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Ubotatflip · 05-30-20, 02:08 AM

Dear Subsim Friends,

this is my first post in this community. I was recently introduced to the genre of Submarine Simulations through Silent Hunter IV and I feel I've been missing out all my life!

I spent a few days reading these forums and watching videos on YouTube to familiarize myself with the game. After getting pretty confident with manual targeting in the tutorial missions, I decided to start my first real Career. Imagine my dismay when the game started slowing down and crashing from the Nav map a few hours into my first patrol.

I am playing the Steam Version, vannilla SH4 with the Uboat expansion/patch (1.5.). No mods installed.

In the beginning, all went well, even if things were a bit uneventful. I completed my mission to patrol off the Japanese Coast and sank two small merchant ships with my deck cannons.

My next assignment was to move to the East Chinese Sea. On the way I would always encounter this large convoy. However, whenever I got close to it on the Nav map, the time compression would becomme unbearably laggy for anything greater than 32x. Eventually the game would CTD if I got too close to the convoy. I tried reloading earlier saves but it didn't help.

Reading the troubleshooting threads on SubSim i reckoned this must be a problem with the 2GB RAM limitation. Maybe the game couldn't handle large convoys on the campaign map due to memory issues, after all this was the first large convoy in my first career! So I tried both the 4GB patch and LLA hoping this would solve the problem, but no dice! The game would still eventually crash, although it would allow me to come a little closer to the convoy than previously. I even moved the game and my entire Steam installation out of Program Files and reapplied the patches, but still no luck.

I ran the Process Memory Monitor and noticed that the game didnt use more than 1,4 GB of RAM at any moment of crashing. So it dawned on me that this might be no related to the 2GB RAM issue per se! The 4GB/LAA patch might work correctly, but the problem was not directly connected to limited memory, because plenty was still available!.

Anyways, yesterday I managed to get into periscope range of that convoy by only using 1x time compression. Imagine my surprise when I saw an endless convoy of 50, 60 maybe 70 destroyers, all of the same class. They were all over the horizon, truly a sight to behold! What was even stranger, I couldn't lock to any of the ships with my periscope, although coming in range of approx. 4000 yards. None of the ships showed up on the nav map either. This seemed rather fishy so I started googling "silent hunter iv massive destroyer convoy" and sure enough, I'm not the first one to encounter this bug, as evidenced by this thread.

If Alt-Tabbing can really spawn these copy/paste monster convoys, than this could be the cause in my case, because I have been Alt-Tabbing extensively. I will avoid that in the future.

So far, I've been trying to circumvent the convoy and the game is working. I noticed that once I got close too it and the TC would become super laggy, my current game was unsalvagable. Even moving away from the convoy wouldn't help against the massive lag and eventual CTD.

Right now I'm just relieved that I found the apparent source of my issues. I'm currently close to a "real" convoy and so far the game is stable. Planning my attack today in the evening.

05-30-20, 02:08 AM	#23
Ubotatflip Nub Join Date: May 2020 Posts: 4 Downloads: 2 Uploads: 0	Dear Subsim Friends, this is my first post in this community. I was recently introduced to the genre of Submarine Simulations through Silent Hunter IV and I feel I've been missing out all my life! I spent a few days reading these forums and watching videos on YouTube to familiarize myself with the game. After getting pretty confident with manual targeting in the tutorial missions, I decided to start my first real Career. Imagine my dismay when the game started slowing down and crashing from the Nav map a few hours into my first patrol. I am playing the Steam Version, vannilla SH4 with the Uboat expansion/patch (1.5.). No mods installed. In the beginning, all went well, even if things were a bit uneventful. I completed my mission to patrol off the Japanese Coast and sank two small merchant ships with my deck cannons. My next assignment was to move to the East Chinese Sea. On the way I would always encounter this large convoy. However, whenever I got close to it on the Nav map, the time compression would becomme unbearably laggy for anything greater than 32x. Eventually the game would CTD if I got too close to the convoy. I tried reloading earlier saves but it didn't help. Reading the troubleshooting threads on SubSim i reckoned this must be a problem with the 2GB RAM limitation. Maybe the game couldn't handle large convoys on the campaign map due to memory issues, after all this was the first large convoy in my first career! So I tried both the 4GB patch and LLA hoping this would solve the problem, but no dice! The game would still eventually crash, although it would allow me to come a little closer to the convoy than previously. I even moved the game and my entire Steam installation out of Program Files and reapplied the patches, but still no luck. I ran the Process Memory Monitor and noticed that the game didnt use more than 1,4 GB of RAM at any moment of crashing. So it dawned on me that this might be no related to the 2GB RAM issue per se! The 4GB/LAA patch might work correctly, but the problem was not directly connected to limited memory, because plenty was still available!. Anyways, yesterday I managed to get into periscope range of that convoy by only using 1x time compression. Imagine my surprise when I saw an endless convoy of 50, 60 maybe 70 destroyers, all of the same class. They were all over the horizon, truly a sight to behold! What was even stranger, I couldn't lock to any of the ships with my periscope, although coming in range of approx. 4000 yards. None of the ships showed up on the nav map either. This seemed rather fishy so I started googling "silent hunter iv massive destroyer convoy" and sure enough, I'm not the first one to encounter this bug, as evidenced by this thread. If Alt-Tabbing can really spawn these copy/paste monster convoys, than this could be the cause in my case, because I have been Alt-Tabbing extensively. I will avoid that in the future. So far, I've been trying to circumvent the convoy and the game is working. I noticed that once I got close too it and the TC would become super laggy, my current game was unsalvagable. Even moving away from the convoy wouldn't help against the massive lag and eventual CTD. Right now I'm just relieved that I found the apparent source of my issues. I'm currently close to a "real" convoy and so far the game is stable. Planning my attack today in the evening.