FotRSU: Going off the reservation

[Mios 4Me]

Assigned to hourly diving practice off southern Honshu, I've instead gone hunting off Hokkaido, where the cold seems to keep most of the mosquitoes away, and encountered a wealth of targets. Faced with another five day stint of daily CO2 headaches off Tokyo, I went south instead, intent on tanker convoys out of the Makassar Straits and on the route north to Halmahera. Other than expending a great deal of torpedoes at one particular anchorage along the way, though, I didn't encounter a single ship between Japan and Midway via Darwin. There were planes though, oh yes.

Is this a major difference from stock or did I have remarkably bad luck?

[KaleunMarco]

Originally Posted by Mios 4Me

Assigned to hourly diving practice off southern Honshu, I've instead gone hunting off Hokkaido, where the cold seems to keep most of the mosquitoes away, and encountered a wealth of targets. Faced with another five day stint of daily CO2 headaches off Tokyo, I went south instead, intent on tanker convoys out of the Makassar Straits and on the route north to Halmahera. Other than expending a great deal of torpedoes at one particular anchorage along the way, though, I didn't encounter a single ship between Japan and Midway via Darwin. There were planes though, oh yes.

Is this a major difference from stock or did I have remarkably bad luck?

incredibly bad luck.
convoy college is a major passage area for all types on convoys.
makassar strait is another major route to/from Dutch East Indies.
as you headed north from Darwin, you would have crossed a couple of routes going to Palau and then Rabaul and then Truk/Eniwetok.
that patrol must have hit snake eyes on all of the convoy spawn percentages.
too bad for you-ooo.

[propbeanie]

If you are seen or detected, the airplanes will hound you if you do not alter course and or speed. They know where to look for you, and that you can only get so far in the dark... After submerging for a while for an airplane, if they come right back at you, it might be necessary to stay down at 150+ for the remainder of the day, unless sonar finds you something, and even then, you have to remember that the airplanes can see your boat beneath the waves. The calmer and clearer the weather, the easier that is... But one nightfall hits, surface, Ahead Full, turn off all radars and do a 90 away from where you are. As day starts to break, submerge for the day down below 150+ again. Once night hits, again do Ahead Full and maybe change course a bit back to where you were going. Once daylight hits, go and be careful on the surface again. If you torpedo something, you might have to skedaddle again... Lather rinse repeat. As for not seeing any traffic, could be a combination of sighting reports, and / or bad Save data...

[Mios 4Me]

Thanks for clarifying that; I'll default to 75 meters' depth.

Perhaps I should check some assumptions:

- if I can ID a plane, it has probably detected me at that point as well
- if I can't, it hasn't.
- if I happen to surface after one whose type is clear has passed over but who does not change direction, I haven't been spotted.

Edit to add: restarting from a save point near a certain fleet anchorage, the torpedo magnet mentioned earlier, I ran three more patrols. On the one down the Makassar Strait, I eventually encountered a single convoy in the large shallows below Balikpapan. The other two, shadowing the merchant route 16 from Makassar to Palau, yielded no convoy traffic (one errant DD however), though I did find and sink the third Yamato class BB, all on this one patrol. Despite almost 200k tons sunk, there was no commendation.

Is there any chance this convoy drought will continue on the next patrol?

[KaleunMarco]

Originally Posted by Mios 4Me

Thanks for clarifying that; I'll default to 75 meters' depth.

Perhaps I should check some assumptions:

- if I can ID a plane, it has probably detected me at that point as well
- if I can't, it hasn't.
- if I happen to surface after one whose type is clear has passed over but who does not change direction, I haven't been spotted.

Edit to add: restarting from a save point near a certain fleet anchorage, the torpedo magnet mentioned earlier, I ran three more patrols. On the one down the Makassar Strait, I eventually encountered a single convoy in the large shallows below Balikpapan. The other two, shadowing the merchant route 16 from Makassar to Palau, yielded no convoy traffic (one errant DD however), though I did find and sink the third Yamato class BB, all on this one patrol. Despite almost 200k tons sunk, there was no commendation.

Is there any chance this convoy drought will continue on the next patrol?

glad you had some success!

let's keep in mind that this is a game that is simulating what happened during the war. with those table stakes..............

traffic patterns will remain relatively the same throughout the entire war. what changes is the deflation of the IJN sphere on influence from the high-point of Mid-1942 to the low point of post-Saipan. there will always be traffic from SE Asia to Japan and from the Dutch East Indies to Japan. any historical convoy map will provide this intel. i believe that clicking on the either the radio or the phonograph provides a traffic map.

what will change is the number of ships (decreasing) and their range, as the balloon of the Greater East Asia Sphere of Influence slowly deflates.
within SH4 there are several date ranges for convoys:

Dec 1941 to Feb 1942
Mar 1942 to Aug 1942
Sep 1942 to Aug 1943
Sep 1944 to May 1944
Jun 1944 to Sep 1944
Oct 1944 to end of war

these dates are the checkpoints where traffic is redefined.

hope this helps. good hunting!

[propbeanie]

Another thing to remember about FotRSU, is that as the US subs developed better, more deadly tactics, the shipping lanes moved somewhat, so you might have to go in closer to the Chinese coast for Singapore to Japan traffic, or it might be that things completely dry-up to Guadalcanal, and then to Rabaul, as most everything goes to submarine (Rat Transport). Of course though, as I said, once detected... and again, if none of the above applies, did your Save folder get corrupted?

[Mios 4Me]

I'm not sure how a corrupted save file would present. I ran another quick patrol, this time to the Balabac Strait, where I encountered a single freighter.

OTOH, I continued with the patrol following the triple Yamato patrol. Ordered to the south of Honshu in early June 1944, I instead headed for the Philippine Sea, hoping to bag a brace of Taihos or three. On my second air contact of 6/17/44, the game CTDed.

Think I should reinstall the entire program and mod?

[KaleunMarco]

Originally Posted by Mios 4Me

I'm not sure how a corrupted save file would present. I ran another quick patrol, this time to the Balabac Strait, where I encountered a single freighter.

OTOH, I continued with the patrol following the triple Yamato patrol. Ordered to the south of Honshu in early June 1944, I instead headed for the Philippine Sea, hoping to bag a brace of Taihos or three. On my second air contact of 6/17/44, the game CTDed.

Think I should reinstall the entire program and mod?

that's your call.
these things happen (ctd) for a variety of reasons, the least of which is the fact the SH4 was not written for Win10.
i would reboot and rerun, first.
here is another example. i am playing TMO 2.5 at the moment. been around quite a long time, very stable. the other day, i was in the middle of hunting a convoy and i switched views from the NavMap to the Conning Tower and BAM, CTD. probable cause: main program made a call for another chunk of RAM of a certain size and Win10 didn't have one of that size and because the app has lousy error checking so it just expires. probably.
so, reboot and go back to playing.
unless you are getting continuous CTD or getting them in the same conditions, try re-booting, then clear out the unnecessary crap that gets loaded at boot time (use task manager) and go back to playing.

have fun. good hunting!

[propbeanie]

Comments in "Orange":

Originally Posted by Mios 4Me

Thanks for clarifying that; I'll default to 75 meters' depth.

Perhaps I should check some assumptions:

- if I can ID a plane, it has probably detected me at that point as well
Depends upon the plane and conditions...
- if I can't, it hasn't.
Depends upon the plane and conditions...
- if I happen to surface after one whose type is clear has passed over but who does not change direction, I haven't been spotted.
Depends upon the plane and conditions...
Airplanes are captives to their "Loadout". If they have bombs, they will attack if they see you. This would include having "fake" bombs, such that they turn and then attempt to strafe your boat. In either case, they do report your position etc. If they have no weapons to attack with, but do observe you, they do not turn, but they do still "fone home" and tell their buddies about your location and direction of travel. "Let's see... 10 knots, headed north, they'll be off of Rabaul in 16 hours..." Anything that gets within roughly 6.5nm will see you almost without fail, and of course, the faster you go, or if you happen to change direction and create a bigger rooster tail, they can see you much farther. Don't forget about the times where your deck crew doesn't "see" something until after you get the "We're under attack, sir! - We're taking damage, sir! - Medic!" Another little note on that is that a submarine sighting seems to be as important as a BB, so you will eventually have at least 7 airplanes "knocking on your door", if you are within range of an airbase. This does include carriers of any sort, including the float plane tenders.
Edit to add: restarting from a save point near a certain fleet anchorage, the torpedo magnet mentioned earlier, I ran three more patrols. On the one down the Makassar Strait, I eventually encountered a single convoy in the large shallows below Balikpapan. The other two, shadowing the merchant route 16 from Makassar to Palau, yielded no convoy traffic (one errant DD however), though I did find and sink the third Yamato class BB, all on this one patrol. Despite almost 200k tons sunk, there was no commendation.

Is there any chance this convoy drought will continue on the next patrol?

There should be no Yamato anywhere near Makassar or Balikpapan, if that's where you were for that. Brunei and Tawi Tawi... As a note on that, the Yamato and Musashi are not "Random" in the game. Those are "scripted" events, reflecting some semblance of historical journeys, as was requested by quite a few players. The game however, will not take them off of the Roster until the date of their actual demise, which would be the Battle for Leyte Gulf (Battle of the Sibuyan Sea, 24 October, 1944) for the Musashi and for the Yamato with Operation 10-Go 7 April, 1945. Even at that, the game would probably over-run any attempts at controlling an RGG with them by date... so the possibility exists that they would show up on September 1, 1945 if allowed to... If you find all of the instances of their travels, you could sink they a hundred times, and the game would keep re-producing them. It is the nature of the game, and is not easily controllable in SH4. As for "awards", the game is set to lower awards for sinkings. While important, doing the assignment is more so.

[Mios 4Me]

Yamato and Musashi were anchored unescorted at Tawi Tawi and the third Yamato (#111/unconverted Shinano?) was anchored at Palau with a few lethagic escorts. Having converted the Archerfish's forward torpedo room to that of a Tench, I had just enough Mark 16s to sink all three.

[propbeanie]

The Musashi left Tokyo on Feb 22 1944 for Palau, and left for Kure on Mar 29, so you like George and just lucky I guess... Either that, or you've been utilizing Tope-Secret Ultra information to personally further your career... the Department of the Navy will be looking into this... - but seriously, the parking at Tawi Tawi has gone on too long! There must be an error in one of those sets of dates! We demand action!... lol

[Mios 4Me]

Assigned to deliver an agent near Tokyo, Archerfish surfaced into a heavy storm front one August morning in 1944 and immediately took the decision to sweep Tokyo Bay on the surface. To our surprise, there were no ships docked in any of the five ports within the bay, only a few planes and a sub, and four torpedo-worthy merchants underway. For comparison's sake, there were more merchants and warships present in Aomori alone on a previous patrol.


Also, while sweeping Tateyama on the escape, we discovered three ships anchored very closely together, almost rafted up, but not quite spawned in the same space. There was perhaps the width of a submarine between the ships. When we hit the Heian Maru in the center, it took out the LCF next to it before we could engage.


Is this normal or should I post to the issues thread?

[propbeanie]

First point, you should have seen at least one third of these:




and the patrols should have been attempting to rip your tin can open...

2nd point, you should be getting ~nothing~ near Tokyo, with the closest assignment being "near Yokosuka", in the Sagami Nada. If you had something different, what were your orders, and where was the "landing zone"? Do you have other mods added, besides FotRSU and the patch?

3rd point, did you get into Tokyo Bay on the surface you say? So you drove over the top of sub nets and didn't get any "screech" or "SKREEEEEE!!!" sounds and hull damage?... lol

[Mios 4Me]

1. There was nothing like that density. In addition to the four merchants, there were a couple of tugboats, a small escort or two, and a DD which came flying up from the bay entrance, only to break its back on the sandbar.


2. It was an agent insertion on the other side of the peninsula from Yokosuka, due west; I should have said near Tokyo Bay earlier. I'm away from the game laptop, so I'm going from memory on everything. If notably incorrect, I'll edit this post tonight. I have no mods other than FotRSUE 1.1 and a couple of minor text edits (extra bow reloads, extra officers).


3. We encountered no nets or mines, running on the surface at Full Ahead, except when we submerged on final approach to targets and in the Tokyo fairways.