Rain Gear
 

I finally got myself into alittle nasty weather off the Solomon Isls. Sloppy seas, mostly cloudy skies, and the sound of thunder. The only thing missing was the crewmen's foul weather gear. When do they don those, in a Hurricane? I submerged the boat in the hopes that when I resurfaced, they would be wearing their gear, but no go. Similar conditions in SH3 would arouse the need for raingear. Are the parameters for raingear different in this game?

I've noticed that too, although I could swear I did see the crew wearing waterproofs once in SH4, maybe it was pre the patch, I can't be certain.

I can only assume that the lack of rain gear in SH4 simulates the men in the US Navy being a tougher breed than those in the Kreigsmarine, as they are not bothered about getting wet, which may explain why the Germans lost the war. Or erm... not.

I ran into this yesterday. Surfaced in a bad storm, with heavy rain. The officer of the deck had on rain gear, but the two lookouts didn't. Must have been hot in the boat or the captain had the sub on water rations and they needed a shower.

I have several pics of my crew wearing rain gear in bad weather, to bad I have no place to post them.....

I ran into a rainstorm while playing last night, and the entire watch crew had their rainjackets on.

Odd.

They will only wear wet weather gear when it actually rains.

That's the only time I'd wear it too !!!!! :lol:

If that's true about the crew wearing raingear only during an actual rain event, that would explain why my guys weren't wearing theirs. There was no actual rain falling.

Unless u wanna get soaked :lol:

The thing that made me wonder, is that in SH3, the wind speed if I'm not mistaken determined if the crew wore raingear, regardless if it was actually raining or not. I guess it's different in SH4.

It started raining and I noticed my watch all had raincoats on. Saved and reloaded later, still raining but no raincoats. This particular oddity is strikingly similar to the bow planes issue. Save while submerged, when it loads it doesn't know how to set the bow planes properly. Save while raining, when it loads it doesn't know how to dress the watch properly. It's like the trigger (dive -> deploy bow planes; starts raining -> put on raincoats) is missing when you load an existing condition.

That sounds like the problem that SH3 has. You could save a game during rain, with your crew in raingear, but when you reload the save, the rain is still happening, but the crew is without the raingear. You need to drag them inside, then repost them so they will be wearing the raingear again.

Seems to be worse than the problem SH3 had though - just ran into this myself - last night the guys had their rain gear on, then I saved and fired it up again today - no rain gear. I tried dragging the watch guys into the damage control and back - no rain gear. I tried diving, ran all night, surfaced after dawn - still raining, but no rain gear. Tried Battle Stations - no rain gear. I'm waiting for a shift/watch change - hoping maybe the next guys will have a little more sense and be wearing their rain gear when they come on watch. With 15m/s winds and driving rain in mid December near Formosa, it just doesn't seem right to see these guys up there in their shirtsleeves. :nope:

I've seen all my watch crew but the one closest to me on the bridge wearing rain gear in a huge downpour. I guess he was the stubborn one.:lol:

Aha - never mind - it is a different same problem as we had in SH3 - I noticed when I asked for a weather report that, although the graphic shows it raining heavily, the NA is reporting no precipitation - so, the game doesn't think it's raining (although it's displaying the rain graphic) and therefore doesn't think the watch crew need their rain gear. I used to see this fairly often in SH3.

On a related point, I guess that maybe the American subs ride higher than the German U-boats did, so even at these wind speeds you don't get the waves crashing over the crew on the US boats like you did in the U-boats, which may explain why the SH4 crew only dons their gear when the game thinks it's raining, and not in high winds like in SH3.