Silent Hunter 3

[Trasgu2010]

Hi all new on this page and new on "Silent Hunter".
What "promotions" are use for,Once you finished your patrol?.I mean,who is more useful to "Promote"?.A Sailor or a Warrant officer or an Officer???

Thank you for your help.

P.S
I´m Student so Sorry for my Englis.

[irish1958]

Welcome aboard; your English is a whole lot better than my Spanish.
There are no warrant officers in the game. The higher ranks in the enlisted men's ranks are called (in USA at least) petty officers.
Giving special abilities to the petty officers or officers:
Medic: just about worthless as this is an unfinished part of the game
Helmsman: equally worthless.
So give out the other abilities, first to the petty officers, and then to he officers
With SH3 Commander you can assign abilities and qualifications to all your crew whenever you want. You can also promote them, providing the person has the necessary qualifications.

[desirableroasted]

Welcome aboard.

I have never found "promotions" to have much effect, though perhaps someone who understands fatigue modeling can correct me. But it's nice eye candy.

As for qualifications,

• you can give up to three qualifications to officers and they all apply.
• You can also give petty officers qualifications, but only the one "on top" applies.
• You can give sailors qualifications, but they have no effect.

As noted above, the helmsman qualification doesn't work at all, and the medic qualification is of very little value.

• Radioman/Sonaman (Sparky): give this only to petty officers, it has no effect for officers. But it is a critical skill, so you want 2-3 with it.
• Repair: spread these around pretty freely among petty officers and at least 2 of your officers.
• Machinist: again, you want a few of these, because (if you use a fatigue model), your engines will stop if you don't have enough qualified, awake people in the compartment.
• Gunnery and Flak: Two gun qualified petty officers and a gun qualified officer seem to be enough. Same with flak, where you can make do with one qualified petty officer.
• Torpedoman: Helps reduce torpedo reload times (no effect on the actual shooting, etc). You might want to have two officers with this qualification, so you can more quickly reload both the fore and aft tubes, if necessary.
• Watch: Your eyes. You want at least two officers with the qualification and 3-4 petty officers (again, this depends on what fatigue model you use).

SH3 Commander is a wonderful, wonderful mod to add when you feel ready to do so. It lets you micro-manage your crew's skill set and ranks quite easily.

Good hunting!

[Jimbuna]

You have a choice as already stated between Officers or Petty Officers first....don't waste them on the sailors.

[Gerald]

[Tessa]

Originally Posted by jimbuna

You have a choice as already stated between Officers or Petty Officers first....don't waste them on the sailors.

As mentioned assigning qualifications to sailors has no effect, it does help to keep track of your crew (only possibly through SHC or manual editing). I like to em as I can be one brutal captain when a sailor/PO or even officer makes a critical mistake. I'll either dismiss them dishonorably, or demote them to an E-1 (requires manual editing, only really do it to officers that really make a major screw up). While it's sort of a cheat, having a sailor with a qualification that gets promoted to a PO will retain the qualification.

[frau kaleun]

Originally Posted by Tessa

While it's sort of a cheat, having a sailor with a qualification that gets promoted to a PO will retain the qualification.

I don't know, that kind of makes sense to me. I'd just assume that he was continuing along on the same Laufbahn as a PO that he was already assigned to as a seaman.

[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by Tessa

While it's sort of a cheat, having a sailor with a qualification that gets promoted to a PO will retain the qualification.

Never known it happen to me.....promotion to a PO

[Gerald]

Not in the SH3!

[flag4]

...i love it when new players arrive. they ask questions i have long forgotten the answers to, like the above. its a quick refresher course!

and they often say '..this might be a silly question..but.'

so, on this subject i have been wondering about promotions via SH3 Commander and the stock game process. in his notes Mr. Jones says that you may find the promotion doesnt work thru SH3 Commander. so i stopped and started promoting through the game again. i had been promoting thru Commander only to discover the crew may not recieve the extra ability when awarded. does any one else understand this - or have an idea about promotion via Commander & stock game - which is best/works.

...or, are the answers in GWX manual?

i have a feeling this is hugely unclear - wot i have writed

cheers

[Draka]

Promotions thru SH3Cmdr do work - at least they always have for me. What happens with the game engine is entirely another matter. SH3 natively doesn't recognize any Quals on enlisted below Petty Officer - and although you CAN give more than one to a Chief Petty Officer the engine only recognizes the first (primary) one. Officers can have up to three, and the engine recognizes all three - but (and here I am not sure) the second and third one give diminishing returns i.e. they are not as effective as the primary one. So YMMV as to what you actually do with them.

In another thread, it is also discussed that Quals that match the symbol of the compartment the person is in add to the efficientcy of that compartment and its tasks, but only up to a point - the one in which the green bar is maxed out. So having a lot of personnel with Quals in a compartment may or may not actually help in running the boat!

It is also stated that said efficientcy adds to the repair ability of that compartment's equipment - those items listed in the screen. Damage Control, and the Repair Qual itself add to flooding and other structural repairs outside the actual equipment listed - again, YMMV.

If you are running a historical crew, especially with one of the fatigue models, Quals can act as place markers so as to place the proper personnel in the proper compartment. Quals, rank, medals et al add to the ability of crew to delay and recover from fatigue.

"Nuff said .....

[flag4]

Originally Posted by Draka

Promotions thru SH3Cmdr do work - at least they always have for me. What happens with the game engine is entirely another matter. SH3 natively doesn't recognize any Quals on enlisted below Petty Officer - and although you CAN give more than one to a Chief Petty Officer the engine only recognizes the first (primary) one. Officers can have up to three, and the engine recognizes all three - but (and here I am not sure) the second and third one give diminishing returns i.e. they are not as effective as the primary one. So YMMV as to what you actually do with them.

In another thread, it is also discussed that Quals that match the symbol of the compartment the person is in add to the efficientcy of that compartment and its tasks, but only up to a point - the one in which the green bar is maxed out. So having a lot of personnel with Quals in a compartment may or may not actually help in running the boat!

It is also stated that said efficientcy adds to the repair ability of that compartment's equipment - those items listed in the screen. Damage Control, and the Repair Qual itself add to flooding and other structural repairs outside the actual equipment listed - again, YMMV.

If you are running a historical crew, especially with one of the fatigue models, Quals can act as place markers so as to place the proper personnel in the proper compartment. Quals, rank, medals et al add to the ability of crew to delay and recover from fatigue.

"Nuff said .....

ok. cheers for that. so, stick with primary quals. and, those given after a maxed out compartment probably dont add much/anything. over the years i have handed out - rather naivley with hindsight - too many quals to make any difference, hoping to give my crew the quickest amount of skills in the shortest amount of time/experience gained.

on a differnt note...

...just had a terrific chase and kill with a Granville freighter over about 5 hours near Gibralter. took ingame photos and was very pleased with myself - untill, i realised, after all the steaming excitement, i had not checked the flag...a neutral

thanks again!

[Jimbuna]

I tend to use the game to add one promotion at a time but use Commander if I'm in a hurry to create an elite crew.

LOL @ the Granville

[Sailor Steve]

I promote people when their experience is maxed. I figure they've put in the time and effort by that point, and deserve it.

[Tessa]

Originally Posted by flag4

...i love it when new players arrive. they ask questions i have long forgotten the answers to, like the above. its a quick refresher course!

and they often say '..this might be a silly question..but.'

so, on this subject i have been wondering about promotions via SH3 Commander and the stock game process. in his notes Mr. Jones says that you may find the promotion doesnt work thru SH3 Commander. so i stopped and started promoting through the game again. i had been promoting thru Commander only to discover the crew may not recieve the extra ability when awarded. does any one else understand this - or have an idea about promotion via Commander & stock game - which is best/works.

...or, are the answers in GWX manual?

i have a feeling this is hugely unclear - wot i have writed

cheers

To promote a sailor -> PO or PO -> Officer you need to use one of the ingame promotions, using SHC will give you an error saying that the crewman isn't available for promotion to the next level regardless of his XP. Only catch is that you need an open space in the next higher level for the promotion to work, so if you keep your boat at 100% capacity you'll never be able to promote a sailor to PO even if he's got 1000xp, you'll need to dismiss a PO first to make space (or officer in order to promote a PO). At games start I'll always max out on the # of sailors but won't add any more PO's for the purpose of being able to promote sailors later on in the game (and PO's to officers).