Help with Days in Base and The Like

[Reinhard Dietz]

Here's the deal:

I'm heading back to St. Nazaire and will arrive during the second week of December 1940. The boat's undamaged, but I want to trade my very lucky VIIB for a brand-new IXC when I immediately transfer from the 7th to the 2nd at Lorient.

If I understand the relevant data files in SH3C right, the IXC becomes available in January of 1941, so I need to spend at least a month in base after the transfer to the 2nd in order for it to be available on the U-boat panel, correct? If that's the case, what kind of SH3C-fu do I need to perform? I suppose it's choosing "Set number of days spent in base to" and entering something like 30. When would that be set, right before I load the save where I'll finish the current patrol in St. Nazaire?

Any advice is appreciated, and I hope I've clearly expressed what it is I'm trying to do. I also need to nudge the ol' renown upwards so that I don't lose my recently-acquired rank of Kaleun; it's appropriate to do that with the 'In port before mission' save, correct?

[krashkart]

What I would do is head out for another patrol instead and gain some extra renown to make it easier on the stripes I've earned. I'd want as much cushion as possible to retain rank and still be able to purchase and upgrade a new boat. Just my preference, though.

OTOH you could save and exit the game, then set your number of days in SH3C according to your calculations, then reload your save and dock. You'll burn a few days in the transfer, too, if I'm not mistaken. When all else fails, upgrade your flak guns a few times, they should cost 0 renown. When I do that it advances the calendar two more days per change.

I now cede the floor to more advanced members of the group. *bow*

[Reinhard Dietz]

krash:

I'm hoping to haul in enough renown off of the about-to-be-ended patrol to ride out the loss. I'd do another one to build that cushion, but I'm itching to get back into the North Atlantic in time to say hello to a certain carrier named Ark Royal on behalf of Admiral Lutjens and company. You wouldn't happen to know if she's at sea in the stock campaign in May of 1941 and in the more or less historical position, would you?

Thanks for the tip on the flak upgrades! My absolute fallback position is going to be loading one of my voluminous saves from earlier in the patrol.

Do you recall if the IXC in the stock game and with SH3C has the correct torpedo loadout? I vaguely remember either it or the IXB being one short.

[Reinhard Dietz]

Bother! I've run the clock ahead to early January 1941 via the flak upgrade method and there's no sign of the IXC. I wonder what I've done wrong---the 2nd at Lorient's U-boat options are the VIIB, VIIC and IXB.

It would appear that someone in the construction program didn't get the message with regards to the data in U-boat availability.cfg, so :damn:

ETA: On the other hand, backing out of the game and coming back into it seems to have cleared up the problem. Yay for SH3C.

[krashkart]

So... it worked out alright then? :hmmm:

Erm... to answer your Q's about the Ark Royal, I don't have the answers. I had always hoped for an encounter with a historical cap ship but finally resigned myself to simply trawling for targets when I played stock. If you go to Scapa Flow playing GWX3, though, there is a Revenge class parked in the bay... but it's on the wrong side of the bay to be the Royal Oak (plus, it's part of the scripted campaign layer; e.g. pretty much always there).

[Reinhard Dietz]

Woo hoo, now sailing in U-126. However, there's a problem. In-base, the date was 26 March 1941. In-patrol, it's 20 December 1940. Er, how the devil do I fix that?

[krashkart]

Woo hoo, now sailing in U-126. However, there's a problem. In-base, the date was 26 March 1941. In-patrol, it's 20 December 1940. Er, how the devil do I fix that?

Ah, I think that's because you transferred to a new boat. It takes some time to familiarize the crew with the new Uboat. I didn't think about that when trying to answer your questions. :oops: I guess the fix would be to back out of the current stage of your career and reload your previous save game, then try again. Looks like nearly a month went by, so maybe if you buy your new boat first and check the date, then try to adjust it as needed.

EDIT:

Wait, maybe I didn't read that right. You were in port in 1941 and are now three years behind that in your patrol? :ping:

[Reinhard Dietz]

Yeah, that's about the sum of it. I used the flak gun thing to skip ahead to the IXC availability date, backed out of that save and restarted the game, loaded that save, got my IXC and outfitted it properly, with all office calendars showing 26 March 1941.

I then went into the patrol and all the dates inside the patrol were 20 December 1940. The boat was in fact a Type IX and the game reports it as an IXC. I wouldn't mind being on the first wave of IXCs into the water, but I was planning on having the crew home for Christmas, etc.

I had previously deselected the specific days in port option of SH3C and chosen random time in port after successfully getting the IXC, for what it's worth. Looking at Patrols_0.cfg, I'm starting to get tempted to change the date in the PATROL 010 fields, specifically StartYear, StartMonth, StartDay, StartHour and StartMinute. Do you know how that works?

[krashkart]

I haven't delved into the campaign folders much so I don't know if changing dates there will work or not. That is possibly the strangest thing I've ever heard of happening in this simulator, though. :hmmm:

Anyone else know what's happening to RD's campaign? I'm at a loss. :ping:

[Jimbuna]

Due you have the alternative flotillas mod enabled or the historical U-boat availability date unchecked?

[Reinhard Dietz]

jim:

No on both counts. I'm still sailing with the default flotillas and historic availability is definitely on.

[Reinhard Dietz]

It has occurred to me to, if nothing else, have a patrol or two that involves cruising around the Bay of Biscay until January of 1941---a grand total of about three weeks---and then starting from there. Call it the U-48 Farewell Tour or something.

