Great video, thanks for posting. One thing not mentioned that is useful to know, the number of sailors available to assign to officers (here you had 4/4 - icon in the lower right) can be adjusted by changing the number of sailors (under Tasks) that are assigned to each of the shifts. here you’d assigned 8 sailors to each shift which resulted in 4 free sailors. If you lower that number to 6 or 7 sailors per shift, the available number will increase to 5/5. This can, however, cause temporary nuisance messages (no cook assigned, spaces get dirty, etc.) if you drop that number of sailors on shifts too low. Also, the anchor symbol will light up with gold background when that officer has been given a direct order and has been taken off the automatic schedule. To reassign him to auto schedule just deselect using the anchor symbol.
Excellent tutorial, I kinda knew most things but the few details make the difference (especially the dragging of the depth-meter and rudder) to enjoy this game even more! Thank you!
@@xljedi2335 Still suck at intercepting, but survived hell beeing hunted cause I destroyed 2 ships in convoy. Even got the achievement of surviving over 100 depth charges on my ass 😎
Amazing tutorial. I've watched quite a few of the crew management videos out there and this was by far the most helpful. One thing I've discovered myself, about the bug you encountered where you were unable to use scrollwheel to adjust the task priorities: if you click into any of the boxes (to type a priority number), the game will get stuck in that "typing" mode and the scrollwheel won't work. You can still technically use Shift + Scroll to adjust the priority (as you did in the video, you'll hear the ticking), and it is changing the value, but it won't update the number until you click out into another box. You can fix this by exiting the crew management window and reopening it; as long as you haven't clicked any of the boxes you should be able to use Shift + Scroll as normal. Typing the numbers is so cumbersome and frustrating I always just use the scrollwheel. As a personal preference, I like to have certain high-priority tasks set to higher than sleep: medical for the radioman, repairs for the mechanics/engineers, calm down for the leaders. Sleep is important, but if someone is dying or the sub is taking on water or we're trying to hide from a destroyer and some idiot is screaming, I need the officers to deal with that ASAP even if they haven't gotten their beauty sleep.
I think if you are on Alarm, the crew foregoes sleep, regardless of their sleep priority. Good tips on the scroll wheel; I knew there was a way to adjust it like that.
Thank you so much for this crew tutorial! The detail about the scheduling, the tasks, and the crew linking is fantastic and will save all of us countless liters of diesel. Danke, mein Kapitän!
Great video! Learned a fair amount I hadn't picked up during the beta - especially about the observation scope task for crew!!! Good grief.. Looking forward to watching the rest of this series! One tip at the beginning: when you're buying torps and the crew is in the process of moving one, you can right-click the moving torp to cancel that action, giving you a few moments to buy another before they attempt the load again. It'll save you a little bit of time not having to wait for it first, the loading is then handled by the dock crew with the fast forward button.
Great info. I run on minimal crew management setting and still need to do most of this setup manually. The only thing I don't have to worry about is food it seems... Just wish that this was setup automatically when you choose minimal crew management..
I'd edit Chief Boatswain instead of Watch officer and use the Save Preset option to save the role as Nav, because it allows you to quick switch back to Watch officer as needed. (Really doesn't matter which you edit so long as you save the preset as a new role it's just that Chief Boatswain is already close to the numbers you want same as below) For the Radioman the role Technician, I believe it is, does the same thing by default the edit shown does just need to run Medic up to 9 or 10. Reason I'd edit that role instead is that you sometimes need to switch to Radio Operator when at periscope depth and having radio operator with default numbers makes it much faster than manually ordering the officer. For the crew shifts make a note of how many crew are actually on duty for the boat and adjust the number assigned accordingly. With the Type IIA it's usually only six, so by reducing from 8 to 6 or 7 it frees up more helpers/helper slots. Lastly it seems to make no difference in the Type II but it's best to get in the habit of setting Valves to 10 when you drop Observation Scope to 0 in crew tasks because it massively speeds up dive time in the VII by stationing a crewman there at all times. As said, minor tweaks, otherwise pro IIA setup.
Awesome video. Great focus on crew management ... I was having trouble running out of fuel because I wasn't paying close enough attention to navigation.
I always think it's a good idea to add the version of a game when making videos so that people realise why things may be working differently in their own game when watching a video. 12:44 Double-click on it and move the cursor where you need to type. This way you can type a bigger number than 9.
I've been playing this game since a while and finished the campain twice during early access, but i love your videos and i love to see the common/different points regarding our approaches and the way to manage the boat. Keep going with these very interesting videos that are so well explained.
Note at 5:00 that "ordered goods are loaded instantly on the boat before departing on a first assignment" written at the bottom of the screen meaning you don't have to wait for the torpedo (or anything else) to be loaded. Just cancel the move and you can load torpedoes directly to all slots with no time required, at least for the very first assignment. Waiting for the crew to shuffle around torpedoes would apply to 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc. patrols. Moving stuff around while underway can minimize time in port. Officer order in task list depends on the order they are organized on the bottom of the normal UI (drag left/right). Shift+Mouse wheel is task priority change. Making several task profiles for officers and changing based on situation (cruise, intercept, approach, emergency, etc.) can be powerful. Time-based crew shifts are inferior to task-based shifts IMO because you can enable/disable task profiles based on need or dressing up for role. Need more hands on deck? Uncheck the cleaning shift without disturbing its setup.
Thank you so much for making these video's, It's saved me hours and hours of scratching my head but more importantly its added more immersion than I would have ever gained without this knowledge, thank you Captain. Hope I can do you proud. xD
Youre the first to post a vid with something than beginer guides. Ive watched all of your videos so far and i love them. The amount of good information you get from them is amazing especialy for non beginers like me. Thank you! In the future mayne you can make a guide for aproacing, engaging and evading convoys. P.S. I wil like and comment on all of your videos. Cheers!
Awesome, thank you! 😊 I really appreciate that feedback. I'd like to maybe continue posting some mission videos and probably a few more tutorials that progress to the S-3 TDC, maybe some stuff on TMA and so forth. Hoping I might be able to pick-up a few more subs so appreciate if you might consider spreading the word.
Thank you for these tutorials, the best I have found so far. I would be up for watching you stream this on YT if you get the chance, for some real time gameplay and Q and A's. I really think you would get an audience, you have a calm and clear persona, you definitely deserve a bigger YT presence. Good luck, I look forward to seeing more YT content. o7
For a 10, put in a 1, enter, then click right of 1 and add a zero. Same for 11. Most efficient fuel consumption is speed 1 or 2... just use acceleration.
You can drag and drop your Officers at the bottom of the screen to change their order in the lineup. This will also change their lineup on the Tasks/Schedule/Squads pages.
You can increase priority to 10 or above. Enter 1, click it again so the 1 is marked, then click to the right of the 1, and you'll be able to put in a 1,2,3 etc.. You can also hold shift or control(I forget) and scroll with mouse wheel to increase or decrease the number, but you have to scroll 2 "times" before you hear a click, and it won't get updated until you de-select the square. It's really unnecessarily finicky
Managed to set the tasks to 10 by setting the number to 101, then deleting the last 1 to leave 10. (Arrow keys works to move back and forth in the cell) :D
19:04 Noticing some differences between what is shown in the squad schedule in this video and what I'm getting by default in my own campaign, where my default squad schedule on the IIa is now 5 sailors on each shift. I've noticed doing similar to the scheduling shown in this video, my sub will at most only have 3 out of 3 crew available to assign to officers more typically it will be 2 out of 2 available. Have tried leaving shifts at the default 5 per shift and also changing it to what this video shows of 8 sailors per shift and always get the same 2 out of 2 available with the infrequent jump to 3 out of 3 available. It's possible the difference stems from the fact you're playing with full simulation settings enabled including crew management, whilst my campaign is set to medium settings but with limited crew management. But does seem kind of weird that reducing the crew management difficulty/player workload leads to actually less crew available to do tasks lol.
That is a little odd, and I was not aware of the lower crew management settings actually making fewer crew members available. However, I can confirm that I am playing in the latest new release version and as of August 2024, the crew management in a Type IIA still works exactly as I show it in the video. I am playing on the highest crew management settings at 100% so I suspect you are right in terms of our crew management settings being different. Thanks for pointing it out! I'm sure others might wonder the same thing.
@@xljedi2335 Yeah, it is a bit weird if the crew management settings does directly or indirectly cause it for some reason, but it's the only explanation I can really think of to account for the difference in behaviour. Just going to chalk it up to weird auto-assignment monsters eating crewmen. lol
@@Tiki832well, with only half controls, it's pulling some of them for automatic tasks. On full realism when you push up the available sailors at the cost of lower tasks being under/unmanned. Such as dive controls or helmsman.
IIA feels so out of place in the campaign. Like you're tasked with long hauling goods across the US ... on a moped. Last night, BdU sent me to detect AAA-guns at Liverpool of all places - and even with me going back to Helgoland to re-fuel, and also making sure to have a decent schedule set up that ensured I always had an engineer plus two sailors running the engines, my range remaining counter had switched from kilometers to meters when I finally made it back to Wilhelmshaven. Think I had around 10000 meters to go when I docked.. :D I'm also pretty sure that if I had played on a higher difficulty setting (no 100% for me, yet), I would've never made it through the Channel. On the bright side: With some help from YTers, I managed to set a pretty good work/shift schedule for my boat, eliminating the need to constantly assign/re-assign sailors to my engineers. Which is a bit of a must on the IIA to get any sort of meaningful range out of her. I'm running 6 officers (2 each of command, engineer and radioman) and I use a 5hours work/3 hours off schedule for them, making sure there's always one of each class on duty. I also permanently assigned two sailors to my engineers and one to each command guy - which seems to work 99% of the time as I don't have to shuffle around those assistants from one engineer to the other anymore. All that said: I managed to complete phase two of the Tonnage War-campaign and I'm *very* glad that I finally unlocked the IID. It's probably still outdated and under-qualified for what comes next (patrols off the W-coast of Ireland), but anything is a step-up from the IIA.. :D
Very nice 😃 , great video. I normally have the medic and repair set higher than sleep, I am thinking if there is an emergency and sleep is highest, they will not get up to tend to the emergency if they are currently sleeping. You can move the officers' icons just like the the other ones, just grab and drag.
Thanks! My thought on leaving the pillow at 11 stems from the fact that it's just the default setting and I typically want to get going fast, and if you are at Alarm status, then that overrides the pillow and no one can sleep anyway. But sure, there could be situations. Encourage everyone to contemplate on their own mix. 🤔 On a recent patrol, I had spare parts wasted on silly stuff like lightbulbs when I needed to plug leaks! I may rethink letting my crew have the option to just repair anything.
@@curtisridge2506 Yeah, I didn't make it back from that mission. We were like 10 miles off England in the North Sea, so not too deep. I was like alright, you all want to waste parts on lightbulbs, we now get to swim to shore and spend the rest of the war in a POW camp being bombed by the Luftwaffe.
To enter anything 10 and above, click the box -> type '1' -> Observe the box is no longer accepting your input (as shown in the vid at about 14 mins in) -> Click on the box again -> Click a further time in the box, but to the right of the 1 (You may need to double click - even double click quickly??( Its fiddly / buggy.. but yes, you can enter numbers 10 and above :)
If you want to input a double digit in the officer task lists just click to the right of the number you first added - 1, click right, input 0 using the kbd. It goes up to 999 but no idea of the consequences of that!!
Another strategy for fuel economy is running electric engines while your engineer sleeps and charging them on diesel when he's on duty. Must be done manually but talk about an increase in range
Thank you for this great tutorial! I encounter a weird issue with the schedule: I've set it up the way you did and am also playing on max crew management difficulty. However I get a quite severe penalty on Discipline thank's to "Fatigue" and "Too much work from officers". Any idea what might cause this?
Feel free to embrace it. Typically, I'm floating around with crew morale in the toilet. ...but that seems to be the only way to separate the seawolves from the panic prone. As you pickup more officers to expand your crew, you can experiment with the scheduling. The idea was to just relay what works to get you off on the right track. I encourage you to experiment on your own and see what works best, I'm always shifting mine around. 😁
Less people helps, but then you have less available. Early years it's pretty safe, though a panic at the wrong time can screw you.. risk/reward pretty much.
