I'm only on like 52% realism or something like that, I like the 3d view. It's a good looking game and when I'm running something down or fleeing I like to watch. In first person you can definitely hear when the charges go off so you don't have to look outside the boat. Medium settings across the board, plus crew management, realistic bilge pumps/flooding Speaking of the bilge pumps, I think this is the first game I played where rough water that goes over you ship floods you. On one patrol I was in really rough water in the North Sea checked the bilge and it was at 0.7m and as I was looking at it a couple large waves in a row broke over the ship and that number went from 0.7m to 1m. Maybe closing the conning tower hatch could prevent that.
The Engineer skill is called Ship Engineer. Your engineer has to be level 3 or higher to pick it. It's not something I'd put on all of them, but it's nice to have one as it saves munitions if you can catch the ship and get them to abandon the ship. It was helpful when I was in the Type II boats so my VII campaign has has two with that skill.
The amount of Officers is kind of a pain. It would be really helpful to have one or two more, but that would probably break the game. Three engineers is nice to have, but so was three leaders, you can also get by with one radio operator, but two is handy and probably even more handy when more advanced equipment starts to be a thing.
In the type II I ran two radio operators, that was probably a waste. Two engineers to baby the engines 24/7 Two leaders to navigate 24/7 and my captain didn't have a shift, I just threw him on the bridge as a lookout or to line up torpedo shots as necessary. Seemed the thing to do with that boats abysmal range. Wasn't as much of an issue in the Type IId.
In this Type VII I have two radio operators, maybe a waste still, but I figure if one gets hurt, the other can heal him. Three engineers, two to baby the engines 24/7 and the other to load and maintain torpedoes and do damage control. Then I just have my captain and a leader who are on a shifts where they do navigation as much as required and then finish their shift on the bridge as lookouts. Seems to work so far and I don't need the navigator's position filled 24/7 when I'm in a Type VII and the patrol zones aren't very far away yet. That third engineer isn't on a shift, his schedule is just listed as anything for the whole day. He'll automatically load or warmup torpedoes if they're not, does repair or DC. It's really handy, except for rare cases when you're creeping along and don't want to be found and he'll start loading torpedoes, because I think he does that even in silent running and blue lights. So you gotta be at alarm and put him in DC, or send manually give him some other order.
