Torpedos will not fire! What?

[Eric Lombard]

Installed FOTRSU yesterday. Usual messing about but finally a clean install. Everything works fine but to my surprise:

Target is locked, marker is green, torpedo selected and configured... then press fire with a satisfying click, stopwatch appears and then NOTHING. No torpedo is launched and stopwatch does not advance.

Suggestions on how to repair this difficulty would be greatly appreciated.

Eric

[Sniper297]

I'll take a wild guess, the FOTRS mod sets the auto open = true to false so you have to hit the Q key to manually open the outer doors?

[Rockin Robbins]

Probably that, plus the fire button is now ctrl-enter instead of just the enter key. I fire with the mouse and open tubes with the keyboard. If neither of those help, you still have some mod soup somehow. When you reinstalled did you delete the contents of your documents\sh4 directory? You should.

[Rockin Robbins]

Okay, he's reinstalled in a root directory outside the Microsoft watchdog's reach, fired up the game and still can't fire torpedoes.

So some more info is needed here, and a video would be very helpful.

How are you firing torpedoes, keyboard or clicking the GUI fire button with the mouse?

Did you start out with a fresh \documents\SH4 directory?

Your computer specs, amount of RAM, video card, desktop or laptop make and model, processor and Windows version (including whether 32-bit or 64-bit) would be useful too.

And a video of the firing procedure, including malfunction would be very helpful. You'll be encouraged to know that nobody has ever reported this malfunction before.

[torpedobait]

Probably that, plus the fire button is now ctrl-enter instead of just the enter key. I fire with the mouse and open tubes with the keyboard. If neither of those help, you still have some mod soup somehow. When you reinstalled did you delete the contents of your documents\sh4 directory? You should.

That does bring up another question. TMO v2.5 has a button on the Periscope command line that opens/closes (toggles) the tube doors. Is there any consideration being given to adding that same feature to FOTARS Ultimate? From a user interface point of view, if you are using the mouse to set torpedo parameters and fire the tube, it adds an unnecessary complexity to shift back to the keyboard only for the purpose of opening the tube. As a captain I like being able to give my orders fluidly, rather than having to use two different processes. Again, not a biggie, but since it's already been done by Ducimas, perhaps you could do it too?

Oh, I think I get it after reading the above paragraph before posting. Since you have to use the keyboard anyway to select the tube (W and E keys), what difference does it make to also use it to open the tube you just selected? Maybe it's a big "never mind", but I did get used to having the open tube button. It just spoiled me!

[propbeanie]

Installed FOTRSU yesterday. Usual messing about but finally a clean install. Everything works fine but to my surprise:

Target is locked, marker is green, torpedo selected and configured... then press fire with a satisfying click, stopwatch appears and then NOTHING. No torpedo is launched and stopwatch does not advance.

Suggestions on how to repair this difficulty would be greatly appreciated.

Eric
The stopwatch isn't advancing because the torpedo isn't launching... Did Ubi model an in-tube malfunction? There's a "live" torpedo stuck in his tube?...

But seriously, I'd suspect a "dirty" Save Folder - hopefully it's something simple like that. :timeout:

[propbeanie]

That does bring up another question. TMO v2.5 has a button on the Periscope command line that opens/closes (toggles) the tube doors. Is there any consideration being given to adding that same feature to FOTARS Ultimate?...
They are there, in the conning tower, but they don't open the expected tube like they used to. When you click the button for Tube 1, you might open Tube 7. Also, there's no "Tube Open" indicator, and when you click on one of the opened tube's buttons, you might open another instead, or close a different one than what you want... We'll have to see how busy CapnScurvy is... :yeah: - Just kiddin' Capn :D

[Eric Lombard]

I beg your forgiveness and thank each of you for your interest and responses.

Turns out, that I did not know that opening the tubes was required! I was used to the stock SH4 where that was not part of the play. Of course! FOTRSU would have this added bit of simulation.

Thanks to sniper297 for: "I'll take a wild guess, the FOTRS mod sets the auto open = true to false so you have to hit the Q key to manually open the outer doors?"

Yes, the Q key solves my issue (he said with a somewhat red face)

[propbeanie]

Excellent Eric Lombard. I did not know that the stop watch would come open under that circumstance... I think I've got my stopwatch set to where I have to ask for it to open...

[aanker]

I beg your forgiveness and thank each of you for your interest and responses.

Turns out, that I did not know that opening the tubes was required! I was used to the stock SH4 where that was not part of the play. Of course! FOTRSU would have this added bit of simulation.

Thanks to sniper297 for: "I'll take a wild guess, the FOTRS mod sets the auto open = true to false so you have to hit the Q key to manually open the outer doors?"

Yes, the Q key solves my issue (he said with a somewhat red face)
Great news Lombard. One mistake though, if I recall correctly even in Stock you need to open the outer doors before firing or you can miss the target- it is a few second procedure and that can make a difference depending on distance. For sure you won't hit your aiming point on the target.... you'd hit behind it, or miss.

Happy Hunting!

[Sniper297]

Yeah, after running some tests with manual targeting and automatic I found that the automatic open subroutine has a serious flaw - the gyro angle is locked at the moment of firing, so any delay means the firing solution is wrong. If you're aiming at the forward mast of a 500 foot long ship with the outer door open it will hit about where you aim it, if the outer door has to open automatically it will hit near the after mast. Aim at middle of target and it will miss astern every time.

I pretty much make my own mods, so after discovering that I used Silent 3ditor to edit the \Submarine\NSS_(subtype)\NSS_(subtype).sim files to change 13:wpn_SubTorpedoSys from Auto Open = true to Auto Open = False, and quickly got in the habit of hitting Q-W-Q-W repeat for as many fish I intended to fire, at least a couple of minutes before the actual "final bearing and shoot" time. Get more hits, waste fewer torpedoes. :up:

[propbeanie]

:roll: Ya gotta be careful letting yer wick stay wet that long though... Too long in that salt water and it won't go "boom"! :roll: :O:

I'm sorry - won't happen again... 'till next time. :D

[Rockin Robbins]

Yeah, after running some tests with manual targeting and automatic I found that the automatic open subroutine has a serious flaw - the gyro angle is locked at the moment of firing, so any delay means the firing solution is wrong. If you're aiming at the forward mast of a 500 foot long ship with the outer door open it will hit about where you aim it, if the outer door has to open automatically it will hit near the after mast. Aim at middle of target and it will miss astern every time. :up:
That's not a flaw, that's the way the torpedoes work. The gyro angle is calculated for the instant the fire button is pressed. In the real sub you could launch a torpedo with the outer door closed, but that would be the last time you would do it.......or anything else for that matter. You and 80 of your best buddies would be dead.

[Red Devil]

I beg your forgiveness and thank each of you for your interest and responses.

Turns out, that I did not know that opening the tubes was required! I was used to the stock SH4 where that was not part of the play. Of course! FOTRSU would have this added bit of simulation.

Thanks to sniper297 for: "I'll take a wild guess, the FOTRS mod sets the auto open = true to false so you have to hit the Q key to manually open the outer doors?"

Yes, the Q key solves my issue (he said with a somewhat red face)

there is no such thing as a daft question. :arrgh!:

[propbeanie]

there is no such thing as a daft question. :arrgh!:
Exactly! Besides, look how many experts missed the problem (Sniper297 doesn't count - he's too good)... Besides, isn't "daft" the amount of water below yer boat? :roll:

[Sniper297]

"That's not a flaw, that's the way the torpedoes work"

Well, maybe. To me it's a flaw in the programming, in real life (1) flood tube, (2) open outer door. (3) hit fire button, (4) gyro spindle withdrawn, (5) blast of air pushes fish out of tube. If you're going to "enhance" a game by including an automatic door opening subroutine, it should work correctly, instead of screwing up the firing solution. Another thing they missed was some kind of indicator showing outer doors open/shut, without that there's no point in trying to put any kind of realism in the torpedo firing sequence.

No way to fix it, so I just change auto open = true to auto open = false, also set the TorpLaunchMaxDepth in the sub's CFG file to 300 so I can open them at any depth and not have to worry about them automatically shutting (with no indicators to let you know they're shut) if I have to duck under a ship in the middle of multiple attacks.

In real life you would give the order "set 1, 2, and 3 for high speed 20 feet, set 4, 5, and 6 for high speed 30 feet, open outer doors tubes 1 through 6" and the crew would do it and report when ready. In the game you have to click through the tubes setting depth and speed for each one individually and open each door for each one. Click slide Q W click slide Q W click slide Q W click slide Q W click slide Q W click slide W, I call that flawed.:down:

[Red Devil]

whichever way you do it be grateful you are not on board the Tang - she sank herself with her own torp!

[Sniper297]

Actually that happened twice, TANG and TULLIBEE. Tang was the most famous because there was only one survivor from Tullibee so they didn't find out until after the war that she was also sunk by a circular run.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Tullibee_(SS-284)