Destroyer spawns

skirich · 09-11-19, 03:17 AM

I have read a few posts related to TC stutter.
For the most part I have been pretty lucky recently.

I had a bad run of TC stutter from 1941 to 1942, but I attribute that to playing around with too many mods.

1943 was stutter free and up until recently 1944 was good until August.

What changed? 2 Mods but I dont think they contributed to the DD spawns I saw.

The last patrol I barely made it back to Brisbane at 256.
It was a long 3 month patrol with multiple refuel stops at a local tender around the Philippines.

I didnt sink much, 3 merchants and 3 warships, but due to the Battleship I nailed the tonnage was very high.

What I noticed was, at every ship I sunk a DD would stay around and circle, even 3 months later.

I figured the DD spawn issue was high when I kept noticing Task groups of 3 DD's everywhere in the South China Sea.

So I figured I would high tail it home before the patrol CTD'ed permanently and I woulld have to restart an earlier save.

Is there any fix to the DD spawn rate? I dont think I have any mods that add traffic, although I have noticed quite a bit of debris and severe explosions of the cargo vessels lately.

Maybe there is a mod to lower the debris?

My Mods ...
Generic Mod Enabler - v2.6.0.157
[E:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Silent Hunters Wolves of the Pacific\MODS]

TMO19_interior3d_GATO_overhaul
Optical Targeting Correction
OTC for 16 to 9 Aspect Ratio
OTC_US Radar from Start
Historical Prop Rotation
3000 Yard Bearing Tool (1920x)
6 Bigger Better Protractors
SMALLER SEABED ROCKS
SMALLER SEA PLANTS SMALL
Webster's Smaller Rain for v1.5
Webster's 100' Underwater Visability for v1.5
Webster's New Orders Bar Menu for v1.5
PacificLocationMaps
CSL Custom Map Colors
TMO water
Webster's New Desk Photo
Webster's Better Mouse Arrow v2
Better Sand
3D TDC and Radar Range Unit v1.02

propbeanie · 09-11-19, 07:18 AM

The longer your career runs, the bigger the save file, and the more the game slows down. Be sure you are saving to a newly created save file each time and don't overwrite old saves. Trim the contents every once in a while from inside the game. Do not delete files from Windows Explorer, only from inside the game.

I"m not certain of the mod combination you have, since I have not used about 1/2 of what you have there. It seems to me that the prop rotation mod is an old one, and might not be needed in v1.5, but I'm not certain. It is difficult to say if the mix is contributing. Every time something spawns though, the game will "stutter". The more you encounter, the more "stutter" there is, and if you get into a really busy area, you might not be able to exceed 128TC, no matter how much computer you have, just because of the game engine only being able to do so much.

As for the 3 DD groups, those are in sub-hunter groups 'layer' in stock, and the number of groups grows each year. Generally speaking, there are from one to four DD and other types of escort ships in the groups. As you progress through a patrol, the longer you go, the more things you do, the more the game is having to keep track of, so shorter patrols of 50-60 days tops are best. Even still, the game can run into problems. Building a mod set, or installing a given mod, and not changing things is best, so it might be that if you mod list is stable and you like it, the next time you start a new career, it will be fine. Then again...

skirich · 09-11-19, 01:51 PM

I've noticed, no matter how bad the TC compression gets, if I can end my patrol and go on the next one, its all better.

So now that you mention it, yeah the previous patrols where all 30 days or thereabout in length, so the spawn issue was probably light.
This last patrol was coming up on 3 months.

As for save file, there really is no one save file. Its a collection of folders and files, lots of GUID folders, and then there is the pointer dotSAVE file.

So its not really a length thing since it appears each time you save is uniquely given space unless you overwrite the files.

There is a replay.tmp file and save.tmp fille, which appears to be built or created upon each patrol and represent progress in the patrol. Seems like whatever is happening is causing an issue with these two files.

For instance. On my way back to home port I encountered a convoy and thought, why not, I have several torpedos left.
I sank 2 of the six using the TDC long range method. but the 3rd was massively off.

I figured I would practice my long range TDC solution shots without periscope.

