Massive destroyer convoy

[SilentEnigma]

Hi all,

Over the last few days I have restarted playing SH4 (with the U-Boat add on, vanilla) on the American campaign. During my latest patrol - the Battle of the Coral Sea takes place a day or so after I leave port - I have saw something, well, funky.

After dropping off an agent on the southern coast of Japan I was ordered to patrol off Honshu Island. I took this opportunity to infiltrate Tokyo Bay and take out a few of the IJN big ships. As I was leaving the bay I dived after receiving a sonar hit on an incoming warship. As I crept away deep under the thermal layer I used the external cam to have a looksee and discovered a convoy of about 30 destroyers. Neat lines of destroyers all heading into the bay. Gave me the impression the AI was out for revenge on the loss of a BB and CA. Needless to say I stayed out the way of them.

I saved a short while later. I reloaded later on to discover my save game was corrupted (from what I have read online, most likely due to the above huge task force). So I am replaying the patrol and now. I am heading towards Tokyo Bay, passing Toyohama, and I have just discovered another huge task force. This one is comprised of - if I have not miscounted or missed any - about 65 destroyers! That is in the range of about half the historical total number of destroyers Japan had in the war, if I am not mistaken. :doh:

So, my question (to finally get around to it): what gives? Does anyone know what the hell is going on?

[c13Garrison]

Good grief! I've never seen anything like that. Are they in a mass, or steaming line ahead like they know what they're doing?

I'd have to say its a clear very bizzare glitch. I suppose its up to you to decide to play around it or re-install.

However, welcome back!:up:

[fred8615]

I used to on occasion run into HUGE TFs that slowed my computer to a crawl. I eventually figured out it was something in the Game Fixes Only mod, so I uninstalled it and haven't had that problem since.

If you don't have GFO though, I don't know what to tell you.

[SilentEnigma]

Thanks for the welcome back.

It does seem whenever I get anywhere close to them, my game lags out and I presume (per my first post and a bit of looking around) is what caused my initial save game to crash. On my rerun of the patrol I have took a massive detour to get around them and saved again and this time the save loads. So for now I am just avoiding them. I haven't seen them before this patrol, and I am hoping I don't see them after.

The first one of 30 looked like a regular convoy, six neat lines of five. All steaming into the bay in order. The second convoy was a little bit more jumbled up. It looked like groups of 5-8 destroyers in some form of formation with 1 or 2 on patrol around it. Then of course they were all on top of one another forming one huge mass of destroyers. But again, they were all steaming in the same direction.

I tried to get a screenshot of the second one, but the file refuses to open. Says it is unrecognizable, even though it is a .bmp and was taken via using ctrl+F11 (regular old printscreen just resulted in white page).

[Webster]

I used to on occasion run into HUGE TFs that slowed my computer to a crawl. I eventually figured out it was something in the Game Fixes Only mod, so I uninstalled it and haven't had that problem since.

If you don't have GFO though, I don't know what to tell you.

might be a stock bug :hmmm: I don't recall anyone ever reporting this problem before, did you also have RSRDC installed?

just delete the campaign folder from GFO mod to fix it, the campaign changes within it are small and wont be missed. if it goes away its a GFO bug, if not then its a stock game or (if used) a RSRDC bug

[Admiral Halsey]

I have seen this in stock. It's really rare so if you can avoid it you should be just fine next patrol.

[Armistead]

It's usually a bug or error made, probably should've been 3, but got a 0 put on it. There have been other bugs where people spawn docked ships numerous times, so they pile up, but not in this case.

You'll probably run into a few bugged groups with stock and all mods, hard not to make an human error messing with numerous groups.

[fred8615]

might be a stock bug :hmmm: I don't recall anyone ever reporting this problem before, did you also have RSRDC installed?
No, I didn't have RSRDC at that time.

just delete the campaign folder from GFO mod to fix it, the campaign changes within it are small and wont be missed. if it goes away its a GFO bug, if not then its a stock game or (if used) a RSRDC bug
Like I said, I haven't had the problem since removing GFO.

[KSCyrus]

Sorry to necro, but seriously what the hell is causing this? Am using only GFO and have run into these 30-60 Destroyer Convoys twice in two patrols now.
after which the game is running in basically slow mo ;/, disabling the mod deleting the campaign folder within it and reactivating didn't help either

[XenonSurf]

Sorry to necro, but seriously what the hell is causing this? Am using only GFO and have run into these 30-60 Destroyer Convoys twice in two patrols now.
after which the game is running in basically slow mo ;/, disabling the mod deleting the campaign folder within it and reactivating didn't help either


This game has been heavily modded for a reason, you should not play just stock game because there are tons of bugs or unrealistic behaviors - to know which ones read the GFO readme, this mod has the purpose to correct most of them. I cannot say wether this is a success or not.

