Some ideas for crew mechanics

[Zuikaku]

I woul'd like to propose some ideas regarding crew mechanics.

I suggest crew to be divided into few subcategories: machinery crew, stokers, damage control crew, tower crew, weapons crew.

Each time ship is hit the game takes account on which compartment is hit and depending on damage inflicted crew can take losses. So, when boilers are hit by overpen hit, there is slight chance that stokers will took some light losses. If we have penetrating exploding hit, losses can be quite high. Similar is with other compartments through the ship. This way we can have main turrets mainly intact but inneficient due to less than optimal weapon crew numbers.

DC ship crew can take losses either from direct hits or when fighting fires or heavy flooding.

As crew numbers are reduced ship loses overall efficiency. So when superstructure is mostly destroyed and tower crew took heavy losses, ship ability to aim, track targets and spot torpedoes is drastically reduced.

As DC crew numbers dwindle, ability to contain damage degrades.

Losses can be partially replaced by investing in special ship compartments like dressing stations or surgery rooms.

Overall crew efficiency and morale can be boosted by investing in living quarters quality and spaces dedicated for entertainment (movie room, gym, chapel, bar, swimming pool, library, game room) - each of these costs maintenance, tonnage and additional crew.

[Cptbarney]

I like this idea, would defo improve the game action-wise and would add another layer to the games complexity. Plus allows us to worry about the crew and not just the shipfu's themselves half the time. Interested too see what they do for their crew mechanics.

[Tycondero]

I hope that crew morale and captain personality will become a factor in the game, though this added amount of complexity may very much "mess things up" for the AI and lead to player frustration as it could be difficult to implement right.

A ship's performance and ability to follow player orders should be affected within the game by the captain and the crew . I imagine that daredevil and/or highly respected captains should be able to maintain sufficient morale which allows some ships to go "beyond the call of duty" making these ships perform well even under intense enemy fire. Green crews or less assertive captains could mean that do or die like player/AI orders (e.g. performing a suicide run) are ignored or called off. This would bring another layer of deeper gameplay well known to people that play more land-battle orientated tactical and strategic games.

Edited January 2, 2021 by Tycondero
typo

[Dannavy85]

I support this idea of crew mechanics. 

[ston5883]

I could see them implementing something like this but on a simpler scale. So much total crew and then just things slowing down as crew die. As far as things like aiming we already have if a tower is knocked out it reduces our aim so all they would have to do is add a bit of crew loss to slow all other processes down and they have a basic crew system. I know you are recommending having a deeper system but I could easily see them going for the simple system over all the extras. 

[Bigjku]

My suggestions...

Crew competence and ability should be determined by two factors.  Training which I would suggest is part of the commissioning process/training and experience.

Commissioning Process

Either on an individual basis or as a fleet policy you should be able to determine the level of training achieved before a ship is commissioned.  I would suggest to following categories.

Surface Warfare- More accurate, faster firing

Torpedo Warfare-  More accurate, after firing

Damage Control (Basic)- Trains dedicated damage control teams and improves damage control.

Damage Control (Advanced)-  Trains whole crew on damage control.

Radar-  Enhance radar capability

Sonar/ASW-  Enhanced use of sonar and ASW ability.

Selecting these training standards for a class of ships in campaign would increase the cost and the time to commission the unit but start it at a higher baseline.

Ongoing Training

A simple four setting system.

Mothball/Reserve-  Skills atrophy quickly as crew is dispersed among fleet from these ships.  Ship will be low level when recommissioned and would have to pass through a period of time to come back to its full initial capabilities.  Could be used in weaker state though.

Active, low-level- Crew is retained and skills atrophy but slowly from low level use of the asset.  A cost cutting measure.

Active, sustain- Skills are sustained where they are.  Normal cost.

Active, intense-  Skills grow over time (within limits of what would be allowed without combat) but expenses are very high as ships are running more often.

Experience

I would keep this simple.  Ships in combat gain experience beyond what training can do.  I would give the following options for how this is handled and it would be a fleet wide policy.

Crew Retained- 100% of the experience is ship specific.  That ship accrues all the experience it earns.

Cadre System-  Crew is mostly retained.  A number are removed to teach lessons through the fleet.  75% of experience stays, 25% passes to other ships of that type within the fleet.  Slowly improves everyone while still building up individual ships quick.

Full Reassignment-  Crews are regularly broken up to fill out new ships and training billets.  Ship retains 50% of experience and 50% passes to all other ships of same type as veterans move around the fleet.

 

I think those are simple things that can be implemented as it doesn’t involve back end tracking of crew as an item.  It’s just modifiers tracked based on your selections and can be easily laid on top of the exiting framework.

[ReefKip]

i am sure they plan to add a crew mechanic to the game. why otherwise would the crew be part of the statistics of the ship in the designer?

They will probably start out simple by letting the amount of crew that dies depend on where the ship is hit. for example a penetration in the middle of the ship will kill the most crew as this is where most of the crew stations are located. while penetrations in the bow or stern area will kill less crew as those are less populated on average. also how many crew members die is connected to the amount of damage a shell does. so for example a shell does 500 HP damage in the middle part of the ship then that means 100 crew members are dead or something like that.

the lower the crew number gets the slower every action on the ship will take. like reloading, damage control and spotting. this would be pretty easy to add into the game when they want it. 

 

Edited January 10, 2021 by ReefKip

[Skeksis]

I hope captain/commander names or portraits can be display in the battle instance, to provide a connection from the crew/captain/commander interface to the battle.

Playing a game recently with companions, it has that correspondence. UAD can do it with captains or division commanders, names/portraits (maybe voiceovers) would create the same atmosphere.

To expand on this, when the division lead changes a message could be displayed e.g. “Commander Beatty has taken command of division 1”. There could be quite a few battle related commander messages, maybe campaign messaging too.

[Dirlinger]

On 12/31/2020 at 3:48 PM, Zuikaku said:

I woul'd like to propose some ideas regarding crew mechanics.

I suggest crew to be divided into few subcategories: machinery crew, stokers, damage control crew, tower crew, weapons crew.

 

 

That is one of the ideas which sounds good in theory but in practice I am bit wondering on how this will impact performance of the game if we have 100+ ships in a battle (Battle of Jutland had 250 ships involved at both sides). Already now the game struggles with big battles that are nowhere close to the numbers I mentioned.

We already know that some crew mechanics per ship would be implemented most likely and I would speculate that it would be something akin to what Reefkip described.

[Zuikaku]

I woul'd also like if they implement morale and experience system that works similar to that in Close Combat game series.
So if we send order to charge into enemy line to some inexperienced (or just overly cautious) destroyer captain he might refuse to do so and make some excuses
(can not build enogh steam, not in contact with enemy, experiencing engine problems...). I'll never forget when I used to order green infantry squad in Close Combat series to assault enemy KV-1 tank only to get answers like: we can't hurt that, conserving ammo, their armour is too thick).

Also it' woul'd be a good thing (especially when there is no radio available) for ships to misinterpret or not get orders at all (crew experience woul'd influence how likely that is and admiral ship is excepted from this).

That woul'd make ships under our command to act like they are manned by real flesh and blood men and not some robots or androids that obey whatever orders they get without hesitating or making mistakes.

Edited January 22, 2021 by Zuikaku