Career Campaign & Character Progression
This mod alters variables across multiple files and dealing with numerous game concepts, compatibility with other mods cannot be promised and the behavior/functionality of mod features may depend greatly on load order
Increased Crew and Officer Capacity
- Starting with 18 crew on the Type IIA and increasing all the way to the mighty Type VIIC/41 with 26 men aboard.
- 2 Additional officer slot unlocks at the reputation officer
- Air quality rates balanced for 10-12 hours (before any modifiers)
Random Skill Ratios Altered
- Crew: 60% Sea Wolves – 30% Anxious – 10% Weak
- Officers: 50% Tough – 7% Merchant – 7% Diver – 7% Cook – 6% Specialist – 3% Connections – 4% Linguist – 4% per language
- All officers are runners, though running was tweaked down slightly to avoid overshooting.
Assigned Skills Rework
- Many skills have been spread around to other classes, allowing for utility/hybrid officers who can fulfill roles while the typical person who fills them has other demands.
- A leader could perform flawless torpedo maintenance
- A Radioman may produce spare parts from scrap
- An Engineer can be a steady, calming presence in the control room
- Engineers and Leaders with Radio Usage Practice can use the radio at 66% performance rather than 33%
- Leaders with sensitive hearing may use the hydrophones at 75% performance instead of 50%
- Radioman with Salvager skill can repair at 66% performance rather than 33%
- All Command Station/Damage Control related buffs have been moved to the advanced tier
- Engineers and Radiomen have a limit of 1 follower by default, but may access the Management skill to provide a 2nd follower (available to Engineers in the basic tier and Radiomen in the advanced tier).
- Sometimes you are presented with situations where a less-than-ideal solution would be adequate and realistic, but the game says that no, that officer will not even make the attempt as the regulations say they shouldn’t be doing that. Or other times where one or two officers are stuck being useless 5th wheels when it would be nice if they could provide some at least marginal assistance rather than just waiting around.
Torpedo Loading and Maintenance
- Loading times from ~37 minutes untrained and alone down to as low as 7 minutes properly trained and with 2 followers
- Maintenance times from ~3 minutes down to as low as 1 minute
- Time torpedoes stay maintained depends on torpedo model, but generally from ~48-72 minutes.
Discipline and Stress Adjustments
- Most discipline reward sources reduced sharply
- Default discipline gain reduced slightly, default overwork penalty reduced slightly
- Most discipline reducing and stress increasing states increased
- The overall result is needing some minimal effort to prevent slow loss of discipline over time, a moderately noticeable loss during shock events, and intentional sustained efforts will have to be made to help them recover quickly. It should no longer be possible to forget all about almost dying by turning the music on for 30 minutes and adding some cheese to the stew.
Patrol Endurance & Campaign Scaling
- Stack limits of food and supplies extended upwards to facilitate longer remote deployments
- IIA Fuel Tank extended from 13750 to 18250, giving her range more similar to a IIB
- Mine Laying and Norway campaign milestones are now 1 patrol for Bronze, 2 additional for Silver, and a further additional 2 for Gold (1, 3, and 5 total). This reduces the Norway campaign by one mission (many players just miss completion of 6) and extends both Mining campaigns to continue providing ocassional alternative low-risk/medium-return mission profiles in exchange for missed hunting time
- Atlantic Operations campaign start date moved to Jan 1, 1940. This will help close up the drought of content that seems to settle in from Nov 39-Mar 40. This also allows a fair chance for the IIA start to acquire a VIIB before the Norway campaign begins, where the IID is very ill-suited to perform the fleet submarine role required there
- Southern Routes campaign reduced to 3 for Bronze, 4 additional for Silver, and a further additional 5 for Gold (3, 7, and 12 total).
- Broad reductions in campaign milestone rewards, but less aggressively towards later campaigns
- Retention of high value goods (medical supplies, antibiotics, vitamin supplements) and targeted reductions of weights/increase in stacks of some precious materials if you feel like dithering about on the surface to collect such things
- Individual standard patrol mission length extended, GRT expectations raised, and rewards reduced significantly. Budget is reduced somewhat, though direct tonnage sinking tends to trivialize the entire idea of the economy until very late in the war
- Reputation will now come largely through campaign goals, alternative mission types, side tasks, and interactions with survivors (give supplies/take prisoners)
- XP rates reduced, there are literally years of breezy gameplay to grind through, no need to have 9 level 5 officers before the end of 1939
- I do acknowledge that a lot of these changes amount to nerfs across the board. My intention is not to simply pummel it all down, but to target the reductions in a way that make decisions feel more impactful and meaningful while providing new approaches to old problems with an array of highly focused specialist officers and others who are more flexible and utility-role oriented.
- As such, the cumulative effect of these changes may make late-era starts far more difficult than the design intends. Likewise, with the shift of reputation towards non-standard content, patrol-only mission type selection in the difficulty/realism setup screen may make accumulation of reputation burdensome. This mod is intentionally targeted towards re-pacing the first 2 or so years of the war to hopefully discourage sprinting to progression goals and then finding little else to hold interest for long periods, leading to boredom and burnout.
