Save Scumming

[jahwillprovide]

Couldn't find much information in any of the threads I was looking at so I decided to start one hoping to get some help.
Came back to this game from about a 5-6 year hiatus and I ran into a few issues. I managed to sink 4/6 passenger carriers en route to Manilla maybe 600 nm north of the Luzon Strait and was really excited to see this career play out but unfortunately when I had gotten about 200nm away from the crime scene I had some sort of game breaking bug. I surfaced to save my game (not sure why I felt the need to surface first) and immediately with no contacts around my main pump and a few bulkheads broke along with the dive plane and Im going to plummet to the bottom and perish. How can I save scum this to save my career? Im in ~/My Documents/SH4 and found the save files. Some of them are just logs of what was reported/sunk etc. and there is one in a non human readable format. Do I need a special program to edit my save and possibly fix the dive plane and main pump so I can limp to base and repair?


Any help would be appreciated, thanks :)

[Mios 4Me]

One workaround from a non-technical perspective is to load the replay, find a time between the last sinking and the damage, then start from there.

[jahwillprovide]

One workaround from a non-technical perspective is to load the replay, find a time between the last sinking and the damage, then start from there.


You mean I can just choose to start from a time I specify even though the save is after the damage? Ive never even looked at a replay before, how do I find mine? Id also like to see it to know what caused the damage since Im out in the open ocean with nobody around me.


I did a little more digging and found the ActiveUserPlayerUnits.upc file and the contained damage=1 on my modules but setting them and the hitpoint damage received all to a value of 0 and the actual value appears to be stored somewhere else because editing this does nothing :( Hit a bit of a brick wall here and hoping somebody can point me in the right direction on how to save my sub from it's premature end.

[torpedobait]

If you didn’t take a Save before the damage event your boat is probably screwed. I’ve not seen nor heard of a way to edit a save file, period, but some master software guru may have a tool for that.


If you didn’t hit a mine you may have fallen victim to a dive bomber who spotted you as you were coming up. It happens. Personally, even knowing how hard it is to give up some good kills, I play “dead is dead” and go to a new career. If the boat didn’t sink then you have to limp back to base as-is. Life is like that.
:Kaleun_Salute:

[jahwillprovide]

If you didn’t take a Save before the damage event your boat is probably screwed. I’ve not seen nor heard of a way to edit a save file, period, but some master software guru may have a tool for that.


If you didn’t hit a mine you may have fallen victim to a dive bomber who spotted you as you were coming up. It happens. Personally, even knowing how hard it is to give up some good kills, I play “dead is dead” and go to a new career. If the boat didn’t sink then you have to limp back to base as-is. Life is like that.
:Kaleun_Salute:


I gave up after about 30 minutes, was only the first patrol anyways. Started a new one this morning on FOTRS and I'm having a blast so far, just ended my first patrol with 52k tonnes sent to the deep. Seems like FOTRS adds a whole bunch of ship types, not exactly sure what else it does but I discovered you can no longer rearm/refuel in Darwin in this mod :haha:
Learned that one the hard way. Will most likely go back to TMO + RSRDC because the map just looks to cluttered with all these dots trying to convince me I actually can rearm/refuel in all these places. I'm pretty gullible when it comes to dots on the map I guess lol

[torpedobait]

You probably know that you can only refuel-rearm at a base indicated by an anchor symbol. Darwin was subjected to Japanese air attacks from New Guinea or bases on Timor, so it’s removal is realistic. Anyway, good luck and good hunting! :salute:

[Mios 4Me]

You mean I can just choose to start from a time I specify even though the save is after the damage? Ive never even looked at a replay before, how do I find mine? Id also like to see it to know what caused the damage since Im out in the open ocean with nobody around me.

Yes, that's it. Go to the Load Game screen; you should see a replay option, assuming you checked that box when you saved the last time. Load the replay and select a time shortly before the damage, start it, then select the play button (little fuzzy on the details at this point - I'm on a different computer) and go from there.


If the replay button hadn't been selected when you saved, you're out of luck.


I understand the "dead is dead" philosophy, but sometimes it's the fault of the program itself. I've had the game fail to come out of warp (very high TC) going into base - despite doing so repeatedly at mid-range warp every time before and after - leaving the boat well inland, destroyed. Same with an undocumented surfacing INSIDE an enemy harbor. Those things are simply never going to happen IRL.