change the starting date gwx3.0

[emaluzer]

I am using GWX3, my first patrol began on Aug 1, 1939, arent the nations neutral until sept 1939? Is there a way to change the date of my first patrol so it is closer to the start of the war?

[A Very Super Market]

SH3 Commander, you can change your start date to anywhere, your sub, your crew... the list goes on.

[Murr44]

I think that he means starting a career in the middle of the month. If that's so I'm not sure that you can do it. Maybe you could by fiddling with the cfg files but I'd be careful about doing that; unless you know exactly what you're doing you can screw up your installation...

[Weiss Pinguin]

I don't think you can set a starting week in SH3, only a starting month.

[emaluzer]

I started a career from the 2nd flotilla in wilhelmshaven. I started in the year 1939. I went on patrol which started on Aug 6th 1939 and through the whole patrol there was no war going on. EVeryone was neutral. The war starts in early September. In my GWX2.0 installation when I launched the same career it started in the begining of September. Im not sure if a mod caused that or if the starting date was changed in GWX3. The whole patroling during peacetime where I can only look at the ships is not my cup of tea. Just wondering how to start closer to the time I can sink ships and not skip to a different year.

[bigboywooly]

I started a career from the 2nd flotilla in wilhelmshaven. I started in the year 1939. I went on patrol which started on Aug 6th 1939 and through the whole patrol there was no war going on. EVeryone was neutral. The war starts in early September. In my GWX2.0 installation when I launched the same career it started in the begining of September. Im not sure if a mod caused that or if the starting date was changed in GWX3. The whole patroling during peacetime where I can only look at the ships is not my cup of tea. Just wondering how to start closer to the time I can sink ships and not skip to a different year.

August start was introduced in GWX 2.1
If you wanna start in Sept use SH3commander to start

You can mess with the flotilla cfg to adjust it that way but not near those files at mo

[emaluzer]

I wasnt sure if it was a mod that did that or not. I never got to upgrade to gwx 2.1 so I never noticed it.

[panthercules]

I forgot to do this myself on my latest GWX 3.0 career start on August 1st '39, but while loading a saved game subsequently I noticed that the GWX folks have suggested a workaround for this on the loading screen - i.e., start your first patrol on 8/1/39, but make it basically a shakedown cruise/trial run that only lasts about 5 days or so - then dock back at base and, with the normal number of days in base setting you will start your next patrol (your first "real" one) just a few days before the war starts - just time to reach your patrol grid and be on station when the shooting starts :)

Seems like a pretty reasonable approach, since such shakedown cruises were probably pretty common for new skippers/new boats. I'm not sure if there's a way to go back later and rename/renumber some of the saved game files to get rid of that first patrol if you really don't like seeing it in your personnel files later, but there probably is a way to do that if you really want to.

[A Very Super Market]

If you want to get straight to the action, you could start the patrol, exit it immediately, and the game will start you in August 30 or so, so you can manuevre into position.

[emaluzer]

i started a patrol then ended it 4 days later and it only took me to Aug 24th so it will still be 7-10 days before the war starts (7 till poland, 10 till Britain), still a long time of nothing going on.

3 or 4 days isnt a problem, but when it gets to be more than that then I get anxious and start sinking neutrals!!!

[Jimbuna]

i started a patrol then ended it 4 days later and it only took me to Aug 24th so it will still be 7-10 days before the war starts (7 till poland, 10 till Britain), still a long time of nothing going on.

3 or 4 days isnt a problem, but when it gets to be more than that then I get anxious and start sinking neutrals!!!

This is in keeping with historical events.....giving you time to reach your patrol grid prior to the commencement of hostilities.

[Philipp_Thomsen]

Kinda funny to imagine it.

You're inside a port, locked at a battleship, looking at the clock and whispering "don't fire the torpedos just yet... we will be at war in 12 seconds... wait for my signal!"

:lol:

What if the torpedo is on the water before the war and hit the ship minutes later, when the war is already on... does it count?

And what if you sink some ships some hours before the war, and return home after the war is started, claiming you sank those ships after the war was started? How in the world they can prove otherwise?

:lol:

[Jimbuna]

Kinda funny to imagine it.

You're inside a port, locked at a battleship, looking at the clock and whispering "don't fire the torpedos just yet... we will be at war in 12 seconds... wait for my signal!"

:lol:

What if the torpedo is on the water before the war and hit the ship minutes later, when the war is already on... does it count?

And what if you sink some ships some hours before the war, and return home after the war is started, claiming you sank those ships after the war was started? How in the world they can prove otherwise?

:lol:

Your computer log files will grass on you ;)

[A Very Super Market]

Yes, whoever writes your logs is a stickler for rules. I like pretending that my flak gunner is that one person. :cool:

[panthercules]

Well, I'm not sure how precise the game actually is about the start of the war. I was lurking on the surface well outside of the main/large entrance to Scapa Flow (in open water east of the large gap into the bay area that's south of the base), about 8km outside/east of the outer screen of patrolling destroyers that I had been shadowing for a couple of days, hoping to spot any main fleet movements in response to the hostilities underway in Poland.

It was about 9am on September 3, 1939 (several hours before the British ultimatum was scheduled to expire, and thus before we were actually at war with England), when one of the destroyers suddenly poured on steam and headed straight for me, firing its deck guns at me. Of course I crash dived, and the destroyer and one of his buddies proceeded to work me over with depth charges for the next hour or two before I was able to creep away (fortunately they weren't very good at it, as the water was still pretty shallow there and I and my crew would have been dead meat if they'd been on their game).

At first, I was a bit miffed that I was being shot at in peace-time and that the game had jumped the gun like that. But then I just chalked it up to the fact that such a destroyer screen charged with protecting the main fleet anchorage would have been rather concerned about seeing a German u-boat prowling around nearby on the eve of hostilities and might well have been a bit trigger happy. Plus, maybe the British had declared some sort of "no ship zone" around their anchorage, similar to what led the USS Ward to fire on a Japanese sub spotted near Pearl Harbor just before the carrier plane attack on 12/7/41.

Moral of the story - don't get too comfortable thinking you know when the war is going to start - it almost cost me my first GWX 3.0 career :oops: