13 Patrol Jinx?

[Seminole]

Is there some kind of jinx associated with patrol #13?

I sailed out of Brisbane just like the 12 previous patrols headed north to the hunting grounds.

The first air patrol I encountered I dived as usual without the plane appearing to have spotted me. I stayed under until dark and started to surface, When I did the whole world exploded. All diesels and electric engines out. Both prop shafts destroyed.Batteries destroyed. Multiple other damages. I thought .. well my goose is cooked for sure this time.

I spent the rest of the night with the damage control team hard at it. Much to my surprize...With the aid of the special mechanical ability crewman everything was repaired good as new..no hull damage. Off and running again back up to 100%.

Next time I dived the exact same thing again. Except this time the deckgun and AA guns wouldn't repair back to 100% though everything else did.

Dropped off supplies in New Guinea and ran across a 1500 ton costal and sank him. Headed for Rabual. Arrived without incident then crash dived to avoid aircraft.

This time I dd not receive any damage when I surfaced but the compressed air had fallen to below 25 % and would not replenish on the surface..even though..the damage screen showed no damage to the compressor at all. :nope:

I figured at this point discression is the better part of valor and headed to Brisbane and ended the patrol. So far #14 has not been a repeat of 13....knock wood....;)


So..any thoughts on what was happening on patrol #13? Every time I had dived, surfaced and received damage I was in the open ocean with at least a 1000 feet below the keel. Rules out hitting bottom, mines, and nets. None of the airplanes seemed to have detected me and I dived with plenty of time to spare. What was going on with the compressed air? The only thing I could think of was that the enemy had developed and deployed some superior type of ariel anti-sub weapon..Time was Oct 1943. Seems unlikey for a total explanation though....:hmm: ..Seems also highly improbable that I could have collied with a fishing vessel when I surfaced...oce maybe..twice..I doubt it.

It hard enough most of the time to have to fight the Japanese without having to fight gremlins too..:-?..at least with the Japs you know what to expect.

[SteamWake]

Bad luck I assume, although Ive never reached patrol #13. Usually Im either dead or retired by that point.

As to the sudden mysterious damage either you found a mine, an un noticed aircraft, or shore batteries spotted you. Although you did state you were in the middle of no where. Did you do any saves / reloads during this patrol? If you save a game with prior damage, every time you load that game the damage gets announced all over again :roll:

The Co2 thing is a known bug. A save and reload should fix it. By the way the air compressor has nothing to do with that. Its a ventilation system which is not really modelled.

Dont really know... good luck on your next... Maybe its time to consider retirement :|\\

[Seminole]

CO2 bug??? I didn't mention any problems with CO2 levels...:shifty:

It was a compressed air problem. (in fact,this is the first time I've ever encountered a compressed air supply issue) Compressed air dropped to 25 % and would not replenish....even though the compressor was not damaged....not even after the boat was surfaced. You see when a submarine is surfaced, that is the time to refill the compression tanks as no or very little compressed air is being used on the surface and unlimited air supply is available for compressing.

As far as shore batteies , nets, random mines...these could not be the problem in the open sea, far from any land mass.

It wasn't a saved game problem either. Even though I did a couple of saves as I always do for a saftey margin...this patrol was definitely a one gaming session patrol. No saves reloaded. Plus too ,as pointed out damage can be reloaded but I would have to assume that repaired damage is equally reloaded as repaired damage.

If this had been a one time event It could be easily dismissed. since it happened twice and led to unexplainable consequences...it becomes another matter. How can one defend against a danger that can't be defined?

I'm playing patrol 14 today. If the problem does not repeat itself then my hunch of a 13th patrol jinx encoded in the gameplay is as good as any. If it does them a deeper investigation is in order I would say.

[SteamWake]

Sorry I guess I skimmed the op to quickly when I read "It wouldent replenish" I just assumed it was Co2 :oops:

I know there used to be a 'mysterious damage' bug but thought that had been ironed out.

Again Ive never made it to 13 patrols in one carrer so I cant compare notes. Maybe Ill do 12 quick ones just to test. :hmm:

[Seminole]

'mysterious damage' bug


:shifty:

Now there is something I never heard of before....now I have a hard target....thanks for the tip. :up:

[SteamWake]

Cant remember wether it was SH3 or 4 but I believe it was 4, usually after loading a save game where the save was submerged.

[Diopos]

Ok I have a theory!
Renegade mine!:o
Drifting along the (nonexisting[?]in SH4) sea currents!:yep:
Hi doc! ... Time for my pill? ...Ok!:damn:

[aanker]

Ok I have a theory!
Renegade mine!:o
Drifting along the (nonexisting[?]in SH4) sea currents!:yep:
Hi doc! ... Time for my pill? ...Ok!:damn:
Actually I don't think you need your meds - for that ;-) and agree with your theory. Probably hit a mine; they can be found even in the middle of nowhere.

