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View Full Version : Disappearing convoys?


jimmbbo
03-29-19, 01:45 AM
Just recently, when I load a saved game where I was submerged setting up to send sons of the Empire to meet their ancestors, I see the convoy and escort sonar tracks but after a short while, they all just simultaneously fade away. Reloading the game and seeing the same sonar tracks, checking the surface view (F11) shows the ships are nowhere to be found... as in never there... Have been playing the game off and on for several years and this is new behavior...

Stock V4 1.5
Thoughts?
TIA!

hauangua
03-29-19, 03:48 AM
Just recently, when I load a saved game where I was submerged setting up to send sons of the Empire to meet their ancestors, I see the convoy and escort sonar tracks but after a short while, they all just simultaneously fade away. Reloading the game and seeing the same sonar tracks, checking the surface view (F11) shows the ships are nowhere to be found... as in never there... Have been playing the game off and on for several years and this is new behavior...

Stock V4 1.5
Thoughts?
TIA!

Ships, convoys, have a route, departure - arrival, When they arrived they vanish.
Also I'm not spawned within 20km (I seem to remember) from your position

Rockin Robbins
03-29-19, 06:42 AM
SH4 works by a virtual ship system. If ships are a certain range from you, within sensor range, they are generated and plotted as single ships. If they are outside whatever the critical range is, they are virtual ships: SH4 knows there's a convoy there, but doesn't actually plot it. This saves memory, because the whole ocean scratchpad is just notes, not actual ship identities and positions.

Things get trick when ships cross that barrier. Of course, when a virtual convoy enters the critical distance, the phantom ships are generated, identified and plotted to become real ships. But if real ships cross the boundary, they will become virtual, perhaps not to be replotted ever again! (Play the Twilight Zone music!)

Luckily, under most circumstances this happens like a magician switches cards while you are distracted. Unfortunately you're a sharp-eyed SOB and caught the ole switcheroo. Now you're not buying the trick and you're telling your friends the magician is a phoney.:D

jimmbbo
03-29-19, 12:27 PM
Didn't know how the game handles "virtual" and "real" ships.... Thanks!


The recent concern is that late at night before saving the game I was able to see the convoy sonar bearings and had visual contact matching the bearings in the F11 view, but decided to save the game and go to bed instead of prosecuting the attack... When I reload the saved game the next night in the F3 map view, the sonar bearings are present, but the F11 view is empty and after a minute or two the F3 sonar tracks simultaneously dissolve to a blank map... :confused: