If it happened more than once people started to adopt a "they are just going to cancel it/retask us so why should we give a ****?"

Not really the best attitude to have and it didn't happen all at once but it happened.

As far as it's relation to SH5, I imagine consistently missing targets while still managing to get beat to hell by depth charges would rather quickly fall under the poor leadership. Or the super-long, thrice extended patrols some players are fond of running degrading performance; less a morale issue and more an acknowledgement that running around working nineteen hours a day on two to four hours of sleep is exhausting.

[CaptainHaplo]

I have a different perspective having spent 8 years in a funny green suit. Interpersonal tensions often created problems - but not of a morale kind. Force the people to work together, understand that they have to tolerate each other, etc, and usually all works out well in the end.

Low Morale however is another issue. Ever run short of potable water, or ammo, or not get the mail? Certain things you need - but don't have, can devestate the willingness to "get the job done". Sure, some highly trained folks can push through alot, but I never had a full bird come to me and say "Good news, none of your future deployments are going to be alongside standard line units". The mentality is entirely different, and little things such as no word from home for a month can tear the heart out of some people. Instead of simply blocking out what was lacking, they dwell on it. Everything from keeping focused on a patrol, to how fast and well they packed gear. I have seen aircraft TI's no-go a repair because a mechanic didn't have his head in the moment, and screwed up a fix. I've seen kids thinking about the what ifs at home, instead of looking to spot the guy getting ready to release their brain from their cranium. I could go on and on.

There are all kinds of ways low morale can equal a lack of performance. Its not just about if the job gets done - its does the job get done as efficiently as it should.