Fast convoy of death!

[Redmane]

I bought the Silent Hunter series from Steam a little over a year ago, SHIII, 4, and 5. The problem isn't your computer, its the Steam version of the game. I also had many issues of the sort you are dealing with, and saw a similar large gathering of destroyers while trying to do a photo recon op in Tokyo Bay. It seems the Steam version is actually unpatched and unpatchable. I'm not sure what version they offer for download, but I had whatever that is, with the U-boat missions as well, and had repeated problems with the game crashing and not wanting to run. I downloaded the 1.4 patch for the retail version of that game, but that wouldn't work because the installer couln't find the program on my machine, even though I pointed it to the proper folder. When I contacted Steam "support" about this they told me the game automatically updates itself... yeah right. I uninstalled the Steam version and bought another copy of the game from Amazon.com. I never had such problems again. For the most part the game is very stable, even with mods activated, but whatever you decide to do, I would advise that anytime you save a game and quit back to the main menu, close the game down and then reload it before trying to play a single mission or war patrol scenario. Its been my experience that quitting out of one part of the game (career for example) and then loading another mode of gameplay (single mission, etc.) ends up corrupting the saved game files. Other people have had their own issues with loading saved games, and their solution is to never over-write a saved-game file. I don't need to do this myself, others do. At any rate, sorry about wasting your money on the Steam version. My experiences with Steam over the last few years forced me to conclude that they are no longer worthy of my dollars.

[merc4ulfate]

one that is a task force not a convoy and two ...



OH MY GEESUS DIVE DIVE DIVE, HURRY UP YOU FOOLS WERE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!!!

I have never seen a task force that large in the game ... but boy I'd love to try it.

[joefremont]

Originally Posted by merc4ulfate

one that is a task force not a convoy and two ...

OH MY GEESUS DIVE DIVE DIVE, HURRY UP YOU FOOLS WERE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!!!

I have never seen a task force that large in the game ... but boy I'd love to try it.

Its too bad I did not get a screenshot of the map view, when zoomed out it showed the square medium convoy symbol not the diamond shaped task force symbol. When I zoomed in the radar showed four small warships in a diamond formation which would normally have some merchants in the middle, but I could detect none. I suspect that when the program was trying to initialize the convoy some error happened and instead of spawning the merchants it kept spawning more and more destroyers. If you try to load a saved game at that point the game is just going to crash and I have to restart it again from windows. Only thing you can do is quit, and reload from the last saved game, and I have gotten in the habit of saving the game after each battle where a ship is sunk.

Think I will order the regular program from amazon although it gets under my skin that I already paid valve for it and now I have to pay for it again. But given the number of hours of enjoyment I have gotten from it already I should not complain.

[KaleunMarco]

yes. i have seen this bug. i have a brand new I7 quad core with 16GB of RAM and an 8G vid card. this unexpected feature is not a resource issue.

i attempted a low game-speed pass of the convoy but it takes too long in real time and i end up speeding up until CTD.

hopefully you have saved the game fairly recently and can re-load after the CTD. the only solution of which i am aware is to steer well clear of that particular convoy.

[KaleunMarco]

additionally, i have noticed that the game slows down the machine dramatically once i've actually detected one of these fast convoys with only 4 DD's.

they also appear as fast task forces.

i did a quick check of the .mis files in the Campaign folder but i cannot find a smoking gun.

[KaleunMarco]

i have had the exact same experience as joefremont and i am using a 1.5 CD version. as soon as i close the fast TF/fast convoy with 4 DD, the sim goes into slow mode. that convoy never leaves my detection even though i am hundreds of miles away the sim keeps slowing down to TC=8 as if the convoy is in close proximity to me.

reinstalling the game and starting over is not really desirable because my current career is in the middle of 1944 and ending prematurely would suck big time.

has anyone looked at eliminating that particular convoy/task force?

my config
SH4 1.5
Office Images
AirPlaneReduction
NewPhotos
Webster's Better Air Patrols for v1.4 and v1.5
Webster's Selected New Sounds for v1.4 & v1.5
FalloftherisingSun_V1.2_SH4V1.5
SH4 1.5 Crew Cheat v.1.0
Torpedo damage Final ver2.0
MTB_Webster's Upgraded Deck Gun v2

[Michel78]

Same happened with me.

I bought the Gold edition on Steam (1.5) and play with no mods.

After meeting this massive flotilla the game crashes.

All I can do is reload the save and avoid the area where I crossed them.

It really sucks, already had this twice in my current career and I'm only on my fourth patrol. Wasted hours dodging planes only to meet this giant fleet.

[slipf18]

Originally Posted by Redmane

I bought the Silent Hunter series from Steam a little over a year ago, SHIII, 4, and 5. The problem isn't your computer, its the Steam version of the game. I also had many issues of the sort you are dealing with, and saw a similar large gathering of destroyers while trying to do a photo recon op in Tokyo Bay. It seems the Steam version is actually unpatched and unpatchable. I'm not sure what version they offer for download, but I had whatever that is, with the U-boat missions as well, and had repeated problems with the game crashing and not wanting to run. I downloaded the 1.4 patch for the retail version of that game, but that wouldn't work because the installer couln't find the program on my machine, even though I pointed it to the proper folder. When I contacted Steam "support" about this they told me the game automatically updates itself... yeah right. I uninstalled the Steam version and bought another copy of the game from Amazon.com. I never had such problems again. For the most part the game is very stable, even with mods activated, but whatever you decide to do, I would advise that anytime you save a game and quit back to the main menu, close the game down and then reload it before trying to play a single mission or war patrol scenario. Its been my experience that quitting out of one part of the game (career for example) and then loading another mode of gameplay (single mission, etc.) ends up corrupting the saved game files. Other people have had their own issues with loading saved games, and their solution is to never over-write a saved-game file. I don't need to do this myself, others do. At any rate, sorry about wasting your money on the Steam version. My experiences with Steam over the last few years forced me to conclude that they are no longer worthy of my dollars.

I have both the Steam version and the Amazon downloaded version.

I run the Steam version stock and have actually never had any kind of issue at all especially the one described or the <64x problem.

The downloaded version I run with the GFO mod and occasionally (inexplicably) I encounter the <64x problem. It is extremely frustrating because it normally pops up thousands of miles from home port and it takes forever to get back. It will not revert to working properly nor will it be fixed if I visit a friendly port and refit. I have not really noticed if it happens after a contact or not. Will have to pay attention.

My point is that I do not think it is a Steam related problem.

[Gray Lensman]

When I first started playing SH4 a month or so ago, I experienced several bugs, the worst of which was the time compression bug. Perusing the forum, I found a strong statement/suggestion concerning NEVER overwriting saved games due to much higher incidence of file corruption in the overwritten saved game files.

Up until that time I had overwritten my saved game using the same name "savegame" continually. When you do this, you will get a pop up box asking if you want to overwrite that game... DON'T DO IT. Save to a new name each time maybe rotating thru SaveGame1, SaveGame2, SaveGame3, etc. When you get more saves than you want to keep just use the DELETE function (found under the Save Game option NOT the Load Game option) to cull down however many of the superfluous saves you no longer want or need. Incidentally after you have deleted, those game files and associated saved folder I generally cycle BACK to the menu and select Save Game again just to be sure the delete process has occurred, then you can reuse some of the previous SaveGame names that no longer exist

A little more info... When you allow an overwrite, the game uses some already written files associated with a previous save and probably introduces some corruption in the overwrite process

When you create a new saved game, it has to create brand new files from internal game information and this process greatly reduces the corruption issues from an overwrite process.

Hope this helps

P.S. I'm using the Steam version v1.5