Any point in going back to Base, rather than refitting?

[BalaoThatOrder]

Hey, all - new to the forum, here... great group of folks!

I'm on my 16th patrol of a campaign. My boat is now the Balao - fully outfitted with the best desk guns, noise suppression, best AA guns (fore and aft) and all radars/sonars updated, etc. as of 1 May 1944 date availability in my career, so far. My crew is highly trained, and I typically do everything myself (deck gun, AA, torp targeting, etc.). All legitimately 'earned' from managing promotions/upgrades, etc. No 'game mods' (just "enviro").

I prefer the torps that are steam, and default to only 41kts./4100yds.

My question:
---------------
Is there really any point in going back to port (Brisbane) at this point in the war?

All the cool stuff is about to happen around the Solomons, New Guinea, Phillipines, etc. and after *3 years* of playing the sim on and off, I just *found* (and sunk) the Yamato! Or one of them, if it/they reappear regularly.
I sink large tankers regularly, and I've developed an appetite for BB's, CV's and the like lately, also. ;)

If crew 'morale' (which is already skilled/trained near the max) doesn't suffer, why "miss" all the stuff by going back to Brisbane when I can just refit at the many ports now available in the area?

Thoughts?

Thanks! And great forum, guys!

I go "back" with Silent Hunter, to Silent Service (on Commodore 64), and everything made, up to present (except SH5). I play/own most of the Sonalyst "stuff" too...

[Sniper297]

Short answer is yes.
Long answer is it probably depends on the system.

I have an 8 year old Dell with XP, 2 gigs of RAM, a Pentium D 3.4ghz. What I found is the save game files get really big and even loading from a SSD it takes a really really long time to load.

I'm the kind of sinner who when led into temptation, I invariably fall, so after creating the "Gone Asiatic" mod:

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/downloads.php?do=file&id=4358

I can never resist heading to one of the resupply bases near the Philippines so I can keep shooting everything in the Japanese Navy. :arrgh!: But the save files get to several megabytes and it takes forever to load on my machine, so I try to end the patrol before I get to 500,000 tons or 100 ships sunk.

[Aktungbby]

BalaoThatOrder! :Kaleun_Salute:

[BalaoThatOrder]

Thanks, Sniper297! :up:

Come to think of it, you're right!

The "history" (size of data retained) of the patrol - must have been why I was getting artifacts (like a billowing smoke trail from my last "kil") which followed my sub everywhere I went after 2-4 'refits' - rather than some NVidia "stuff" from inferior drivers. I haven't seen it recently (patrols limited to 2-3 refits), so thought it was 'fixed.'

I thought it was corrected with my 'new' drivers (using a 640M on my Dell XP One 2710 system [i7, 3.3, 8G mem, Win7 64-bit] with 3.31 or 3.34 drivers, for my embedded video).

Thanks for the heads-up! :cool:

Good Hunting! :salute:

[Sailor Steve]

In order to load faster, SH4 only loads 6 months of activity at a time. If you keep rifitting over and over (which was something they didn't do more than once in real life, as the crew would become absolutely exhausted) you will suddenly find yourself without any targets at all.

[Jimbuna]

Welcome to SubSim Balao :sunny:

[BalaoThatOrder]

:smug:In order to load faster, SH4 only loads 6 months of activity at a time. If you keep rifitting over and over (which was something they didn't do more than once in real life, as the crew would become absolutely exhausted) you will suddenly find yourself without any targets at all.

Thanks for that, Steve! :up:

I'm not so sure about running out of targets, though... :O:

...I'm at that point in the war (1 May 1944) where there are 8 enemy ports :o in the northwest area of New Guinea, with convenient refit base "right around the corner!"

If true, I haven't gone "harbor hunting" in a while - with or without the 'long dogs' - to reach out and touch them up to 8-9k yds. I prefer to get in close though, as timing and evading the escort 'orbits' is such fun! :D

Good segue...do they spawn/respawn in ports? I had a large tanker convoy in Celebes Sea that just disappeared from radar the other day... :hmmm:

I save and reload at the start of each contact tracking session, and again just as I'm evading and exiting after engagement. I reloaded the save and searched everywhere - at a certain point, they just went 'flying Dutchman.' :wah:

Any info on the port spawn/respawn or whether it's random, appreciated!

I think I'm running TMO...I have JSGME installed, and a PE4 (1,2,3,4,5) in the MODS folder, from 2012. I had to do a system restore at some point a year ago, and JSGME isn't 'active' and I haven't bothered with it. I like the added effects, crate debris, bodies, etc. and just left it alone, because it's graphically-tuned and works so well! :smug:

Thanks!

