The amount of OH time you see in the harbor is just how much that engine gives. Engineers
will add on to that. (They stack linearly, and every 110k true ability adds an extra second)
http://www.navyfield.com/board/view.asp?Num=84358&Sort=D07

Oh thanks guys, so we can increase overheat time with high lv engineers, I didn't notice
that though. So is the overheat time said in the harbour correct ?

What I mean is could the actual overheat time be longer than the stated overheat time
said in the harbour ?

1 Engi or 1 Rep wont hit any cap by themselve. IJN BB crew will have a hard time hitting
repair cap, overheat time is not capped. Well... in usage overheat time is capped by the
end of the battle / the sinking of the ship. But no amount of engineers gives you enough
time to overheat 15minutes... which would be the cap then.

So it give you an improvement to have 200 and more vets on repairers and engineers and of
course experts for the rest of the men on the crew.

"so only overheat increases ? Not the lower speed? "

The cruise/OH speed of each ship is capped and they increase in defined increments.

23/39
24/40
25/42
etc etc

And, no matter how good your engineers are...the Super Yamato will only go 25/42. However,
you can overheat for 5 minutes if your engineers are good.

Ability displayed is not that relevant in the end, amount of vets and experts is.

"Or how many vets + experts are enough to fill up the grey bar at lv 120"
You run a 3 gold bar crew on a Nagato, yet did not reach 100% ability yet? I'm
assuming this means your crew is rather low on vets and experts. So if you have the
option to buy some prem items, I'd say get those sailors to 100/109 vets and fill
them up with experts.

And finally, the lower number is your base speed. It is not dependant on engineers,
but on the amount of displacement you are using on your ship. (More armor and
guns = more weight = less base speed) That speed then becomes the base with
which your overheat speed is calculated. Overheat speed can at max be 170% of
your base speed and the level and quality of your engineers will determine how high
that overheat speed will be. Engineers themselves don't have a cap as GT
mentioned, but every ship has different requirements for engineering power to
reach its maximum speed. The Yamato for instance is rather imfamous for being hard
to reach its 40 knot speed cap.

Thanks


@GTD; so only overheat increases ? Not the lower speed?

Engineer ability isn't capped. If your engineers are good enough, you'll just keep
overheating...

And, unless you have a crew full of good repairers with lots of vets, you won't even sniff
the repair cap.

http://www.navyfield.com/board/view.asp?Num=174659&Sort=A03&Order=re_upday&PageSize=20&Page=1&Ctg_1=&Ctg_2=&Ctg_3=

IJN torpman will cap with 800 or 1400 torpedo ability, confusing these 2 values now...
just do the math