Crew pools and eventual drainage.

[Izargon]

Over my last two long lived campaigns, I've noticed a great deal of crew pool drainage happen, even if the funding is full.

Is this crew drainage more or less a function of building ships too many too fast for the crew pool regeneration to keep up?

I usually build 6+ ships at a time, usually starting on a January and from time to time, especially as the game continues, I have to manually add crew into new ships...

Because I will keep what I've built running roughly 10 or more years...

That and I rarely ever build ships on a cramped crew quarters setting. Prefering spacious quarters.

[hospitaller]

Yes.

There's an inherent value at which your nation considers your crew pool "big enough" and the crew addition per month goes to about 1/10th of what it is when the pool is being actively grown. Mid-to-late game, this "big enough" pool will almost never actually be big enough for a full division of large ships.

It's a bit silly we can't set the cap or affect the cap, but it is what it is. It really encourages you to scrap old ships prior to new ones being completed, as the crews from the scrapped ships get rolled into the pool (crews never retire or die except in combat!) and can then be sent to the new ships when they complete, avoiding disruption.

If you get caught short, crew pool growth will go up to its normal rate until the new ships are crewed, but the new crews are "rushed" through training and will be of very poor quality and bring down your overall crew pool experience level. It's better to scrap and roll your veterans into the new ships if you can. If you can't/don't want to scrap, the new crews will eventually man the new ships, and will eventually acquire experience, but you'll take some hits in terms of delays (ships mothballed until crews can be rushed in) and experience (untrained rushed crews that won't gain XP until battle or more time training.)

[chiyen]

Originally posted by Izargon:

Over my last two long lived campaigns, I've noticed a great deal of crew pool drainage happen, even if the funding is full.

Yes, it's a problem.

So try to:
- Make a large initial fleet, they will be fully staffed for free.
- Conquer weak nations (major or minor) that has thin naval power, smaller port size (eazy to capture), and with Huge population. Something like China or AH in this game. To pump up your population base. You don't get their inland province populations, but it's a quick take for their coastal provinces, and they are gone.

China got a 70,000+ initial crew pool in an A.D. 1890 game start now...

[Izargon]

Thats not exactly realistic and nor is it the way I tend to play. I like keeping my ships around for a good chuck of time. IMO, the crew pool should stay a fairly stable influx, increasing during wartime and ebbing off during peacetime, not what it currently is.

I mean, I could try that, but it clashes with my mentality of getting investment worth you know? Considering they use 2020 level of inflation instead of a gradual increase like that other game that is significantly less pretty to look at. Certainly you'd think they'd encourage keeping ships around for decades...

I will say that I've seen my crew pool as large as 350k after I'd majorly scrapped most of the initial fleet in 1920s or so...

[J5_Matthias]

The system is definitely broken. Spain's "cap" to the 10% threshold is less than 1000... That's simply ridiculous when AI nations with half my current population right now - (Britain, AH, Japan, and Germany) or less are sitting on caps ten times my size in the ~15000 range. The cap should be dynamic against the population size of the nation,

[Hidden Gunman]

When you pool crew is above the 2-3k mark, it grows slowly. So either scrap or mothball old ships when you need crew, or build your ships to finish construction sequentially over a period of months, using the 'halt production' function...if you build in batches.

[hurepoix]

I usually set crew to 0%, and raise it at 100%, when needed and when crew poll is at 1 to 5. The next turn I set it again at 0.

I dont say it is the best method. It is mine.