Since the game is giving me no indication where I can home-port, the plan is to stop at every still-existing base until I find one where I can "end patrol."


I'd like to snag a Type XXI to finish out the war, if possible.


I do get repairs, fuel, and ammo at each stop though so it could be worse.




Historically, I should now be part of the 33d Flotilla based at Flensburg. But I couldn't end patrol there :(

If you stay out on patrol in the IXB, and miss the transfer to a IXC, you then become the Flying Ductchman, and can never end patrol... that is the nature of the game when a submarine "dies"...

No, I got a Type IXC. Then when I was out on patrol, Lorient fell, now I can't home-port anywhere.

Maybe Propbeanie could explain how to tweak the file for giving an harbor base temporarily :06:

If not, I'll just wander until the war's over. Only a few more months.


A real U-boat crew would be lucky to be alive at this point.


Talk about driving home the bleakness of the real war. :(

if you are driving a IXC out of Lorient after 9/1/44, Flensburg should be your new base. Flensburg will be in business from June 44 until the end of the war.
what date is it as you travel from base to base?

Re: OME:DW's, UBM question...
 

Just out of curiosity Fifi... :hmmm: , would it be possible to take the pacific uboat missions in the original SH4WotP:UBM's... and incorporate them into Dark Waters.?

I wouldn't mind being able to see of doing a career in that area, as a change of pace from the Atlantic theater :yep: & would imagine that there would be others who would be, as well. I can't speak for them of course, just Myself.

M. M.

:Kaleun_Salute:

jumping in here to help Fifi............

Max, you CAN drive a Uboat in the Indian Ocean with Dark Waters.
Starting in October 1943, you can start a career with a IXC or IXD out of Penang and then in 1944, Djakarta is available.
Stock-Uboat has only a IXD to start a career so this would be an enhancement.
Good luck!
:Kaleun_Salute:

Oh yeah, thanks Marco! I’m not that much on SH4 forum actually... Cause i fall in love with an SH3 megamod.

Sure you can play pacific/Indian theater in DW (even if i never did myself though)
Could be interesting...dunno what Lurker managed with this campaign.

and which mega mod would that be Fifi?

Onealex megamod :03:

Well, I left Lorient some time before 9/1/44. I don't have my save from just before leaving base (I delete oldest ones as I go) but I do remember being out at sea, probably on the way to or back from Australia, when Lorient went away.



It is now February 1945. Flensburg does not let me "end patrol." No tilted anchor symbol.


I contacted HQ for more orders. Still didn't give me a home port.

wow. that is so odd. your flot should have automagically transferred to Flensburg.
that's a glitsch because i tested that and it worked...at one time.:timeout:
well....crap.
i am not sure what will happen in May 1945. i suspect that the war will end while you are at sea and you will receive a screen stating same.

Are you being assigned to Australian missions from Lorient, or are you going there on your own? It almost sounds like you either hadn't deleted the Save folder data before starting with a DW career, or that you have bad Save data in the folder. I also tested Lorient transfers (as well as too many others to remember), and never had the issues as you describe. If you stay out in a IXB too long, and don't make it back to Lorient before it ends on 1st September, 1944, then you have no way to "transfer" to the IXC boat, which goes to 33Flot, Flensburg which "opens" on 15 June, 1944 and has a IXC set to NULL, NULL which means it is available its whole life. The Far East boats are the IXC/40, and the IXD2 - that's it. You only either start there, or transfer down if using the Lorient start in June of 1943, with a proper boat. The Bordeaux IXD2 does not go Op Monsun, but to Flensburg. Penang starts in October 1943, and transfers to Djakarta in September of 1944, and you can play there until the war ends for Germany.

If you are being assigned Australian or Indian Ocean missions from Lorient, that means you are falling through the cracks in OM / DW and being assigned Stock missions, which are some strange assignments. But an assignment to Down Under from anywhere in the game other than the Far East commands means there is a problem in your game set-up. If you get a photo recon or deliver supplies, even if in Penang or Djakarta, that means you were assigned a Stock mission, and that should not happen in OM / DW, and is a sign of an issue that needs to be addressed.

That's right, I was assigned an Australia mission out of Lorient not once but twice (or was it 3 times?). Twice in a row, then immediately after upgrading to a IXC.


Same missions where the mission orders were in French. It's now late February 1945 and I've seen a few radio messages in French as well.


I didn't re-use any earlier saves, I started a fresh career in 1939 (out of Wilhelmshaven in a Type IX).

:hmmm: Let me dig through the PatrolObjectives, Flotillas, and the individual assignments you would be assigned for that flotilla then. Only a transfer down, or assignment while at Penang or Djakarta should result in those Australian assignments, and even at that, they should not be the Stock missions. That's like receiving an East China Sea assignment each time out on the US side. That is the "fail-safe" for if there is a bad assignment made, to keep from getting "Primary objective not found" error messages. Of course, I have found other ways to induce the game into that comatose state with FotRSU... :roll: :o

That's probably where the trouble you have lies... :salute:

Update: OK WH4K, I think I found the crack in the floor that your career fell through. In the old OM, of which 95% of the DW campaign came from, under the IXA boat are three calls for the boat to use the SPAIN code to find missions in PatrolObjectives. However, it looks like the 2nd one has a typo for the year, so there is an overlap of the SPAIN calls. That can cause problems. Then to throw salt in the wound, the Patrol Objectives has seven calls to missions, but there are only six missions. Mission 2 repeats, which is not good, and is probably what caused you to fall through to the "default" Australia assignments group. The "easy" fix is to add a 7th mission to the SPAIN calls. However, the true fix is to remove the extra call for Spain-2... Of course, that is no easy task in the DW PatrolObjectives file, with all of the renumbering that would be involved :o - This hole has been in there for who knows how long, but it is a double-whammy and is probably why your Save data is corrupt. I am not certain if you want to mess with the Save data, but in your latest Save, you could attempt to alter CareerTrack.upc file and change the CurrentStatusLast section's CurrentFlotilla= and CurrentFlotillaBase= lines to 33Flotilla and F14Flensburg and see if that works, but back-up the entire Save folder before you try that. There are other "hooks" to your current base and flotilla, and that is the easiest reference to find. Maybe someone else knows more about Save folder edits and could better help you, because I would put at least a 50-50 on failure after the edit...

your fix should work.
the only issue would come from the fact that you are making changes to the CareerTrack during a mission...that action is always risky.
but, hey, it is only a game. try it.

BTW, what-the-h is SPAIN code?
:Kaleun_Salute:

FWIW, the edits only work if you do them in 2 places.


Within the folder for a given savegame (e.g. \Documents\SH4\data\cfg\SaveGames\00000024) there is a further folder called UPCInitial.


You must edit the CareerTrack.upc found in both this folder, and the parent one (00000024 in this case) to successfully change homebase.


However, it doesn't really work. Though I get the tilted anchor at Flensburg, when I try to head back there the game crashes.

I suspected as much... there might be another instance of the home port, or maybe it's the "CurrentSDepartureDescription=", which is the longitude and latitude of the place you start from at that particular base. However, the CareerTrack file uses "scientific" notation for the big numbers, and I am not at all familiar with converting the numbers to that. You might also have to mess with the

[CareerTrack 1.CareerStatusSave X]
ID=ID
Reason=CSS_FlotillaChange
NameDisplayable=
CurrentDate=1939-09-01 15:00:00
FlotillaIDLink=2Flotilla

[CareerTrack 1.CareerStatusSave X+1 ??]
ID=ID
Reason=CSS_BaseChange
NameDisplayable=
CurrentDate=1939-09-01 15:00:00
BaseIDLink=F4Wilhelmshaven

and I don't know if you'll find others of that or not. I also do not know how the "X" and "X+1" work, and if they would be before or after your last Save. I cannot find a "Transfer" in any of my Save folders... I have seen them, but never did pay much attention to the info... :salute:

Did some experimenting.


If I only change the block at the beginning of the savegame file (CurrentFlotilla= and CurrentFlotillaBase=) to reflect the 33d and Flensburg rather than the 2d and Lorient, I can load the savegame, but it crashes almost instantly once I start moving the boat. Or within a minute or two, if I remain at anchor.


I tried adding blocks to the end of the file, reflecting changes of flotilla and base (e.g. Reason=CSS_BaseChange) but those saves always crashed the game when I tried to load them.



"CurrentSDepartureDescription=" does not appear to be latitude and longitude in any standard, real-world format.



Suspect the coordinates are based on game "cells." Open-ish-world games like this one often use such regions to calculate what's happening. E.g., once you leave a cell, its state is saved and things are not being simulated "live" while you are away, to reduce processing load. Only the area immediately around your boat is "live." Just guessing though, based on what I've seen in other sims.


Another thing I don't get: near the top of the CareerTrack.upc file is "CurrentDate=1944-09-01 00:00:00" This is most definitely not the current time and date within the game when I saved, so I don't know what that field is supposed to show.