Efficiency - what does it actually do?

[gnolam]

The topic should say it all, really. What effect does increasing the efficiency bar of the sub's various compartments really have? The manual is woefully inadequate on most aspects of the sim, and this one is no exception.

Let's take the engine compartment as an example. Does filling it with competent crew make you <UL TYPE=SQUARE><LI>faster?
<LI>more fuel efficient?
<LI>quieter?
<LI>all of the above?
<LI>none of the above?[/list]

So far I haven't actually noticed much of a difference anywhere... (for example, the torpedo reload times my weapons officer report seem to be constant, no matter how many people I assign to the torpedo rooms)

It's the same with the rest of the crew management - I can hand out awards between missions, but I have no idea if doing so has any kind of practical effect...

[gnolam]

The topic should say it all, really. What effect does increasing the efficiency bar of the sub's various compartments really have? The manual is woefully inadequate on most aspects of the sim, and this one is no exception.

Let's take the engine compartment as an example. Does filling it with competent crew make you <UL TYPE=SQUARE><LI>faster?
<LI>more fuel efficient?
<LI>quieter?
<LI>all of the above?
<LI>none of the above?[/list]

So far I haven't actually noticed much of a difference anywhere... (for example, the torpedo reload times my weapons officer report seem to be constant, no matter how many people I assign to the torpedo rooms)

It's the same with the rest of the crew management - I can hand out awards between missions, but I have no idea if doing so has any kind of practical effect...

[Kpt_Zig]

I'm wondering what effect it might have on the motors myself. On the bridge it'll increase the chance of an enemy vessel being spotted. In the torpedo compartment it should give you faster reloads. http://forums.ubi.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif

[Johnny_JG2]

Why do games these days always have such lame manuals?!?!

You would think it would be in their best interest to cover this stuff in detail in the manual- rather than make gamers attempt to figure it out by trial and error..

[quillan]

For the engine room, the only effect I seem to notice is that once it drops past a certain point, the engines will shut down. For the sonar room, efficiency seems to have a direct impact on how reliable and fast your sonar man is. At full efficiency, I've gotten contact info from him up to 20km away. On top, as watch efficiency means good spotting of other ships, while for the guns it means accuracy. The big thing is in the torpedo room. Get the efficiency to 100% and you'll notice quite a bit of difference in load/reload times. Just that little bit from 90-100 takes load times down from 11 minutes to 7 (both rough times) on loading a torp, and transferring one from the external stores from 60 minutes down to 40. All these effects are in addition to being able to use fewer men in the compartment. I stuck one torpedo man and one officer in the aft torpedo room of my VIIB earlier, and hit 100% in the compartment.

[TASKFORCE1x1]

Topic moved to Com. Help April 4 2004.

[Amnio]

By taking a look at the SilentHunterIII\data\Cfg\Sensors.cfg you can get a pretty good idea on the role crewefficiency and other factors play on the various sensorsystems. I find it a bit strange that "visual" and "radar" lists "uses crew efficiency=false" though.

[KiwiVenge]

If you do a mouse over on the different compartments in teh crew managment screen it tells you what higher efficiency will do for each compartment.
http://forums.ubi.com/groupee_common/emoticons/icon_smile.gif