Thanks for the tutorial! Question: Is there any reason to (or not to) assign a sailor to the radioman as well? From the tool tip I saw that one sailor gives extra range for hydroscope?
Excellent question, thanks! As a default setting for your Type IIA/D crew assignment, I would say no. Your radio officer is going to be leveling up to gain skill on the hydro and increase detection range. After your first mission or two, I would buy the hydrophone perk (looks like a big ear) that gives you the detection bonus. However, even if you don't buy and choose to maybe go paramedic first, that works too. On a 3-hour dive schedule your boat in accel-time is going to dip down for a hydro check that will blanket the area of a complete grid square. You surface, run 3 hours, it puts you in a new square and your hydro covers the new space with a little overlap. You have plenty of coverage without assigning an extra sailor. Now, once you have located a hydro bearing and come out of accel-time, or while you are submerged in an area and maybe focused on hydro contacts, you are running on electric (which of course can recharge) so having 2 sailors assigned to navigation at that point is not critical. That's where I would typically (manually) pull a sailor off nav and let them help the radio officer to pickup an additional range boost. So for me, I would prefer to manage the extra sailor assignment to hydro on my own, and let our scheduling focus on fuel economy. ...and likewise for an officer on torpedo. No need to assign sailors, because in accel-time he works the torps almost instantly alone, and if I am on approach and need him to warm one up, I can pull a sailor or two off nav and let them assist for the speed boost.
Thanks a lot for demystifying the schedule menu for us !! Way less scary now thanks haha Just one question, I did set my first campaign like this, but it seems like no one is reloading the torpedoes (no number in the priority columns). I had to set "loading and maintaining torpedoes" at a prority 8 to be able to have torpedoes loaded :) I could drag the torpedo in the tube menu, but the loading didn't start. Do you do it manually in this setup ? :) Thanks !
@@InikoMonkoya I usually try to expand my crew to pickup a mechanic for torps and a second radio officer. …but there’s no reason why you can’t experiment with your own settings now that you get how it works.
I just bought the game. I started a career with the IIA after doing the tutorials. For now 48% realism because it is my first simulation experience. Many thanks for the video, it's really nice. I have a newbie question to ask you. It doesn't seem important to have watch officers in the turret looking around because you didn't plan for them. Did I understand correctly or am I missing something? Subscribed of course
When we start a career at the beginning of the war, there is little need for watch crew because you're primarily playing an unchallenged game of target detection. The hydrophone blankets a much larger scan area than crew on watch; so it seems logical to assign crew to min-max an offensive stance. However, as the war progresses, you will be challenged by aircraft, and you will have to adapt your crew schedule to balance offense and defense. Hopefully, you will also be upgrading your sub and the amount of crew available for allocation, as well as spending reputation points to add more officers. I've shown you all how the schedule works, what to think about in terms of matching radio officer to the dive schedule, and so forth. But you will find that you need to adapt rather quickly to suit your boat and play style. In our starting setup for the IIA, the need for a mechanic to manage torpedoes becomes apparent after the first patrol and is usually the first officer that I am looking to add. How you might setup a schedule for a "Flak-Boat" could be very different for instance.
I've been using this setup for my Type IIA and IID and it works really well, even with bigger crew sizes. I run 20 sailors with 7 officers and the sailor shifts are 11 apiece. How would you schedule an unmolded cre size Type VII sub? Would the same scheduling seen here still be effective on a totally different sub type?
It was intended to be a starter setup that works for any sub. However, larger crews can assign more than 4 sailors to the officers. You just need to consider how you might choose to allocate the extra crew to officers and which officers you might like to expand your crew with? For me, I typically look to acquire a mechanic to keep torpedoes warm. I think you have all the details you need to begin to optimize the crew to suit your own style of command.
@@xljedi2335Btw with the scrolling not working it says it right at the bottom, hold shift while scrolling. Probably changed it from 2022.1 since I also thought it wasn't working when I came back the the game on just after release.
I'd start in type VII the same way. Except that in a VII, you have more crew so you get to assign 6 sailors instead of 4 right off the bat. For me, early war, I'd set it up the exact same way for a VIIB and maybe put 1 sailor on hydrophone too for the detection boost. So I'd maybe start with 5/6 sailors assigned. Generally though, you get the idea on how the scheduling and dive schedule works. You're going to want to tweak it to your own playstyle, and I think you all know how to set it all up now and adjust accordingly.
@@xljedi2335 Ok, thx a lot. I used to play SH2 and 3 back in day, even if I didnt exactly know what I was doing (young lad I was but love the subs of course after watching Red October and later Das Boot). This game is a godsend.
Some areas are limited space. Torpedoes to start, you can manage manually to get them warmed up. I usually look to expand the crew with a Mechanic first, but to start this works fine. Don't worry about cooking and stuff that impacts morale, it will only help to weed out the weak. 🤕
Zulu time (UTC) and no, I have not observed the dive schedule adjusting as I move east to west for local time. ...but then again, I haven't really ventured too far beyond the Bay of Biscay. So I might ask others to chime in if they have different experience.
I fail to see the logic behind scheduling and often end up with officers stuck in endless loops. The system is either broken, or devoid of logic to an extent that one cannot predict it's outcomes. Either way, it needs fixing IMO. Or a much, much better explanation of it's inner workings. Sleep as a top priority also seems to be a problematic interference with the logic. Unless I give direct orders, my officers are either in bed forever or end up in forementioned loop between bed and nowhere.
You can prioritize the crew and officers to perform whatever tasks you like. The logic being followed is: IF Not "Direct Order Mode" is Active, THEN perform tasks in order of priority from the highest number to the lowest number. If you prioritize sleep as the highest priority, if your officer is exhausted, they will sleep. If not exhausted they will move onto the next task, perhaps First Aid if a crew member is injured. If no crew injured the next priority "Listen for Contacts" might be followed. If you are not submerged, then perhaps "Check the Radio for Messages" would be the next, and so on. Now, if your crew is failing to follow your scripted orders; the most likely culprit is that one or more of the officers has been given a Direct Order. Press Tab key for the order menu, look to the options enabled at left and remove the "Direct Order" mode if active. When I started playing with scheduling it was this item that screwed me up the most, and I was right there with you until I figured it out. Also, if you select a crew member by clicking on their icon, you will see a small dialog window at the left of the screen that will display their anchor with a gold-colored background, indicating they are in Direct Order mode. You can also toggle it on/off individually by clicking the anchor. There was a time when my officers were in bed forever, because I saw they were tired and I gave them a direct order to rest. As long as rest is a direct order, they will rest.
I just re-downloaded the game after the full release. I tried to setup the crew and task schedule like you show in your video. I then started the 3rd or 4th tutorial mission and my officers are not following the schedule. 4 out of the 5 show the pillow like they are sleeping and none of them seem to have any sailors assigned to them. I must be doing something wrong.
If you give an officer a Direct Order to sleep, they will just sleep. Press the tab key and turn off "Direct Orders" and your crew should settle back into their schedules.
I don't understand how crew shifts work. You have 14 normal sailors on the boat but three shifts of 8 which totals 24. How many sailors will be working vs sleeping on each shift?
It seems our crew can work almost indefinitely on no rest. Some of it I chalk up to distortion that occurs because the devs had to make some concessions on crew size to accommodate gameplay. For instance, if they filled the boats with the correct crew sizes, it would be so cramped that we would not be able to move freely within the ship and the AI pathfinding would constantly lock up. So, I think they cut the crew sizes down, and in the process had to also scale down the amount of time a sailor needed to rest. So it appears as though we have superhuman crew, but I think it's just a scaling issue. To answer your question though, for the typical 8-hour shift, you would have 8 working, 4 assigned to officers, and 2 would be left to rest. If no one assigned to officers, then 6 are resting. If alarm status is triggered then no one rests and 6 can be assigned. I believe this equates to either 6h rest per 24h or 2h rest per 24h depending on whether your crew is assigned to officers or not. If you scaled that time for the crew size limitations I think you'd end up somewhere in the range 4 to 8 hours of rest per crew member per 24h period. Assigning sailors to officers drives down your crew moral rapidly. However, a stressed crew is the only way to reveal hidden sailor traits and you want to work toward a crew of sailors with the seawolf trait and dismiss those with panic or health issues. It's a bit of an odd mechanic, but I get that there are some limits to AI pathfinding and having a sub crammed with the full crew.
There are many settings that will allow you to adjust the firing solutions to your playstyle. You can assign the firing solution tasks to your crew very easily.
If it says 2/2, check to see if you have the full allotment of sailors on board. Then check to see how many sailors you have assigned to each of the 8 hour shifts. You can increase the number of sailors available by decreasing all 3 shifts by 1. For instance, instead of 8 sailors assigned to each 8hr shift, change it to 7 for each shift and it should increase from 4/4 to 5/5.
@@xljedi2335 Yeah I done that and even made a new campaign to see if it'll fix it but I still can only assign maximum 2 sailors to any of my officers at one time, I've a full crew and followed your tutorial but idk where I must've went wrong
I don't speak German. ...and there are important tactical messages from the crew I need to understand. Immersion for me is understanding what my crew is saying. It's easy to imagine they are speaking German, and I just understand it.
Great video, thanks for posting. One thing not mentioned that is useful to know, the number of sailors available to assign to officers (here you had 4/4 - icon in the lower right) can be adjusted by changing the number of sailors (under Tasks) that are assigned to each of the shifts. here you’d assigned 8 sailors to each shift which resulted in 4 free sailors. If you lower that number to 6 or 7 sailors per shift, the available number will increase to 5/5. This can, however, cause temporary nuisance messages (no cook assigned, spaces get dirty, etc.) if you drop that number of sailors on shifts too low. Also, the anchor symbol will light up with gold background when that officer has been given a direct order and has been taken off the automatic schedule. To reassign him to auto schedule just deselect using the anchor symbol.
Excellent points, thank you!
More free sailors to assign tasks sounds like a good thing, going to give it a try!
Outstanding tutorial. Best user tutorial on crew management since one when the game first came out. This is what I've been looking for. Thanks!
Thanks Karl, I appreciate that! Makes it all worthwhile. ☺
Excellent tutorial, I kinda knew most things but the few details make the difference (especially the dragging of the depth-meter and rudder) to enjoy this game even more!
Thank you!
Bought the game yesterday, played till 5 am 💀 and now at work I watch this so after 5pm I can be better captain. Great tutorials! ❤
Let us know how it goes!
@@xljedi2335 Still suck at intercepting, but survived hell beeing hunted cause I destroyed 2 ships in convoy. Even got the achievement of surviving over 100 depth charges on my ass 😎
You were lucky this time! ...nice work.
You are awesome! Thanks for the "how to" on scheduling the officers and crew. Brilliant.
@@chrispatton7215 thanks! I appreciate the encouragement. Thank you ☺️
Great video, thanks. Looking forward to watching all your UBOAT content.
Much appreciated!
Amazing tutorial. I've watched quite a few of the crew management videos out there and this was by far the most helpful.
One thing I've discovered myself, about the bug you encountered where you were unable to use scrollwheel to adjust the task priorities: if you click into any of the boxes (to type a priority number), the game will get stuck in that "typing" mode and the scrollwheel won't work. You can still technically use Shift + Scroll to adjust the priority (as you did in the video, you'll hear the ticking), and it is changing the value, but it won't update the number until you click out into another box. You can fix this by exiting the crew management window and reopening it; as long as you haven't clicked any of the boxes you should be able to use Shift + Scroll as normal. Typing the numbers is so cumbersome and frustrating I always just use the scrollwheel.
As a personal preference, I like to have certain high-priority tasks set to higher than sleep: medical for the radioman, repairs for the mechanics/engineers, calm down for the leaders. Sleep is important, but if someone is dying or the sub is taking on water or we're trying to hide from a destroyer and some idiot is screaming, I need the officers to deal with that ASAP even if they haven't gotten their beauty sleep.
I think if you are on Alarm, the crew foregoes sleep, regardless of their sleep priority. Good tips on the scroll wheel; I knew there was a way to adjust it like that.
Thank you so much for this crew tutorial! The detail about the scheduling, the tasks, and the crew linking is fantastic and will save all of us countless liters of diesel. Danke, mein Kapitän!
