After contact with the enemy? As in you have them in sight?
SH3 is very finicky about where it is saved. You should never save in sight of any other ship, any base or any shoreline.
After that, all I can suggest is that you remove all the mods and reinstall them one at a time. Test the game after each mod install. This will tell you exactly which mod is causing the problem. It will also probably kill your current career, but it sounds like it's pretty well dead anyway.
__________________
“Never do anything you can't take back.”
—Rocky Russo
|