The more I read about these save game issues the more I think they are going to ruin my SH3 experience. Like Prowler3 I very much have a real life and I generally only get to play for a few hours each week. Last week I had a destroyer over my head for two hours (real time) on TC32 after attacking a convoy in the Naval Academy, let alone a real career.

Being the Academy (and since both my periscopes had been destroyed already) I just hit <escape> and went to bed, but in career mode I'd have had to tough it out. I can't see how I could have got myself to a convenient point 50km away from anything so I could safely surface just to save the game (getting the destroyer 5km away would have been nice). Basically, if I get myself in a pickle when I'm in career mode I'm going to have to save when submerged and with DC's raining down.

Leaving the PC on in pause mode isn't an option either, as I spend several days away from home at at stretch and I don't want my PC on while I am away.

Are my career aspirations FUBAR'd before I even leave port? I find it amazing that Ubisoft let such a massive bug remain in the game.

Just make a bunch of saves. The CTDs are mostly random chance, so with 10 saves, you should be fine. If you are going out in an hour, save every 5 minutes and load the latest one when you want to play again. If it doesn't work, go back a save.

If you follow some of the suggestions listed above, ie. saving on the surface, the 50km rule, etc. you should minimize the risk of a ctd. Unfortunately I don't believe that there is a 100% effective solution to this problem. Each of us has had different experiences playing both stock & GWX (don't know about the other mods as I've never played them).

It's one of my biggest peeves with the game; having to find an empty spot to save after an hour or so of playing. I don't know how many times that I've found a supposedly "safe" place only to have an aircraft or ship suddenly spawn near by.:damn: Like I said before, there's no hard & fast rule to prevent this problem. You just have to get used to it.

I must be living right or something.....:cool:
In the past, I've broken every rule listed above fairly often due to a lot of CTD's caused by overheating issues and had only one corrupted save.
I've cut back the number of times I save now after getting my CTD issues worked out and I try to save keeping all the above rules in mind, but I do break them occasionally and have not had any problems.....yet.
(Excuse me while I go looking for place to knock on wood.)

:)

My careers are generally stable too. I've come to the conclusion that save game crashes are a fact of life with SH3. Sooner or later they happen to everyone & there's nothing you can do to completely eliminate the risk of them.

Basically I only save between 1400-1515 local game time. But first I consult a voodoo priestess who comes to my house spits rum on my cpu and wipes the monitor down with a bloody chicken foot. Its messy but it helps.

Also make sure that Mars and Mercury are close to being aligned. And read your horoscope.

Don't forget to rub your lucky rabbits foot.

But really.. <looks around> <whispers> "I think its ghosts in the machine."

You know what?
There are ghosts in the machine!
After posting in this thread yesterday, I had my first corrupt save file in a year today, had to return to in base before mission:timeout:

The gremlins are just waiting for that special moment and then:woot: