Officers and Sailors – Better NCOs

A realistic Kriegsmarine crew hierarchy for UBOAT — every man with a rank, a uniform, a command, and a career — plus crew-size-aware air and food so a bigger boat still plays fair.

i got very tired of the out of place historical crew structure in the base game and found the typical "make crew bigger" mods just drew more attention to the issue. So i made this.

Stock UBOAT splits the crew into a few named officers and an anonymous pool of sailors — no chiefs’ mess, no career ladder. This mod rebuilds the company into the three-tier structure of a real U-boat:

Enlisted ratings → NCOs (Chief Petty Officers) → Commissioned Officers

Every man belongs to a class that drives his rank, his insignia, how many he can command, and how he advances.

• Rank boards on the men’s shoulders — officers and chiefs WEAR their rank: boards painted onto the green jacket and denim battledress, and full 3D boards with button and pips on the leather jackets. Survives uniform texture mods; updates the moment a man is promoted.
• Three crew classes, one career — Enlisted, NCO (Chief Petty Officer), Commissioned Officer — promote, commission, demote, and retrain at a naval academy.
• Four-rank NCO tracks — every petty-officer branch climbs Bootsmann → Oberbootsmann → Stabsbootsmann → Stabsoberbootsmann (with engine, radio, navigation and medical tracks to match), one rank per level.
• Authentic Kriegsmarine ranks beside every name, across the UI and in first person — flip German/English with one button, hide boards or titles if you prefer, and rename every rank in-game (USN / RAN / Literal presets).
• A five-box crew counter — Watch Officers, Engineer Officers, Chief Petty Officers, Ratings and Survivors, each wearing its class symbol; the numbers always match what the boat will actually let you board.
• Command limits that matter — a leader’s span of control follows his class and tier; the wardroom is capped per branch, and BdU posts surplus officers ashore (kept in your roster, off the boat).
• The wardroom matters — officers lead instead of labouring: a staffed wardroom improves the crew’s task efficiency, discipline and stress recovery — scaled by each officer’s rank and the men assigned to him — while empty billets weaken the boat. A live effects box beside the crew counter shows exactly what your company is doing for you.
• BdU on the line — the first time each feature comes up, headquarters rings a rotary phone on your HUD with a spoken briefing (once per career; can be switched off).
• A bigger company — room for ~9 officers and ~45 crew with no HQ upgrades, plus a survivors allowance in Custom billets.
• Veteran ratings — experienced sailors grow tougher, faster and steadier, and earn perks as they level; bold "Sea Wolf" crewmen rise faster while the anxious lag behind.
• Word from BdU — each patrol’s promotions and medals arrive as an official dispatch in your message log.
• An idealised starting crew — begin with a properly structured company at believable experience, or sweep the deck and hand-pick your own from a free recruiter.
• Beards & shore leave — the men grow beards over a long patrol, then return clean-shaven in fresh rig.
• Crew-size-aware air & food — dive time and provisions are normalised to your MAX crew (Historical / Vanilla / Custom), so a big company no longer suffocates or starves twice as fast. Optional: captives breathe too.
• Fully tunable — a tabbed Preferences panel on the main menu plus plain-text rule files; drop in your own insignia art.

v1.0.0 — 2026-07-03

• Gameplay hole sealed: assigning a man the Watch Officer role no longer silently makes him a commissioned officer — roles are duty, not rank. Commissions now come ONLY from the promote ceremony (reputation), the Senior Leaders Course (reputation) or hiring a ready-made officer. Existing saves keep every officer they already had.
• New — the wardroom matters (crew mutators): a staffed wardroom buffs the whole boat’s task efficiency, discipline regen and stress recovery; empty billets weaken it. Men assigned to an officer work better again, scaled by his rank and training. Live summary box on the crew screen; switchable in Preferences > Mod Tweaks.
• New — BdU tutorial calls: a rotary phone rings on the HUD the first time each mod feature comes up (first load, crew screen, uniforms, promotion, over-establishment deboarding, the Senior Leaders Course) — six spoken briefings from headquarters, once per career, with an on/off switch.
• Senior Leaders Course reworked: a Chief Petty Officer of ANY specialty returns a commissioned watch officer (Leutnant zur See, keeping every skill — plan careers for officers with engine or radio perks). The course now costs 2 reputation.
• New — Mod Tweaks tab in Preferences: BdU calls on/off, crew effects on/off, debug log on/off.
• New — Stop Audio button on the crew tab cuts any playing mod sound short.
• Fix: a hired officer recruit could lose his commission tag the moment he was hired (enrollment re-keyed him) — tags now follow the man.

v0.5.0 — 2026-07-02

• The big one — rank boards on the men’s shoulders: boards painted on the green jacket and denim battledress, full 3D plate/button/pips on the leather jackets. Match the man’s actual rank, survive texture mods, update on promotion.
• New: four-rank NCO career tracks for every branch — title, portrait board and shoulder boards all advance as a chief levels.
• New: the crew counter rebuilt into five boxes (Watch / Engineers / NCOs / Ratings / Survivors) with class symbols and honest limits.
• New: rank display controls on the crew tab — hide/show boards, hide/show titles, one-click refresh.
• New: survivors allowance in Custom billets; every rank renameable with USN / RAN / Literal presets; optional captives-breathe air penalty.
• UI: the Preferences panel wears the game’s own chrome, always saves on close, and the mod badge + version show on the main menu.
• Performance: the recurring stutter is fixed — rank visuals refresh only when a rank actually changes, and board textures pre-build after load.
• Fix: a full chiefs’ mess could block boarding another commissioned officer (thanks Kptlt. Weingarten) — the wardroom now always has its reserved slots.
• Change: verbose logging is off by default — set DEBUG_LOG = true in os_prefs.txt for bug reports.

Older notes live in the Change Notes tab.

• For UBOAT 2026.1.
• U-Boat Expanded: normally compatible — it was broken fir a bit, should be reverted
  update (as of 03/07/26) is broken and hangs VII-boat loads. Disable U-Boat Expanded until its author pushes a fix; this is their bug, not this mod.
• Do not run with mods that edit crew size unless the vanilla crew options are selected in the settings.
• The air option overlaps "Breathe Easier" — pick one, or set Air to Vanilla to defer to it.
• Save-game friendly for the rank/class tracking; air/food take effect on load.

i love making these kinda mods, but they take time and energy i must use to pay rent — help change that!
https://buymeacoffee.com/pingu565