I'm playing with this over the U-Boat version 1.5:


1.0 TMO_RSRDC_OTC
1.5_OTC_German PPI Screen
1.5_OTC_Realistic Scopes for 16 to 9 RSRDCv502
2.0 Ralles ModPack for TMO_RSRDC_OTC

This is one example only how you can mod the game, there are others obviously.
RSRDC is a new wirtten campaign, so this mod should avoid your troubles.


:Kaleun_Cheers:XS

[KSCyrus]

Sorry, dont really like Rsrdc as im not a fan of half the pacific being empty as i dont have that much time usually when playing, After all im content with GFO and just dont want to run into those 60 Destroyer Task forces so any hints as to why its happening would be welcomed

[XenonSurf]

But if you don't have so much time, can't you just close your eyes and go on with the game? You surely realize that this thread is 7 years old, trying to find the solution (why is it not posted?) will make you lose even more time...

[KSCyrus]

How am i supposed to go on with the game if it starts stuttering and becomes unplayable once i run into this problem?, Also if you dont intend to leave any helpful advice as to how to fix it then i think you are wasting more of my time then any game could.

[propbeanie]

Be nice now KSCyrus. If you want to waste time, we can delete our posts and ignore you. XenonSurf is trying to lighten the situation with a joke. He offered a suggestion, you don't like it. Fine. Move on. In the meantime, did you empty the Save folder before playing a modded version of the game?

Usually speaking, when a person has issues like described by the OP or you KSCyrus, it is from not emptying the Save folder before playing a new mod, or from not emptying the Save folder after removing a mod, so try deleting the contents of "C:\Users \UserName \Documents \SH4", in which "UserName" is what you log into windows with, and "Documents" might be "My Documents" or similar, depending upon your Windows version. Neither Stock nor GFO have what the FotRSU Mod Team refers to as "Run-A-Way Spawns" :salute:

[XenonSurf]

There was no joke from my part, I was sincere and not sarcastic, what I mean is: if in 7 years the hardcore players above didn't find a solution then - you can guess there is none or it would have been posted here. That's why I said Cyrus could perhaps lose time...


Now, meanwhile I've taken a look about how to correctly install GFO, it's not that simple, there are patches to correct some missions which cause CTD (maybe the trouble comes from there). Here an extract that could help:


-----------------------------------------
CTD Issues with GFO:

there are CTD issues with a few of the single missions i included in GFO and below i will explain how to fix this:

anyone who uses GFO should manually delete all of the added single missions found in my GFO mod, they have about 6 or 7 with file errors that cause CTD issues that only show up under certain times or conditions so delete the missions that are numbered SM102 thru SM115 in the "singlemissions" folder found in GFO and then place the missions from this mission pack that has the newly fixed versions for all of those missions plus a few extra missions not originally found in GFO group numbered SM102 thru SM115.

get the tambor198 mission pack here: http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=158202
-----------------------------------

[Mios 4Me]

I've run into this issue before when using GFO, as well as one where an approaching high speed convoy of four large transports begins blinking on screen and losing one or two members before I can reach attack position; both then led to crashes. Never found a solution to either. Afterward I went back to stock and had almost forgotten this.

Once I encountered this at short range, popped up to periscope depth and saw dozens of DDs streaming by. Went to camera view and headed up the direction they were coming from; I stopped when I realized there were easily thousands of destroyers. Took a deep breath, picked out six targets, and let loose an entire salvo, expecting a memorable response. Instead the entire system crashed before the first torp struck. :(

[kapura]

Hey, i have the same problem. I'm in 1942 and such convoys are really rare, so far they only appear near japan. I guess game can't handle this number of ships and crashes. I patched it to use 4gb RAM, which partially solved the issue for me, but often my engine and rudder stuck in such encounters, so it really isn't a fix.

I wonder if it isn't some sort of bug to spawn so many ships of one type, cause number can go way higher than 30. And there's no gameplay value for such thing. Destroyers aren't valuable targets, you are probably screwed anyway, and a lot of them are going to ram themselves to death.