Well I missed that last one, not by a little, which I would have accepted as a learning curve but by an enormously massive amount and it was my fault for not programming the solution right. So I went back to the save from just after I sunk 2 of the six ships and when I loaded it up the entire convoy shifted 15nm west where I first encountered them, the two ships were back in the convoy and I was given credit for the kills. Thats when I knew the replay and save.tmp files were corrupted and boogied back to port.

propbeanie · 09-11-19, 03:00 PM

As I mentioned, there is a bandwidth problem with the game engine when too much is going on, and 90 days out is a bit too much for the poor thing. It's difficult to say whether what you were playing was correct, or whether the reload was when you encountered that group the second time. The Save process itself may have glitched - and, you may have left the game before it was 100% completed... btw, there is a percentage of shots that will fail no matter what. You do not get 100% reliable torpedoes. The odds are very low, but the chance is there.

skirich · 09-13-19, 03:45 AM

New patrol today and same issue with Destroyers and time compression.
This time less than 30 days and I am now limping back to home port on TC 256

I remember reading somewhere on the forums that someone had a similar experience when they where in certain spots on the map.

That may be what I am experiencing. In the South China Sea around Luzon straight. Lots of ship traffic there. And now that I have two radio men I get tons of map hits with convoy reports.

Things were fine up until the patrol zone time ended and then it was like a switch was hit.

So once this patrol is over I’m transferring back to pearl and will try another zone to see if the effect is still as bad.

Mios 4Me · 09-13-19, 07:19 AM

Yes, I've had severe issues associated with geographic points: on a line N/S of the Volcano Islands and in the ECS east of the Ryukyus, which I suspect to be borders of the same sector. I suppose it could be related to sheer traffic volume but it doesn't always alleviate when exiting.

It's also associated with 3x DD TFs (once memorably a fast convoy of 4x large passenger liners, one of which always sank on approach) which blinked in and out of existence on radar.

And then there were the occasions it happened on sheer kill volume alone.

Pisces · 09-13-19, 07:46 AM

Is it really a stutter issue? Like ingame sound or graphics working jittery, and you have to reduce to avoid that? Or are you talking about a limit to the time compression you can set? As that is a feature, not a bug. In Documents\SH4\data\cfg\main.cfg is a [TIME COMPRESSION] section that limits the TC based on the state your boat is in. If you cannot go higher than a certain one find out which state applies and either try to get your savegame out of that state, live with it, or change the levels next patrol. Maybe you can change them in between savegame reloads. I don't know how well you'll manage if you do.

propbeanie · 09-13-19, 10:37 AM

To add to what Pisces describes, it also might be a mod soup situation of the not-very-nice variety. Any shelling out to Windows and returning to an active game can cause similar issues. But around ports in some mods can be very busy and bring the computer to a crawl, depending upon your hardware.

Also, certain mods have what I call "run-a-way" spawns accidentally built into them. What happens is that a ship gets added to a mod, and set to face a certain direction, but the modder neglected to set the "speed" to zero, and did not "dock" the ship. Therefore, when it comes time to spawn, it departs at the "default" speed of 5 knots. Since it is only in the database until you get within its actually 3D spawn range, it will "circle" the globe on that particular heading. The next time a spawn for that particular "group" comes along, it adds another. Lather rinse repeat, and the next thing you know, you have a 30+ DD "Task Force" that will take your computer down and CTD you hard, even at 1x TC. If you ever experience that, post about it with your mod list, and we'll try to fix you up. I had a fix for FOTRS v1.3 around here somewhere... if I could ever find anything in this mess... I also used to have a 010 Editor script that could find them all, but I never got it set-up to do a quick-fix for me... [rummages through hard drive files and empty space]

skirich · 09-13-19, 11:47 PM

More than likely its the geo. It is ECS and the traffic there is very high. I cant go more than 20nms before I bump into another convoy.

Zooming out on the map I can see all the reports of convoys as well in the ECS. Its like someone pucked up red squares in that spot.

Starting a new patrol from a transfer to pearl. Hopefully I'll get a different area to patrol.

I dont think its any of my mods or mod soup. I went through quite a bit of testing and file comparisons to make sure things work as intended. I even edited a few bizzare things, I though were fubar. Like when I got that paint job upgrade on tha balao in mid 44, well I also got a downgrade of radar mast to gato. That was fun to figure out, especially when the radar dish was spinning about at the level of the bridge deck. Oh and my guns were put back to weird gato defaults eliminating my crew. That was another edit. All good now.

I dont have any "new" ship type mods. But I do have webster maneuver fix, and OTC does change the way ships are persived through the equipment for a true shot at them. I'll poke around them some more. The TC issue was non-existent and I could go to 8192 no issue anytime up until the moment the patrol timer ended and I was complete on the mission. Then all hell broke loose.

The whole TC thing is just a big PITA for such a stellar game, age and all. I truely wished they published it with source code, I would have fixed it by now like I do for other game.

Oh well, I'll post my experience on the next patrol.

propbeanie · 09-14-19, 10:04 AM

For all of the "look-ahead cheats" that you know the game does - I mean, it tracks everything about the game in a database - you would think they would have had a better "routine" for when high-TC is in use. When you think though, that 1 second of real time at 1024x is 17 minutes in game time, and 8096 is over 2 hours, the devs should probably have left the top TC setting at 4096 like it was...

Mios 4Me · 09-14-19, 10:11 AM

Skirich, are you getting any of those weird external camera angles after awhile? I'm not sure whether they were a function of the desron fault, too many kills, a combination, or something else entirely, but after awhile, external camera views of other ships would go to wonky, unusable angles.

I definitely had the stutter issue along with the blinking desron issue - if I didn't lower the TC, it would eventually CTD.

skirich · 09-14-19, 11:30 AM

No weird camera angles. But if by blinky desron you mean on the map screen then yes I see those but I assume it’s a graphics paint lag.

propbeanie · 09-14-19, 01:41 PM

If you're seeing icons on the NavMap turn on, then about 30 seconds later, turn off, then about another minute and a half to five minutes turn on, that would either be the radar "sweep" if outside visual range, or if at the fringe of visual range, the crew gaining and then losing identifiable visual contact. In either case, you would probably see sonar lines pop on and off also as visual or radar contact is lost and regained. If you're seeing them further out while at higher TC, those are the radio reports coming in that turns them on, and then the "decay" time after the report turning them off...

Mios 4Me · 09-14-19, 10:38 PM

The blinking issue seems to be a harbinger of system decay and unrelated to normal radar operation. IIRC - hasn't happened in awhile, but was frequent - it only involved the desron groups (and once a group of four unescorted LOPL, one of which inevitably sank before contact), not any other ship traffic in the area. Also, no sonar tracks were displayed when the icon disappeared. If i closed with the desron, CTD soon followed.

If I took strong evasive action and narrowed the field of view to exclude the harbinger TF, i could occasionally prevent disaster and the game would return to normal.

Mios 4Me · 09-21-19, 01:50 PM

No issues on this career from 1941 until 8/1/43, when I reentered the Western Pacific from the ECS. I approached a convoy 50km SSE of Okinawa when the external camera view of nearby targets went nuts. Even saving and doing a full restart bought me only a couple of normal images before the issue returned. Just prior to this approach I had 21 kills of around 200k tons, around 2/3s of a normal patrol. Duration might have been up somewhat. I thought I saw a non-DD convoy blink once beforehand but can't be sure. No TC issues, yet.

