How did you get a Gar as your first commission anyhow ?


Yes I know you picked it but from a "roleplay" aspect (shrug).

Moral of the story: don't get your boat so banged up. You can't drive over a few powerups and magically have your "health" restored to 100 pts.

As with reality, some damage can't be repaired, and the boat gets scrapped.

That makes sense. I know they made a crapload of those diesel subs so the decision to scrap one must not have been a hard one to make.

I can only think of one or two boats that were so damaged they had to be scrapped.

Look at it this way,they have to send your Gar back to the States for a full repair job and they don't want to keep you out of action for as long as the repair job would take so they transfered you to the first available boat.

Your exec gets the Gar and gets to party in San Francisco for a few months while you get to go back out and risk your neck again.

Classic... :rotfl:

Well Sir,

Getting my boat banged up was not exactly my idea. You see, there were these Japanese gentlemen who seemed to take umbrage at my decreasing the buoyancy of some of their cargo ships.


They were awfully decent about it. They just wanted to chat about it. However, I was preoccupied with checking my trim at depth and running a silent running drill for the crew that I neglected to pay my respects to the convoy commander. Awfully sorry old chap!


Well those Japanese blokes wanted to send me a little something for the occasion. They were all carefully wrapped in metal drums, but something went wrong with them. Every time they got close to my submarine, they exploded. Must have been shotty workmanship what with the war being on.


Well, it started getting a little wet and noisy for my good so I waited until darkness and then surfaced for a breather. I guess the chaps got tired of waiting so I went home.


Believe me, if it were up to me, I would rather have forgone the damage to my submarine.


However, I will take your advice on my next patrol. Thanks for sharing. :)

4 warpatrols with a clean sweep...then failure????
 

I started in the asiatic arena and on my first war patrol came home with empty torpedo rooms and 9 ships sunk for around 43000 tons.

My 2nd war patrol, again empty torpedo rooms with 9 ships sunk for 45000 tons. Was trying like hell to get 10. At the end of that war patrol I noticed manila was taken by the japs and I had to go to Surabaya to end patrol.

My 3rd war patrol with a new boat, again empty torpedo rooms with 10 ships sunk for 46000 tons. My boat is rapidly running out of brooms for the periscope when we pull in.

** My only gripe with these patrol was I was given the victory medal (medal of honor) when it should have been a lower award and I'm thinking about revisiting my medal mod and going back to the previous version I had. Wasn't perfect but it worked.**

NOW THE KICKER: I end up transferred to Pearl where I start out at and head back to the celebes sea. Right away I run into a convoy where I sink a destroyer on a snap shot as she appeared out of no where at night. I get the objectives to focus on convoy escorts so that re attacks on the convoy could be achieved. I end up sinking 2 more destroyers and have nothing but ships around me. Conserving torpedos for short accurate shots I end up sinking, damaging enough so they won't go no where and can be finished with deck gun later, and ultimately battle surfacing and sinking the entire convoy for 13 ships at 67000 tons. On my way back I get bomb twice by airplanes. Even though radar is installed I get no fore warning and recieve damage on both occasions so that I have to emergency surface, fight off the planes while making emergence repairs which I am successful.

I pull into port...get 2 medals and a note stating because of my less the noteworthy achievements I am retired early. :huh:

Was it the plane attacks? Or was I suppose to NOT sink the blipping convoy? Anyone else have similar sea stories?

That simulates the admiral getting drunk and making foolish decisions.


Just kidding, it sounds like a bug, the patch team is aware of it. What I do is start a new career in the year the old one ended, and then add the totals at war's end. ;)

Isn't that bug caused when you get a Gato class before it should be officially available? I think if you get a Gato before it should be available the game ends your career at the very same date the Gato is introduced into service.

I think that happends, only if you forget to change the dates on the "patrol planner" for want of a better term. In every flotilla, each boat has a specified date its introduced, and a list of patrols that are sort of planned out based on date. If you forget to change the introduction date, and/or the date on the patrol assigments, then ya, you get an early career ending.

On a side note, the boat introduction date into a flotilla, also dictates when you can transfer to that flotilla with that boat type.

Soon as I got the Balao out of Brisbane, I pulled some damage from a freighter during deck gunnery. Not bad. Couldn't dock anywhere but Freemantle. Pulled in and got retired.