What's sad game seems to simulate discovered ships also some time after the encounter, so even if you turn away and break all contact, saving in this state always results in corrupted save and you can't really get away, beacuse time compression with so many ships leads to ctd

To avoid it I just save the game after every encounter, reload if i spot a blob and go different way

[Sniper297]

I've heard of that but never encountered it. One possibility;

https://scontent-msp1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/95919330_3136147929762799_7627159157967159296_o.jp g?_nc_cat=110&_nc_sid=e007fa&_nc_ohc=WNKjPDDyTsoAX_3LFRR&_nc_ht=scontent-msp1-1.xx&oh=cef0ae78b545da16489368df20d244e2&oe=5ED61940

This is one of the standard "random" groups, which use percentages to roll the dice for whether or not any ship will appear in that group. If the dice come up with the number for no ship every roll, this task force will have 1 BB, 1 CA, 1 CL, 1 tanker, and nothing else - no escorts at all. With 10 destroyers at 80% and 5 at 30%, law of averages you would expect to see about 10-12 destroyers total. Sometimes it will be 5, sometimes 7, rare occasions you'd see all 15 or none.

Somebody has some ambition they could go through all the mission files (preferably with some kind of text search utility) to see if there's a random group with some ridiculous number of destroyers in it.

[Col7777]

Would be nice to play in God mode and see if you can sink them lol.

Col.

[propbeanie]

I replied to another thread about this not too long ago, but cannot find it just yet, but we named the massive DD groups as "run-a-way spawns". There are two ways those can happen, with the main one being the use of certain mods that have improperly configured RGG (Random Generated Groups) that appear to have been intended to be "docked" in a harbor, but the default speed was left at 5 knots, and the "DockedShip" was not set. There are no waypoints on the RGG, so they take off at 5knots in the direction they are facing. The game then runs the "around the world", and they come back on the other side of the SH "tube" world, eventually turning into "groups" of DD in columns as time progresses. They will eventually take the game down due to "bandwidth" if you encounter them. Just too much for the game engine to have hundreds and hundreds of ships in one scene.

The other ways to get similar to that is to either shell-out to Windows (<Ctrl><Tab>, <Alt><Tab>, or <Windows> key combinations), or by not deleting the Save folder contents after changing mods, both of which can and do result in invalid data in the game and corrupted Save files. :salute:

[Captain Kramer]

Same thing has been happening to me since I started playing SH4 again a few days ago. Fresh install on a new computer, no mods, not even JSGME, 1.5. Happened twice on my first patrol on a fresh 1941 campaign and again when I started a new campaign (it borked my save) on my third patrol. Knew better than to overwrite my save file this time, but really now, I had no idea this occurrence was so common in stock.

I still want to continue my stock campaign because I never really played vanilla before (and now I remember why) so we'll see if it keeps happening. Three times in four patrols seems crazy to me. I suppose I could play stock+RSRDC but the thing with that mod is that once you know all the task force movements from delving into the files to observe a bit of history the campaign becomes boring because you feel like you're playing a scripted game. Do I sit here and wait for the two unguarded cruisers that I know are gonna come through here and score some free tonnage or do I purposefully ignore that part of the ocean for a while? Hmm...:hmmm:

Well, I guess the solution here is the same for all buggy messes: save often!

[XenonSurf]

Same thing has been happening to me since I started playing SH4 again a few days ago. Fresh install on a new computer, no mods, not even JSGME, 1.5. Happened twice on my first patrol on a fresh 1941 campaign and again when I started a new campaign (it borked my save) on my third patrol. Knew better than to overwrite my save file this time, but really now, I had no idea this occurrence was so common in stock.

I still want to continue my stock campaign because I never really played vanilla before (and now I remember why) so we'll see if it keeps happening. Three times in four patrols seems crazy to me. I suppose I could play stock+RSRDC but the thing with that mod is that once you know all the task force movements from delving into the files to observe a bit of history the campaign becomes boring because you feel like you're playing a scripted game. Do I sit here and wait for the two unguarded cruisers that I know are gonna come through here and score some free tonnage or do I purposefully ignore that part of the ocean for a while? Hmm...:hmmm:

Well, I guess the solution here is the same for all buggy messes: save often!


Did you delete your savegame folder in Documents\SH4 before restarting your fresh campaign? If you didn't that could be the reason.

[Ubotatflip]

Dear Subsim Friends,

this is my first post in this community. I was recently introduced to the genre of Submarine Simulations through Silent Hunter IV and I feel I've been missing out all my life! :ping:

I spent a few days reading these forums and watching videos on YouTube to familiarize myself with the game. After getting pretty confident with manual targeting in the tutorial missions, I decided to start my first real Career. Imagine my dismay when the game started slowing down and crashing from the Nav map a few hours into my first patrol.

I am playing the Steam Version, vannilla SH4 with the Uboat expansion/patch (1.5.). No mods installed.

In the beginning, all went well, even if things were a bit uneventful. I completed my mission to patrol off the Japanese Coast and sank two small merchant ships with my deck cannons.

