Realistic qualification timeline using SH3 Commander

[frau kaleun]

Originally Posted by sub_nuc_108

I want to be clear about the difference between officers, NCO's, and seamen. The officers can have three quals, right? SH3 Commander gave me four officers (in addition to me): three qualified as helmsmen, and one as watch. All are Overfahnrich z. S.

Then I have the NCO's (mine are all bootsmaan). Two are qualified machinist, two torpedomen, one medical, and one watch. The rest are unqualified.

The remaining crewmembers are seamen, who do not earn quals.

There is a section in the SH3 Commander user guide that addresses these issues, i.e., how many qualifications the game itself will actually recognize for (commissioned) officers, NCOs, and the rest of your crew. For instance, you can give enlisted men qualifications in Commander if you want to, but the game will not recognize them and they will not have any effect on game play. You can give an NCO extra qualifications but if you go over the number that the game will recognize, the extra quals will have no effect on gameplay. I can't remember offhand how many quals the game will recognize for officers and NCOs, but check the user guide, it's all laid out there.

I assume that if you're giving out quals in the game itself and not in Commander, the game itself will prevent you from awarding more quals to a crewmember than his rank will allow.

So, you are saying that the guys in the radioroom are qualified NCOs? And your Watch Officer is an officer, not an NCO? And your weapons officer is also an officer, and not an NCO?
Thanks!

The guys in MY radio room are qualified NCOs, yes indeed. I can't really remember being given a crew where the radioroom was not occupied by two NCOs but if was I'd just switch people around so I had two in there, and then give them both Radioman quals when we returned to port.

In my experience (which is limited to Type VII patrols, I don't know what the makeup is for boats that carry a smaller or larger crew) the positions of chief engineer (CE), weapons officer (WP), navigator (NA), and watch officer (WO) will all be filled by commissioned officers. The first three are automatically stationed in the control room and the last one on the bridge when you start a patrol.

(This deviates a bit from standard practice in the Kriegsmarine, where IIRC the head navigator was typically not a commissioned officer but a senior NCO who also functioned as the third watch officer. The first and second watch officers would be commissioned line officers and second/third in line of command after the commander himself.)

Basically, in the game, if you go to the crew management screen, all your commissioned officers will appear as head/face icons in the squarish boxes in the control room, on the bridge, or whatever other compartment. Only the commissioned officers can fill those slots, and if a guy is in one of those slots, he's a commissioned officer.

Any guy who you see as a "whole body" icon in one of the other smaller and more numerous slots is an NCO or enlisted man. If he's wearing a brown jacket he's an NCO, if he's wearing a blue sailor suit he's an enlisted man.