Originally Posted by Stormvanger
Originally Posted by Obsessed
Ehhh, really depends on play style and how you vet your sailors.
I run 6 Engys and 2 Repairs. Don't think you should rely on bulge tbh, since you should always be spotting subs go under and recognize where it's going. And as for TBs, just turn . Lol
Six Engineers is, in my opinion, too many. The way engineers stack, you get an ever smaller return on each one. You'll get more skill out of 5 Engineers and a Seaman than you will out of 6 Engineers, and the Seaman does a good job on Repair too. Plus Seaman ability is uncapped (as far as we can tell), so my 120 seaman with 300 vets does wonders.
Unless your seaman adds more than 12% ability, you're mostly wrong about a seaman being better than a 5th + engineer.
A seaman might only add more to your OH than extra engineers above 4 if you haven't capped your OH speed yet, then the way engineers stack, will make a difference in that a seaman might actually allow you to cap OH speed while an extra engineer might not. However that extra engineer will add a lot more OH time than a Seaman since OH time stacks linearly with extra engineers. If you value the extra knot of speed more than the added OH time, here a seaman is better, but eventually OH spd will be capped so that bonus will no longer apply.
A seaman might also add more to your engineering crew instead of an engineer if you can no longer add engineers to the support slots on your ship, a seaman should still work his engineer stuff in a T/R or BO slot.
And finally a Seaman might be worth more to you than a 5th( or 6th) engineer if you want better OH time but also want a lot better repair rate and maybe even some reload improvements.
In all other situations ppl value the much better OH time gained from extra engineers more than the benefits from a seaman.