You are most welcome Herr Kaleu, good hunting! 😁
Dragging the different controls to the left side to show them all in one go... mind blown that you can even do that
Great video! Learned a fair amount I hadn't picked up during the beta - especially about the observation scope task for crew!!! Good grief.. Looking forward to watching the rest of this series!
One tip at the beginning: when you're buying torps and the crew is in the process of moving one, you can right-click the moving torp to cancel that action, giving you a few moments to buy another before they attempt the load again. It'll save you a little bit of time not having to wait for it first, the loading is then handled by the dock crew with the fast forward button.
Excellent point on the torpedo moving, thank you!
Nice tutorial! This setup is very well explained and I learned a lot as a newbie to this game, thanks!
Thank you so much! Great tutorial on crew scheduling and the UI!
Many thanks for the tutorial. Have played nearly 1500 hours so far and I still learned something new today. Cheers for that. Hope you'll be doing more
Great info.
I run on minimal crew management setting and still need to do most of this setup manually. The only thing I don't have to worry about is food it seems... Just wish that this was setup automatically when you choose minimal crew management..
Great beginner guide. There are a few minor tweaks I'd make but the essentials are all there.
Feel free to share you tweaks and suggestions! I'm sure folks would be interested.
I'd edit Chief Boatswain instead of Watch officer and use the Save Preset option to save the role as Nav, because it allows you to quick switch back to Watch officer as needed. (Really doesn't matter which you edit so long as you save the preset as a new role it's just that Chief Boatswain is already close to the numbers you want same as below)
For the Radioman the role Technician, I believe it is, does the same thing by default the edit shown does just need to run Medic up to 9 or 10. Reason I'd edit that role instead is that you sometimes need to switch to Radio Operator when at periscope depth and having radio operator with default numbers makes it much faster than manually ordering the officer.
For the crew shifts make a note of how many crew are actually on duty for the boat and adjust the number assigned accordingly. With the Type IIA it's usually only six, so by reducing from 8 to 6 or 7 it frees up more helpers/helper slots.
Lastly it seems to make no difference in the Type II but it's best to get in the habit of setting Valves to 10 when you drop Observation Scope to 0 in crew tasks because it massively speeds up dive time in the VII by stationing a crewman there at all times.
As said, minor tweaks, otherwise pro IIA setup.
Excellent suggestions, thank you!
I’m trying to figure out why I’ve watched so many of your Uboat videos without subscribing. Fixing that now.
Thank you, I appreciate the sub! 😇
Amazing, thanks for this deep explanation.
Awesome video. Great focus on crew management ... I was having trouble running out of fuel because I wasn't paying close enough attention to navigation.
I always think it's a good idea to add the version of a game when making videos so that people realise why things may be working differently in their own game when watching a video.
12:44 Double-click on it and move the cursor where you need to type. This way you can type a bigger number than 9.
Awesome, will do! Thank you for that.
Ive been playing this since the day it came out and I never knew you could move those UI elements around, thank you!
I've been playing this game since a while and finished the campain twice during early access, but i love your videos and i love to see the common/different points regarding our approaches and the way to manage the boat.
Keep going with these very interesting videos that are so well explained.
Thank you, always good to have some old seadogs in the ranks to keep me honest!
Note at 5:00 that "ordered goods are loaded instantly on the boat before departing on a first assignment" written at the bottom of the screen meaning you don't have to wait for the torpedo (or anything else) to be loaded. Just cancel the move and you can load torpedoes directly to all slots with no time required, at least for the very first assignment. Waiting for the crew to shuffle around torpedoes would apply to 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc. patrols. Moving stuff around while underway can minimize time in port.
Officer order in task list depends on the order they are organized on the bottom of the normal UI (drag left/right).
Shift+Mouse wheel is task priority change.
Making several task profiles for officers and changing based on situation (cruise, intercept, approach, emergency, etc.) can be powerful.
Time-based crew shifts are inferior to task-based shifts IMO because you can enable/disable task profiles based on need or dressing up for role. Need more hands on deck? Uncheck the cleaning shift without disturbing its setup.
Cool, thanks for that!
Awsome video helped a lot with this type of uboat! Looking forward to the video for the VIIC!
Thank you so much for making these video's, It's saved me hours and hours of scratching my head but more importantly its added more immersion than I would have ever gained without this knowledge, thank you Captain.
Hope I can do you proud. xD
Great to hear! I look forward to reading your mission reports!
Youre the first to post a vid with something than beginer guides. Ive watched all of your videos so far and i love them. The amount of good information you get from them is amazing especialy for non beginers like me. Thank you!
In the future mayne you can make a guide for aproacing, engaging and evading convoys.
P.S. I wil like and comment on all of your videos. Cheers!
Awesome, thank you! 😊 I really appreciate that feedback. I'd like to maybe continue posting some mission videos and probably a few more tutorials that progress to the S-3 TDC, maybe some stuff on TMA and so forth. Hoping I might be able to pick-up a few more subs so appreciate if you might consider spreading the word.
Thank you for these tutorials, the best I have found so far.
I would be up for watching you stream this on YT if you get the chance, for some real time gameplay and Q and A's.
I really think you would get an audience, you have a calm and clear persona, you definitely deserve a bigger YT presence.
Good luck, I look forward to seeing more YT content. o7
The greatest video 🤍😊
Thank you! This was gold.
You're very welcome!
Good tips about moving the dials, I had no idea that was a thing
For a 10, put in a 1, enter, then click right of 1 and add a zero. Same for 11.
Most efficient fuel consumption is speed 1 or 2... just use acceleration.
You are correct of course, something about traveling long distances at those speeds though. It doesn't feel right, but sometimes I have to.
Great video, subbed. I'm about to reinstall UBoat now that it's had its full release and this was great for reminding me how to set up my crew.
This is very very useful ! Thank you ! I'll watch all others videos as soon as possible. Hello from France, near Brest ;)
Cool, thanks! ...and greetings to you from Florida, near Jupiter Light.
You can drag and drop your Officers at the bottom of the screen to change their order in the lineup. This will also change their lineup on the Tasks/Schedule/Squads pages.
Indeed, I have since learned that. Appreciate you mentioning it though, an excellent point.