[Sailor Steve]

I had a large tanker convoy in Celebes Sea that just disappeared from radar the other day... :hmmm:
I don't know about spawning or how it even works, but I may know something about this problem. Were they nearing a port? The game isn't sophisticated enough to allow them to break formation and sail into the harbor. When they reach that last waypoint they vanish.

[BalaoThatOrder]

No, it happened right in the middle of the Celebes Sea.

I could see how a convoy might 'vanish' when transiting across a 'node' between 2 of the major convoy routes, though. And I may have been near one of them, and didn't know it. It's been a while since I looked at a map for this area, but I've known about the major ones around for many years...

Thanks for the info on convoy port approach though - I never tried to follow a convoy into port. Now I know it may be a disappointing experience - especially if I spent a lot of time shadowing them!

[Sailor Steve]

In the middle of the ocean? I don't have a clue then. Sorry.

Oh, and Welcome aboard. :sunny:

[Armistead]

If you're not using RSRD, numerous groups will spawn and despawn in the ocean, even with TMO, just rare you happen to be there at the last waypoint.

[BalaoThatOrder]

:hmmm: ....RSRD sounds like something I may want to consider. :hmm2:

I assume this requires a career 'reset' though?

If so, I'll "tough it out" until the end of the war...maybe... :nope::hmmm::haha::har:

I've come THIS far, already...did I mention '3 years of sporadic "career-ing"'? :O:

[merc4ulfate]

Longer patrols breed more corrupt saves. Also on the off chance you get a crash and your last save became corrupted you lose more tonnage.

Plan your strategy so you are where you wish to be between home port visits.

[BalaoThatOrder]

Those 8 ports that I referred to earlier on/near the northwest end of New Guinea turned out to be "fake ports" - just a clump of graphics that "appear" to be shaped as port infrastructure would be (from zoomed-in map view), but no 'docks' or anything - and no ships near them.

There doesn't appear to be any rhyme or reason on types of traffic, density of the convoy or anything associated with where I am (within reason).

*sigh*

Oh well - enjoy trying out different tactics, approaches, weapons, etc. anyway.

"Nothin' to see here - move along!" ;)

I haven't seen any troop ships in a loooong time though.

Maybe I need to be nearer japan, or in a MAJOR area - running largely stock game/sim, that is...

[Sniper297]

"no rhyme or reason" was my first assessment too. Teenytiny little wooden river gunboats suitable for patrolling shallow water harbors are all too often seen hundreds of miles from the nearest land, in seas that they would need a miracle to stay afloat let alone come upright long enough to fire a round from one of their guns. Which would promptly capsize them from the recoil. Yet you see "task force" (antisubmarine patrol) with a destroyer or subchaser and a couple of them silly little shallow water gunboats crossing and recrossing the high seas everywhere. Then you go to enter an enemy harbor or bay through the narrows where you would EXPECT to see dozens of the little beasts scurrying back and forth across the entrance, but none to be seen.

Troop convoys are also called "task forces", the most common being the kind with 3 cruisers, 8 to 12 tiny troop transports (1800 tons) and a dozen escorts. Without one of the physics fix mods it's pointless to attack these since they have no clue where they're going and alter course at random, breaking up the formation, steaming in circles around each other, stopping and backing up, all with the acceleration of a dragster.

Historical battles are ignored in campaigns - go to 400 miles bearing 320 from Midway on June 2 1942 and wait, the carriers SHOULD just run over you on June 4, but they never show up in the campaign. Instead you get a radio message about the battle of Midway a few days later, which apparently happened in a parallel universe.

If they ever make a SH6 the best way to start would be to take a hard look at all the things they screwed up in SH4 and fix those, instead of farting around with new "features" like taste my soup.

[TorpX]

"no rhyme or reason" was my first assessment too. ...

Historical battles are ignored in campaigns - go to 400 miles bearing 320 from Midway on June 2 1942 and wait, the carriers SHOULD just run over you on June 4, but they never show up in the campaign. Instead you get a radio message about the battle of Midway a few days later, which apparently happened in a parallel universe.



I never spent much time with the stock game. Reading your post, I can see I didn't miss much. :har:



If they ever make a SH6 the best way to start would be to take a hard look at all the things they screwed up in SH4 and fix those, instead of farting around with new "features" like taste my soup.

Amen.

I've always thought, that if Ubisoft had spent 25% more effort on the game, it would have been 100% better (and 100% more profitable for them).

