No fair-Game killed my crew

[XonE:32]

So I've read that saving a game can be treacherous. I guess that's what's happened here, but I'm wondering if I can edit a savegame to bring my crew back to life?

I'm on 2nd Patrol from Pearl starting Jan 4, '42 "Patrol Marshall Islands". So I luck out on the Feb 3, '42 after 30 days of nada and I find a large IJN Task Force heading SSW @12 knots. I set up for the 2 Kongos and the Shikoku Carrier. Take out the first Kongo and dive. Sneak away @ 280ft. Reaquire the fleet a few hours later & take out the second Kongo and dive. Sneak away again. Have a good line on where they're heading so I surface and set up to reaquire in a few hours for the carrier.

At this point I'd beeen playing fer hours and was gettin tired. I hear "ship spotted" and see that's a picket DD on the outskirts of the task force so I decide to have some fun before I go to bed. He hadn't spotted or attacked me at the time so I saved the game, turned to attack with the deck gun and had a running battle for about 15 minutes before I got wasted. I'm running RFB 1.52 + RSRD.

I just loaded up my savegame and all my deck crew are dead!?

So do I just have to accept this BS or even worse restart my campaign? Or is their a utility to access the savegame files?

Any thoughts would be appreciated and thanks in advance.

Regards,

XonE:32

[Wolfling04]

Did you load the correct game (ie. not the auto save) and you created your own save point correct?

Also I have heard to never save a game in the vicinity of ships, because it could possibly cause a variety of issues within the game. I've only heard this, have experienced weird game play after saving around living ships or ones i just sunk.

Now days i make it a practice to either finish what I'm doing and make sure nothing else is close when i save, havn't had any issues since

The best advice I have is restart from the auto save "Leaving Port" or whatever it is and acquire the Task force all over again.

sry bud

unless its a scripted (ie not random but something generated to be there at a time and place for realism) you most likely wont see the same thing twice or even any trafffic in that same area twice because its like a slot machine when it decides what to generate and where and when. using rsrdc its likely you have a 25% chance you will see the task force at the same spot because those are most often scripted.

[Clyde00]

Saving while submerged and while in the vicinity of ships is always a gamble.

Do you have multiple save files?

If so you might be able to cut & paste from the crewslots in the saved file. I think you could modify their health stats back to 1.000000 and damage to 0.00000

Haven't tried this but you should be able to cntl+f and find the names of the crew in wordpad or notepad.

The file is the activeuserplayerunits in my documents\sh4\data\cfg\savegames\(2nd recent save)

Hopefully this works.

Forgot to add for above that it is a .upc file. Open with notepad\wordpad\notepad+ or whatever you use for .txt files

Also sometimes when starting, there will be an upcintial folder under the save file. I have used this to change gameplay and to check on career settings but never tried to resurrect dead crewmembers. Good luck with this. Maybe someone else has more info?

[XonE:32]

Thanks all for the replies. It IS appreciated. I'll try and be detailed in case anyone else runs into this or someone smarter than me can figure out what f@ck happened.

THE MAIN POINTS:
1)The problem is (or was in this case) a recoverable one.
2)Saving your game can be more frickin' dangerous than the damn IJN.

In this case (and hopefully if it happens to anyone else) it WAS/IS recoverable WITHOUT EDITING the .upc's. In fact, I'm not even 100% sure editing the .upc files will help for dead crew? If it does work I don't know how to do it. I have UltraEdit and it's great for comparing files side by side among other things. I looked at both the activeplayerunits.upc files from my borked save and compared them with each other and compared those with other saves where nothing was borked in the sub or the save file. I saw NO health issues with the crew in ANY of files. I DID see damage issues (for some compartments) with my borked save. This is important later on. Anyway I compared it to a save where the sub was in perfect condition and used those values (i.e. 0.00000 for damage and repair time etc.). I loaded up the borked save and my Deck crew was still dead and the compartments still damaged.