You can increase priority to 10 or above. Enter 1, click it again so the 1 is marked, then click to the right of the 1, and you'll be able to put in a 1,2,3 etc.. You can also hold shift or control(I forget) and scroll with mouse wheel to increase or decrease the number, but you have to scroll 2 "times" before you hear a click, and it won't get updated until you de-select the square. It's really unnecessarily finicky
Thank you!
Fantastic tutorial, thanks man.
Great! best tutorial to play it as realistic as possible
Managed to set the tasks to 10 by setting the number to 101, then deleting the last 1 to leave 10. (Arrow keys works to move back and forth in the cell) :D
You'd think the text entry boxes might work like every other text entry box in the game or any other application of the last half-century. LOL
Great video XL - can't wait to watch the others!
Much appreciated!
Really helpful, thanks!
Excellent video subbed
Thanks for the sub!
19:04 Noticing some differences between what is shown in the squad schedule in this video and what I'm getting by default in my own campaign, where my default squad schedule on the IIa is now 5 sailors on each shift.
I've noticed doing similar to the scheduling shown in this video, my sub will at most only have 3 out of 3 crew available to assign to officers more typically it will be 2 out of 2 available.
Have tried leaving shifts at the default 5 per shift and also changing it to what this video shows of 8 sailors per shift and always get the same 2 out of 2 available with the infrequent jump to 3 out of 3 available.
It's possible the difference stems from the fact you're playing with full simulation settings enabled including crew management, whilst my campaign is set to medium settings but with limited crew management. But does seem kind of weird that reducing the crew management difficulty/player workload leads to actually less crew available to do tasks lol.
That is a little odd, and I was not aware of the lower crew management settings actually making fewer crew members available. However, I can confirm that I am playing in the latest new release version and as of August 2024, the crew management in a Type IIA still works exactly as I show it in the video. I am playing on the highest crew management settings at 100% so I suspect you are right in terms of our crew management settings being different. Thanks for pointing it out! I'm sure others might wonder the same thing.
@@xljedi2335 Yeah, it is a bit weird if the crew management settings does directly or indirectly cause it for some reason, but it's the only explanation I can really think of to account for the difference in behaviour.
Just going to chalk it up to weird auto-assignment monsters eating crewmen. lol
@@Tiki832well, with only half controls, it's pulling some of them for automatic tasks. On full realism when you push up the available sailors at the cost of lower tasks being under/unmanned. Such as dive controls or helmsman.
This only really becomes an issue on the c/d after sailors are somehow killed.
the number of assigneable sailors depends on how many you add to the shedule and your total sailors. you can adjust that number to 10 if you want.
Caution! Having a watch crew will increase men on deck and extend diving time to dangerous levels.
Thanks for the video
IIA feels so out of place in the campaign. Like you're tasked with long hauling goods across the US ... on a moped.
Last night, BdU sent me to detect AAA-guns at Liverpool of all places - and even with me going back to Helgoland to re-fuel, and also making sure to have a decent schedule set up that ensured I always had an engineer plus two sailors running the engines, my range remaining counter had switched from kilometers to meters when I finally made it back to Wilhelmshaven. Think I had around 10000 meters to go when I docked.. :D
I'm also pretty sure that if I had played on a higher difficulty setting (no 100% for me, yet), I would've never made it through the Channel.
On the bright side: With some help from YTers, I managed to set a pretty good work/shift schedule for my boat, eliminating the need to constantly assign/re-assign sailors to my engineers. Which is a bit of a must on the IIA to get any sort of meaningful range out of her.
I'm running 6 officers (2 each of command, engineer and radioman) and I use a 5hours work/3 hours off schedule for them, making sure there's always one of each class on duty. I also permanently assigned two sailors to my engineers and one to each command guy - which seems to work 99% of the time as I don't have to shuffle around those assistants from one engineer to the other anymore.
All that said: I managed to complete phase two of the Tonnage War-campaign and I'm *very* glad that I finally unlocked the IID. It's probably still outdated and under-qualified for what comes next (patrols off the W-coast of Ireland), but anything is a step-up from the IIA.. :D
Superb!
Very nice 😃 , great video.
I normally have the medic and repair set higher than sleep, I am thinking if there is an emergency and sleep is highest, they will not get up to tend to the emergency if they are currently sleeping.
You can move the officers' icons just like the the other ones, just grab and drag.
Thanks! My thought on leaving the pillow at 11 stems from the fact that it's just the default setting and I typically want to get going fast, and if you are at Alarm status, then that overrides the pillow and no one can sleep anyway. But sure, there could be situations. Encourage everyone to contemplate on their own mix. 🤔 On a recent patrol, I had spare parts wasted on silly stuff like lightbulbs when I needed to plug leaks! I may rethink letting my crew have the option to just repair anything.
@xljedi2335 if your fast enough, you can select damaged parts to not be repaired. Great for that situation. I know from experience 😂
@@xljedi2335half of my ship was broken, pump and holes was the only thing repaired 😂😂. God knows how I made it back..
@@curtisridge2506 Yeah, I didn't make it back from that mission. We were like 10 miles off England in the North Sea, so not too deep. I was like alright, you all want to waste parts on lightbulbs, we now get to swim to shore and spend the rest of the war in a POW camp being bombed by the Luftwaffe.
@@xljedi2335 ah yea, being trapped right off their coast and not being able to hide really sucks..
my man this is dope i learned so much thanks
12:43 you can make 10 in there. Just write 1 then click right side of the 1 and write 0 next to it.
Oh cool, thanks! I might still be good with just my 9's. I think it's just a matter of having one number larger than another?
@@xljedi2335that's my understanding
To enter anything 10 and above, click the box -> type '1' -> Observe the box is no longer accepting your input (as shown in the vid at about 14 mins in) -> Click on the box again -> Click a further time in the box, but to the right of the 1 (You may need to double click - even double click quickly??(
Its fiddly / buggy.. but yes, you can enter numbers 10 and above :)
You missed some free torpedoes lol
Yeah... I like steam trails, and basically bought some fish there at the end, when I could've purchased an eel.
If you want to input a double digit in the officer task lists just click to the right of the number you first added - 1, click right, input 0 using the kbd. It goes up to 999 but no idea of the consequences of that!!