I may yet be forced into this one, but the good news is that I can easily do it thanks to preserved saves. I'll just have to make the manual changes to the crew via SH3C. :D

[krashkart]

Sweet. Where there's a will there's a workaround. :up:

[Reinhard Dietz]

Yeah, there may be a workaround, but what's got me wondering is whether there's something that I can do that doesn't involve me having a couple of zero tonnage patrols to look at on the record.

The next alternative is simply to take an IXB when I arrive in mid-December and see if I get the option to trade up to an IXC right before I leave on patrol. Since I've already got my crew for the IXC configured, what exact file(s) should be preserved in order to save that work? Also, where does the game store the "In base before patrol" save data?

Thanks for the assistance so far, everyone.

[frau kaleun]

Call it the U-48 Farewell Tour or something.

You could make a fortune on t-shirts and programs alone. :O:

[Reinhard Dietz]

You could make a fortune on t-shirts and programs alone. :O:
That's the plan. I told myself that U-48 was going to be used on the German equivalent of a war bond tour or something. And yes, you can get a T-shirt. We sign autographs, too.

(Those Irish guys who think they're the crew of a U-boat got nothing on me.)

[Reinhard Dietz]

Here's where daring will get you into trouble:

So I got impatient and decided to try editing some other files. I found PlayerSettings.cfg and altered the date to a right time and loaded from my "In Port Before Patrol" save point. Well, I bought an IXB, got the date rolled forward a bit and then bought an IXC. Everything looks OK, but I decided to get greedy and restore the lost renown, and now I think I've gotten lost.

Where the devil are those "In base before patrol" saves at so I can go and edit it back? I've got a sneaking suspicion that I need to visit Patrols_0.cfg and remove the entire entry for Patrol 010, but this situation is rapidly getting out of my knowledge. Er, help!

[Snestorm]

Does it realy have to be a IXC (which should not be historicaly available for patrol yet), or could you live with a IXB?

If you can live with a IXB, and refinishing your last patrol (from an at sea save), I'll help you get it FREE. (Let's hope all the files haven't become FUBAR.)

[Reinhard Dietz]

It absolutely has to be an IXC or else all is lost!

I kid, I kid. At this rate, I think that's what I'll do once it's established that I haven't broken something beyond repair. Since I think I've got backups of anything I've touched, I can probably just set the Days in Port to just enough to get me into January of 1941 and take the IXB from there, picking up an IXC when convenient.

I was going to go on the hunt for Ark Royal but I'll save that for the GWX campaign which'll kick off once I finish this career in May of 1945. I do believe I'd gotten locked into the notion of being able to whisk dates and time around willy-nilly without consequence. My SHIII-fu isn't sufficient to pull that off, though.

Good thing I (probably) have backups.

[Snestorm]

OK, here's how to do it.

Start in Dokuments.
Follow the path down to Carreers.
Open the folder with your current carreer name.
Open the "Patrols_0" folder.

Scroll down PAST your last patrol completed, to your NEXT patrol.

When you get to "submarine type" (or something close)
change the "1" (Type VII) to a "2" (Type IX).
Change the name as applicable (F.eks. VII to IX, or VIIB to IXB.)

If a IXB will do, leave the version as "0".

Later, when the IXC is legitamately available, you can change the version from "0" to "1", if you still want it. (IXB is my favorite. It dives faster than the IXC, and aircraft WILL be abundant soon.)

Oh! Change the boat number too! (You'll see it in there.)
No need to alter the days in port.
U106 started her first patrol on 4.jan.41.
U107 started her first patrol on 24.jan.41.
(Early december finish = U106. Late december finish = U107.)

Was this helpful?

[Reinhard Dietz]

It's almost working perfectly, or at least the setup is. I got into the game to choose the career and it believes I've chosen a Type XXI. (That'd be nice, but I'm waiting on one of those...)

I had just finished playing the Bismarck single mission with a XXI, so that may be influencing it. Here's what Patrols_0.cfg has to say:
PatrolNumber=0
StartYear=1941
StartMonth=3
StartDay=22
StartHour=2
StartMin=22
EndYear=0
EndMonth=0
EndDay=0
EndHour=0
EndMin=0
RealYear=2010
RealMonth=4
RealDay=19
RealHour=23
RealMin=14
StartLocation=753
EndLocation=753
SubType=2
SubVersion=1
SubName=U-126
PatrolArea=BE29

That's the relevant data for the file, and 22 March 1941, oddly enough, was the real first sailing of U-126, so I made the change. The bracket at the top of the data is Patrol 010, for what that's worth.

NB: I just tested it in-game and the bloody thing is insisting that the date is 20 December 1940. I give up! I was going to have the crew home for Christmas, so there's going to be an awful incident of sabotage aboard my IXB, or something, a mile or two out of the pen. :damn: Bloody shame about my time aboard U-122. Really.

[Snestorm]

You do know that it bases everything on the date you completed your last patrol, right?
The date will be moved forward the 28 days on loading your next patrol. IE, you won't see a date change until your back in the boat.

If 20.dec.40 is the ending date shown, your next patrol should start on, or around, 17.jan.41.

This would make U107 your best candidate as she left for her first (real) patrol on 24.jan.41.

[Reinhard Dietz]

No, I didn't really understand that.

Suffice it to say that since I'm already fudging history as it is, we'll just have to say that the good people of AG Weser got her ready on schedule and my veteran crew managed to learn the Type IXC in less than a month. They er, trained on another one, or something. Yeah, that's the ticket! (The reason I took U-126 is that she's not one of the well-known boats and therefore I can more or less write her history, as opposed to Kptlt. Bauer.)

Meh, I'll not make these mistakes again when it comes time for the GWX career. :damn: Thanks for your help---I appreciate it. I may have learned a few things from this.