Mysterious damage explained...

[FIREWALL]

Originally Posted by ElAurens

SteamWake, my comment is aimed squarely at heartc, not you. I've had the same thing happen. Pity we can't fire back at them.

And heartc, I'm glad that you have a perfect, bug free install of SH4, really I am.
However, many of us do not, and your pollyanna like comments in threads of people asking for help, or pointing out issues, do nothing to make the situation for those of us that do indeed have problems any easier.

I thank you EIAurens for posting what I don't I guess have the right words to say. I know JCC is going to be mad at me but looking at heartc past posts he's kinda passionate about his opinions and other times he's very informative So what the heck a bad day maybe ? We all have em. Good Hunting

<Fixed that for you. I know you wouldn't want to get brig time for a personal attack! JCC>

[IRONxMortlock]

Originally Posted by FIREWALL

I thank you EIAurens for posting what I don't I guess have the right words to say. I know JCC is going to be mad at me but looking at heartc past posts he's kinda an A$$ hat :rotfl: and other times he's very informative So what the heck a bad day maybe ? We all have em. Good Hunting

Perhaps a bad day but I just add people like this to my ignore list. That's two today!

[joea]

Originally Posted by ElAurens

As to unexplained damage being taken my latest example was near the end of my last completed patrol. I was still WSW of Miday on my way back to Pearl. As it was late IRL I saved the game and went to bed. Next day I fire up SH4 and load the save. I'm on the surface at night, I order ahead slow and click on the map to make sure of my current heading and refresh my memory a bit as to my location. I start getting the "taking damage" calls from the crew. Huh? I'm between Wake and Midway, it's night, there are no ships or aircraft anywere, other than my boat. I go to the damage contol screen and see I have a damaged forward bulkhead, damaged forward battries, and flooding in the forward torpedo room. My forward torpedo crew are all wounded, half my damage control party is as well.

I go to externals and look at my boat from stem to stern, nothing. No objects in the water, no enemy presence of any kind, no ships to ram..nothing.

I exit the game at that point and reload the save and all is well after that.

I've had this happen more than a few times.

I have no reason to make any of this up, I want to have a good experience with SH4, but it grows increasing more difficult. I hope the 1.03 version fixes these problems.

Weird, well sometimes it could be mines or shore batteries, clearly not in this case though. What about the weather? Could be something to do with weather, storms causing damge but not noticed becasue of high TC (storm comes and goes in transit and not noticed)...doesn't sound like your case however. :hmm:


For the record, heartc has good info usually.

[heartc]

Originally Posted by ElAurens

Next day I fire up SH4 and load the save. I'm on the surface at night, I order ahead slow and click on the map to make sure of my current heading and refresh my memory a bit as to my location. I start getting the "taking damage" calls from the crew. Huh? I'm between Wake and Midway, it's night, there are no ships or aircraft anywere, other than my boat. I go to the damage contol screen and see I have a damaged forward bulkhead, damaged forward battries, and flooding in the forward torpedo room. My forward torpedo crew are all wounded, half my damage control party is as well.

I go to externals and look at my boat from stem to stern, nothing. No objects in the water, no enemy presence of any kind, no ships to ram..nothing.

[Just to get this out the way first, cause you might have missed it: Are you using a no-DVD crack for convenience? If so, get rid of it because the copy protection will kick in and corrupt the game.]

Did you go to high TC when on the map screen? If not, you can stop reading right there because then I have no idea.

Otherwise, I can think of a few:

It is notable that this happened at night. I remember your name from the flightsim community way back (in a good way, but your "Life's to short for this POS" statement in the other thread reminded me of UBI-Zoo ), so I don't know about your experience with subsims in general, maybe you are already aware of the following: The thing with any subsim I've every played is that it will drop you out of TC only when the crew has spotted something. Also, the higher your TC is and the more strain is put on your system, the more time will pass in-game from the crew spotting something and TC actually dropping back to 1. Last time, in fine weather and daylight, I was dropped out of TC cause we spotted a destroyer. He was still at long range, but when I checked the time of the "Warship spotted" report in the message window it was already 2 minutes ago at this point.