Another explanation could be hitting debris from a prior sinking. I've gotten into the habit now of drawing a 5 nm circle around an unmarked sinking so I can avoid that area even days later. Started doing that after sustaining some unexplained damage to a forward torpedo door. That's all I could think of that would have caused it.

However I would think that after leaving the area the game wouldn't 'remember' to leave debris. It's a mystery to me what happened to that door but I figured it's better to be safe than sorry. BTW - that event wasn't on patrol #13.... lol

Art

[Seminole]

I spent a bit of time searching for the topic of unexplained damage bug and came up with pretty much a zero as for what causes it. Or cures it. I did run across a closed thread where an argument broke out...:nope: :shifty: :nope:

Before I began playing patrol 14 today I went Subschool-Artillery Section just out of curiosity. I've been there many times to practice manual targeting, see how new torps would behave ....ect...ect..ect..

Today I got a big surpize..those planes actually sunk my boat. Restarted the lesson an they did it again....:hmm:

Isn't that something new? Isn't the subschool supposed to be a protected environment where your boat is not subjected to damamge? Is this something new new to version 1.5 gold?

Then I actually got into patrol 14 and was bombared by this nonsense:

http://i292.photobucket.com/albums/mm36/Seminole_05/dr2.jpg


Over and over ad naseum. I did conduct an attack and sunk a merchantman using the stern tubes but the message keeps repeating over and over and over...:dead:..is this perhaps a known bug? Is there a fix. :-?

[SteamWake]

Hrm... Ive had a repeating message on loading a saved game.. even a repeated "passing thermal layer" while surfaced :rotfl:

But it usually goes away after a while.

Im beginning to think that somewhere along the way you got a corrupted save in your carrer. Why it would carry over to the next mission I have no idea. :hmm:

Maybe try starting a new carrier :roll:

[Seminole]

:damn: ...I reloaded 14 again and this time I couldn't set a waypoint..and the engines kept switching from All Stop to Ahead Full and back to stop again...though I loaded a single mission and everything appeared normal.

:shifty:

Yep something certainly got corrupted somewhere along the line.:yep:

I'm starting 14 again from leaving port(all appears ok) and will see what develops tomorrow....but I'm not about to start another Pacific career. At this point I'll go over to the Kriegsmarine either in SHIV or maybe back to SH3 all together. The Pacific is getting pretty mundane after so many patrols with the Asiatic command.

Still am I right about Sub School being a protected environment immue to damage? I'm pretty certain it is..and what in the world could or would have corrupted that?...:hmm:

[Task Force]

Ill see if this happens to me if I reach my 13 patrol, Veary unlikely to though.:-?

[Task Force]

I spent a bit of time searching for the topic of unexplained damage bug and came up with pretty much a zero as for what causes it. Or cures it. I did run across a closed thread where an argument broke out...:nope: :shifty: :nope:

Before I began playing patrol 14 today I went Subschool-Artillery Section just out of curiosity. I've been there many times to practice manual targeting, see how new torps would behave ....ect...ect..ect..

Today I got a big surpize..those planes actually sunk my boat. Restarted the lesson an they did it again....:hmm:

Isn't that something new? Isn't the subschool supposed to be a protected environment where your boat is not subjected to damamge? Is this something new new to version 1.5 gold?

Then I actually got into patrol 14 and was bombared by this nonsense:

http://i292.photobucket.com/albums/mm36/Seminole_05/dr2.jpg


Over and over ad naseum. I did conduct an attack and sunk a merchantman using the stern tubes but the message keeps repeating over and over and over...:dead:..is this perhaps a known bug? Is there a fix. :-?
you must have alot of stern torpedo tubes.:rotfl:

[Arclight]

Oh, you can get bombed in sub-school, maybe the ships are set to non-active, but the planes certainly aren't. For me it got introduced with RFB; in the torpedo training you'll have the cruiser sailing along and an airplane inbound. Thanks to RFB, that plane can now see me underwater, and so it drops cans on my sub. Haven't been able to complete that training since. :lol:

[Seminole]

First point..sub school does indeed feature an invincible status for the player unless this protection has been removed by a mod. :shifty:

Second point..The mod that altered mine was ASW_9.0_STANDARD_1.5 and was also apparently responsible for all the other quirks I have been encountering.

I arrived at this conclusion because after I removed ASW_9.0_STANDARD_1.5 and continued on Patrol 14 the world is back as it should be....:yep: ....both in the Career and in the sub School.

Thank goodness....now I can look forward to finishing the war...:up: ...even if that does mean constant and unrelenting Japanese patrol planes.

[Seminole]

I've been doing some testing the past two days about all of the above and have found some interesting things. I thought I would pass them along..for what it is worth..naturally...your opinions may vary.