09-11-19, 03:17 AM	#1
skirich Chief Join Date: Aug 2019 Location: Patroling the south pacific Posts: 321 Downloads: 75 Uploads: 0	Destroyer spawns I have read a few posts related to TC stutter. For the most part I have been pretty lucky recently. I had a bad run of TC stutter from 1941 to 1942, but I attribute that to playing around with too many mods. 1943 was stutter free and up until recently 1944 was good until August. What changed? 2 Mods but I dont think they contributed to the DD spawns I saw. The last patrol I barely made it back to Brisbane at 256. It was a long 3 month patrol with multiple refuel stops at a local tender around the Philippines. I didnt sink much, 3 merchants and 3 warships, but due to the Battleship I nailed the tonnage was very high. What I noticed was, at every ship I sunk a DD would stay around and circle, even 3 months later. I figured the DD spawn issue was high when I kept noticing Task groups of 3 DD's everywhere in the South China Sea. So I figured I would high tail it home before the patrol CTD'ed permanently and I woulld have to restart an earlier save. Is there any fix to the DD spawn rate? I dont think I have any mods that add traffic, although I have noticed quite a bit of debris and severe explosions of the cargo vessels lately. Maybe there is a mod to lower the debris? My Mods ... Generic Mod Enabler - v2.6.0.157 [E:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Silent Hunters Wolves of the Pacific\MODS] TMO19_interior3d_GATO_overhaul Optical Targeting Correction OTC for 16 to 9 Aspect Ratio OTC_US Radar from Start Historical Prop Rotation 3000 Yard Bearing Tool (1920x) 6 Bigger Better Protractors SMALLER SEABED ROCKS SMALLER SEA PLANTS SMALL Webster's Smaller Rain for v1.5 Webster's 100' Underwater Visability for v1.5 Webster's New Orders Bar Menu for v1.5 PacificLocationMaps CSL Custom Map Colors TMO water Webster's New Desk Photo Webster's Better Mouse Arrow v2 Better Sand 3D TDC and Radar Range Unit v1.02

09-11-19, 07:18 AM	#2
propbeanie CTD - it's not just a job Join Date: May 2016 Location: One hour from Music City USA! Posts: 9,735 Downloads: 439 Uploads: 2	The longer your career runs, the bigger the save file, and the more the game slows down. Be sure you are saving to a newly created save file each time and don't overwrite old saves. Trim the contents every once in a while from inside the game. Do not delete files from Windows Explorer, only from inside the game. I"m not certain of the mod combination you have, since I have not used about 1/2 of what you have there. It seems to me that the prop rotation mod is an old one, and might not be needed in v1.5, but I'm not certain. It is difficult to say if the mix is contributing. Every time something spawns though, the game will "stutter". The more you encounter, the more "stutter" there is, and if you get into a really busy area, you might not be able to exceed 128TC, no matter how much computer you have, just because of the game engine only being able to do so much. As for the 3 DD groups, those are in sub-hunter groups 'layer' in stock, and the number of groups grows each year. Generally speaking, there are from one to four DD and other types of escort ships in the groups. As you progress through a patrol, the longer you go, the more things you do, the more the game is having to keep track of, so shorter patrols of 50-60 days tops are best. Even still, the game can run into problems. Building a mod set, or installing a given mod, and not changing things is best, so it might be that if you mod list is stable and you like it, the next time you start a new career, it will be fine. Then again... __________________ "...and bollocks to the naysayer/s" - Jimbuna

09-11-19, 03:00 PM	#4
propbeanie CTD - it's not just a job Join Date: May 2016 Location: One hour from Music City USA! Posts: 9,735 Downloads: 439 Uploads: 2	As I mentioned, there is a bandwidth problem with the game engine when too much is going on, and 90 days out is a bit too much for the poor thing. It's difficult to say whether what you were playing was correct, or whether the reload was when you encountered that group the second time. The Save process itself may have glitched - and, you may have left the game before it was 100% completed... btw, there is a percentage of shots that will fail no matter what. You do not get 100% reliable torpedoes. The odds are very low, but the chance is there. __________________ "...and bollocks to the naysayer/s" - Jimbuna

09-13-19, 07:46 AM	#7
Pisces Silent Hunter Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: AN9771 Posts: 4,892 Downloads: 300 Uploads: 0	Is it really a stutter issue? Like ingame sound or graphics working jittery, and you have to reduce to avoid that? Or are you talking about a limit to the time compression you can set? As that is a feature, not a bug. In Documents\SH4\data\cfg\main.cfg is a [TIME COMPRESSION] section that limits the TC based on the state your boat is in. If you cannot go higher than a certain one find out which state applies and either try to get your savegame out of that state, live with it, or change the levels next patrol. Maybe you can change them in between savegame reloads. I don't know how well you'll manage if you do. __________________ My site downloads: https://ricojansen.nl/downloads

09-13-19, 10:37 AM	#8
propbeanie CTD - it's not just a job Join Date: May 2016 Location: One hour from Music City USA! Posts: 9,735 Downloads: 439 Uploads: 2	To add to what Pisces describes, it also might be a mod soup situation of the not-very-nice variety. Any shelling out to Windows and returning to an active game can cause similar issues. But around ports in some mods can be very busy and bring the computer to a crawl, depending upon your hardware. Also, certain mods have what I call "run-a-way" spawns accidentally built into them. What happens is that a ship gets added to a mod, and set to face a certain direction, but the modder neglected to set the "speed" to zero, and did not "dock" the ship. Therefore, when it comes time to spawn, it departs at the "default" speed of 5 knots. Since it is only in the database until you get within its actually 3D spawn range, it will "circle" the globe on that particular heading. The next time a spawn for that particular "group" comes along, it adds another. Lather rinse repeat, and the next thing you know, you have a 30+ DD "Task Force" that will take your computer down and CTD you hard, even at 1x TC. If you ever experience that, post about it with your mod list, and we'll try to fix you up. I had a fix for FOTRS v1.3 around here somewhere... if I could ever find anything in this mess... I also used to have a 010 Editor script that could find them all, but I never got it set-up to do a quick-fix for me... [rummages through hard drive files and empty space] __________________ "...and bollocks to the naysayer/s" - Jimbuna

09-11-19, 01:51 PM	#3
skirich Chief Join Date: Aug 2019 Location: Patroling the south pacific Posts: 321 Downloads: 75 Uploads: 0	I've noticed, no matter how bad the TC compression gets, if I can end my patrol and go on the next one, its all better. So now that you mention it, yeah the previous patrols where all 30 days or thereabout in length, so the spawn issue was probably light. This last patrol was coming up on 3 months. As for save file, there really is no one save file. Its a collection of folders and files, lots of GUID folders, and then there is the pointer dotSAVE file. So its not really a length thing since it appears each time you save is uniquely given space unless you overwrite the files. There is a replay.tmp file and save.tmp fille, which appears to be built or created upon each patrol and represent progress in the patrol. Seems like whatever is happening is causing an issue with these two files. For instance. On my way back to home port I encountered a convoy and thought, why not, I have several torpedos left. I sank 2 of the six using the TDC long range method. but the 3rd was massively off. I figured I would practice my long range TDC solution shots without periscope. Well I missed that last one, not by a little, which I would have accepted as a learning curve but by an enormously massive amount and it was my fault for not programming the solution right. So I went back to the save from just after I sunk 2 of the six ships and when I loaded it up the entire convoy shifted 15nm west where I first encountered them, the two ships were back in the convoy and I was given credit for the kills. Thats when I knew the replay and save.tmp files were corrupted and boogied back to port.

09-13-19, 03:45 AM	#5
skirich Chief Join Date: Aug 2019 Location: Patroling the south pacific Posts: 321 Downloads: 75 Uploads: 0	New patrol today and same issue with Destroyers and time compression. This time less than 30 days and I am now limping back to home port on TC 256 I remember reading somewhere on the forums that someone had a similar experience when they where in certain spots on the map. That may be what I am experiencing. In the South China Sea around Luzon straight. Lots of ship traffic there. And now that I have two radio men I get tons of map hits with convoy reports. Things were fine up until the patrol zone time ended and then it was like a switch was hit. So once this patrol is over I’m transferring back to pearl and will try another zone to see if the effect is still as bad.

09-13-19, 07:19 AM	#6
Mios 4Me Sonar Guy Join Date: Feb 2019 Posts: 394 Downloads: 38 Uploads: 0	Yes, I've had severe issues associated with geographic points: on a line N/S of the Volcano Islands and in the ECS east of the Ryukyus, which I suspect to be borders of the same sector. I suppose it could be related to sheer traffic volume but it doesn't always alleviate when exiting. It's also associated with 3x DD TFs (once memorably a fast convoy of 4x large passenger liners, one of which always sank on approach) which blinked in and out of existence on radar. And then there were the occasions it happened on sheer kill volume alone.

