Sinking for no reason

[Loudspeaker]

I would like to call myself an experienced player having played this game for years. But now I have run into a very annoying problem, which I have never seen before. When submerged in hostile waters, I sometimes just sink and die. It has happened to me twice in a row, ending two careers the same way, and this made me suspect that a bug is causing this. Here is what happens:

During day time and having no air warning system I dive to 90 feet and keep it going there untill nightfall, where I will submerge and recharge batteries. Much to my surprise, I just sink without any warnings of any kind. The hull just takes severe damage at the 90 feet depth. It's like the boat just crushes like a piece of paper. I don't know for sure, if I was attacked, but it seems very unlikely. It happened to me in an S-boat in my previous career and just right now in a Gar-class submarine (time compression 512).

The only changes on my computer have been a damned and unwanted upgrading from Windows 7 to 10, but my mods are still the same as always:

RFB 2.0 along with RSRD.

It is a mystery to me what is happening. What is wrong?

[Taucheisen]

Maybe you hit a mine? There are lots of them after September 1942 (Stock 1.5)

[cdrsubron7]

Originally Posted by Loudspeaker

I would like to call myself an experienced player having played this game for years. But now I have run into a very annoying problem, which I have never seen before. When submerged in hostile waters, I sometimes just sink and die. It has happened to me twice in a row, ending two careers the same way, and this made me suspect that a bug is causing this. Here is what happens:

During day time and having no air warning system I dive to 90 feet and keep it going there untill nightfall, where I will submerge and recharge batteries. Much to my surprise, I just sink without any warnings of any kind. The hull just takes severe damage at the 90 feet depth. It's like the boat just crushes like a piece of paper. I don't know for sure, if I was attacked, but it seems very unlikely. It happened to me in an S-boat in my previous career and just right now in a Gar-class submarine (time compression 512).

The only changes on my computer have been a damned and unwanted upgrading from Windows 7 to 10, but my mods are still the same as always:

RFB 2.0 along with RSRD.

It is a mystery to me what is happening. What is wrong?

After making the upgrade from Win 7 to 10 are you using the same install of SH4 or do a complete fresh install and start over?

[propbeanie]

Originally Posted by cdrsubron7

After making the upgrade from Win 7 to 10 are you using the same install of SH4 or do a complete fresh install and start over?

'zactly... and your "Saves" might be toast too...

[torpedobait]

I leave the free camera available, and after one of the sudden sinking events I reloaded a save and used the camera to check the waters around me, near the southern end of Formosa Strait. I found it loaded with mines! I'm sure there are many other areas similarly mined. Ducimus got me!

[Rockin Robbins]

There is no safety in diving during the day and surfacing at night to recharge batteries. And you will develop only 1/4 of the targets you would have developed, had you remained on the surface.

It's like the Germans' grand plan to use a snorkel to remain submerged during the day. They were blind. And they were unaware that their snorkel was a homing beacon, a most excellent radar reflector. They were not safe at all! They just never knew what killed them.

Wearing a blindfold is not the same as not being able to be seen. Submariners should learn that simple fact.

Not only that, but when you deplete your batteries you are not ready for any combat at all! On the surface your fuel consumption doubles or triples as you recharge batteries, cutting your range by the same factor and making you a less successful sub skipper. And suppose you get pinned down by action with your batteries half charged?

Now you can run half as fast, only half as far before you are forced to surface and die because you are unprepared for action in the false belief that hiding below the surface makes you safe.

The truth is that it makes it many times more dangerous for all these reasons. A submarine is a surface raider which can submerge for the shortest possible amount of time when absolutely necessary to save your fool hide and those of your crew.

Stay on the surface and live! Stay on the surface and sink four times more targets per patrol. Airplanes? That is what lookouts are for. War ain't supposed to be safe. But it IS supposed to be fought, not hidden from.

[aanker]

The area just south of Honshu at the eastern entrance to S. Japan's 'Inland Sea' - Ku Suido - is heavily mined, and that was the location I was sunk by a mine for the first time. Submerged at sunrise to creep in, and BOOM (although there was no boom, it's that fast though, and over).

The excellent Win 10 upgrade remark by cdrsubron7 is another good possibility, as is plowing into a tiny '1 pixel' (single square) Is.
-
Edit: RR is correct about staying on the surface, however I was following early war orders to submerge during daylight hours. This protocol was soon changed.

