To me, repair is nice, but only after you've been clobbered. I try to avoid contact with enemy weaponry and rely more on speed and stealth. For me, speed and OH duration are more important. The Seaman offers similar repair capabiliites by upgrading ALL of the crew's rep/rest rates (which are enhanced on SS). My SD is only a few points lower than when I load the repairman on board. Also, the KM SS5 gun is mostly useless. You couldn't sink a DD with less than 20 shells. Good luck with that. THe U-Flak guns are awesome and I would gladly exchange one Engineer and Seaman for my two gunners and those guns, but not on the SDE "To-Do" list.
I had to scrounge up enough credits to buy a good Chief Engineer (L93) the other day. With three Chief Engineers (L108, L93, L76) and a Seaman (L94) in the gunner slot, the best I can attain is 37 Knots OH surfaced, 32 Knots OH Submerged at this time.
At some point my Engineers will get good enough to achieve 40 knots OH surfaced, but not for a while. However, my OH time well over 1 1/2 minutes, so my transit time in OH is very good across no man's land.
The KM SS4 would achieve that quite easily with that crew. But looking forward as most people will upgrade from SS4 to SS5 at L95, instead of at a higher level. As a result, most SS4 going forward won't be achieving those speeds because they will move up to the SS5 and start over at a low level in a higher ship.
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