QUICK RECAP:
1) I'm running SH4 1.5 + RFB 1.52 + RSRD for RFB
2) I was surfaced and out visual range from the destoyer (i.e. my watch crew saw him, but he hadn't seen me). So technically i was in sensor ranger which is bad when saving I hear.
3) This is the point when I saved and then I decided to have gun fight for fun before headin' to bed.
4) Minor point- Autosave? Didn't know SH4 had one. I always do a save from the menu and title it.
5) In my search to find out what the hell happened I did find a post on the UBI forums regarding saving your game that echos much of what many of you have said in your posts. I knew saving could be treacherous as I mentioned in my first post, but I didn't know the specifics. So I now know not to save while submerged, not to save within sensor range (mine or enemies), and to save while in the control room. I'll remember those.

The missing piece of the puzzle... I think.

6) I left a critical piece of info out of my first post. Although I wasn't submerged and I was out of range of the destroyer, but he was within my sensor range; The important thing I didn't mention in my first post was that I WAS damaged.

I had forgotten that during one of my attacks on the 2nd Kongo while submerged I had taken moderate damage to the MAIN DECK via Depth Charges. Periscope shears, and the AA gun were slightly damaged and the Radio Antenna had a "1" for damage. I assume the "1" means it's destroyed in RFB? When mousing over the words "Main Deck" on the crew management screen it said 100/100. I'm not 100% sure what that means, but I assume it means the MAIN DECK is 100% damaged??

Anyhoo, I saved the game with my main deck in that condition and my watch crew in their watch slots.

I read the manual for RFB and there is some info in it regarding damage etc.. and "rigging for depth charges" which I do, but I didn't see anything in there about the fact that if your MAIN DECK is damaged and you save with a watch crew in their slots while o the surface they'll all be dead when you reload lol. I don't think that happens all the time either (i.e. I don't necessarily believe that RFB is bugged, but something odd is happening here). I thought it more likely it was a confluence of the deck damage + crews in those slots + the fact I was within sensor range of the destroyer at the time I saved the game??

THE SIMPLE FIX: (took all of two minutes after all that text editing and comparing.)

1)I loaded up the borked game with my dead watch crew.
2)I moved the dead dudes to the empty Hogan's Alley slots and a few to other undamaged parts of the sub.
3)Got out of sensor range of anything.
4)Remained surfaced.
4)Went to the the control room screen when out of range.
5)Saved the game as TEST (not necessary, but I was testing lol)
6)Reloaded the TEST save and *poof* all the "Red Deadies" were alive and well.

IMPORTANT NOTE:
At this point I thought, "Great it must have beeen because I was within sensor range of the destroyer". The damage to the main deck had not entered into my mind as an issue at all... YET.

I put the healthy Watch guys back into their slots on the still damaged MAIN DECK (remember, I'm surfaced and out of range of anything). I went to the Control Room screen and saved the game under my regular save file Patrol_2_Feb03_42 or some such. I reloaded that save and *poof*, the guys were all dead again.

So I repeated 1-6 above and reloaded and *poof* they were all alive again.

I then decided to say "piss on this" and I headed back to Pearl.

BEFORE I DOCKED I made sure to hit REFUEL AND REARM in order to make sure the boat got completely fixed. Only AFTER the boat was FULLY repaired was I brave enough to put the watch guys in their slots on the MAIN DECK and save the game. I reloaded that save (i.e. boat repaired and watch crew on the main deck) and sure enough everyone was alive and well. Only then did I hit the "Dock" icon and choose "End Patrol". Once in the office I went to the crew managament section and saw everyone was thankfully still alive.

Hopefully when I start patrol 3 they won't all be dead.
I'd like them to be able to enjoy the fact we sank 2 Kongos and a Shakoku(<spelling?) Carrier.

Regards,

XonE:32

[Stealhead]

If I decide need to make a save at a risky point I will make another file name so if something fubars I wont have lost everything. Besides doing that dont know what else to say.