Error Updated Personnel File in SH3 Commander

I finished a patrol and I went into SH3 Commander to update my personnel file and I'm getting an error saying ""Invalid argument to date encode". Has anybody see this before and know the fix is?

I'd really rather not have to start a career over again.

Thanks in advance!

[Sailor Steve]

When you load SH3 Commander you will see a question mark (?) at the lower left. Clicking this brings up the User Guide. This is not only interesting but tells you pretty much everything you need to know.

At the very bottom of the UG it says:

I am now getting “Invalid argument to date encode” errors when I select an existing career. Why does this happen and how can I fix it?

This error may appear after you delete save games through SH3. Sometimes, SH3 does not clean up after itself well, resulting in a data integrity problem. To avoid getting this error, always reload your career in SH3 (only needs to be to the barracks screen) after deleting any save games, as doing so allows SH3 to correct the problem.

Sorry...I shoulda known...

[Sailor Steve]

'S okay. I hurt when I think about all the times I've asked for help with things I did know the answer to, but forgot until someone told me again.

OK. So I launched SH3 through the commander and loaded from a spot where I'd saved as I got ready to cross the Bay of Biscay heading for Lorient. When I get back to port and end my patrol I am sitting in my office looking at my captain's log. It shows my career start date as 0/0/00. Huh?

I exited out of SH3 and went back to the commander and tried to update my personnel file only to get that same error again.

[VONHARRIS]

I am sorry to say that I had the same problem and it was not fixed.
Finally I had to drop the career.

[Sailor Steve]

1. Did you perform a Roll Back before you made changes? Or do you have 'Auto Roll Back' set? This is important as changing one thing in Commander can change others unless you do a Roll Back first.

2. It is a well-known problem with SH3 in general that you should not change things while at sea.

I'm not sure if either of those applies to this particular problem, but you may be out of luck for that career.

[Tom]

I have had this problem too and managed to fix it. I just can't remember for sure which file caused the problem.

Anyway, go to your saved games folder for that career, probably something like:

\My Documents\SH3\data\cfg\Careers\"Captain Name"\

One of the files there contains an invalid date. I'm pretty sure it was one of the Log_*.cfg files, most likely Log_0.cfg in my case. Those files contain dates in the format:

Date=19390801

For whatever reason one of the dates was messed up and, if I recall correctly, read "Date=00000000", or something equally silly.

Fixing this line manually to show the correct date fixed the problem. Of course, figuring out what the correct date should be might be a problem. Just enter a date close enough if you're not sure. These dates are used to calculate the time spent at sea.

[Osmium Steele]

I just had this problem a couple of nights ago. The dates in the log.cfg files were correct. I found the problem in the various Careers.cfg and Patrols.cfg files. They are found in the same folder noted above. They read:

StartMonth=0
StartDay=0
StartYear=0

Changed them all to the proper start date, and SH3 Commander created the personnel file just fine.

[Captain Nemo]

I have also had this error after finishing a first patrol. It is attributed to upgrading your boat prior to commencing your first patrol although I didn't do this. The cure is to make a save just prior to docking and if the error rears it's ugly head, just reload that save and dock again and the error normally disappears. I have never had it happen to me in subsequent patrols though.

Nemo

[Osmium Steele]

Yup, mine was a first patrol also, but no changes were made.

I had a CTD, finished the patrol from an earlier save, and Commander wouldn't create the personnel file.

I think it may have had something to do with SH3 mods not being rolled back due to the CTD, but that is just speculation on my part.

[Dave Kay]

Greetings fellow Commanders, I see this thread is quite dated however, having had similar problems like it before, I have something of a solution to offer to this problem and it goes like this:

In the middle of a bold attack, inside convoy, in between the convoy lanes, we first torpedoed one Large Merc and then a small tanker and while those were sinking, as we lined up to give another fish to another small tanker, the game suddenly crashed with the signature WIN-XP "Windows has encountered a problem with SHIII and must..." etc.,. where WinXP nicely returned me to desktop.

Went back into game and looked for this commander's save dates for this mission and sure enough, there was his START PATROL DATE at Feb 7th 2017 at the top of list but--- my last good SAVE PRIOR TO THAT CRASH-DAY appeared above it, at the top of SAVE list, as Feb 1st 2017.

Make sense?

Got back out of game and went EXPLORER looking for that corrupted date. Eventually found the beggar in My Documents/SH3/data/cfg/Careers/(your Commanders-name folder)/0 (zero being the folder name)

Pondering what to do now I decided that attempting a make date changes to the TEN associated SAVE files in that folder was not a good idea so, I took a chance and just deleted them, (all ten associated files, associated with that corrupt date, inside that '0' folder) leaving everything else alone; let the chips fall where they may.

After all, we've all collectively, and quite probably, lost several thousand commanders to corrupt saves in the course of this game, so what the hell did I/we have to lose?

It worked~!

Started game from SH3 Commander, chose last GOOD SAVE DATE from my commander's list and have just come back from a successful THREE KILLS inside a convoy--- 2 small tankers and the Large Merc!

Hope this helps others as your learned posts have helped me today~!

CHEERS~!