Oh the Heartbreak! First Convoy this Career and CTD on load

[panthercules]

Well, it's December 1940 and I'm in my ninth patrol (first one after upgrading to my new Type IXB), and I finally spot my first real convoy of this entire career (I have encountered a couple of pairs of ships, but that's not the same). It's a real beauty spread out across the horizon with only 2 apparent escorts, with me waiting smack in front of them about 10,000m away. It was getting a little too late last night to start such a battle so I decided to save the game and start the attack tonight.

Practically drooling in anticipation, I start loading up the saved game and WHAM - CTD :damn:

Hoping it was a freak one-off, I rebooted and tried again, same thing - CTD :damn:

So, apparently, I'm not gonna get to clobber this convoy after all :(

IIRC I've seen some posts around here a while back about not being able to load saved games - this is the first time it's happened to me in a year of playing, so I didn't pay much attention to them then - maybe if I can find those threads I can figure out how to fix it without trashing this patrol or career. Anybody got any ideas for fixes?

[Emcon]

My advise: Don't mind the save game, just start over and head for Bristol. You will probably find a convoy there. I recently started a new career and spotted a convoy on both my first and second patrol in that area.

Good hunting!

[Salvadoreno]

The solution is simple.. Dont save when your amongst a convoy. Thats what causes the crash to desktops. It doesnt happen all the time, but its hapened to me several times. I see a convoy, dont feel like attacking it yet, so i save. Then it crashes, so i came up with a save solution. I save once when i know that im going to hit the convoy soon, another when i have acutally spotted the convoy, and 1 last one when i have finally engaged the convoy. Only 3... No more then 3 because i think it starts to freeze after that and u lose all your saves. So if u load at the spotting of the convoy, and it CTDs when u try and load that save, just load the save right before you spot the convoy...

not confusing is it??

[panthercules]

Good advice, usually - unfortunately, this time even the save just before the convoy was corrupted as well and I got CTDs with that one too :(

I finally got my next previous save (first one from this patrol) to load up, but I did lose the credit for the large cargo that had already fallen victim to my torps the first time around that way :(

However, in the "silver lining" department, I soon ran across a lone merchant - it was just a coastal freighter, but it was my first ever Greek steamer ( 3 careers and almost a year of playing, and finally found one). And, as luck would have it, it was late November 1940, just about 10 days after our Italian friends turned the Greeks into enemies, so down she went. Hit her amidships with a single torp, and then surfaced and finished her off with my deck gun (figured I might as well take advantage of this rare bit of calm weather and save the extra torp in the bargain). Got some great screen shots of her on fire stem to stern and slowly rolling over to starboard as she slipped beneath the waves - very cool indeed :)

Maybe if this luck holds that convoy will still be where it was before and I can get a crack at it this time.