RUb/SH3 Commander fatigue system questions

[BladeHeart]

Interesting :hmm:

Forgive my ignorance but who is Timothy Mulligan, and is he a primary, secondary or tertiary source?

How many other sources corroborate this detail?

Cheers

[Beery]

Originally Posted by BladeHeart

Interesting :hmm:

Forgive my ignorance but who is Timothy Mulligan, and is he a primary, secondary or tertiary source?

How many other sources corroborate this detail?

Cheers

Dr. Timothy P. Mulligan is an archivist at the National Archives and Records Administration, specializing in captured German and related World War II records. His official publications include several finding aids and guides to captured German records, particularly to those of the German Navy; personal publications include Lone Wolf: The Life and Death of U-Boat Ace Werner Henke (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing, 1993), and Neither Sharks nor Wolves: The Men of Nazi Germany's U-Boat Arm, 1939-1945 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1999).

[jaxa]

Beery, I play RUb and think about your idea of fatigue system. It is interesting, but has one fault in my opinion - it doesn't simulate sleeping/relax time. In vanilla SH3 fatigued green crewman must go to bed and rest frequently, experienced crewman rarely, but must too. Player has to think how to manage his crew and replace, for instance, fatigued qualified sonarman with other crewman. It is like in real life - everybody must relax and sleep, nobody works all the time.
In RUb qualified crewman can stay at his station during all patrol and works. In fact, he will be tired, but player hasn't to replace him, because RUb fatigue system doesn't simulate relax time. In vanilla SH3 after rest he is relaxed and can go to his watch again.
I hope you understand what I want to say - after rest crewman should be little relaxed. I know that long patrol is very tiring and crew during patrol is more fatigued than at start time of patrol, but fatigue system should simulate rest time.
What do you think about it?

[Beery]

Originally Posted by jaxa

Beery, I play RUb and think about your idea of fatigue system. It is interesting, but has one fault in my opinion - it doesn't simulate sleeping/relax time.

It has nothing to do with sleeping or relaxing. It's not supposed to simulate that.

In vanilla SH3 fatigued green crewman must go to bed and rest frequently, experienced crewman rarely, but must too. Player has to think how to manage his crew and replace, for instance, fatigued qualified sonarman with other crewman. It is like in real life - everybody must relax and sleep, nobody works all the time.

RUb's fatigue system doesn't simulate day-to-day fatigue. This is combat fatigue, which is completely different. As I've said many times before, you cannot recover from combat fatigue by taking a nap. Combat fatigue is a psychological condition - an illness - that affects a person's ability to function in the long-term. It may not manifest in terms of 'fatigue' at all. In fact the afflicted person may appear alert, and even unable to sleep.

In RUb qualified crewman can stay at his station during all patrol and works. In fact, he will be tired, but player hasn't to replace him, because RUb fatigue system doesn't simulate relax time. In vanilla SH3 after rest he is relaxed and can go to his watch again.
I hope you understand what I want to say - after rest crewman should be little relaxed. I know that long patrol is very tiring and crew during patrol is more fatigued than at start time of patrol, but fatigue system should simulate rest time.
What do you think about it?

If the RUb fatigue system simulated tiredness you might have a point. But it doesn't. It never has. The standard game's fatigue system simulates tiredness, but RUb's system doesn't. The system has been completely scrapped and a new system has been put in its place, using the same mechanics to simulate a completely different phenomenon. Tiredness is no longer an issue - the crew is assumed to take care of tiredness automatically by taking rest breaks. We should not have to worry about that because good rest management is a simple matter of scheduling rest periods. Even the worst-run U-boat had proper rest periods scheduled. This shouldn't require player input, and the biggest problem with the standard game was that it required the player to micro-manage rest periods, which is in my view a ludicrous waste of the player's time and energy.

You'll have to excuse me for seeming a bit frustrated at this point. This must be about the hundredth time I've had to explain that RUb's fatigue system is not meant to simulate tiredness. I really just do not know why so many people still cannot understand the very basis of RUb's fatigue system. It's laid out as clearly as I can state it in the readme file:

"Patch Notes:

Fatigue: the new fatigue is based on a combat stress model. It is no longer fatigue."

[Kresge]

I think what is frustrating people is that the level of combat stress seems to have too much of an effect on the crew at times. After a simple case of sneaking up on a merchant, launching two torpedoes, sinking the merchant, and then reloading those two tubes your crew may be at a high level of combat stress already and you might not even be two days out of port.

