Absurdities Aboard the Snapper

[Hellguard3]

Just a few questions to you guys.

Upon my first serious patrol, i find the game is not being serious (i hope).
To preface i have no mods installed, i purchased sh4 and the u-boat missions through steam.

To the meat of it.

the first mission i was given from the Asiatic base at Manila had me doing a "recon" mission of jap carriers in Manila bay. Baffled by this i turned my boat around (started outside the harbor) and went back in to take a look, thinking "gosh they must have bad Intel" (or the mission was meant to be scripted later in the campaign. Lo and behold the Japs had an escort carrier and a seaplane tender parked in the bay. I took pictures of them then proceeded to try to get into a good torpedo position at 1/3rd when BAM! torpedo nets. I set about having my repair crew fix the now leaking bulkheads and get the water out which fixed rather fast.
Then like a true greenhorn i setup a shot form beyond the nets and proceeded to set the depth on my torpedoes to hit 3m above the bottom of the enemy ships, only to sacrifice three good fish to the nets. after realizing my idiocy, i fired the 4th at 1m depth and sank the carrier in one hit, a stern torp and some gunfire finished off the tender.

i figure its my first time out and my first real go at a subsim so i figure the game is throwing me some target practice, but this mission was just weird. I refitted in Manila before proceeding.

Does the game usually make these mistakes?, i'm pretty sure the Japs didn't have carriers parked in manila bay on Dec 9th.

next im ordered to patrol the top of the Luzon strait, omw there i run into three invasion forces (knew they were coming) and sank a troop transport, a Cruiser, a liferaft (no idea how i get credit for that) and two freighters in a convoy through Luzon. i get to the location marked by the flag with 3 torpedoes left.

The game flags a "Large Convoy" heading WSW through the straight, going 12kts. I think "oh good i'm in position on their course i can try out this nifty trick i read up on about using hydrophones only to determine bearing range and speed without looking at the target." I get everything worked out, and after 3min 15 seconds i get one ships location and speed figured up and get ready to dicko caine (i have no clue how this is spelled.) get everything entered into my targeting computer when, the target zigs noticeably. so I'm like "damn, did he turn?" with a funny feeling that my track was worthless i decided to look around topside with the camera, and immediately dove to crash depth.

The "Large Convoy" was all destroyers... Three rows of destroyers... 45 Destroyers Total. In-fact there were so many that I'm pretty sure they didn't have that many built of each class that was represented. This convoy is the nastiest surprise i could have imagined.

Has anyone else run into these Cthulhu spawn convoys before?

[Sniper297]

The photo recon in Manila bay is one I've seen, the destroyer convention is one I've heard of but never seen, possibly that's in the 1.5 patch (I tried 1.5 briefly but found it so full of new bugs I went back to 1.4). One thing works with the torpedo net, flank speed on the surface to scrape over the top of the net, then set the torpedoes on low speed (for max range) and fire at the targets from 9000 yards. Best way to deal with stupid missions is to ingore them and sink ships instead. Completing a mission earns you 300 renown points, sinking a heavy cruiser gets you 500 points, and failing to complete the patrol mission has no penalties at all. So if the mission seems stupid, just ignore it and sink tonnage instead.

I should emphasize "SINK", if you've played other sub simulator games you'll find the biggest flaw in this series is you get zero credit for damaging an enemy ship - if it doesn't sink you might as well not have bothered.

[Rockin Robbins]

Originally Posted by Hellguard3

The "Large Convoy" was all destroyers... Three rows of destroyers... 45 Destroyers Total. In-fact there were so many that I'm pretty sure they didn't have that many built of each class that was represented. This convoy is the nastiest surprise i could have imagined.

Has anyone else run into these Cthulhu spawn convoys before?

If you read through our Fall of the Rising Sun Ultimate thread over in the SH4 modding forum here, you'll see that we've been wrestling with the weird DD convoys, some of them much larger than yours, to see what the cause might be.

They shouldn't happen, they can actually crash your game, and they're happily somewhat rare. First step is not to engage. Submerge and get out of Dodge. You have to submerge or shut off your radar because the sheer number of contacts can crash the game. Once you get out of sensor range they will dematerialize (IF you're playing v1.5, otherwise restart your career. The rumors of 1.5 being so full of bugs are totally bogus. You NEED 1.5 to play any modern post 2008 mods.)

