Is my sub made of lead?

[goof]

I play on 72% realism, with manual TDC.

I've had some really odd damage control issues.

Here is one example, tho the same thing has happened many times in different circumstances.

I was headed to the Java Sea from Western Australia. I opted to go through the Sunda Strait even though it's shallow and gun emplacements are known to be in the area.

I wasn't paying attention and wandered in range of some of the coastal batteries and took a hit before I managed to submerge.

Instead of going to periscope depth like I'd ordered my sub dives straight to the bottom, like an aquatic lawn dart.

My scope had taken a hit, but the pumps were fully functional and there was no reported damage to any bulkhead. I had a full DC crew and put 'em to work. I was only 190' feet deep, the shallowness of the Sunda Strait looked like a godsend at this point.

I still hadn't figured out why I'd sank. There was no flooding. The DC crew reported the scope repaired along with other misc gear in the conning tower, TDC etc.

All systems were green. I blew ballast. Nothing happened. Ok, that's not completely true. Chief of the Watch says "Blow ballast!" and then nothing happened.

Hmmm. No flooding. No damage. 190' deep, resting on the bottom. I blew ballast and the only thing that happened was Chief repeating my order.

At this point it looks like I'll be spending eternity with the valient crews of the Houston and Perth, not that that would be bad company mind you, cept I wasn't ready to die.

I tried to blow ballast again. Same result. High pressure air was nearly full.

I hit the blow ballast button about four thousand times in rapid succession, Chief begins to say "Blow Ballast!" so fast and so often I'm sure he's going to pass out from lack of oxygen. I was seriously getting concerned about the amount of CO2 he was spewing into the atmosphere from screaming the words "Blow Ballast" six trillion times in 2 minutes.

The sub rocks a bit. Then ever so slowly she begins to rise.

FLANK SPEED! FULL RISE ON THE DIVE PLANES! Oh wait...I don't have independent control of my dive planes. Belay that last.

180'

150'

120'

She's picking up speed now!

But there is still a Japanese gun emplacement sitting there, just waiting for me to pop outta the water so they can put more holes into my boat.

So I decide I'd level out at periscope depth. Instead of picking a depth manually, or ordering my diving officer to maintain current depth, I gave the order to stop at periscope depth.

We were at about 40' by now, so the boat had to dive a bit to achieve the desired depth.

Down we go.

45'

50'

60'

70'

100'

Wait a second dammit! I said 60 feet!

She won't level off. I called down to maneuvering. "Why are we diving deeper! Is there a problem back there?"

"Negative sir, all systems are nominal."

The answer was the same from the rest of the boat. There were no problems! It seems that the hull of my beloved Gato class submarine has been transmogrified into lead!

We hit the bottom pretty hard, but suffered only minor damage. Which was promptly repaired.

I was down to about 50% on my compressed air. When all systems were repaired I again machine gunned the "blow ballast" order to my beleagured chief.

This time it didn't work. I kept it up until my compressed air was exhausted. The sub never budged again.

So now we are resting on the bottom not to far from the USS Houston and the HMAS Perth. At least they got to fight to the bitter end. My crew and I took one plink from a shore battery and sank without even flooding.


Anybody have anything similar happen to them? This exact same thing has happened to me numerous times. If my conning tower bulkhead takes ANY damage at all, which it hadn't in the above story, I cannot dive to even 30 feet after it's been repaired, unless I want my boat to sink. Damage control seems to be pretty useless.

[U-Bones]

Welcome to the most infuriating bugs in the game.

!. Undisplayed flooding.
2. Water inside the boat is 10 x heavier that water outside the boat.

[Iron Budokan]

Yeah, that's what it sounds like to me. If the game displayed flooding I'm sure it would show you were awash in sea water up to your necks in several compartments. Too bad the game doesn't show us this, but I guess it "remembers" it and that's why you can't come up.

I don't know that's a bug, though. I just don't think this was ever implemented by the devs. Would've been nice.

[Deep6]

You did not leave Bernard in charge of shutting the hatch did you? :D

[FAdmiral]

In all my testing of SH4, I have never had the damage control bug everyone
seems to post about. I have taken damage many times to all areas and once
fixed, I can dive just like I did before the damage. There was one post here
about memory being a factor. I don't know about that one cause I use 3gigs of Ram. Could this be another example of the dreaded "Bad Install" ???

JIM

[ccruner13]

Yeah, that's what it sounds like to me. If the game displayed flooding I'm sure it would show you were awash in sea water up to your necks in several compartments. Too bad the game doesn't show us this, but I guess it "remembers" it and that's why you can't come up.