My next assignment was to move to the East Chinese Sea. On the way I would always encounter this large convoy. However, whenever I got close to it on the Nav map, the time compression would becomme unbearably laggy for anything greater than 32x. Eventually the game would CTD if I got too close to the convoy. I tried reloading earlier saves but it didn't help.

Reading the troubleshooting threads on SubSim i reckoned this must be a problem with the 2GB RAM limitation. Maybe the game couldn't handle large convoys on the campaign map due to memory issues, after all this was the first large convoy in my first career! So I tried both the 4GB patch and LLA hoping this would solve the problem, but no dice! The game would still eventually crash, although it would allow me to come a little closer to the convoy than previously. I even moved the game and my entire Steam installation out of Program Files and reapplied the patches, but still no luck.

I ran the Process Memory Monitor and noticed that the game didnt use more than 1,4 GB of RAM at any moment of crashing. So it dawned on me that this might be no related to the 2GB RAM issue per se! The 4GB/LAA patch might work correctly, but the problem was not directly connected to limited memory, because plenty was still available!.

Anyways, yesterday I managed to get into periscope range of that convoy by only using 1x time compression. Imagine my surprise when I saw an endless convoy of 50, 60 maybe 70 destroyers, all of the same class. They were all over the horizon, truly a sight to behold! What was even stranger, I couldn't lock to any of the ships with my periscope, although coming in range of approx. 4000 yards. None of the ships showed up on the nav map either. This seemed rather fishy so I started googling "silent hunter iv massive destroyer convoy" and sure enough, I'm not the first one to encounter this bug, as evidenced by this thread.

If Alt-Tabbing can really spawn these copy/paste monster convoys, than this could be the cause in my case, because I have been Alt-Tabbing extensively. I will avoid that in the future.

So far, I've been trying to circumvent the convoy and the game is working. I noticed that once I got close too it and the TC would become super laggy, my current game was unsalvagable. Even moving away from the convoy wouldn't help against the massive lag and eventual CTD.

Right now I'm just relieved that I found the apparent source of my issues. I'm currently close to a "real" convoy and so far the game is stable. Planning my attack today in the evening. :salute: :subsim:

[Aktungbby]

Ubotatflip!:Kaleun_Salute: nice first post!:up:

[Col7777]

I am playing the Monsun mod at the moment, just came across a large convoy of 30 ships, nearly all freighters and 3 escorts.
I had a field day, they scattered and I had a job getting them all, 2 made a run for it but I later caught them, I was like a sheep dog rounding up the sheep lol.

Edited: I went back in the saved game and another wave of the convoy appeared, total 40 freighters and 5 escorts.


Col.

[Ubotatflip]

Ubotatflip!:Kaleun_Salute: nice first post!:up:

Thank you Aktungbby! It's good to be on board! :Kaleun_Salute:

[propbeanie]

Hey Ubotatflip! As Aktungbby says: "Welcome to SubSim!" (using different words, of course :roll: ) :subsim:

Secondly, what mods are you running on your Steam SH4? What version of Windows are you using, and is it 64-bit or 32-bit? Where did you install Steam, and where did you install Silent Hunter 4? Do you have a 2nd hard drive or partition available for a 2nd Steam Library folder? Do you "shell-out" to Windows while playing SH4? ie: You see a ship, use the <Windows> to temporarily exit and look it up on the internet, and then go back into the game... ?? Let us know all of those details you can! :salute:

[Ubotatflip]

Hey Ubotatflip! As Aktungbby says: "Welcome to SubSim!" (using different words, of course :roll: ) :subsim:

Secondly, what mods are you running on your Steam SH4? What version of Windows are you using, and is it 64-bit or 32-bit? Where did you install Steam, and where did you install Silent Hunter 4? Do you have a 2nd hard drive or partition available for a 2nd Steam Library folder? Do you "shell-out" to Windows while playing SH4? ie: You see a ship, use the <Windows> to temporarily exit and look it up on the internet, and then go back into the game... ?? Let us know all of those details you can! :salute:

Hi propbeanie, thanks for the warm welcome! :)

Sure, I'll try to go through all the points:

Mods: No Mods installed (btw what Mod would you recommend for staying as
close as possible to vanilla with just bug fixes and general improvements?)
Windows: Windows 10 (I guess that means 64bit, correct?)
Steam Install folder: C:\Steam
SH IV Install Folder: C:\Steam\steamapps\common\Silent Hunters Wolves of the Pacific
Drives: I only have one partition and no 2nd harddrive

Shell-out: Yes I used to "shell-out" quite often using ALT-Tab during the game. Mostly it was too look up tactics on strategies on Subsim and also not to make the wife angry when she would see I was playing that "Uboat stuff" again :) :arrgh!: I avoid that know because in an earlier post it was stated that this could be the cause of such problems.