Then resume playing. Sooner or later the FOTRSU mod team will find out what causes these things and eliminate them. They are so rare that up until today nobody has even tried such a thing in ten years.

[BarracudaUAK]

Originally Posted by Hellguard3

...

The "Large Convoy" was all destroyers... Three rows of destroyers... 45 Destroyers Total. In-fact there were so many that I'm pretty sure they didn't have that many built of each class that was represented. This convoy is the nastiest surprise i could have imagined.

Has anyone else run into these Cthulhu spawn convoys before?

Yep...

My first experience with this:


http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=227766


I think it has happened once more since then.

Barracuda

[LCQ_SH]

Originally Posted by Hellguard3

Just a few questions to you guys.

Upon my first serious patrol, i find the game is not being serious (i hope).
To preface i have no mods installed, i purchased sh4 and the u-boat missions through steam.

Why not starting your learning curve with a modded and fully functional game engine ? Stock game is terrible and as you said it, not serious at all

You will enjoy it if you mod it.

You can start with Ralles mod pack and this will save you tons of time of digging in the downloads section trying to pick the right mods.

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=225443

[Rockin Robbins]

Originally Posted by LCQ_SH

Why not starting your learning curve with a modded and fully functional game engine ? Stock game is terrible and as you said it, not serious at all

You will enjoy it if you mod it.

You can start with Ralles mod pack and this will save you tons of time of digging in the downloads section trying to pick the right mods.

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=225443

Only problem is that stock game problems are continued in all mods. Our FOTRSU (Fall of the Rising Sun Ultimate) mod is the largest ever published for SH4 at 3.6 GB, yet the rogue DD squadrons still roam there, as they do in all mods ever published.

We have discovered and corrected dozens of stock game problems which have never been fixed and fixed most of them. We have discovered dozens more which are hard-coded and unfixable.

We're still in search of a solution but have back burnered that in favor of more solvable issues for now.

I would say the exact opposite of LCQ and say the stock game is EXCELLENT, that one of the most enjoyable ways to play the game is Webster's Game Fixes Only mod. And then I would agree with him and say that modding the game is great fun.

[propbeanie]

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

Only problem is that stock game problems are continued in all mods. Our FOTRSU (Fall of the Rising Sun Ultimate) mod is the largest ever published for SH4 at 3.6 GB, yet the rogue DD squadrons still roam there, as they do in all mods ever published.

We have discovered and corrected dozens of stock game problems which have never been fixed and fixed most of them. We have discovered dozens more which are hard-coded and unfixable.

We're still in search of a solution but have back burnered that in favor of more solvable issues for now...

I would say the exact opposite of LCQ and say the stock game is EXCELLENT, that one of the most enjoyable ways to play the game is Webster's Game Fixes Only mod. And then I would agree with him and say that modding the game is great fun.

We ~hope~, beyond all reason, that we found the issue with most of the run-a-way spawns... maybe... - there were at least 7 RGG in the Jap_HarborTraffic.mis file (stock) that spawned and moved to their first waypoint, and did not have a "Delete on last waypoint". Setting those 7 to either a "Docked ship" or giving them a termination has virtually eliminated the reports. I cannot guarantee it, just hope that it's gone - for the most part... There were at least a total of 12 RGG that had issues of one form or another, and I'm sure we're not finished visiting the RGG spawning issue, because we've changed the "balance" of things, so we most likely still have too many of "this group", and not enough of "that group" showing up, and will have to re-adjust, which in the next version will become more difficult, since the Jap_HarborTraffic has been split into six parts now... I'm almost certain that reports of bad spawns will increase exponentially after the next update... - to find the issue, Search on "DeleteOnLastWaypoint=False" in the MIS file, and make certain that the "hits" produced have their "DockedShip=True" set correctly. Almost all of the MIS files in stock have issues, but the Jap_HarborTraffic was the worst, since there's like 1285 RGG it it... - hence the "splitting" of it into six parts in the next update.