Crew schedules...again

[kandnil]

How many hours a day would be neccessary to have someone on cleaning duties? How about a cook, especially now with the new morale mechanics,

Do you guys have both a cleaner and a cook on station at the same time all the time? Do you have 1 sailor going between the pots and the mop?

It's my experience that ignoring cleaning for just a few hours a day will lead to a dirty ship that may take several days to fix.

[CellNav]

If you want to reduce CLEANING, try only 2 shifts, not 3. Works for me.

The only other change I've done to sailors is remove the OBS SCOPE and add a 6 to VALVES. They still use the OPS outside combat, but during ALARM they don't sue the OBS scope and they man the valves instead.

Slightly off topic ... I'm getting a "Neglected food prep" (-3/min) during an ALARM. It's not that bad but it's a new thing. I'm wondering if changing the cooking helps? Funny thing is that I see the cook still animating during the alarm, so IDK.

[VipreRX]

I've never had an issue having one guy on each around the clock. I don't see a real benefit to having one extra guy free.

[kandnil]

Originally posted by VipreRX:

I've never had an issue having one guy on each around the clock. I don't see a real benefit to having one extra guy free.

The thing is, on the VII with 18 crew, morale takes a hit if more than 6 sailors are on station at any given time, 2 in the engine room, 2 lookouts/diveplanes, 1 at the helm leaves 1 sailor left to be assigned a job before the penalty kicks in. Without a cook and without a cleaner, that penalty will come real quick and hit hard so that's a minimum of 7, 8 if you have both a cook and a cleaner on station at the same time.

[VipreRX]

I just offset that by playing the radio and using the correct lighting for the time of day.
Honestly the morale penalties are so weak as to not even be noticeable.

[CellNav]

Originally posted by VipreRX:

I've never had an issue having one guy on each around the clock. I don't see a real benefit to having one extra guy free.

One less cleaner is one available SQUAD assignment for that shift. Sure it's just one shift with an extra man but it could make a difference, especially since the cleaner makes a better door than a window (blocks path).

[CellNav]

@ Kandnil

You might want to look at SQUAD numbers and how many per officer. The default is 8 per shift, but if you overlap the three shifts using smaller work/free time, then you can squeeze more sailors per hour for a a few hours a day.

Off course that might increase morale problems but like VipreRX said, you can offest that with music and other benefits.

I was thinking about doing that, increase squad size but use 1 per officer. The extra sailors come in handy during an ALARM, I'd rather use the max sailors during an ALARM and woo them with music, food, and cards later. Even use that bottle of champagne we get for once !!!

I don't think I could ever "auto" balance everything because the ALARM will throw a wrnech into everything. In any extreme schedule, "auto" balance might not work so I have to manually add music, thankfully there is cooking and card playing but it can hover on thin ice.

Besides, stress and broken men reveal their personality early in the war, which is better than being surprised later, but then again our officer skills can help, and the game mechanics seem to balance one way or another without meddling too much.