So, I'm on a new career. Because I was hesitant to start over in '41 and run into the same bug again, I just started in '44.

I also noticed that during that last patrol in the Balao, the game was taking a long time to load. Both to the main menu, and into the game engine (4 minutes). It normally opens in 15 (intro menu) and 30 seconds (save load).

You are a nagging troll, just pay your money and shut yer mouth.

Just kidding!

The career mode is perhaps the biggest bug that seemingly wont ever be fixed.

Im guessing the devs looked at one of the most rewarding aspects of SH3, the crew management and advancement feature, and decided it was simply just too good for decadent American scum to have, so they borked into oblivion.

Forced Career Termination
 

The career structure of SH3 was "open ended", thus allowing for a great degree of variation such as port, boat, crew, equipment, year, etc etc. Thus adding to overall playability as well as replay value.

Now, with SH4 we have a hideous forced career structure that severely limits playability and virtually obliterates replayability.

Now, the standard fare among the subsim forum apologists is "The average US sub commander did 5 patrols" or some such bunk.

Be that as it may, we must therefore assume that should all things be equal, SH4 should behave much like SH3.

Ive been waiting for one of the self-appointed "experts" here to clarify this, but Ive waited long enough so Ill do it myself.

Please review the following information on German uboat commanders, with special note to amount of patrols.

Weight this carefully against the theory that "if it aint broke, dont fix it". Then lets remind the dev's this is an issue that needs to be fixed...immediately.

Karl-Friedrich Merten = 5 patrols

Georg Lassen = 4 patrols

Carl Emmermann = 5 patrols

Ernst Kals = 5 patrols

Helmut Witte = 4 patrols

Günter Hessler = 3 patrols

Ernst Bauer = 5 patrols

Reinhard Hardegen = 5 patrols

Werner Hartmann = 4 patrols

Richard Zapp = 5 patrols

Victor Oehrn = 4 patrols

Erwin Rostin = 2 patrols

Hans Ludwig Witt = 3 patrols

I’ve had quite a good time in the 3 careers I’ve played so far. Just this weekend was my first ever CTD, and from the sounds of it, it’s the corrupt save game bug that is held over for SH3. Nothing going back to an earlier save won’t fix.

For a game that has just now been out for a month, saying “It won’t ever get fixed” is quite a bold statement, not to mention a very negative one.
As one of those “American scum,” I didn’t have a single problem with crew management in SH3. However I found it unrealistic for the captain of a U-boat to tell the crew when to go to bed. SH4’s watch system is more inline with how it was done historically. Also SH4’s handling of promoting and awarding medals to the crew is handled exactly the same as it was in SH3.

Looks like the average german skipper did 5 patrols.

What exactly is your problem? I support making "realistic career length" an option ... love this feature in SH3 Commander. Think it ought to be tweaked and the end screens fixed though.

Perhaps more but this is not a comprehensive list.

Regardless, SH3 allowed the player to run from the first day of the war to the last day of the war regardless of what German uboat commanders faced in reality.

But in SH4, players are forced to -/+ 5 patrols, or less depending on year and boat.

I strongly suggest the devs add a little box in the realism section that says "Realistic Career Length".

I agree, and option box would be a great way to handle this. In the mean time, what I've done is just start a new career in the year of when I was retired and pretend I'm transferred to new construction or a new boat.

A little off topic: Wasn't there already a thread discussing this topic already? I remember reading one late last week.

German kaleuns were forced to do more patrols since the Kriegsmarine was losing more than what could be replaced. As for your list, at least 1 of them, Hardegen, was retired due to health problems.

If you'd crack a book and learn a little history (or as you call it "some such bunk"), you'd know that Lockwood was big on giving his skippers leave after 4 or 5 patrols so as to keep them fresh. Many of them were bumped up the chain after just a few patrols. Imagine that, a sub simulation that actually simulates what happened.

Do I agree that "realistic career length" should be an option? Sure.

Looks the same to me. So what is the issue? That SH3 lets you go up to 15 unrealistic patrols or that part of the game does not matter to your style of game play? I'm not sure what you are attempting to have fixed here.

A discussion last week on this basically amounted to having the option to continue on or end it there. Players choice.