Why is all of my crew asleep?

[wovik]

Originally Posted by ATR-42

This happend to me...in the middle of duking it out on a surface battle with a destroyer.

ran out of torpedos, had the nads to surface and use the deck gun, needed ahead flank to avoid the destoryer that was going to tbone me... push the lever..."cannot comply" check the crew status, ALL SLEEPING! son-of-a...

get rammed by the destroyer, which then sank, waited 'overnight' and steamed off when they woke up

if you send them to battlestations it should wake everyone up (i didnt know at the time)

I started a saved game and had everyone asleep. I didn't notice it until my speed dropped off and the engines shut down. I set about 9 3/4 kts on the speed dial, the engines started and speed picked up. I then checked the crew and found they were all asleep, even the on-duty crew members. I used Battlestations briefly to get them awake. I then put back to sleep the off-duty crew which needed it. (see my post above)

[kiwi_2005]

We need a "No Fatigue" mod to come out.

Only experience the problem once but what i did is swapped them around and its like they all woke up? Was able to run the boat again as i was on the surface and a look out just spotted aircraft. It was a bit of a panic :rotfl:

[Charlie901]

...and I thought SHIV was supposed to improve "Crew Management" and eliminate the SHIII "compartment not functioning" because the crew is asleep...!!!

Now in SHIV the whole sub fails to "Function" because the Entire Sub Crew is Asleep :rotfl:

[Jab_Bauer]

Originally Posted by wovik

There is a way. If you have an empty crew slot (damage control, or guns etc.) you can move the one you want to go to sleep there then imediately move it back to its original slot. It will go to sleep. This works with the off duty crew.


I also started a saved game with Honshu as the patrol area and had every one asleep when it booted up. Had to boot their butts and get em back to work! (used Battlestations breifly ).
These recruits are young these days! Need their naps!

Didnt seem to work for me. 3rd Shift is on right now, and I tried it on some 2nd shift guys w/ about 40 fatigue and they wont sleep. Ah well.. I doubt they will all fall asleep again, but they will be less efficient. But yeah, a no fatigue mod would be useful.. or at least better management of the crew. They need to be more responsible.

[-Pv-]

The crew management system works quite well but you need to understand a few simple concepts to keep from messing up the rest cycle:

1) The watch cycles progress through I,II,III,I, etc. in 4 hour shifts 0:00, 4:00, 8:00, etc. and change within the 1st 11 minutes of each watch cycle (random timing.)
2) If you save and restore within 10 minutes BEFORE a watch change, your crew fatigue gets subtracted. Make sure you always save AFTER a crew change if you are near one.
3) Never drag a crew BACKWARD in the cycle if you can help it. It causes them to miss a sleep cycle (II to I for instance.)
4) There are several ways to get your tired crew to sleep more.
a) Drag an ACTIVE crew foward ONE in the cycle. The next crew awating turn gets to sleep four hours prior to their next watch. Best to do this right after a crew change so they get the full four hours.
b) If the tired crew in the next cycle aren't quite charged up enough when their turn gets activated, drag them foward AGAIN as many times in the next cycles as necessary (AFTER the crew change, or you will force them to miss sleep cycles.)
c) Drag a crew that is awaiting their next turn to activate (but the computer has caused them to wake up) SIDEWAYS from one position in a compartment to another position in the same compartment. Unless the fatigue is zero, this will force both exchanged crew members to sleep.
d) The repair crew station uses less energy than most of the other stations. Placing crew there without activating them will give them more rest than normal.
e) When submerged, the WATCH station crew ACTIVATED or NOT will mostly rest as there is little for them to do. So you can give the watch crew extra rest by submerging.
5) Keep the crew members in a compartment with the best leadership in the 1st slot. The whole compartment will be more efficient and not tire the crew as much.
6) Try to keep members with training and affinity for a position in the compartment where their skills will be used best (crews with highest watch score in the watch compartment for instance.) Again, this will make that crew more efficient and they will use less energy while on watch.
Note: When the computer sets up your crew for you on the 1st mission, it does a pretty good job, but maybe 85% right. A watchful and alert commander will be able to make small, carefull tweaks to make your crew improve and work better during your 1st patrol.
7) If you have the renoun for it, hire a few extra crew while at port and put them in the repair list. They make great replacements for tired, injured, or dead crew.

After you get everybody rested up, you will no longer have to manage the sleep cycles. The computer will do fine for many days if left to itself, even at fast compression. It's usually when a player manages the positions badly while experimenting that things get out of cycle for a while. It may take a couple days to sort out a badly mangled crew.
-Pv-

[JFL1]

Well, thank you very much for all this information.

However, I still don't understand one thing: I let the game manage my crew (I never ever touched anything in the screen nor issued any order susceptible to change the watches); I did not save, I never went more than 128x TC, but I still experienced my WHOLE crew sleeping...

I may be stupid or this game maybe too complex for me, but I really don't see how, if the game manages the watches correctly, this situation is supposed to happen... I shouldn'ty have to make my crew rest if they were to do it while not on active watch.

Almost makes me wish this whole new way of managing my crew, which I thought promising at first, be scrapped...

On a side note, if Iam not to save within 10 minutes prior to a watch change, how do I know when the next watch will be changed? In other words, do I have to take note of every change or is there an indication somewhere?

[Kweli]

Sleeping or not..

Im kind of confused how your going to play this game in 'real-time' without any time compression? This is fun for you?

I dont know what to think.....

[-Pv-]

As I mentioned in my last post, the crew changes at fixed times:
00:00, 04:00, 08:00, 12:00, 16:00, 20:00 military time.

Starting at the hour shif change, the actual change may occur within seconds of the hour, or may change up to 11 minute later. This appears to be a random feature.

I have played for over 100 hours doing a mix of large blocks of real time and large blocks of very compressed time. I have not any failure of the automatic crew management system anything like Jab describes. Something we're not being told, I expect. It's also apparent from your questions about when the crew changes that you're not quite understanding the system. When you say "whole crew asleep" are you talking about all three shifts (I,II,III?) This simply is not possible.
For a whole non-active crew shift to be asleep (the shift with the dark grey highlight is the CURRENTLY ACTIVE CREW) is not at all unusual and SHOULD happen. I strongly suspect you are not understanding the management layout.

In the illustration below, the actual crew row that's active may be different at these specific times for your mission. This is an example.

13:00 (plus 1 second to 11 minutes)
I --- --- --- --- Crew on maintenance and training
II --- --- --- --- Active crew (only crew that will sleep is bridge crew when submerged and very tired.)
III --- --- --- --- Sleeping or in training/maintenance.

16:00
I --- --- --- --- Sleeping or in training/maintenance.
II --- --- --- --- Crew on maintenance and training
III --- --- --- --- Active crew (only crew that will sleep is bridge crew when submerged and very tired.)

20:00
I --- --- --- --- Active crew (only crew that will sleep is bridge crew when submerged and very tired.)
II --- --- --- --- Crew on maintenance and training
III --- --- --- --- Sleeping or in training/maintenance.

This cycle is continuous and does not reverse direction.

These positions change status every four hours at fixed times. Every four hours a different crew shift is active, the next one goes to sleep and the previous one is in training/maintenance. Individual crew members may go to sleep or awake depending on their tiredness.
There is a possibility you are over-working your crew. Do some submerged time and let them catch up. Do not thin out a tired compartment. This makes the remaining crew even more tired. Yes I know you are not managing your crew. Maybe you should step up to your job as captain and do just a little.
I can understand there are players who do not like this feature of the last two Silent Hunter series. I can understand that. The introduction of crew micromanagement in SH3 was at the request of the subsim community to have a more interactive submarine. When you think about it, there are really only four things for you to do:
Navigate
Sink ships
Maintain and progress the crew (so your war effectiveness will increase)
Look at the pretty graphics
Maybe this is not the sub sim for you. On the other side of the coin, since you are playing real time, you obviously have a lot of time to spend. Why not jump in and explore this feature a bit rather than just letting the game play for the computer's amusement?

-Pv-

[DirtyHarry3033]

Well I saw this "whole crew going to sleep" for the 1st time tonight after doing 3 patrols. Think I know what caused it.