The UNEXPLAINED DAMAGE THING..well it isn't unexplained any longer. Here is what happens.

Airplane patrol limiting mod is installed (in my case ASW 9.0). This mod allows you to be detected even after submerging. I believe I read a similar warning in other major mods that feature air patrol limiting.

That is certainly true. They can detect your boat submerged..and whats more they can also attack it. :yep: If you are under TC for some reason the damage doesn't register until you stop TC...then all hell breaks loose.

Here is the senario: I am steaming along at 1500+ TC and an aircraft is spotted. I order dive to periscope depth and cut speed to zero. I restart TC to 4000+ ...intending to wait until dark. What I did not realize is that while I was at periscope depth I was attacked,sometimes repeatedly by the aircraft, though because of the high TC the damage is not registered and reported immediately. So it appears that I have evaded the air patrol but the fact is I have been devastated by it...:nope:

When I come out of TC the damage is reported and registered and it is only an illusion that the damage was from an unknown source. :huh:

This can be avoided by never ordering dive to periscope depth but instead ordering crash dive and going very deep...or removing the mod entirely...I'm switching to Webster's limited Ac mod version.

13th Patrol Jinx:

Next what appeared to me to be a 13th patrol jinx was really a matter of the SAVE FILE becoming so large that it became unmanageable! It was simply a coincidence (though a seafareringly romantic one) that the 13th patrol was the point where this showed up.

Along about the 13th patrol mine grew from a few Kb in size to a whopping 25 Mb and weird things began happening..apart from the ASW mod's quirks.

Torpedo tubes damaged/repaired incessantly. All ahead full/All ahead stop incessantly. Unable to lay in a waypoint...on and on it went.

What finally killed my career on the 14th patrol(after many attempts to revive it) was this: I fired 4 torpedos at two ships and all four impacted and the ships sank. HOWEVER the game failed to register these 4 fish as impacted and the stopwatch kept timing their "runs". The torpedo icons continued to appear on the periscope screen and the TBT screens. Saving and reloading failed to clear these "running" torpedos from the game...in fact..returning to base, ending the patrol, and starting a new one failed to correct this problem. Yep..I started the 15th patrol at Brisbane with four fish running hot, straight, and normal and that goofy stopwatch cheerfully and dutifully timing their "progress into infinity."...:shifty: :nope:

My thinking is that after so many patrols the save game file simply becomes bogged down and goes screwy, keeping up with all those promotions, medals, and special abilities for the crewmen. I may (probably am ) wrong but I can't see any other reason the saved files would grow to such preposterous dimensions....:hmm: ..Of course it does keep a running tab on all your sinkings too...so... http://www.clipartof.com/images/emoticons/xsmall2/489_shrugging.gif

At this point I said to heck with this and started a new career beginning at the point the old one ran amok. I really do want to see how the last year and a half of the war plays out. I really would have prefered doing it with a season crew rather than a entirely grass green new bunch though...:yep:..yep...

[aanker]

Using the free cam I can easily see my boats silhouette at periscope depth and even the periscope shears are clearly visible so if the aircraft are going to pass within 5 nm I'll wait it out at 140'.

I don't use the aircraft limiting mod so I don't know what effects it has but the largest my save files usually get are 5 - 6 MB during a patrol and only a few hundred KB in port between patrols.

Art

[Seminole]

In the unmodded version it doesn't matter what you can see on the external camera. If you are at periscope depth with 'scope retracted these planes simply can not detect you.

In the AC patrol limiting mods I have tried this is no longer the case.They can detect you at periscope depth. I don't understand why limiting the number of patrols involves this increased detection ability...but it does....

from ASW readme: -Aircraft now 'see' the player at depth. Choice of dive depth is now more critical in aircraft evasion.

amen to that..:yep:

I'm pretty certaint hat I read somethinfg similar also in TMO's documentation.

I didn't say or even imply that the mega size saved game files were the result of any AC limiting mods. The fact is I don't know why they grow so huge late in careers. Even early as late '43 a new patrol starts out as a file of only a few KBs but over the course of one single patrol can and do grow to 25MB at least....possibly even larger. And as I said, it was my experience that at this stage the saves become unstable. Screwy events begin to occur.

[aanker]

OK. Understood. Kind of like high-scope then. When I first got SH4 I was patrolling using high-scope (mostly before radar) a technique I've read about and also used in the old SHCE. It worked great in SH1 ........ come to find out that in SH4 high-scope has no effect in increasing the horizon.

For realism I'll continue to dive to 140' for aircraft and also use high-scope before radar.

Right now I'm using a collection of mods and techniques I've learned from watching the modders probably best described as my version of flavored to taste. I'd like to avoid those 25 MB saves though.... so far I've been successful avoiding them..... lol

Art