Ships disappear (and performance takes a hit!)

[jgbishop]

Here's a weird bug I just ran into:

While on patrol near one of the port cities (I forget which one), I spotted two targets on radar. They both turned out to be Large Modern Tankers, heading for port. Needless to say, I was definitely excited. As I got close to them, I went to periscope depth and crept into position. When I raised up my periscope, the ships were gone! Nowhere to be seen!

I surfaced, and sure enough, there was nothing there. All the way back to my home port, performance was terrible. I couldn't increase TC past 1024, and when I checked, the game was running at 7 FPS ... even in the nav map screen!

I know that ships can disappear from the game once they've reached the end of their route (I've seen this option in the mission editor). But it is as if the game isn't unloading them properly when they disappear within visual (or audible) range, and they stay in memory the rest of the time, slowing things down as a result.

Has anyone else experienced this? It was so frustrating going back to base at such a slow pace ... took me nearly 15 minutes (real time) to do it, with no action along the way!

[gimpy117]

well you were near a port...but other than that

what are your stats and scenery settings??

[jgbishop]

I run on the "High" graphics setting at 1280 x 960 (75 Hz). Here's my hardware specs:

* Motherboard: Asus A8N5X
* CPU: AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ 2200MHz
* Memory: 2 GB of Corsair XMS DDR400 SDRAM
* Video Card: eVGA GeForce 7900GT
* Hard Drives: 2 Seagate Barracuda SATA 160.0 GB
* Sound Card: Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS
* Operating System: Windows XP Professional

I'm planning on upgrading my machine at some point in the near future, which should help overall.

[gimpy117]

hmm yeah i get 25 fps in ports (g-card is good and ram but the proc sux (64 bit single core @ 2.2GHZ and that's overclocked!))
so i doubt it's tyour card or anything

i was just thinking you wrre trying to run it on very low specs

[-Pv-]

Are you sure they were radar contacts and not just HQ position reports? The position reports get old and the targets might have moved on by the time you got there. If you note their direction, you can sometimes intercept them by following ahead of the projected track.
-Pv-

[jgbishop]

I could physically see both large tankers on the surface, and I was maneuvering into position to get a good shot at both of them. As soon as I went under and then raised my periscope, I noted that both ships had disappeared. I also feel like this is the second time this has happened to me, though I don't really recall the exact setup the previous time this happened.

What's doubly odd is that the sound contact remained, though it didn't change its location. It eventually faded out. I think both tankers must have reached their destination, and then got removed from the map (the mission editor has an option to do this). I would argue that ships should only be removed when A) they have reached their destination and B) they are out of visual and audible range of the player. Just my 2 cents.

[M. Sarsfield]

That's what I think happened. I know that ships won't spawn if you're within a certain distance to their spawn point. This should also be applied to ships disappearing.

[-Pv-]

Looks like a despawn then.
-Pv-

[k1l0]

in sh3 i was expecting a convoy in a port and at some point near the port the convoy diapered... i guess it docked

[keelhauled]

It's possible it could be the Philidelphia Experiment gone awry.