For the 1st time since I started playing I decided I'd had enough of the constant air attacks, constant diving/surfacing, and thought I'd see if the flak crew could manage. So I enabled "Man the AA gun" and "Fire at will" and watched in glee as my AA crew shot down several planes over the course of the afternoon Note that I was NOT at battle stations.

About noon I got jumped by a couple of Betty's and decided not to risk it, ordered a crash dive. Guess what, got "Cannot comply". Went to crew management and the entire freakin' crew was asleep! 1st time that's EVER happened to me!

So I turned off "Man AA guns" and "Fire at will", dragged the least-tired crew onto the watch and was able to crash-dive finally. Left both of those options off and after a time things returned to normal with one shift on watch, one shift taking it easy, and one shift sleeping.

Then I tried it again, turned back on "Man AA guns" and "Fire at will" and went back into TC until the next air strike. Ordered another crash dive and actually dived this time. But when I tried to level off at 180 feet, she kept diving. Looked at crew management and I had 2 shifts sound asleep and the entire watch crew, though awake, had their green bars totally empty and fatigue at 93/100 or greater.

So I started dragging the most-rested crew onto the watch and by the time I was at 280 feet I had my boat back under control.

I'm willing to bet the same thing would happen if I manned the deck gun. Something tells me that if you keep the deck gun or the AA gun manned, or keep "Fire at will" turned on, it has the same effect as keeping the entire crew at battle stations as far as fatigue is concerned.

DH

[SKurj]

40 hrs between a couple campaigns here, the only time I have unable to comply was after forgetting to turn off battlestations. I've had 2 shifts asleep but never all 3...

[DirtyHarry3033]

Originally Posted by -Pv-

When you say "whole crew asleep" are you talking about all three shifts (I,II,III?) This simply is not possible.

It is VERY possible. All three of my shifts had ZZZ's over each member tonight. Including the watch shift. At a later time, the 2 off-duty shifts were all asleep (except for 2 or 3 <edit - I mean 2 or 3 guys, not shift 2 or shift 3> ) and the on-duty watch crew while still awake, had totally empty green bars in each department and were unable to control the sub until I manually dragged in less-tired crewmen into their posts.

If I get it to happen again, I'll post up a screenie.

DH

[-Pv-]

Another thought. Are you forcing your crew to ride out rough weather on the surface? Bad weather (waves washing over the bridge from time to time) causes your crew to tire faster than the normal watch cycle can handle. Submerge for 12 to 24 hours to give them a break. Until the storm subsides, cycle your surface and submerged time equally. This isn't like Flight Simulator where you can put your plane on autopilot for a 10 hour flight and come back after going shopping to find everything hunky dory.
-Pv-

[DirtyHarry3033]

Originally Posted by -Pv-

Another thought. Are you forcing your crew to ride out rough weather on the surface? Bad weather (waves washing over the bridge from time to time) causes your crew to tire faster than the normal watch cycle can handle. Submerge for 12 to 24 hours to give them a break. Until the storm subsides, cycle your surface and submerged time equally. This isn't like Flight Simulator where you can put your plane on autopilot for a 10 hour flight and come back after going shopping to find everything hunky dory.
-Pv-

You asking me? If so, yes was surfaced, weather wasn't great but not awful either. No storms, no rain, but not glass-calm seas either. Not being a real mariner I can only guess, but I'd say sea state 4 or less. At periscope depth I could get a clear view of the horizon about 50% of the time, maybe 25% of the time the scope head was under water, rest of the time scope above water but the swells were blocking my view.

At any rate, the afternoon before, I made a run on a task force (lusting after 2 Hiryu class CV's...) in the same or slightly worse condtions. No probs with crew fatigue, but then I was submerged. However, had ran surfaced thru that weather for several hours also with no fatigue problem.

And on my last patrol, I ran thru a driving monsoon all night and nearly ran down a Jap freighter (came within 200 yds and could barely see him let alone identify type) and again, no fatigue probs.

Only thing different I did tonight was, I turned on "Fire at will" and "Man AA guns". Never messed with either before. Soon as I did, my entire crew has hit the sack. Think there is a connection there...

