Crew scheduling woes

[bsones]

I'm having a hard time coming up with officer schedules that work, sometimes in a literal sense. Many of the Youtube tutorials out there seem to offer advice that is either outdated or simply wrong.

For example, I want my watch officers to do three things (other than sleep): calm crew, go on watch, and update navigation. Calm crew has the highest priority, but of course that comes up infrequently. Based on one tutorial I watched, I had set Watch to a higher priority than Navigate, but I was finding that officers would then *never* update navigation, allowing it to dwindle right down to 0%. Well, okay--I guess Watch is an activity that is pretty much always needed, so maybe that priority ordering needs to be reversed if I ever want to pull officers off watch. So, I put Navigate higher than Watch, and then they became way too obsessed with updating navigation data. Nav at 93%? Forget going on watch, straight to nav! I then tried putting them at equal priority settings, and now it's just... erratic. Sometimes they update nav data at sensible times, and sometimes they let it dwindle to 0%. At this point I feel like I have tried all possible permutations of this schedule, and none of them work. I'm thinking of taking Navigation off the schedule entirely and just updating it periodically via direct orders. But having a schedule that consists of basically one task sort of defeats the purpose of having a schedule at all.

I had also taken Load Torpedoes off the mechanics' schedules based on some advice I had gotten from a Youtube video (basically: loading torpedoes makes noise, so it's not something you want them doing autonomously, especially in combat). But there doesn't seem to be a direct order for loading torpedoes--it's simply not in the TAB list. And as far as I can tell, if you don't have Load Torpedoes as a scheduled officer task, torpedoes will never be loaded. I cue them up at the torpedo tubes, but they are just listed a "Moving" (at 0% progress) forever, and nobody ever actually loads them. After four days of no loading, I gave up and added Load Torpedoes back into the schedule. I actually do wish I could load via direct order only, but there doesn't seem to be any way to do that, which is... weird.

Instead of Load Torpedoes, I started by trying the "Warm and Load" task, but they just loaded the torpedo cold and left it that way. Isn't that option supposed to make them warm the torpedo before loading it?

My crew schedule for regular sailors seems to work reasonably well, but I cannot for the life of me figure out the mechanics that determine how many sailors are available for officer assignments. A minor annoyance, but it bugs me that even after hours of trial and error, I simply have no idea how that works. Is it pulling officer assignments from the seven sailors that I have on duty? From the seven that are off-duty? There seems to be a limit to how many I can assign; how is that limit set? I simply don't know.

[Micullus]

What boat? type 2 or type 7 ?

[bsones]

Type IIA.

[Micullus]

The problem is you got just the half of a regular crew. 14 in total.
Dividing into 2x7 makes no sense. 7 people are not enough to succesfull operate the boat.

Sailors:

Delete all the shifts, create a new one and name it Zentrale, OPZ , or Ops.
The shift is dedicated to the place where you "drive" the boat from.
Put 5 in doors and buttons , 8 helmsman, 7 diveplanes, 4 cook and 3 cleaner.
Assign 5 Sailors to the shift, do it by name not by number.
The shift goes on duty full 24h

create a new shift, name it radio, put 5 on radio (any number will do) and assign a single sailor to this shift. This shift also goes on all the time.

Officers:

Try to get 3 nauticians as soon as possible.
Till then the captain and the 1WO alternate 6h shifts

Captain: 10 calm 7 watch 8 map 9 sleep
1WO. : 10 calm 8 watch 9 sleep
2WO.: 10 calm 8 watch 9 sleep
LI. 10 torpedo room duty 8 machine 9 sleep NO REPAIRS!
Machinist 8 Machine 9 sleep NO REPAIRS !
Radioman1 10 medic 8 hydrophone 7 radio 9 sleep (Single Radioman no radio duty)
Radioman2 10 medic 8 hydrophone 7 radio 9 sleep

Single Radioman and captain, if with 2 watch officers, are watch free
All others do alternating 6 hour shifts

Assign all support sailors by name
Radioman gets support from the sailor in the sailor radio shift.

Works pretty well but you have to put the single radio man by hand on radio duty when the Radio sailor calls for incomming message.

On alarm every officer has full crew support.

Good Hunting!

