93. Difficulty level bonuses.
Whilst it's possible to graduate through different roles in the boat, usually from helm towards captain, fundamentally any given role, once learned, confers no extra skills to be learned one the basic job is learned. This might be considered due to the need for bots to be able to do every role, or it might be that the devs thought that all tasks needed a basic accessability level for new players, rather than being a sim, it was a game.
This seems to me to be a missed opportunity in the first instance. Bots should be able to do all the basic tasks well enough, and players can learn the basics to a degree by watching them. However, if we take the dive-officer as an example, one could make extra valves operate for a player who wants more to do, or a greater challenge, by adding longitudinal trimming, necessary for depth keeping, or torpedo compensating tanks to deal with. If these controls did not operate when in use by the bots, or a newer player who does not wish to deal with those, then some roles on the boat could have their "life" extended by providing increased difficulty.
So why might crews want this? There's more risk if a DO is finding it harder to maintain a precise PD. Suppose that as you play on the harder settings - eg playing real radio rather than simple morse, using the Enigma etc, or in our DO's case, dealing with more realistic trim and compensating tanks, then that player could acrrue points for tonnage gained whilst playing the harder role, and lose it by getting killed. The SUM of the points aboard might permit one or two Lut, or Acoustic torpedoes in the pre-game loadout, or other "slightly early" adoption of kit for the NEXT game. It might be a higher capacity battery or similar. Having newer players on the boat would also add benefit in this way, to aid training and good experiences for new players, rather than getting the old sweats into a crew and then not helping bring on new players.
Possible voluntary extra difficulties:
Helm: realistic lag between rudder-movements and reactions of heading change.
Toppling of individual gyro-compass repeaters. Temporary complete loss of gyro-compasses (from DC attack).
Dive Officer: Compensating tanks for firing of torpedoes, longitudinal trim-tanks, lag in effect between any trim change and movement of the boat. Small lag in effect for planes and movement. Bouyancy instability if DC's detonate above, or below. Inertia for any given movement of the u-boat.
Radioman - mandatory encryption of all signals. (achieved by penalty of using words on a banned list for en-claire transmission. Real morse. HFDF of extended transmissions, or overly frequent ones, especially close to the convoy. Ability to operate DFing kit to plot a line towards another u-boat or escort, and a rough range. Faster transmission rate of bot-sent morse.
Engineers: More realistic recharge rates, need to move fuel to header tanks (once) per game. DC damage to exhaust valves causing diesel sea-water flooding (in addition to exhaust hull valves being left open when diving).
Captain: Need to sent and receive all signals encrypted. Otherwise all the optional difficulties from each role electing to play at a higher difficulty.
All: Torpedoes require manual player movement and alignment, insertions for reloading and (noisy) recovery of spares from below deck-plates, using winches etc. Manual firing of torpedoes in torpedo or emotor rooms. Need for torpedo doors to be opened and shut, heating and charging electric torpedoes before firing.
And so on. With a bit of thought, optional increased of difficulty could be added to most roles without causing problems for the bots provided that if a player with an optional extra difficulty on, comes off the controls, then those settings are reapplied when he returns, but are otherwise no longer occurring.
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