Happy Hunting!

[Rockin Robbins]

Originally Posted by aanker

-
Edit: RR is correct about staying on the surface, however I was following early war orders to submerge during daylight hours. This protocol was soon changed.

Happy Hunting!

Ah! But the policy was changed because brave sub commanders disobeyed those orders, knowing it was better to be alive and begging forgiveness than dead and considered a hero. Of course, in the process of saving their necks they developed a lot more contacts and sank more tonnage than those who merely obeyed orders.

Lockwood was a smart enough cookie to see a good thing when it was served to him on a silver platter. But make no mistake. It was the sub commanders disobeying his orders who changed the paradygm.

Hiding in wartime is not safe. It's more dangerous than doing your job.

Patton said it best "The best way to deal with fear of losing your life is to make the enemy more afraid of losing his."

[KaleunMarco]

Originally Posted by torpedobait

I leave the free camera available, and after one of the sudden sinking events I reloaded a save and used the camera to check the waters around me, near the southern end of Formosa Strait. I found it loaded with mines! I'm sure there are many other areas similarly mined. Ducimus got me!

Mines!
for the first time i actually ran into one. it blew my topside to hell.
what i wanted to discuss is why it activated at all.
i was patrolling in Area 7. Deep water. submerged to 200 feet. stalking a small convoy. all of sudden, i am taking topside damage. no injuries. periscopes and weapons damage, only. only? well, i had to break off contact and fix the damned scopes before returning to action.


after the mission was completed i fired up the Mission Editor and loaded the Jap_Mines file and there it was...Area 7 it is rife with minefields. so, i located the field that i had sailed into and found that the mines are set to activate between -20 and -35 meters. 35 meters is approximately 115 feet. ME does not indicate the type but the .MIS indicates a Type=500. unfortunately i do not have access to the type-table so i do not know what type it is.


anyway, the issue that has me perplexed is that i was at 200 feet yet i activated a mine whose deepest activation is 115 feet.either i am missing something basic or Ubisoft got me.

[propbeanie]

... and just what do you think holds that mine at its depth? Magic fairy pixie dust? Why no, it's an anchored cable (usually), and your right-front dive plane hooked it, and pulled the mine down to your depth - "KA-BLOO-IE"...

I don't know if they simulate that, but St. Peter would be able to tell you...

[mikesn9]

While on the subject of mines, is there anyway to watch out for them while patrolling an area?

I've been sunk a few times, Like a bomb out of nowhere.

[Barkerov]

Not unless you view the external camera and they are underwater so it would be very tedious. There are just some areas you should stay away from, like the coast of China along the East China Sea, The entrance to the Sea of Japan and Places along the Formosa Strait. These are not ALL of the areas that are mined by the way, just the places I have had the unpleasant experience of hitting them.



The mines have to be in reasonably shallow water too since they have to be anchored to the sea floor by a cable.

[propbeanie]

Originally Posted by mikesn9

While on the subject of mines, is there anyway to watch out for them while patrolling an area?

I've been sunk a few times, Like a bomb out of nowhere.

The game can have mines anywhere, the game don't care 'bout no "anchor" point... but there are a couple of things you can do. If it's late in the war, and you have a Tench boat with FM sonar, you can "hear" the mines ring the chime. Otherwise, if you are underwater in an area you suspect has been mined, then you can partially raise the periscope and look through it (refer to the "SH4_Q-Ref_Card_Front.jpg"), so long as you are going slow enough, and are not too terribly deep to see, or that it is not night time... The game does not give you a sound (that I know of) like a cable rubbing against your hull the way the anti-subnet will give you a warning. You just go "BOOM" when too close, in my experience. It is advisable (duh) to stay away from them...

[mikesn9]

[If it's late in the war, and you have a Tench boat with FM sonar, you can "hear" the mines ring the chime]

I have a Tench boat how do I hear these?

[propbeanie]

Unfortunately, the FM does not truly function in SH4. I might try me a test with a Tench, make a SingleMission with a minefield, and see if it "shows" on the NavMap maybe... It'll be this afternoon before I get to it. - Oh! are you using TMO, or FotRSU?