[bsones]

Originally posted by Micullus:

The problem is you got just the half of a regular crew. 14 in total.
Dividing into 2x7 makes no sense. 7 people are not enough to succesfull operate the boat.

But here's the thing: seven people IS enough to successfully operate the boat. As I said in my first post, my crew scheduling seems to work fine. There are enough crew on duty to handle all tasks without delay. Often only a portion of them are working at any given time; on the surface, there may only be two or three sailors actively doing tasks at any time (aside from officer assignments), and two of them will be cooking and cleaning.

I've seen the suggestion to just put all of the sailors on duty at all times previously, and I do understand that they don't need sleep. But here's the problem: with my current seven on/seven off schedule, I have five sailors available at any time for officer assignments. Assigning all five to officers gives a -5 morale penalty. Assigning three of them to officers gives a -2 morale penalty.

If I put all 14 sailors on duty around the clock, the number of sailors I have available for officer assignments goes down to three, and having three assigned gives the full -5 morale penalty.

Like I said in my first post, I have *no idea* how the math works out for this mechanic, but the game seems to determine the number of sailors that you have available for officer assignments, at least in part, based on the number of sailors not currently working a duty shift. So, there's a tradeoff at play: you can put more sailors on duty, giving you more sailors to perform common ship tasks, but this comes at the expense of having fewer sailors available to assist officers, and with a higher morale penalty for each one of those that you assign.

Given that you don't need 14 sailors to run the boat (or even seven, most of the time), it makes little sense to put all of your sailors on duty. Most of them are just going to be sitting idle in their bunks, anyway.

Captain: 10 calm 7 watch 8 map 9 sleep

As mentioned in my first post, this doesn't work. With these numbers, he'll just spend most of his time puttering around the navigation map, and will almost never go on watch. Swapping the Nav and Watch priorities creates the opposite problem: he'll never update nav, and it will dwindle to 0%. Giving them equal priorities creates unpredictable behavior where he will sometimes update nav and sometimes lets it dwindle to 0%. None of these outcomes are acceptable.

[StuKa]

Originally posted by bsones:

Originally posted by Micullus:

The problem is you got just the half of a regular crew. 14 in total.
Dividing into 2x7 makes no sense. 7 people are not enough to succesfull operate the boat.

As mentioned in my first post, this doesn't work. With these numbers, he'll just spend most of his time puttering around the navigation map, and will almost never go on watch. Swapping the Nav and Watch priorities creates the opposite problem: he'll never update nav, and it will dwindle to 0%. Giving them equal priorities creates unpredictable behavior where he will sometimes update nav and sometimes lets it dwindle to 0%. None of these outcomes are acceptable.

My best advice is to get 3 leaders ASAP. My standard roles are 2 alternating 12 hr watch shifts, with 1 navigator on / off every 4 hours. If I have a long transit where fuel is a concern I switch these (assuming relatively safe waters) so that I have 2 alternating navigators and one 4hr on / off watchman.

Until you have the crew to fully automate I suggest just running 1800x max time accel and keep an eye on it. Or manually swap it every x hours as needed.

[bsones]

Originally posted by StuKa:

My best advice is to get 3 leaders ASAP.

Sure, that would solve the problem, but having a scheduling priority system that actually works would also solve the problem. There's no reason why two watch officers shouldn't be able to handle both watch duty and navigation. The problem is that the tools the game gives you for defining these priorities are too crude.

In the specific example of navigation, what I *want* to be able to tell my officers is that they should be on watch unless navigation drops below a certain %, at which time they should leave watch and update the map. Simple. But with the fiddly-yet-somehow-vague priority numbering system, it's not possible to set that behavior.

One solution would be to have a couple of different Navigation tasks, each tied to navigation dropping below a specific %. So, the task list might have Navigation 80%, Navigation 50%, and Navigation 30%. Any or all of these could be assigned priority numbers. Let's say I have Watch set to 8, and then I set Navigation 50% to 9. Now, if navigation falls below 50%, it immediately is assigned a higher priority than watch, and officers should leave watch to update the map.

