Sinking ships in port
 

By experience I have found that as soon as I start sinking ships at port a number of unwanted side-effects WILL occur soon thereafter.

1. Strange external camera behavior.
I do have TMO installed enabled but I re-enabled the external cam. The cam fails to focus on any target whatsoever and returns errors like "out of sector" at all sorts of weird angles.

2. Performance degradation.
Especially noticeable during time compression >x1024. Frame rate gets choppy.

3. Strange behavior upon loading a game.
Whenever one or more of the above has already occurred and a game is saved and reloaded the game immediately applies what seems to be random damage to one or more (sub)systems. The damage can be repaired.

4. Crashes.
When I continue the patrol despite above errors the game also starts to crash at changing camera views (like pericope to bioculars). Memory leaks also seem to occur according to the task manager. At around 1.6Gig the game reliably crashes. Enabling LAA flag in the .exe does not seem to avoid this crash.

After ending a patrol the above seems to reliably fix itself. I can reliably replicate any and all of the above behaviors at any point during the pacific campaign. Sinking a few stationary ships at port is all it takes.

So now I don't sink ships at port anymore and it's not a big deal. This post is to inform those with similar game behavior what the cause may be. :salute:

It's a matter of course!
 

Objects in ports have many bugs, like cockroaches, flyes. Do not be too close!

It seems your doing many things that contribute to your own errors.

Many learned years ago that saving near large groups of vessels can cause corrupt saves. You just do not do it. Also adding a mod then changing an aspect of it can give you game play issues if you have not adjust all factors from the resulting item that you change.

Time compression is fine over long distance with little shipping traffic but around ports and convoys it is always taught that it should be avoided. Another issue that causes compression issues is what you have running on your computer along with the game. Sure we have better CPUs and ram these days but with the added load of OS's your still going to get compression issues from a game that is around 20 years old playing on a new system.

Of course if you have saved a game where you have deliberately put yourself in a situation where compression or large item mapping has to be saved your asking for trouble. It is one of the first things people are told to avoid doing when saving at sea. It is not an issue saving at port but when you pull up along side a convoy of 34 merchants and 10 escorts there is no guarantee that every single lat and longitude, speed, draft, where the wave was, where the smoke was and all of those other factors of every single vessel will be saved and then reinitialized upon resuming game play. Save in bad places will get you bad saves. Many games out there have holes where a player may fall into and then be trapped in between mapped textures and then if they save it they will not be happy when they try to play again. Same goes for SH.

You should take the time to read many dos and dont of the game ... none of these items are new to players who have been at it or years.

It sounds like it would do you well to read through a few of these threads.

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=107783

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=146795

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=128517

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=131872

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/forumdisplay.php?f=222

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=158234

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=155786

Everyone one of those will have real gems in them

Indeed it seems to be so. This game seems to have quite some do's and don'ts. Thanks for the useful many links and the tips already mentioned in your post.

I run TMO, RSRD and several other mods and don't have those problems. The only time you should get an out of sector error is if you use the cam to go through the subs exterior walls.

I did play on a older system, but frames still held about 40 in ports. Now if you get around ports with lots of ships, does place a load and can slow the game down some.

I've played for years on the older system with numerous setups and as long as I use the right mod setup, never had a problem with crashes.

The out of sector issue is a normal thing for any computer game when you understand that some section are not modeled and the designers never intended anyone to go to those places.

CTD happens so rarely with the game I do not even worry about it. 99% of the time it is because of bad saves. The only time the game has thrown me out due to over load would be the one time where I got to close to Truk. Prior to a certain date if I got to close there would be multiple convoys and task forces spawning at a continuous rate. The sheer number of ships in the lagoon overloaded the game engine and crashed. I think it was only when I ran the fall of the rising sun mod too.

Harbor-Raiding...uhg! :nope:

Hey, as long as they get sunk, thats supplies the Japanese wont be getting :D

I don't see any moral issues whatsoever with sinking ships anchored at port. As long as they are bearing enemy flag in wartime in disputed territory, that makes them active participants and thus fair game according to every rule of engagement known to mankind.

Perhaps in WW2 history it didn't happen so often because of the tactical disadvantages (even pre-MAD) involved for a sub to be in shallow coastal waters. Alternatively, I cannot think of any tactical advantages in waiting until freighters leave port with DD escorts to start sinking them. Hell, sink the DD's at port FIRST and come back later for the freighters...

Apparently you skippers have never been called to the office of Admiral Armistead. :nope:

You can't tell me you've never been right around Saipan with no contact in days and thought, ''There's 50,000 tons in there...''

The Tirante sank a ammunition ship and two escourts at anchorage in the northern shore of Quelpart island. Targets were getting scarce near the end of the war. There is even a film of it.

The reason many players frown upon harbor raiding, is that the SH4 game harbors have weak and puny defenses. Both sides knew that their harbors had many valuable ships and protected them accordingly. It simply isn't realistic, the way the game allows one to waltz into a base and start sinking stuff.

I've tried to find evidence of what you say on the Net and Wiki but I can't find that much to support your claim. Which ASW defences *would* there have been at harbors like Saipan that would pose a serious threat to raiding subs even at night?

Planes had nothing but visual to go on at the start. I don't know if the Japanese had the resources to allow for continuous multiple DD patrols doing active sonar sweeps that would deter a sneaky sub raiding a port.

Also, even IF there would be well equipped ASW harbors I would assume not be ALL or even a LOT of them -barring perhaps Japanese Mainland ports- especially not at the start of the war (let's say pre '43).

History supports your claim in the sense that it didnt seem all that common. I just do not understand what the actual defences would have consisted of that would be so effective. Again, especially at the start of the war.

The way I see it there are five factors in real life missing from the game that kept WW2 skippers from just nosing into a harbor when they got bored.

Lack of good maps. The ones in the game are perfect. You even have an optimal overhead GPS view of where you are all the time. In the actual war, there often were no good maps at all. When Mush Morton made his famous recon of Wewak, he had to rely on a crude blow-up from children's atlas that one of his crew had providentially brought aboard. A serious difficulty for both sides with naval operations in the Pacific was the lack of good hydrographic charts. In some cases, the only available charts were British Admiralty charts dating from the 19th century. These were reproduced and issued by the US Navy, but often with disastrous results as they were inaccurate and out of date.

Shallow Water. In SH4, the bottom is always flat, fairly constant and in reality, featureless like a swimming pool. All those rocks you see are simply graphics there for show. You can pass right through them. It's almost impossible to run aground unless you ram the beach. In the real world, the bottom of any harbor can be a minefield of unknown obstructions. Logs, coral heads, wrecks, reefs, rocks, planted obstacles, dredging spoils, sand bars, etc. Anyone of which could damage or hole a submarine. Shallow water always tends to be more subject to treacherous tides, eddies and currents probably all of unknown strength (due to poor charts) which would be difficult for the electric motors of a submerged submarine to overcome. There are none of these in SH4. In addition a submarine is far more visible against the bottom in shallow water by aircraft.

Harbors are busy. In SH4 most harbors (even the big ones) are rather thinly populated and lifeless. In the real world major ports are a crowded hive of constant activity. There are lighters, barges, auxiliaries, coasters, yard oilers, motor boats, tenders, coastal minesweepers, ferries, tugs constantly on the move, even at night. Most happily dedicated to putting out the alert if they spot periscopes or any strange activity. The game doesn't even begin the simulate the diverse number of small craft that took part in the war in the Pacific. Most Japanese mainland ports also had a dedicated contingent of shore patrols and searchlight posts manned by men who did nothing but scan the waters day and night.

Nets. Most large harbors had them, not only at the port entrance, but often deployed around important vessels as protection against torpedoes and frogmen as well. These harbor nets had dedicated tenders who would be another obstacle to dodge. In addition, most warships had a constant patrol conducted by armed members of the crew who would man a boat and row about the anti-torpedo net in shifts to maintain them.

The Unknown. In SH4 by living multiples lives and careers you learn the AI's predictable habits and which harbors are weak. In the real event, no one had anyway of knowing what sort of nasty surprise was waiting in any particular port. The US and Allied navies often assumed that Japanese harbor defence procedures were the same as their own (after Pearl Harbor quite stringent) and acted accordingly. A US skipper thinking of penetrating an enemy anchorage had only to dwell upon the well-publicized Japanese midget submarine operations into harbors which invariably ended in either suicide or captivity with little gain. That sobering fact probably wasn't lost on him.

:sign_yeah:

I'd say that sums it up pretty well.

What a well written answer. :yeah:

Sure wouldn't want to run my sub aground in/around an enemy port...imagine the embarrassment. I'd could never go to a veteran party even if I survived the Jap prison camp.

Now I will just have to restrain myself next time I pass a harbor with a phat BB or bunch of freighters just sittin' there.

But come on man...it's like being in a strip club and having to look the other way. I wish there weren't any ships in port.

Very nicely written Dread Knot.

I thought I summed it up well too. :D