Another strategy for fuel economy is running electric engines while your engineer sleeps and charging them on diesel when he's on duty. Must be done manually but talk about an increase in range
Most helpful!
on may way
You can make tasks a 10…. Type a 1 then click the cursor behind the 1 and add the zero
@@jamesngotts perfect, thanks!
Thank you for this great tutorial! I encounter a weird issue with the schedule: I've set it up the way you did and am also playing on max crew management difficulty. However I get a quite severe penalty on Discipline thank's to "Fatigue" and "Too much work from officers". Any idea what might cause this?
Feel free to embrace it. Typically, I'm floating around with crew morale in the toilet. ...but that seems to be the only way to separate the seawolves from the panic prone. As you pickup more officers to expand your crew, you can experiment with the scheduling. The idea was to just relay what works to get you off on the right track. I encourage you to experiment on your own and see what works best, I'm always shifting mine around. 😁
Less people helps, but then you have less available. Early years it's pretty safe, though a panic at the wrong time can screw you.. risk/reward pretty much.
I run with 6 most of the time, with music and a mixture of food, you can manage pretty easily.
Thanks for the tutorial!
Question: Is there any reason to (or not to) assign a sailor to the radioman as well? From the tool tip I saw that one sailor gives extra range for hydroscope?
Excellent question, thanks! As a default setting for your Type IIA/D crew assignment, I would say no. Your radio officer is going to be leveling up to gain skill on the hydro and increase detection range. After your first mission or two, I would buy the hydrophone perk (looks like a big ear) that gives you the detection bonus. However, even if you don't buy and choose to maybe go paramedic first, that works too. On a 3-hour dive schedule your boat in accel-time is going to dip down for a hydro check that will blanket the area of a complete grid square. You surface, run 3 hours, it puts you in a new square and your hydro covers the new space with a little overlap. You have plenty of coverage without assigning an extra sailor.
Now, once you have located a hydro bearing and come out of accel-time, or while you are submerged in an area and maybe focused on hydro contacts, you are running on electric (which of course can recharge) so having 2 sailors assigned to navigation at that point is not critical. That's where I would typically (manually) pull a sailor off nav and let them help the radio officer to pickup an additional range boost. So for me, I would prefer to manage the extra sailor assignment to hydro on my own, and let our scheduling focus on fuel economy. ...and likewise for an officer on torpedo. No need to assign sailors, because in accel-time he works the torps almost instantly alone, and if I am on approach and need him to warm one up, I can pull a sailor or two off nav and let them assist for the speed boost.
Thanks a lot for demystifying the schedule menu for us !! Way less scary now thanks haha
Just one question, I did set my first campaign like this, but it seems like no one is reloading the torpedoes (no number in the priority columns). I had to set "loading and maintaining torpedoes" at a prority 8 to be able to have torpedoes loaded :) I could drag the torpedo in the tube menu, but the loading didn't start.
Do you do it manually in this setup ? :) Thanks !
@@InikoMonkoya I usually try to expand my crew to pickup a mechanic for torps and a second radio officer. …but there’s no reason why you can’t experiment with your own settings now that you get how it works.
I just bought the game. I started a career with the IIA after doing the tutorials. For now 48% realism because it is my first simulation experience. Many thanks for the video, it's really nice.
I have a newbie question to ask you. It doesn't seem important to have watch officers in the turret looking around because you didn't plan for them. Did I understand correctly or am I missing something? Subscribed of course
When we start a career at the beginning of the war, there is little need for watch crew because you're primarily playing an unchallenged game of target detection. The hydrophone blankets a much larger scan area than crew on watch; so it seems logical to assign crew to min-max an offensive stance. However, as the war progresses, you will be challenged by aircraft, and you will have to adapt your crew schedule to balance offense and defense. Hopefully, you will also be upgrading your sub and the amount of crew available for allocation, as well as spending reputation points to add more officers.
I've shown you all how the schedule works, what to think about in terms of matching radio officer to the dive schedule, and so forth. But you will find that you need to adapt rather quickly to suit your boat and play style. In our starting setup for the IIA, the need for a mechanic to manage torpedoes becomes apparent after the first patrol and is usually the first officer that I am looking to add. How you might setup a schedule for a "Flak-Boat" could be very different for instance.
@@xljedi2335 Thanks for the detailed answer!
I've been using this setup for my Type IIA and IID and it works really well, even with bigger crew sizes. I run 20 sailors with 7 officers and the sailor shifts are 11 apiece.
How would you schedule an unmolded cre size Type VII sub? Would the same scheduling seen here still be effective on a totally different sub type?
It was intended to be a starter setup that works for any sub. However, larger crews can assign more than 4 sailors to the officers. You just need to consider how you might choose to allocate the extra crew to officers and which officers you might like to expand your crew with? For me, I typically look to acquire a mechanic to keep torpedoes warm. I think you have all the details you need to begin to optimize the crew to suit your own style of command.
Press the right arrow key after you type "1", you'll see a cursor move over where you can type the "0".
Oh wow! Stupid that it works that way; but awesome tip, thanks for sharing. ☺
@@xljedi2335Btw with the scrolling not working it says it right at the bottom, hold shift while scrolling. Probably changed it from 2022.1 since I also thought it wasn't working when I came back the the game on just after release.
This is an amazing setup! Thanks.
How does this translate to crew scheduling on other types? Like VII for example
I'd start in type VII the same way. Except that in a VII, you have more crew so you get to assign 6 sailors instead of 4 right off the bat. For me, early war, I'd set it up the exact same way for a VIIB and maybe put 1 sailor on hydrophone too for the detection boost. So I'd maybe start with 5/6 sailors assigned. Generally though, you get the idea on how the scheduling and dive schedule works. You're going to want to tweak it to your own playstyle, and I think you all know how to set it all up now and adjust accordingly.
@@xljedi2335 Ok, thx a lot. I used to play SH2 and 3 back in day, even if I didnt exactly know what I was doing (young lad I was but love the subs of course after watching Red October and later Das Boot). This game is a godsend.
Why no 2 officers for radio? Also no one is assigned cooking and doing stuff with torpedoes, what happens then?
