It must be somthing random...

Limited fuel here, same "drop off agent" mission 3 times so far. Each mission completed as per log book.
Departing Pearl, stopping at Midway to top up (outbound and inbound):arrgh!:

freemantle

I'm on limited fuel and have gotten many similar mission types.

I keep getting sent to patrol off the philipines. Very boring. Also, I can't seem to do what comand wants cause I sink every ship I run across, expend all my torpedos, and deck gun ammo, and yet my mission is incomplete.

I think someone's brain in command is incomplete.

I play with everything checked except no map udates. Started a career in 1943. 1st patrol was off the southern coast of Japan. 2nd thru 5th East China sea. I successfully completed all but the 2nd one. Finally said screw it and started another career as I wasn't going back to the East China Seal.

Unlimited fuel, only had one "mission" as opposed to regular patrols.

I think the main mission for the patrol is over-rated in importance. It's just something to do while you're doing other things and is not a goal in itself exclusive to enjoying the rest of the game's potential. The most unfortunate aspect is there are few missions, so even a randomizer that has only two options is going to give you one mission 50% of the time. Even if there were 100 missions, you will get the same mission twice in a row once in a while.

With that in mind, I reserve fuel and weapons for the main mission, get it over with, and if I don't get any more specific directives (though I often do) I'm then free to use the remaining fuel and weapons to whup on stuff and junk on my way home for a refit.

taking the risk of suggesting another positive aspect, the shallow spy and supply missions are among the most difficult and when accomplished will build up your crew and your own personal skill rapidly not to mention the uniquely Pacific War aspect of shallow water warfare.
-Pv-

I wonder whether it's a save game issue. When I first started I played "iron man" and got different missions each time... since I've been doing a lot more saving/loading I seem to be stuck on a "Patrol Manilla" mission (4 or 5). Returning to base immediately after leaving gave me a new mission.

Since there is only 5 missions in effect the chances of getting a repeat mission is fairly high.

However the chances of getting the same mission 8 times in a row ?!

Indicates one of two things... Either your luck sucks and the RNG hates you or the RNG is stuck ie getting the same seed number each time.

As far as recurring missions go ...

I would assume that there really was only so much that a sub captain could do during the war.

Go out ... find the enemy in this area and lay waste to them, run out of fish, go home ... go out, find the enemy in the other area and lay waste to them, run out of fish, go home ... go out, find the enemy reported to be here, lay waste to them. Maybe one day you get an insertion mission, once that's done, go out ... find the enemy and lay waste to them.


Yeah pretty repetative, but I would guess it was standard fare for sub pilots.

The difference is I never know what I'm going to run into and how well the particular event is going to go. Lately the AI DDs have been ultra agressive and I can't seem to escape and I get blasted to Davey Jones' Locker, but occasionally I get lucky and sink one before they get me. There is enough uncertainty in the average mission of success or failure that I'm content with "living the past".

Sorry the rest of you get bored so easily.

I just ran an MS Excel random number generator 500 times on 5 mission types.
I got a repeat mission 63 times, Double repeats 21 times(i.e same mission three times), no trebles or higher. My statistical friends say that is about right. The chances of nine in a row are very remote indeed :1 in 1,953,125 (5 to the power on 9 apparently)

Seems either the SHIV rand generator is faulty or there is some other factor in determining if the next mission is different.

It's worse than that. There are 5 mission types. One of those types is "Deploy to XXX and engage merchant shipping", but XXX can vary. I got 5 consecutive deployments to the East China Sea from Pearl Harbor, with limited fuel on, both with and without stopping at Midway to refuel on the way back. This was before patch 1.2. When I patched that one, since I'd just upgraded to a Gato, I just decided to start a new career in Pearl, 1942, with a Gato and proceed from there. My first mission was to patrol off Honshu. The second was a photo recon of Osaka, and once that one completed I got a Deploy to Iwo Jima mission as a followup. I ran out of torps at that point before sinking any merchants, so I just went on home. My next patrol was to Deploy to East China Sea. I haven't completed that one yet, so I'll see if it starts repeating.

I don't think it's the TYPE of mission that's the problem here, but rather the exact same mission time after time that's the problem.

Getting standard patrols time after time would be reasonable if you were vectored to different areas, but these people are being asked to patrol at exactly the same point each and every time.

I had it once with going to exactly the same part of the Celebes Sea three times in a row, and now it looks as though I'm going there again this fourth time, even though I was granted a sub upgrade and sailed from Pearl instead of Fremantle.

Again constant agent insertion or recon missions would be believable (I'll bet there were a few RL crews who were dab hands at these dangerous mission types and were therefore top of the tree when patrols were handed out) if you had to take them somewhere different each time.

Am I on the right track here?

I think so.

For me, it's not even that going to Manilla again and again is a game breaker or boring... that's a fine place to patrol and has a lot of action... it's that it makes me think that my patrols are not incrementing or some variable is messed up, and that's going to bork something else down the line.