Now, when you are in bad weather with poor visibility, or worse yet bad weather at night, you will only drop out of TC at pretty short ranges, and then 2 minutes is a long time. I can very well imagine how you can collide with a ship / get shot at during those 2 minutes and the ship disappearing back into the fog before you ever had a chance to do something about it. This is a problem that has been there in SHI, AOD, SHIII and now SHIV (prolly in SHII, too, but I never gave that one a lot of time). I deal with it by lowering TC until any lagging is gone (so I can see the system is not under strain) whenever I notice very bad visibility, or sometimes I even go submerged for this period just to be safe, especially when weather is poor at night (they also did that iRL when visibility was too piss poor). When at TC, I somtimes notice a bad weather encounter which usually goes with a high sea state by looking at the depth-meter, which will be jumping up and down in a smallish but rapid way.

Also, there is the additional chance that you indeed were attacked by an aircraft under those same circumstances. Unfortunately, SHIV has you occasionally and unrealisticly attacked by air at night and I bet the crew won't be fast enough to notice *anything* happening before the plane is gone again. There is a mod that pretty much eliminates airstrikes at night. Check the *second* post in this thread:

http://www.subsowespac.org/forum/ind...pic,115.0.html
(and btw. compare the number of posts in their "Patrol Reports" forum to the one in the "Bug" forum. Seems like some people do enjoy this "POS")

Another thing which might be a problem for some, though probably not in your specific example cause you were in the middle of the ocean, is the fact that when you reload a savegame, the sub will be "reset", meaning engines all stop and rudder to zero. If you do not order "return to course" or move the next waypoint once, the game will not recognize the plotted route from the previous session and continue on with a rudder setting of zero, which will drift you off course because of sea state and naturally also ignore the next waypoint. I can imagine some people running into land this way or over one of those small semi-sandbanks in the Pac and be dead before they know what hit 'em. The TC should drop back once in the proximity of land, but it might fail to do so in time at high TC as per the above.



On another note:

The thing which ticks me off is that while there are real bug reports for SHIV, they are often burried below a helluva lot of BS. I can't count the number of times where we had those "My torps don't fire!!" posts. At first people thought it might be due to a cracked exe, and some of the concerned said "Oh yes, I'm using one". But then it turned out that people were just hitting the tube selection buttons instead of the universal fire button. I mean, I did the same once cause I was used to the system from SHI, but hell I figured it out in about 5 seconds instead of leaving the game and posting a rant. I can't remember seeing any more posts about this issue after that thread. So, while this "problem" was caused by people hitting the wrong buttons, it also showed that plenty of people are not aware that a no-DVD exe is not advised because it WILL corrupt the game as per the devs' statement.

And there are many more "bugs" like this or just small personal annoyances and they all add up to "buglists" pointing out 100 things, and the real issues are somewhere in that (Neal has posted a good list, but the thread is still filled with 100 other things). The sub being "reset to zero" after a savegame load for example is not a BUG, it's a minor inconvenience by way of the game is designed, which is solved by hitting a single button, yet I saw it listed in one of those buglists. This all adds up, and new guys looking into the different forums will see 20+ pages "buglists", and then either leave damning the game before they have played it or add another "bug" to the list as to how they cannot submerge anymore without killing themselves after being shelled or hit by a freakin BOMB. Yeah, the game could give you some indication that you shouldn't dive anymore because the hull is SOL albeit the rudder might be repaired, but common sense should tell you that it might not be a bug after all and the crew at sea cannot just overhaul the hull like the sub was in a drydock. IRL, when being hit by a bomb, the sub usually kept patrolling, for eternity, so I don't see how this is a bug.

And that's all I have to say about that.

[Capt.LoneRanger]

Quite funny. You notice you get damaged while enroute and find out it is a ship firing at you and so many people join the march, though the mysterious damage usually occurs on a completely different occasion: When loading a saved game.

On the other hand, I'm pretty impressed the Devs confirmed there is a bug with the savegames and some people call them a liar, because they encountered a completely different phenomena.

I can understand that it sometimes gets annoying to read all the whining, but this counterwhining without any reasoning at all isn't really a bit better.

[heartc]

Originally Posted by Capt.LoneRanger

Quite funny. You notice you get damaged while enroute and find out it is a ship firing at you and so many people join the march,

Shore batteries.

On the other hand, I'm pretty impressed the Devs confirmed there is a bug with the savegames and some people call them a liar, because they encountered a completely different phenomena.

Can you point me to where the Devs said the sub will sometimes take unexplained damage after loading a savegame? Not saying this isn't true, but I must have missed that. Also, no one called anyone a liar, instead:

Did you go to high TC when on the map screen? If not, you can stop reading right there because then I have no idea.

[kv29]

I think the "we are taking damage sir" (with the broken glass visual effect) when we load a saved game is related to the fact that we still have permanent damages from prior attacks & repairings. Is a very stupid way to warning "hey, don´t go too deep if you don´t want to feel the same than a cockroach under a shoe" :p

[SteamWake]

Originally Posted by kv29

I think the "we are taking damage sir" (with the broken glass visual effect) when we load a saved game is related to the fact that we still have permanent damages from prior attacks & repairings. Is a very stupid way to warning "hey, don´t go too deep if you don´t want to feel the same than a cockroach under a shoe" :p

I often seen the "taking damage" scenario when loading a game where I had damage previous to that save. I figured it was normal.

What is being discussed is catastrophic (as in bang your dead) unexplained damage from mysterious sources for no apparent reason.

I might add that I am running the die slowly mod. If not I probably would have never had a chance to see where the damage was comming from. The first round hit us pretty damn hard.

[j.faller]

Originally Posted by heartc

Oh my gosh, and you tell me *that* is what people couldn't figure out and went crying "Mysterious Damage, Bug Bug!" into the forums?? I always wonder why I do not experience even a quarter of those so called "bugs" which make the game "unplayable".
Well, this is one of "them" I had never happen - I don't get close to *enemy coasts* surfaced unless I have to, because I would expect to have exactly that happen.

Frankly, I think we got a lot of eye-candy new guys here who might just not be up to deal with simulations.
Then we have people who thought this will be SHIII No.2 (Why is the interface changed ahhhhwhaa!!!)
And then we have people who simply like to rant over every single small personal annoyance they might experience with the game. Those are mostly bored people and kids.

Well.

You sound like a 10yr old

[John Channing]

Easy, now.

JCC

[longam]

I ran threw some narrows for a short cut after completing a ruff mission and found myself getting a beating from these guys also. Turned tail and went the long way home.

[Iron Budokan]

Originally Posted by heartc

Frankly, I think we got a lot of eye-candy new guys here who might just not be up to deal with simulations.

I think there's a lot of truth to that.

[SteamWake]

I give up...

[GTHammer]

Originally Posted by Iron Budokan

I think there's a lot of truth to that.

This goes double for me. Its obvious that some people aren't ready for in depth sims but, and this community is very good at it, its important to try and have patience with people new to simulators. Afterall if they are initially confused with the game and then have to deal with hostile players, they probably aren't going to become part of the fan base. Dedicated Flightsim and subsim fan groups are small enough. This, and because I've asked plenty of them myself, is why I don't mind answering dumb questions or trying to explain what I know to help others better enjoy the game.

[John Channing]

You are absolutely spot on when it comes to NUBs asking questions and seeking guidance . It is our responsibility to this hobby to help newcomers in any way we can.

However....

When new people show up spewing vitriol and making irresponsible, childish posts and stupid comments because they haven't taken the time to figure things out, or don't have the maurity to realize that perhaps there is something that they don't know, then I must admit I share some of the frustration. Sometimes publically.

JCC