[Sniper297]

Well, first impression of SH4 was irritating tedium. Only got so many hours in the day to play computer games, and with the stock game it could take a month to get from Midway to Tokyo simply because you came out of time acceleration every 30 seconds for a plane contact. Several guys I knew just gave up on the game at that point, but once the first mod to reduce enemy aircraft to a reasonable number came out, the game was actually playable in career mode. I tried several of the big mods like TMO, but that's a matter of taste - for me all the ones I tried merely made the game more tedious.

I did try playing 100% realism several times, but the fact that the real world skippers had to put up with the frustration of 100% torpedo failures the first couple of years doesn't work for me - it's a GAME, it's supposed to be ENTERTAINING. I like realism and challenges, but not when it gets in the way of having fun.

The flip side of course is cheating too much to the point where all the challenge is gone, if my sub is invulnerable and I can sink an entire convoy with a single torpedo, that's no fun either. Finding a balance in any wargame or RPG is tricky, but worth the effort when you hit the sweet spot between too easy and too hard. :know:

[merc4ulfate]

"you came out of time acceleration every 30 seconds for a plane contact"

While I have never played a stock game of SH4 I find it very easy to remain at time compression by going to 150 feet and running all day under water and come back up at night. Some areas of the ocean you do not have to worry about aircraft but the others are pretty easy to get through with the correct strategy and course ... a good radar never hurt either.

[Armistead]

"you came out of time acceleration every 30 seconds for a plane contact"

While I have never played a stock game of SH4 I find it very easy to remain at time compression by going to 150 feet and running all day under water and come back up at night. Some areas of the ocean you do not have to worry about aircraft but the others are pretty easy to get through with the correct strategy and course ... a good radar never hurt either.

Some of us like to cover ground. Stock sucked, heck through most the way, you left Midway it was one Jap plane contact after the other, but thankfully mods take care of that.

When I played, in areas of heavy plane traffic like Formosa, I'd stay submerged most the day.

[BalaoThatOrder]

Come to think of it...I'm not even sure that I've tried "harbor hunting" in SH4 yet! I remember it being lots of fun in SH1. :haha: Although unrealistic, you could lob deck gun shells astern at the pursuing Kaibokan DD's while gettin' out of Dodge at flank speed! :O:

I think the graphics in SH3 are far superior to SH4...although I have my rig pretty well 'tuned' now. I was just happy to be back in the Pacific!

I don't much like playing as axis, even though you get cool 'boots' like the type XXI near the end, as I recall. Obviously, SH3 gets harder as you go - whereas SH4 gets easier. I used to pick out my favorite 'fräulein' in the people on the pier, for my evening's "fun" as we entered the dock, in SH3. ;) That, and entering the sub pens in currents/seas, made manually docking soooooo worth it! In SH4, why bother? Grrrrr!

And one of my favorite DVD's in my collection is Das Boot. You get English...or German...or German with English subtitles...etc. Best (one of the most well-done) movies eevvvvvvvverrrrrrrr! :rock:

Come to think of it....I think I'll reinstall and patch-up SH3 tonight!

Thaaannnnkks to you 'maniacs!' (/sarcasm off) :hmmm: :D :subsim:

[BalaoThatOrder]

Good thing I looked at "the most recent screenies" for SH3 - even with SH5 mods...

...nah...I miss the 'transiting Gibraltar' and the other 'stuff' that I mentioned about SH3, but the latest graphics 'standards' of SH4 and IL-2 and the like are a 'bar' that I can't go below, without extraordinary game playability! :hmph: :O:

[Sniper297]

I liked SH3 gameplay, unfortunately had to uninstall, clean the registry, run a bunch of other utilities, then finally gave up and formatted the hard drive and reinstalled everything except SH3. Why, because SH3 came with StarForce, and none of my other games wanted to work with StarForce, which also made the DVD drive unreadable when it was installed. Primary reason I never bought SH5, them bozos wanna declare war on pirates and play scorched earth copy protection they can play without me.

As for harbor hunting;

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=201622

[BalaoThatOrder]

Heh heh...I just installed RFB 2.0 (and patch) [for the first time in my SH "experience"] and I'm about to install ISP 2.1. :D

I'm going to take you up on this (your harbor hunt link - thanks!), after I do my next "shakedown" patrol to get used to the new mods. :O:

Thanks!! :salute:

[Fish40]

[Quote] If they ever make a SH6 the best way to start would be to take a hard look at all the things they screwed up in SH4 and fix those, instead of farting around with new "features" like taste my soup.


Agreed! Although the Mod makers have brought the game a long way.