Gentlemen, yesterday, I attacked my first real convoy (using a lot of great tipps from these forums on how to plot intercept courses) and the game was stable and did not lag at all. It was quite a large convoy and my computer handled it well, so for now I think this confirms my hypothesis that I don't have general memory issues (I have LAA installed just in case!), but that the CTD were caused by this massive "ghost" convoy.

Btw. I managed to sink two ships, although more by luck than anything. I felt pretty confident with the manual targeting in the training missions, but it turns out its not so easy to keep your cool in a "real" convoy attack situation. Bottom line is, both my torpedo salvos missed their intended target by far, however they accidently hit other ships and two frighters went down :yep::up:

[propbeanie]

I asked about the mods because changing the game with a mod can wreak all sorts of havoc on it if the Save folder is not emptied after the changes. As for keeping close to Stock with only fixes, Webster's Game Fixes Only (https://www.subsim.com/radioroom/downloads.php?do=file&id=1196) (GFO) works very well. THEBERBSTER re-worked Webster's mod into All In One Beginners Mega Mod (https://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?p=2508558#post2508558), which eliminates the need of finding the add-ins for Webster's GFO mod. If you want to stray a bit away from Stock, then Fall of the Rising Sun Ultimate Edition (https://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?p=2635992#post2635992) (FotRSU) is the one, in my opinion ( :roll: )

You say you have Steam installed in the root of the C:\ drive, which works then for when and if you do apply mods to the game. If your Steam was in a Program Files folder, then Windows would interfere with your efforts... A 2nd Library folder in your situation is not necessary, since you've already avoided the issue. Just remember that when you apply a mod, or de-activate the mod, that Silent Hunter is a different game, and as such, you need to empty the Save folder ("C:\Users \UserName \Documents \SH4" or similar, OS dependet) prior to playing the altered game. Another option would be to make multiple copies of your Steam SH4 game, rename the folder, and use MultiSH4 (https://www.subsim.com/radioroom/downloads.php?do=file&id=1110) on the different copies such that you have a differently named folder for each of the SH4 copies. In that way, you are able to run multiple Mods at the same time for better evaluation purposes... :roll: :salute:

[KaleunMarco]

I replied to another thread about this not too long ago, but cannot find it just yet, but we named the massive DD groups as "run-a-way spawns". There are two ways those can happen, with the main one being the use of certain mods that have improperly configured RGG (Random Generated Groups) that appear to have been intended to be "docked" in a harbor, but the default speed was left at 5 knots, and the "DockedShip" was not set. There are no waypoints on the RGG, so they take off at 5knots in the direction they are facing. The game then runs the "around the world", and they come back on the other side of the SH "tube" world, eventually turning into "groups" of DD in columns as time progresses. They will eventually take the game down due to "bandwidth" if you encounter them. Just too much for the game engine to have hundreds and hundreds of ships in one scene.

i thought we fixed this issue.

[Ubotatflip]

I asked about the mods because changing the game with a mod can wreak all sorts of havoc on it if the Save folder is not emptied after the changes. As for keeping close to Stock with only fixes, Webster's Game Fixes Only (https://www.subsim.com/radioroom/downloads.php?do=file&id=1196) (GFO) works very well. THEBERBSTER re-worked Webster's mod into All In One Beginners Mega Mod (https://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?p=2508558#post2508558), which eliminates the need of finding the add-ins for Webster's GFO mod. If you want to stray a bit away from Stock, then Fall of the Rising Sun Ultimate Edition (https://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?p=2635992#post2635992) (FotRSU) is the one, in my opinion ( :roll: )

You say you have Steam installed in the root of the C:\ drive, which works then for when and if you do apply mods to the game. If your Steam was in a Program Files folder, then Windows would interfere with your efforts... A 2nd Library folder in your situation is not necessary, since you've already avoided the issue. Just remember that when you apply a mod, or de-activate the mod, that Silent Hunter is a different game, and as such, you need to empty the Save folder ("C:\Users \UserName \Documents \SH4" or similar, OS dependet) prior to playing the altered game. Another option would be to make multiple copies of your Steam SH4 game, rename the folder, and use MultiSH4 (https://www.subsim.com/radioroom/downloads.php?do=file&id=1110) on the different copies such that you have a differently named folder for each of the SH4 copies. In that way, you are able to run multiple Mods at the same time for better evaluation purposes... :roll: :salute:

Thank you so much for all the helpful tipps! I might try the GFO Mod for my next career! :ping: :)