Liferafts

[Armistead]

I've been wondering where all the lifeboats are in TMORSRD or which one may be causing lack of lifeboats. I've been stumped, because when I sink a ship, I may see one, then it's gone. I noticed today with the cam the liferaft appeared when the ship sunk message shows up. However, I noticed when the ship finally went under, the liftraft went with it, sorta like it was still attached to the ship, even though it's floating from the ship. It basically sinks at the same rate with the ship.

The only other mods I'm running are the above with the patches, maxoptics fix, ROW9 sound and a few skins. Still, I noticed few lifeboats after loading RSRD and most that show up sink when the ship does. Sometimes a few stay and you can sink them, but it's rare.

[Hmuda]

Tricky things they are...

I also noticed that normally only a single raft spawns after every sunk ship, but recently I decided to create a little surface battle with the mission editor, and I got this after a jap BB went under.
http://www.sg.hu/galeria/986752963/9867529631242039199.jpg

So something is obviously not right. As for them dissapearing...now that you mention it, I didn't see them after the battle calmed down, even though they should have been quite visible in the aftermath, yet only oil slicks and a few "not dissapeared" derelicts remained (curse the limited engine, could have been an awesome underwater ship cementary, especially since I palced them in shallow water).

It's possible that they are destroyed by the secondary explosions and that's why they sink, happened to me once, it could easily happen to them as well, since they are practicly right next to the fireworks.

[pythos]

Chalk me up for another person experiencing this.

I personally think it is un realistic to NOT have several life boats for a ship that takes a long time to sink.

I am running RFB with RSRD mod. This keeps happening even when running OM.

I looked at several merchant cfg files and found the survivability at 80 percent and the survival rates to be 20 percent. So something is not correct somewhere else.

[Armistead]

With stock you always got many liferafts. Sink a liner and you could have 20 of the things.

It's not that big of a deal. I seldom sink them, even though some do give you one ton. I was just wondering if it was a bug. My guess is it's RSRD and he just set the survival rate down.

I would think if a boat explodes and breaks in half, I wouldn't expect lifeboats and never see anything.
The problem is a ship registers as sunk, but may take awhile to go under. I watched two liferafts in the water get around 500 yards away. When the ship went under, so did they as if they were attached.
To me that's a bug that needs fixing.

[apathyps]

after i sink every ship, if i see any life rafts, i try to surface and shoot them with the deck/aa guns. sometimes they seem like they are getting destroyed, other times they dont seem to take any damage.

[rditto48801]

I once did a torpedo run on a pair of transports, including a liner.
After using external camera to observe the fireworks, I took note that of three torpedo hits on the big one in front, but there was only on visible hole in the ship. There was lots of fireworks also.

Needless to say, one of the life boats was apparently in a bad place when torpedo 3 hit, and got caught in the blast, because 'life boat' showed up in my log right after 'huge european liner'. :doh:

I didn't notice it until my patrol report showed I had sunk 4 ships when I had only sunk 3 by that time, causing me to check my logs and notice 'life boat' listed. :o

As for shooting life boats... waste of ammo...
Let them be rescued and become a waste of enemy time, resources and medical supplies. To easy to bury the dead.
So being humane (sort of) in a war in itself becomes an attack on enemy logistics. :arrgh!:

[tomoose]

I'm playing at very irregular intervals but I think there may be something to the 'lack of lifeboats' comment. I'm running TMO and, maybe it's just my imagination, but there's seems to be a distinct lack of lifeboats in this TMO than previous versions. Curious.

On a different note I've yet to receive a mission to find downed pilots (although I'm not sure I'm at the correct time period for this type of mission to be tasked).

[rditto48801]

I'm playing at very irregular intervals but I think there may be something to the 'lack of lifeboats' comment. I'm running TMO and, maybe it's just my imagination, but there's seems to be a distinct lack of lifeboats in this TMO than previous versions. Curious.

On a different note I've yet to receive a mission to find downed pilots (although I'm not sure I'm at the correct time period for this type of mission to be tasked).

I am in mid 1942 (patrol 6 or 7 iirc, playing stock), and I have not got assigned any missions to rescue downed pilots. I am not sure if or when there is a right time period for effective life guard duty missions to pop up.

Oddly enough, I have strayed across downed pilots if I return to Pearl Harbor and I come close to the west side of the island... some of the US pilots seem to like to fly into the ground, including a small twin engine bomber (B-24?) and one of the search planes (landed upside down...) :-?

Then watching the red smoke 'drift' from land to the water.... :06:
Then needing ahead full or flank to catch up with their 'power drifting' once they are in the water... :o


In stock, I have noticed that it seems a bit random as far as how many life boats there are.
One big transport dumped at least a dozen life boats (half of which soon vanished), one other one (same type, different time/location) launched maybe 3-4 when it went down.

I wonder if the location and type of damage, and how the ship sinks and how long it takes to sink, has any bearing on how many life boats are launched.

For example, of big transports, the one that launched a dozen life boats took a few torpedoes, but took upwards of 10 minutes to sink. The other one that launched only 3-4 had major fireworks after the first torpedo hit and then two more torpedoes and it went down fairly quick.

[tomoose]

If you've been playing for a while and are comfortable with stock I highly recommend you get one of the mods. I would never go back to stock after using TMO. You're missing out on some of the excellent mods which make the game more interesting and authentic. Your choice of course.:up:

[rditto48801]

@ tomoose

Since SH4 crashes whenever I load a save (except, so far, for the 'in office' saves), using mods is an option for me if I can't fix my problem and have to restart my last patrol...

I had been thinking of a few basic mods for starters, a few that make minor changes, such as tweaking the speed, ability to raise the SD radar mast, and reducing aircraft amounts and making them able to hit targets smaller than a small island.
I think many of the 'mini-mods' I was interested in were by WEBSTER.
I also got TMO downloaded and sitting in a folder I keep assorted SH files in, so I have that already if I do choose to give it a try.

I do love the idea that with some mods/mini-mods, that each day, my sub won't encounter as many or more aircraft than most subs in WWII encountered during entire patrols.