I don't know that's a bug, though. I just don't think this was ever implemented by the devs. Would've been nice.

it definitely shows flooding...the little boxes for each compartment fill up with blue. its just you dont get better after the blue gets pumped out...i think?

[mayandlex]

Just a stray thought, a hole in the top of the ballast tanks would flood them without flooding in the pressure hull, any air blown into the tanks would simply escape. That could explain your predicament.

[Fitz505]

I'm a little dubious that the sim is that detailed. I've pretty much resorted to just dealing with the quirks. About the only thing that has me baffled is why the dev's just don't create a pdf. explaining how the various systems operate in detail and if something doesn't work as expected and it's not easily fixable or your not just going to fix it, just tell me.
John

[THE_MASK]

I wasn't paying attention and wandered in range of some of the coastal batteries and took a hit before I managed to submerge.

I think this is the problem.

[FIREWALL]

Yeah, that's what it sounds like to me. If the game displayed flooding I'm sure it would show you were awash in sea water up to your necks in several compartments. Too bad the game doesn't show us this, but I guess it "remembers" it and that's why you can't come up.

I don't know that's a bug, though. I just don't think this was ever implemented by the devs. Would've been nice.

it definitely shows flooding...the little boxes for each compartment fill up with blue. its just you dont get better after the blue gets pumped out...i think?

I'll have to check that out. Never noticed any boxes with blue. Just red.

[SteamWake]

In the damage control screen. At the top of each compartment.

It fills with light blue as it floods.

In fact you can hover the cursor over the compartment to get the flooding "time" and damage status.

Undoucumented yes... but its there.

[goof]

In the damage control screen. At the top of each compartment.

It fills with light blue as it floods.

In fact you can hover the cursor over the compartment to get the flooding "time" and damage status.

Undoucumented yes... but its there.

Aye, I've seen real flooding. Seen it stopped and pumped out.

But in the above case I had no reported flooding, no reported hull or bulkhead damage.

I don't see it being a bad install. The game has only crashed on me once and that's because I tried doing to much multi-tasking while cruising into Pearl.

[SteamWake]

Well the damage reporting is a bit suspect.

There have been reports of a boat suddenly crushing with no damage at all.

The majority of these have been traced back to "saves" while submerged.

[ccruner13]

hmm i took some damage and crushed at 10 meters

[U-Bones]

Well the damage reporting is a bit suspect.

There have been reports of a boat suddenly crushing with no damage at all.

The majority of these have been traced back to "saves" while submerged.

I can say that exactly zero of my damage control (or other) problems have been related to submerged saves, since I never load and play submerged saves.

I think the majority of these tracebacks were hasty. The condition is possible even on port saves.

[Bane]

Well the damage reporting is a bit suspect.

There have been reports of a boat suddenly crushing with no damage at all.

The majority of these have been traced back to "saves" while submerged.

I can say that exactly zero of my damage control (or other) problems have been related to submerged saves, since I never load and play submerged saves.

I think the majority of these tracebacks were hasty. The condition is possible even on port saves.
This whole "you can't save while submerged" thing should be on the bug list, not a community accepted limitation. This isn't acceptable behaviour for a game that allows you to save anywhere, including submerged.

If saving submerged causes problems (for whatever asinine reason which I wouldn't believe anyway) - don't let us save submerged! Brilliant! If you're going to let us do so - those saves better damn well work correctly when I load them! End of story, no excuses.

[CaptainHaplo]

There has been alot of testing of DC - and there are 2 seperate models at work. Hull damage - and internal damage. The issue is that currently - hull damage also affects "floatabilty" - in addition to crush depth. Once you start getting to 25-30% hull damage - you will see a noticeable issue when you dive. If your aft end was damaged - you will be tail heavy, and vice versa. Even "fully repaired".

One theory on that is MBT or Trim tank damage being modelled. We are starting to see some with alot of Ram not have the issue - so it also could be just a quirk due to machine specs. Unfortunately - most of us doing the testing are running low amounts of ram - so if one of the high ram users can drop down to 1G for a test we may get an answer.

In the meantime - you can find the "sweet spot" if your having dive control issues. Order surface but at all stop - as you sink - use your speed to counterbalance the weight. This is much easier if your aft heavy, but reverse will work when your nose drops - although not as well. Then you "motor off" underwater until you can get the range sufficient to surface.

One thing about the models - if you start to take hull damage from pressure - it continues until you SURFACE - so if you just go back up after an evasion to PD and try to sneak off - your still going to be taking slow damage. The damage counter doesnt reset until you surface. Odd.... Hope this explanation helps.

Good Hunting.
Captain Haplo

[mcoca]

I just had an experience that makes me think the ballast tank theory is correct. After a desperate surface battle with some destroyers (which I won), I realized I couldn't turn any more, even though there was no damage to the rudder in the DC screen. With the external view, I saw the rudder was missing, presumably blown off.

Now, that damage was there, visible in the outside, but not in the damage control screen. I managed to reach an advanced base (exploiting a save-load bug to turn), and refit, but the rudder was still missing, even though other destroyed items were fixed.

I suspect now that damage to certain exterior items of the sub is modelled correctly, maybe including the ballast tanks, but that damage a) is not displayed anywhere (except in the physical model, and how would you tell a damaged tank apart?) and b) is not repairable. Sounds like a bug to me...

[U-Bones]

Well the damage reporting is a bit suspect.

There have been reports of a boat suddenly crushing with no damage at all.

The majority of these have been traced back to "saves" while submerged.
I can say that exactly zero of my damage control (or other) problems have been related to submerged saves, since I never load and play submerged saves.

I think the majority of these tracebacks were hasty. The condition is possible even on port saves. This whole "you can't save while submerged" thing should be on the bug list, not a community accepted limitation. This isn't acceptable behaviour for a game that allows you to save anywhere, including submerged.

But you are correct in this: If the save can not be reasonably complete and reliable - it should not be allowed.


If saving submerged causes problems (for whatever asinine reason which I wouldn't believe anyway) - don't let us save submerged! Brilliant! If you're going to let us do so - those saves better damn well work correctly when I load them! End of story, no excuses.
I was not taking a position on how well saving works or does not work. I was debunking the myth that anyone has documented it as the cause for this particular bug (or any sub specific bug for that matter).

As for saves, there are two components. Sub state, and world state. I have never seen credible evidence that sub state is not reasonably and accurately preserved across saves. Submerged or surfaced. (ok, all stop is a very obvious exception, but not too hard to live with).

On the other hand, there is reason to believe that the world state, which includes random events, multiple scripts, numerous AI's and other non persistant items.... well lets just say I would not bet my life on everything being accounted for.

You are correct about this: If the save is not going to be reasonably reliable - it should be disallowed, but in my mind this applies more to "contact" than to "depth".

[FAdmiral]

Here is a little mod that may help in seeing those save files to check for
unknown damage to the outside hull:

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=114405

Bulkheads & Hulls are two different damage items, bulkheads are repaired
from inside, hull is not repairable while at sea. The save file reports this.

JIM

[U-Bones]

Here is a little mod that may help in seeing those save files to check for
unknown damage to the outside hull:

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=114405

Bulkheads & Hulls are two different damage items, bulkheads are repaired
from inside, hull is not repairable while at sea. The save file reports this.

JIM

Hull damage, as documented in save files, which I have been intimately familiar with, is NOT the cause of the lead boat. The lead boat can occur with ZERO damage showing in the save file.

[bruschi sauro]

I had this bug.All damages repaired but the sub was on the bottom ...:shifty:
blow ballast...the sub on the bottom:shifty:
blow ballast....nothing happened.. the sub on the bottom:nope:
Another bug for the dev team..In this moment I play with Medieval II total war,
I snapped the disk of SH4:damn:

[NZ_Wanderer]

I had this bug happen to me as well, except I tangled with a 3 DD not a shore battery...
I sank like a rock to the bottom (thank god not too far down), and there I sat waiting for the DD's above me to find me...
Couldn't rise at all and sneak away...
Luckily they left after an hour or so, so then tried to rise... - No luck...

Then I remembered reading this thread so proceeded to tap the blow ballast key repeatadly, and it worked, I began to rise...
Once on the surface I set course for the nearest friendly base I could refit at...
All damage was fixed on the way, Once I had to dive, and again I sank like a rock (luckily I wasn't in deep water, so hit the bottom with a thud causing my damage crew to get of their butts again and fix some things...
As I had recharged my Air etc while being on the surface I was again able to tab the blow ballast key again until I started to rise.. (mind you, I sat on the bottom until dark)
This ended up happening several more times , so I just made sure I piloted my ship in the shallows until I managed to get back to a refit base.

I wouldn't mind it happening IF it showed up in my damage screen or something, but to be told there is NOTHING wrong with my sub while I am sinking like a rock to the bottom is just plain crazy...