To me this action may have heightened the level of stress but should not kill the effectivness of the crew. In fact, they have gained valuable experience and such an action would probably have increased their zeal and energy, not damaged them psychologically. Even an inexperienced crew should not have their efficiency for the rest of the cruise cut in half just from loading a couple of torpedoes.

I like the idea of combat stress instead of regular fatigue, but maybe it needs to be tweaked a bit more. Thanks for the work you have already done on this system!

[Beery]

For those who have not seen RUb's readme file, here's the bit about fatigue:

Fatigue: the new fatigue is based on a combat stress model. It is no longer fatigue. The feature is meant to reward careful crew assignments while removing the burden of micromanagement that the original game placed on the player. In this mod the torpedo compartments and the repair area are the most stress-inducing areas of the boat, so try to keep crewmen out of these areas until they are required to work there. Also, try to limit placing watch crews on duty during bad weather. It's best to submerge when the weather is bad. Always make sure not to spend too much time at under 32x time compression.

Combat stress and crew management: When crewmen become fully stressed they will work at lower capacity. In the first couple of missions (until you train specialists) this can make it difficult to run the boat. In the short-term, place NCOs and officers in compartments which are having trouble. Between patrols, give the necessary specialist badges to NCOs and officers so that they can work the worst-affected compartments more efficiently.

Sleeping areas and fatigue: Fatigue (now combat stress) will no longer heal during time spent in the sleeping areas, but these areas will prevent crewmen from becoming more stressed. Fill these compartments with all non-essential personnel in order to keep them rested for duty.

Fatigue Marker: the fatigue marker's shape and colour has been changed. This is to remind players that high fatigue is not a 'red alert' situation. Crewmen can and will do their job even when highly stressed, but their efficiency will drop considerably. A stressed torpedo crew often takes 24 minutes to load a tube, while a fresh crew takes only 12 minutes.

[jaxa]

OK, thanks for reply. Don't be frustrated that people ask you about your fatigue system. It differs from standard fatigue system and many people don't understand it at first time, after playing stock SH3.
I've another question for you - is it possible to include in RUB install randomizer? It will be fantastic to choose what to install from RUb pack.

[Beery]

Originally Posted by Kresge

I think what is frustrating people is that the level of combat stress seems to have too much of an effect on the crew at times. After a simple case of sneaking up on a merchant, launching two torpedoes, sinking the merchant, and then reloading those two tubes your crew may be at a high level of combat stress already and you might not even be two days out of port.

This is realistic. Combat has a very pronounced effect on new recruits. However, if you spend even a few DAYS sneaking up on a merchant and you reload two torpedoes (as in your example) your torpedo crew should not have acquired more than 20 minutes of battle stress (which is a very small proportion of the maximum). You don't need your torpedo team until you start reloading the torpedoes, so anyone who has a spent crew after a single attack is doing something VERY wrong in terms of crew management. The fact that rest areas have been denied their recuperative properties does not mean you shouldn't use them as best you can. They still prevent fatigue from accumulating. If players use them effectively they should be able to patrol for at least a month (even with a green crew) and reload all the boat's torpedoes before fatigue becomes a serious issue. On later patrols fatigue should not matter at all.

To me this action may have heightened the level of stress but should not kill the effectivness of the crew.

Why is it that players seem to think it 'kills the effectiveness of the crew'? It does no such thing! The crew can still run the boat and load torpedoes, even when they are fully fatigued. As far as I'm aware there is absolutely no situation where players are presented with a boat whose weapons can't be reloaded and where the boat cannot function. I've tested it over and over again, because this accusation keeps coming up, and it sometimes seems that nothing can persuade players that this idea of a 'fully fatigued and therefore helpless' crew is all in their head. Sure, a green crew will need more attention in order to function properly, but there's nothing unrealistic about that.

If you FULLY fatigue every single member of the crew, even on the first patrol, you can still cruise around and launch torpedo attacks. The crew are far from helpless, and while their effectiveness is lessened they are not ineffective. On later patrols, given the right choices made in terms of qualifications, fatigue is a non-issue. A fully fatigued crew on patrol #8 will perform better than a fully rested green crew on patrol #1. That's the way it should be: green crews should be strongly affected by combat, and should be relatively... well 'green'; veteran crews, even battle fatigued ones, should perform better than raw recruits. RUb's combat fatigue system achieves both of these things.

[LukeFF]

Thanks for that explanation on crew qualifications, Beery. I was thinking along the same lines as your response, but it was good to see that I wasn't on the wrong track the whole time.