Time Compression - am I doing something wrong here?

[LukeFF]

I went ahead and tried my hand at my first patrol tonight, in an S-18 boat out of Cavite. It abruptly ended when the game CTDd on me when trying to get a range fix on a Japanese DD. :roll:

Anyways, one thing tonight which really bothered me was how the game doesn't drop down to 1x time compression whenever the lookout crew spots a ship. By the time I manually get the game back down to real time, at least 30 minutes of real time have passed, and the ship is long gone. I have not modded my time compression settings at all. Is this something that other people are experiencing?

[DeePsix501]

When my crew spots a ship/plane, a popup window gives me three choices (Dive, Maintain, Engage). Maybe you spotted a friendly ship, as ive noticed the watch crew ignore those.

[LukeFF]

Maybe you spotted a friendly ship, as ive noticed the watch crew ignore those.

Aye, that's probably what it is.

[joea]

Is it possible to alter the cfg file for dropping TC at certain events? Like you can do in SH3 with SH3 Commander?

[davejb]

When you spot something hit the backspace key, (pause) - you can then press the '+' key to advance to x1 normal time...much better than trying to halve speed repeatedly from a high compression rate. Worth noting also is that when you crew spot a plane and you get that popup offering a "dive to PD, maintain course, or engage the blighter" the game is still running while you decide which to click.

On time compression here's a wierd thing - there's a problem with slow updates, I think probably related to the 'draggy mouse' issue. If you are on a high time compression and the stopwatch is advancing in a very jerky manner, then higher compression rates can run slower than lower ones. I timed runs at 'Standard Speed' on one game, running for a minute of real time at 4096 and 1024, checking against the distance to waypoint on the map. At 1024 grpahics were smooth, at 4096 jerky - not usually so, I might add, but this whole mission had been at snails like pace so I was investigating all sorts to try to sort this out.

At 1024, in 1 minute, my boat covered twice the distance that it did at 4096... given the 2/3 speed needed to cover long transits my trip Pearl-China took rather a lot of real time. Luckily not seen in my current mission, which is to go back to the same bit of China and drop another spy off, ie same mission as previous one.

[NefariousKoel]

You can manually modify the My Documents/SH4/Data/Cfg/main.cfg file under [Time Compression] for various things. I changed my 'Enemy Detected=8' to 1. You can also modify various other instances.

As for your CTD, LukeFF, try saving and reloading the game after you're well outside your harbor but before encountering any targets. Exit game and reload that save. I've had a few rare Stadimeter CTDs and they seem to be the first target I use the Stadi on after leaving base without saving and reloading.

[Platapus]

Worth noting also is that when you crew spot a plane and you get that popup offering a "dive to PD, maintain course, or engage the blighter" the game is still running while you decide which to click.

Ick, I did not know this. I thought the game paused at that screen:oops:

The fact that the game does not pause and that the aircraft are still bearing down on me is probably a good thing for me to know.

Thanks for pointing that out.

[LukeFF]

As for your CTD, LukeFF, try saving and reloading the game after you're well outside your harbor but before encountering any targets. Exit game and reload that save. I've had a few rare Stadimeter CTDs and they seem to be the first target I use the Stadi on after leaving base without saving and reloading.

Thanks, I'll remember that. It was the first time I used the stadimeter in the campaign, so your fix should come in real handy.

[Quillan]

Worth noting also is that when you crew spot a plane and you get that popup offering a "dive to PD, maintain course, or engage the blighter" the game is still running while you decide which to click.

Back in SH3, I mod'd my main.cfg file to drop time compression to 0 when enemy aircraft are spotted. I also modded my controls.cfg file to make the Enter key automatically take time compression to 1. This served two purposes: it got me out of accidentally firing torpedoes all the damned time, and it let's me drop to normal time compression with a single easy-to-reach key. Both work just fine in SH4 as well.

[Farinhir]

I do not know how, but I seem to have misplaced my ship/aircraft spotted popup. Anyone know what file I should look in to fix this?

Also, I am running the following MODS.
NSM
ROW
RFB
RSRD
OM V40X beta

Any help with be appreciated.


Update:
The popup does not return even when I disable all MODS

[Mush Martin]

What happened is at some point you chose
alswys do this action.

which for me is fine I always leave it permanently set
on "maintain current orders"

theres a way in the game control screens to reset it but
I cant recall either I will find it shortly or someone else will
pop in

please standby.................