The Diesel Repair Bug....

[MRV]

....got back to SH4 a bit and installed the most recent TMO mod and after a few hours and a nasty encounter with a coastal battery, I was reminded in why I gave up on SH4 once:
Diesel engines got around 20 % damage, were repaired in no time, my sub kept a steep pitch-up angle under water dispite no flooding at all and the diesels just won't work on the surface, although there are 50 % of fuel left.

Has meanwhile anyone got a fix for this? Almost every attack on my sub damages diesels in some way, and as soon as they are shut down for repairs they never get back to work anymore.....

[Jan Kyster]

Paying the price for playing with coastal batteries... :D

But why should it be a bug? If you engage with - almost anything :88) - why should your sub be able to take the pounding?
It's a delicate and fragile piece of equipment... not a battleship.

Your engines suffered from damage not repairable at sea.


Don't know if the savefiles can be edited, but doubt it.
Much easier to stay out of reach and away from engaging surface battles...
I'm not ashamed to be a chicken :oops: - and always get the boat safe home! :smug:


Well, almost... :nope:

[tater]

Because a fleet type has 5 or 6 diesels, any ONE of which can make the boat move.

I'm cool with not getting in unrealistic fights, and even having them sink the boat. But unless the damage is so bad the boat actually sinks, you should still have propulsion, IMHO*.

*and in that case you should sink still with diesels that could move the boat, lol)

The trouble is that the DM is a trade off. In order to always have a workign diesel, you might have to give up any damage possible. The likely trade off was that SOME damage happens all the time, and is worth having in the game, and catastrophic damage that leaves you dead in the water is so rare that it's worth that happening to have SOME damage.

[ETR3(SS)]

I wouldn't call this a bug so much as a lack of Zone editing on the developers part. Since SH4 is a build off of SH3 you get a lot of the same stuff used. U boats only had 2 diesels, so only 2 diesels were included in the damage zones. Yes it makes reference to having 4 diesels on the fleet boats damage screen but the other two aren't really there.

Now if you're playing in an S boat (not many do) and take damage to your engine room, that's a different story. The damage zone used for an S boat engine room is simply, the wrong one to use. Once it becomes completely flooded the diesels quit working and you can't pump out the water. I'm not sure if Ducimus changed that in TMO or not.

[Major Johnson]

I had a similar problem the other week. Had two dead engines and two good ones, but I was stuck. Seems for whatever reason when they programmed the game they paired up the engines in that such a way that if one of a pair doesn't work, the other won't work either. Might as well start that patrol over again. That's what I had to do.

[ancient46]

Repairing the engines by Save game editing is possible. The ActiveUserPlayerUnits.upc text file is the one you want. Find the compartment that has the engines and edit the damage number.

[Jan Kyster]

Because a fleet type has 5 or 6 diesels, any ONE of which can make the boat move...Not to be a total nit-picker :D but the diesels can not move the boat.
They drive generators that feeds batteries/main electric motors...

So in regards to the "bug" above, one could just pretend, it's an unrepairable damage to the electric motors! Voila! :yeah:

[tater]

Not to be a total nit-picker :D but the diesels can not move the boat.
They drive generators that feeds batteries/main electric motors...

So in regards to the "bug" above, one could just pretend, it's an unrepairable damage to the electric motors! Voila! :yeah:

Yeah, I know. But the electric motors can ALSO be damaged, no?

So we then have twice the chance of irreparable motor damage?

If a boat was otherwise intact in RL, but was lost due to the inability to move, we'd know about it—and they'd have used the radio, too. So it's safe to say no real fleet boat ever lost all propulsion—even the damn HOR boats :)

[Jan Kyster]

LOL - I don't have any recollection either of boats not making it home due to lack of propulsion.
Only know of a couple that got beached by accident - even one of my own boats did that :oops: - and only remember one boat having severe problems with propeller shafts misalignment after heavy depth charging.
Several inches, iirc, but even that one made the limp home.


Wonder what happened to Drifter's Rescue Sub Mod? :hmmm: Could have come in handy for the OP... :D

Do we dare asking for it? http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=166011

[tater]

Heheh.

You know, there is a unit type in the names.cfg called "replenishment" wonder if anyone has ever tried it.

[MRV]

Ok, first of all: I did not fight that coastal battery, it surprised me while on time compression until I took 2 or 3 hits, which were enough to bring my engines down. Just to make it clear I was not trying to get involved in a major surface engagement with a sub. ;)
If the diesels suffered unrepairable damage, shouldn't they be marked as destroyed in the repair screen? Instead, they are shown fully repaired.

Maybe I should tell: the thing happened with an S-18, not a fleet boat. As far as I know the S-18 used the propulsion system similar to u-boats.

@ ancient, I'll try it next time this happens, thx

[Jan Kyster]

Ok, first of all: I did not fight that coastal battery, it surprised me while on time compression until I took 2 or 3 hits, which were enough to bring my engines down. Just to make it clear I was not trying to get involved in a major surface engagement with a sub. ;)It's okay, I forgive you! :rotfl2:

Still remember very vividly the first (and only!) time we were surprised by coastal batteries splashing shells all over the place :o
Since then, depending on weather, we've always taken care of keeping well clear of shorelines.


Save often, is a good tip. Not as much as a "cheat", but as you've found, SHIV do has it's quirks... :D

[tater]

You are right regarding the S boats being direct drive.

Funny, I was playing the other night, and decided like an idiot to take a shortcut since the japanese had only recently taken Batavia...

BOOM. Shore battery plus TC killed me.