[TEC] How to force SH3 to put the Startpoint to Lon Lat 0

[Hebe Vollmaus]

Hi all,
you know that sometimes SH3 will put your Boat in the middle of Nowhere. Exactly Longitude Latitude 0, Null, or Zero-Point coordinates, left from West-Coast of Africa. The already good knowledge about this behavier has almost to do with external Mods/Bigmods with mistyped or misconfigured relationship between Cfg\Flotilla.cfg and en|de_menu.txt and Campaign_LND.mis. These quirks are easy (also programmaticaly) detectable.

I will show here a reproduceable way, that this Lon-Lat-0 Startpoint can also happen with a unmodified vanilla SH3.
For short, this can happen when a Base-Change is involved, and a former Saved Game has been loaded.

What follows is a crude way to show a really stupid reaction of SH3 when you Dock at a "wrong" Date:

o Make a Backupcopy of your MyDocuments\SH3-folder.
o Delete MyDocuments\SH3-folder.
o Create a clean unmodified SH3 v1.4 (=v1.4b).
o Create a JSGME-mod with Cfg\Basic.cfg and change
  [EQUIP0]; Diesel Engine upgrade
  DaysSpent=485;;3
  (this is for speedup to get to the wanted inGame-Date.)
  Activate this Mod.
o Start New Career 1943 La Spezia - now is 19430301.
  Go to UBoat-Equippments-EngineUpgrade - activate GW Kapselgeblase.
  Wait a minute - Let the Dates changed - now is 19440628.
o Start Mission.
  Now the crude things start. Message: "The Base was changed to: Toulon".
  Look at Nav-map - Startpoint La Spezia not shown. Blue Base no longer exist.
  Esc - Exit Patrol - No "Dok at:" available. Use "Return to Base".
o Start Mission.
  Look at Nav-map - Startpoint Toulon exist. Looks good so far.
  Esc - Exit Patrol - "Dock at: Toulon".
o Start Mission.
  Look at Nav-map - Startpoint Toulon not shown. Blue Base no longer exist.
  Esc - Exit Patrol - No "Dock at:" available. Use "Return to Base".
o Start Mission.
  Message: "Flotilla is disbanded. You are tranferred to 1st Flotilla".
  Message: "The Base was changed to: Brest".
  Look at Nav-map - Startpoint Toulon not shown. Blue Base no longer exist.
  Esc - Exit Patrol - No "Dock at:" available. Use "Return to Base".
o Start Mission.
  Message: "Flotilla is disbanded. You are tranferred to 7th Flotilla".
  Message: "The Base was changed to: Bergen".
  Look at Nav-map - Startpoint Brest not shown. Blue Base no longer exist.
  Esc - Exit Patrol - No "Dock at:" available. Use "Return to Base".
o Start Mission.
  Look at Nav-map - Looks good. You are in Bergen.
  Esc - Exit Patrol - "Dock at: Bergen".
  Now you have 6 Patrols.
  Thanks to the Developers the red Enemy-Bases you started in (Toulon and Brest) are not populated with any Defence.

o Go one Site back, with the "Back" button left bottom corner.
  ("Back" is faster, but "RETURN TO MENU" over the Big Exit-Door will also work.)
o Use "SAVED CARRER"
o Move cursor to "Patrol 2: July 26, 1944  In Base after Mission"
  Use "Load Save"!
o Normaly you should get Toulon as Base, see above. Instead you get:
  Message: "The Base was changed to: Bergen"!
  Look at Nav-map - Startpoint Lon Lat 0. <===Here we are left of Africa!

o Delete MyDocuments\SH3-folder. Copy back your Backup.
o De-Activate the above created JSGME-Basic.cfg

Conclusion:
Never Load a former Saved Game without completely Exit the Game before.
It looks to me that this sort of quirk is not programmaticaly detectable.

A second Load of "Patrol 2" will not work the same way.

I have tested this under Win7-64 with the Reloaded and with another hsie-patched version.
[edit]Also tested with GreenPepper SH 3-5 DVD on Win2k.[\edit]

Greetings.

[FUBAR295]

Thank you for such a detailed explanation on the cause.

Good hunting,
FUBAR295

[Hebe Vollmaus]

Greetings.