Another problem is that the schedule has a bunch of very different types of tasks. Some of them are momentary tasks--things that crop up and need to be dealt with, like "Calm." Those are pretty straightforward. Others are continuous tasks, like Watch. There is always a need to have officers on watch, unless you are below periscope depth. Still others are continuous tasks that are tied to conditionals, like Cards. An officer *could* play cards all day long, but nobody wants that (and obviously a lot of people zero out Cards for that reason). As with Map, Cards is a thing that you want done only if specific conditions are met--"Play cards is morale drops below X," for example. Setting an unconditional priority number for tasks like that makes no sense, as the priority is situational. The way the system works now, Cards might as well not even be on the task list. Nobody is ever going to use it, other than by accident.

The system needs some work, is what I'm saying.

[skaudus]

If you overlap your two starting officers for 1h during their schedules, one will take watch while the other takes navigation. Once the first officer goes to sleep, the other takes watch. Never seen dips in navigation this way.

I prefer having someone on nav permanently for fuel efficiency anyway.

Another thing is, I don't particularly need officers on watch all the time – you're relatively safe at night if you do regular hydropone checks, so you can leave UZO watching for daylight.

I'd still love a more comprehensive system, but what we have works alright most of the time.

[bsones]

Also, I just did a little experiment to collect some data on the relationship between the number of sailors in the current duty shift and the number of sailors available for officer assignments. The numbers for my Type IIA, which has 14 total sailors, are as follows:

[sailors on duty: sailors available for officer assignments]

1: 9
2: 8
3: 7
4: 6
5: 6
6: 5
7: 5
8: 4
9: 3
10: 3
11: 2
12: 2
13: 1
14: 0*

*(with 14 sailors on duty, the tab in the lower right corner of the screen SAYS that I have 0/1 officer assignments available, but it won't let you assign anyone, so it's actually zero)

Note that "sailors on duty" means the number of sailors assigned to the duty shift, not the number of sailors currently performing tasks. AFAICT, the number of sailors currently performing tasks doesn't affect anything.

Assigning all available sailors to officers incurs a -5 morale penalty, no matter how many sailors that works out to be. If you have nine sailors available, you get a -5 penalty for assigning all nine to officers, and proportionately less penalty for assigning fewer (assigning four sailors gives you a -2 penalty, for example). If you have one sailor available, you get a -5 penalty for assigning that one sailor.

And just to reiterate: you do NOT need 14 on-duty sailors to operate the boat. The most I've ever seen continuously active is five. That's when submerged:

1 on helm
2 on depth steers
1 in galley
1 cleaning

With a seven-sailor duty shift, that leaves two idle sailors sitting around waiting to push buttons or close bulkheads. And you don't really even need those two, as the cook and the guy sweeping up could easily go do those tasks, too. This makes it pretty tempting to go down to a 5-sailor duty shift, which would increase my available officer assignments to 6.

You wouldn't want to go below three on duty, at the very lowest, because that leaves you without enough sailors to perform critical tasks when the boat is submerged (unless you have "expanded crew tasks" turned off). Four would be do-able--you'd lose the cook or the cleaning guy when submerged, but that's not a big deal. But four doesn't net you any additional officer assignments, so five is probably the sweet spot.

[bsones]

Originally posted by skaudus:

If you overlap your two starting officers for 1h during their schedules, one will take watch while the other takes navigation. Once the first officer goes to sleep, the other takes watch. Never seen dips in navigation this way.

This is a good suggestion, and something I hadn't considered--thanks!

[Red_Seven_]

Originally posted by bsones:

One solution would be to have a couple of different Navigation tasks, each tied to navigation dropping below a specific %.

It currently works in a similar way but there's just the one navigation task and there's also a threshold for navigation taking over priority from watch for example.

I personally do a 4 green, 3 red, 1 gray shift for my starting two leaders. The task prios are simply 8 watch, 9 nav, 10 sleep.

From the start both will only do watch duty as the navigational accuracy hasn't dropped below the threshold. Once it falls below the next best leader will do navigation for his entire shift. This will inevitably leave gaps in the watch but I have additional crewmen doing it in the meantime so you won't be completely blind during that time. This works quite reliably until I get the third leader. Then you can switch to a 3 officers/2 jobs rotation if you want both jobs covered.

Keep in mind that to force the officers to do the navigation even above the threshold you need to set the priority of navigation at least 11 points higher than the watch (or any other task).

