My First Hunt

[Gargamel]

Your only required to spend 24 hours in your assigned patrol zone. You dont have to return after that. Most of us won't return until we're out of eels. It's not uncommon to spend 60-70 days at sea.

And anyways, in GWX, the renown bonus for actually hitting your assigned zone has been removed. Some of us, myself included, have added it back in, to feel like we're actually following orders. But once the 24 hours is up, you cna go wherever you want, and that is usually into one of the high traffic areas that are marked on the included (GWX only, not stock, IIRC) map.

Historically, Skippers were court martialed or just reassigned for not shooting at anything (basically the ones that intentionally avoided contact with the enemy). So it's accurate to play till your out of fuel or ammo. And there's enough fuel in the GWX boats to sail to the US, spend a couple few weeks, and sail back.


If your having issues with SHC and the steam install, try UNchecking the auto rollback option. I think the delay caused by Steam forces SHC to ignore all it's own changes, but that's just a theory of mine.

And as I said in the other thread you have here somewhere, expect 10-20 minute load times, especially deep into a patrol. It's just that deep of a game. (or poorly written )

[frau kaleun]

Originally Posted by Gargamel

And as I said in the other thread you have here somewhere, expect 10-20 minute load times, especially deep into a patrol. It's just that deep of a game. (or poorly written )

For who knows what reason, the game loads the entire SH3 "world" every time you load up... all the data for everything for the full duration of the war, instead of, say, just the stuff that's necessary for the current patrol or mission. That's my understanding of it, anyway. Thus the very long loading times. They will probably get even longer the more stuff you add. It can be a nail-biter when you're loading up for the first time right after adding a new mod, sometimes it will hang right there at the end and make you think it's gonna crash and then it doesn't.

OTOH maybe it's not a bad thing to have to get used to for a game where patience is such a virtue.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by frau kaleun

For who knows what reason, the game loads the entire SH3 "world" every time you load up... all the data for everything for the full duration of the war, instead of, say, just the stuff that's necessary for the current patrol or mission. That's my understanding of it, anyway. Thus the very long loading times. They will probably get even longer the more stuff you add.

No probably about it. The reason was that they had no idea that people were going to create more that 100 new merchant ships and all the incredible harbor details. I keep a stock SH3 install for testing things and occasionally I load it up just to remind myself that, yes, stock SH3 really does load in less than a minute.

Because they learned from their mistakes (some of them, anyway), SH4 fixes all that.

[timmy41]

Congratz!

[Tessa]

Originally Posted by Gargamel

Your only required to spend 24 hours in your assigned patrol zone. You dont have to return after that. Most of us won't return until we're out of eels. It's not uncommon to spend 60-70 days at sea.

And anyways, in GWX, the renown bonus for actually hitting your assigned zone has been removed. Some of us, myself included, have added it back in, to feel like we're actually following orders. But once the 24 hours is up, you cna go wherever you want, and that is usually into one of the high traffic areas that are marked on the included (GWX only, not stock, IIRC) map.

Historically, Skippers were court martialed or just reassigned for not shooting at anything (basically the ones that intentionally avoided contact with the enemy). So it's accurate to play till your out of fuel or ammo. And there's enough fuel in the GWX boats to sail to the US, spend a couple few weeks, and sail back.


If your having issues with SHC and the steam install, try UNchecking the auto rollback option. I think the delay caused by Steam forces SHC to ignore all it's own changes, but that's just a theory of mine.

And as I said in the other thread you have here somewhere, expect 10-20 minute load times, especially deep into a patrol. It's just that deep of a game. (or poorly written )

60-70 days in a type IX would be perfectly normal, in a VII that would tend to be on the long side. My longest trip in a VII was ~15,000km, 51 days and running on fumes when I came into port. If they were able to refuel they could easily last that long, though usually ran out of torpedoes before they came up to the 2 month mark.

Depending on the circumstances and testimony of the crew, if you had a pure string of truly rotten luck where you had zero targets/contacts for 30-40 days after a lengthy court martial most captains were allowed to return to their command. Any of them that repeated the same events were "transferred elsewhere" upon returning home, seemingly disapearing as they walked off the boat. Conversely as you mention if they showed cowardarice and avoided attacking they also "disapeared" though in reading those reports the writing on the wall read that they were headed for somewhere 'bad'.

There are a few mods that can greatly increase the load time, most notable is the merchant fleed mod + skin packs. Even on a fast machine it can easily add 5-10 minutes of load time even for a new game. In anticipation of the enevitable slowdown once I push the start button its time to go get something to drink, make a snack, or pick out a dvd to watch while the game loads. Usually by the time you finish the game is loaded or at least ready to start a new game/load a savegame.