DH

[JFL1]

Originally Posted by -Pv-

Maybe this is not the sub sim for you. On the other side of the coin, since you are playing real time, you obviously have a lot of time to spend. Why not jump in and explore this feature a bit rather than just letting the game play for the computer's amusement?-Pv-

Again, I really want to thank you for your long and detailled information about the crew management feature.

Just to make myself perfectly clear, though, I just want to stress the fact I never did write that I was going "real time". I am going at 128x TC max... It's still not very fast but I am working on another computer while I'm on patrol. So, yes, I have time...

Your explanations will help me in trying to master this crew management. It could have been explained in the manual, though (I got the useless Canadian 48 pages one). We are fortunate to have skippers like you on this forum...

Originally Posted by -Pv-

When you say "whole crew asleep" are you talking about all three shifts (I,II,III?) This simply is not possible.

Well, I am probably the happy owner of a special edition made just for Canadians...
Here is what I did the 3 times my problem happened:

(Full realism except external camera)
- I went surface at night, standard speed.
- I went periscope depth during daylight, stationary.
- Never ordered Battlestations nor deck gun nor AA...
- On the first two patrol with sleeping crew problem, I saved once, while surfaced.
- On the third patrol, I never saved.

- All three times, once I was less than 25 nm from the mission objective (star) off Honshu Island, my sub stopped. All orders received "Unable to comply" answer.
- My COMPLETE crew was asleep (this means all 3 watches, the Damage repair team, and the deckgun and AA guys). All icons were showing ZZZZZ...

That's it.
I am going to try to apply your suggestions. Again, thanks.

[Elder-Pirate]

PV,you may want to be a little carefull calling these people liers as thats just what you did when you said that all 3 shifts could not be asleep at once. Your quote PV in post #23 ........When you say "whole crew asleep" are you talking about all three shifts (I,II,III?) This simply is not possible....Unquote.

I thought your first post in this thread was very constructive and I even printed it out as now I can try and make my crew preform better.

Can't figure you Devs out, you put all these "pretty graphics" ( your words ) and carried over most of SH3 and called it SH4 so that the "Casual Gamers" would purchase game. Well I'm sure they did and shelved it when more than half ( yes more than half ) of the Simulation ( or is it a game ? ) is either not scripted correctly or it is badly bugged. Casual gamer, what a slick one.

When reading your third post in this thread I read where I may have messed up by forceing the crew to be on watch during a storm and very rough seas ( although in the pic it says "4 Meter winds" :hmm: ), just after this pic I was trying to finish off a very crippled "Medium Old Split Freighter" at right of pic with my foredeck gun. Yeah I know your not supposed to be able to use a deck gun in rough weather........suppose thats a bug? . I was compleatly out of torps and had five rounds of High explosives left and allready put down five freighters and three DD's, my crew was in very good shape ( last time I looked was about two hours before ) but I was then at about 45' depth ( deck wash depth because of waves ) most crew were resting. There were no "battle stations" called as were no need. Then I surfaced when the last DD left ( Chicken ) and was manning the deckgun myself, well really jumping back and forth between command room and deck gun and bridge as very high water kept me off the deck gun.



I did not want this '2 kt per' freighter to get away in the night or I would have dove down 70/80 feet.
After I sank the freighter I gave the order to 100 ft. at 1/3 ahead and went into 2048 tc. About three hours later ( game time ) I surface and called 2/3 ahead and set a course for "East China Sea".............Squat went the diesels and the sub slowed to 0 kts in short time ( btw the seas were like glass by now ) I quickley looked at crew management and All Three Shifts were sound asleep. All had Zzzzzz over their slots........It is very possible for all three shifts to be asleep and this would NOT happen in real life so you Devs may have done a good thing here ( but certainly not for the casual gamer eh ). I certainly will be more alert next time. Although buggy and not compleated by far this Simulation has great potential. Maybe you need to check your guys and see if the ZZzzzzzz are above their heads. :hmm:

I realize I was a little cranky but you have been pushing it a little to close in some of your posts.
These people here on this forum are some of the best people I've known ( or at least communicated with ) and I respect them. Please don't call them a lier again.