[tequilatibbs]

Ive learned to stop caring about crew assigned to officers. Its just not really necessary (maybe for watch).

Dont need more than forward 3 patrolling.
Only need hydro guy to have one during hydro check.
Navigator is fine without.

I do like having 7 officers though: 1 radio / 2 engineers / 4 leaders

[Micullus]

But here's the thing: seven people IS enough...

You need:

Helmsman 1
Diveplane Mate 2
Central mate 1
Button pusher / Cleaner 1
Cook 1
Stoker 2
Sea watch 2
Radio 1
____
together 10

...?

No wonder you got only 3 sailors as supporter.

By the way you don't have to put the central shift on green. Grey should make no difference.

and i don't recommend 12 hour shifts. Else bring A LOT of coffee!
If i could i would even go with 4h shifts but the game sadly doesn`t support that.

Anyways, this is my advice... take it or leave it!

[ждун]

Originally posted by Micullus:

The problem is you got just the half of a regular crew. 14 in total.
Dividing into 2x7 makes no sense. 7 people are not enough to succesfull operate the boat.

Sailors:

Delete all the shifts, create a new one and name it Zentrale, OPZ , or Ops.
The shift is dedicated to the place where you "drive" the boat from.
Put 5 in doors and buttons , 8 helmsman, 7 diveplanes, 4 cook and 3 cleaner.
Assign 5 Sailors to the shift, do it by name not by number.
The shift goes on duty full 24h

create a new shift, name it radio, put 5 on radio (any number will do) and assign a single sailor to this shift. This shift also goes on all the time.

Officers:

Try to get 3 nauticians as soon as possible.
Till then the captain and the 1WO alternate 6h shifts

Captain: 10 calm 7 watch 8 map 9 sleep
1WO. : 10 calm 8 watch 9 sleep
2WO.: 10 calm 8 watch 9 sleep
LI. 10 torpedo room duty 8 machine 9 sleep NO REPAIRS!
Machinist 8 Machine 9 sleep NO REPAIRS !
Radioman1 10 medic 8 hydrophone 7 radio 9 sleep (Single Radioman no radio duty)
Radioman2 10 medic 8 hydrophone 7 radio 9 sleep

Single Radioman and captain, if with 2 watch officers, are watch free
All others do alternating 6 hour shifts

Assign all support sailors by name
Radioman gets support from the sailor in the sailor radio shift.

Works pretty well but you have to put the single radio man by hand on radio duty when the Radio sailor calls for incomming message.

On alarm every officer has full crew support.

Good Hunting!

interesting setup. but - don't you use overlapping duties for the officers?
I mean with overlapping duties you can fully automate everything with just 5 officers already.

I have figured also 5 work 3 sleep ratio is perfect. They go to sleep at about 60%, never dropping too low which would reduce their performance. This also allows overlapping by 2 hours per duty shift.

[Micullus]

interesting setup. but - don't you use overlapping duties for the officers?
I mean with overlapping duties you can fully automate everything with just 5 officers already.

I have figured also 5 work 3 sleep ratio is perfect. They go to sleep at about 60%, never dropping too low which would reduce their performance. This also allows overlapping by 2 hours per duty shift.

i like it simple. the problem with overlapping is somewhere always pops some trouble up.
The captain is my girl for everything cause it doesnt matter if he gets overtired. he always has a bed for himself. with other officers, if you miss the window where a bed is aviable the whole recovering phase gets even longer.And if you take a radioman for example, he does 2 things only, and there is nothing where he else could pop in.

i just wish they fix the crew skills soon. it sucks to have 3 nauticians supported by 9 Sailors in the central but the soundlevel stays at 90db.

[s0d0]

I always have 2 of each, WO, Engi and Radio. And one quartermaster.
The quartermaster I leave it as is.

The rest I put in 6 hour shifts so there is always one of each type working, and I limited their duties to what's needed. (I swapped out stuff like torpedo warming up cause it has no benefit, when I approach a target I always do the preheating right before firing.)

I have no mechanic since all he does can be applied if manually if needed.
Also the WO gets +2 crew by standard and everyone else +1.

This strategy automates pretty much everything with great efficiency and has never let me down. You just shouldn't forget to manually preheat the torps when about to attack.