Some areas are limited space. Torpedoes to start, you can manage manually to get them warmed up. I usually look to expand the crew with a Mechanic first, but to start this works fine. Don't worry about cooking and stuff that impacts morale, it will only help to weed out the weak. 🤕
Is the dive schedule time UTC/GMT or local time zone time? Does it mix night and day eventually when traveling far enough?
Zulu time (UTC) and no, I have not observed the dive schedule adjusting as I move east to west for local time. ...but then again, I haven't really ventured too far beyond the Bay of Biscay. So I might ask others to chime in if they have different experience.
Which periscope stabilization option did you have?
This Type IIA video predated the stabilization options. So it would've been equivalent to fully stabilized if comparing to options we have now.
I fail to see the logic behind scheduling and often end up with officers stuck in endless loops. The system is either broken, or devoid of logic to an extent that one cannot predict it's outcomes.
Either way, it needs fixing IMO. Or a much, much better explanation of it's inner workings.
Sleep as a top priority also seems to be a problematic interference with the logic. Unless I give direct orders, my officers are either in bed forever or end up in forementioned loop between bed and nowhere.
You can prioritize the crew and officers to perform whatever tasks you like. The logic being followed is: IF Not "Direct Order Mode" is Active, THEN perform tasks in order of priority from the highest number to the lowest number. If you prioritize sleep as the highest priority, if your officer is exhausted, they will sleep. If not exhausted they will move onto the next task, perhaps First Aid if a crew member is injured. If no crew injured the next priority "Listen for Contacts" might be followed. If you are not submerged, then perhaps "Check the Radio for Messages" would be the next, and so on.
Now, if your crew is failing to follow your scripted orders; the most likely culprit is that one or more of the officers has been given a Direct Order. Press Tab key for the order menu, look to the options enabled at left and remove the "Direct Order" mode if active. When I started playing with scheduling it was this item that screwed me up the most, and I was right there with you until I figured it out. Also, if you select a crew member by clicking on their icon, you will see a small dialog window at the left of the screen that will display their anchor with a gold-colored background, indicating they are in Direct Order mode. You can also toggle it on/off individually by clicking the anchor.
There was a time when my officers were in bed forever, because I saw they were tired and I gave them a direct order to rest. As long as rest is a direct order, they will rest.
@@xljedi2335 Got it now, funny how missing one small element can set one off on a course for the wrong destination.
Thanks a bunch for replying!
I just re-downloaded the game after the full release. I tried to setup the crew and task schedule like you show in your video. I then started the 3rd or 4th tutorial mission and my officers are not following the schedule. 4 out of the 5 show the pillow like they are sleeping and none of them seem to have any sailors assigned to them. I must be doing something wrong.
If you give an officer a Direct Order to sleep, they will just sleep. Press the tab key and turn off "Direct Orders" and your crew should settle back into their schedules.
You keep saying "mail". How do I change the voice with an "incoming message" to "You've Got Mail" from AOL voice? LOL
I don't understand how crew shifts work. You have 14 normal sailors on the boat but three shifts of 8 which totals 24. How many sailors will be working vs sleeping on each shift?
It seems our crew can work almost indefinitely on no rest. Some of it I chalk up to distortion that occurs because the devs had to make some concessions on crew size to accommodate gameplay. For instance, if they filled the boats with the correct crew sizes, it would be so cramped that we would not be able to move freely within the ship and the AI pathfinding would constantly lock up. So, I think they cut the crew sizes down, and in the process had to also scale down the amount of time a sailor needed to rest. So it appears as though we have superhuman crew, but I think it's just a scaling issue.
To answer your question though, for the typical 8-hour shift, you would have 8 working, 4 assigned to officers, and 2 would be left to rest. If no one assigned to officers, then 6 are resting. If alarm status is triggered then no one rests and 6 can be assigned. I believe this equates to either 6h rest per 24h or 2h rest per 24h depending on whether your crew is assigned to officers or not. If you scaled that time for the crew size limitations I think you'd end up somewhere in the range 4 to 8 hours of rest per crew member per 24h period.
Assigning sailors to officers drives down your crew moral rapidly. However, a stressed crew is the only way to reveal hidden sailor traits and you want to work toward a crew of sailors with the seawolf trait and dismiss those with panic or health issues. It's a bit of an odd mechanic, but I get that there are some limits to AI pathfinding and having a sub crammed with the full crew.
how did you get those ship controls to the left side
7:00 Moving Dials for Permanent Display
I am only getting 5 sailors per shift, not 8. Any idea what I am doing wrong?
Probably the game settings at less than 100%
@@xljedi2335 ah, cheers. Yes I tend to play about 80%.
I’m thinking about buying this game but is it also possible to mark a target? This whole tdc thing is to difficult I think
There are many settings that will allow you to adjust the firing solutions to your playstyle. You can assign the firing solution tasks to your crew very easily.
@@xljedi2335 thank you sir for this quick answer
I can only assign 2 sailors to my officers at a time, says 2/2 not 4/4 how do I change it?
If it says 2/2, check to see if you have the full allotment of sailors on board. Then check to see how many sailors you have assigned to each of the 8 hour shifts. You can increase the number of sailors available by decreasing all 3 shifts by 1. For instance, instead of 8 sailors assigned to each 8hr shift, change it to 7 for each shift and it should increase from 4/4 to 5/5.
@@xljedi2335 Yeah I done that and even made a new campaign to see if it'll fix it but I still can only assign maximum 2 sailors to any of my officers at one time, I've a full crew and followed your tutorial but idk where I must've went wrong
@@alotek1022 Are you playing at 100% settings?
@@xljedi2335 No 44%
I noticed that the amount of sailors available changes at different times, even ended up with no sailors available to assign xD
IID
Please help me about U-boat gameplay..
I'll do my best!
@@xljedi2335 I am having trouble with getting this game from steam
Unfortunately, I can't help you troubleshoot your Steam account.
@@xljedi2335 Can u send me this game via steam gift card???
@@muhammads.a.m4727 Ha, you so silly 🤪
bulshit
Ha, you so silly 🤪
English dialog. Now that's heresy.
It's not English, it's German. I just have the German language skill so I understand what they are saying.
come on...hardcore and expert but english dub?
I don't speak German. ...and there are important tactical messages from the crew I need to understand. Immersion for me is understanding what my crew is saying. It's easy to imagine they are speaking German, and I just understand it.