09-13-19, 11:47 PM	#9
skirich Chief Join Date: Aug 2019 Location: Patroling the south pacific Posts: 321 Downloads: 75 Uploads: 0	More than likely its the geo. It is ECS and the traffic there is very high. I cant go more than 20nms before I bump into another convoy. Zooming out on the map I can see all the reports of convoys as well in the ECS. Its like someone pucked up red squares in that spot. Starting a new patrol from a transfer to pearl. Hopefully I'll get a different area to patrol. I dont think its any of my mods or mod soup. I went through quite a bit of testing and file comparisons to make sure things work as intended. I even edited a few bizzare things, I though were fubar. Like when I got that paint job upgrade on tha balao in mid 44, well I also got a downgrade of radar mast to gato. That was fun to figure out, especially when the radar dish was spinning about at the level of the bridge deck. Oh and my guns were put back to weird gato defaults eliminating my crew. That was another edit. All good now. I dont have any "new" ship type mods. But I do have webster maneuver fix, and OTC does change the way ships are persived through the equipment for a true shot at them. I'll poke around them some more. The TC issue was non-existent and I could go to 8192 no issue anytime up until the moment the patrol timer ended and I was complete on the mission. Then all hell broke loose. The whole TC thing is just a big PITA for such a stellar game, age and all. I truely wished they published it with source code, I would have fixed it by now like I do for other game. Oh well, I'll post my experience on the next patrol.

09-14-19, 10:04 AM	#10
propbeanie CTD - it's not just a job Join Date: May 2016 Location: One hour from Music City USA! Posts: 9,735 Downloads: 439 Uploads: 2	For all of the "look-ahead cheats" that you know the game does - I mean, it tracks everything about the game in a database - you would think they would have had a better "routine" for when high-TC is in use. When you think though, that 1 second of real time at 1024x is 17 minutes in game time, and 8096 is over 2 hours, the devs should probably have left the top TC setting at 4096 like it was... __________________ "...and bollocks to the naysayer/s" - Jimbuna

09-14-19, 10:11 AM	#11
Mios 4Me Sonar Guy Join Date: Feb 2019 Posts: 394 Downloads: 38 Uploads: 0	Skirich, are you getting any of those weird external camera angles after awhile? I'm not sure whether they were a function of the desron fault, too many kills, a combination, or something else entirely, but after awhile, external camera views of other ships would go to wonky, unusable angles. I definitely had the stutter issue along with the blinking desron issue - if I didn't lower the TC, it would eventually CTD.

09-14-19, 11:30 AM	#12
skirich Chief Join Date: Aug 2019 Location: Patroling the south pacific Posts: 321 Downloads: 75 Uploads: 0	No weird camera angles. But if by blinky desron you mean on the map screen then yes I see those but I assume it’s a graphics paint lag.

09-14-19, 01:41 PM	#13
propbeanie CTD - it's not just a job Join Date: May 2016 Location: One hour from Music City USA! Posts: 9,735 Downloads: 439 Uploads: 2	If you're seeing icons on the NavMap turn on, then about 30 seconds later, turn off, then about another minute and a half to five minutes turn on, that would either be the radar "sweep" if outside visual range, or if at the fringe of visual range, the crew gaining and then losing identifiable visual contact. In either case, you would probably see sonar lines pop on and off also as visual or radar contact is lost and regained. If you're seeing them further out while at higher TC, those are the radio reports coming in that turns them on, and then the "decay" time after the report turning them off... __________________ "...and bollocks to the naysayer/s" - Jimbuna

09-14-19, 10:38 PM	#14
Mios 4Me Sonar Guy Join Date: Feb 2019 Posts: 394 Downloads: 38 Uploads: 0	The blinking issue seems to be a harbinger of system decay and unrelated to normal radar operation. IIRC - hasn't happened in awhile, but was frequent - it only involved the desron groups (and once a group of four unescorted LOPL, one of which inevitably sank before contact), not any other ship traffic in the area. Also, no sonar tracks were displayed when the icon disappeared. If i closed with the desron, CTD soon followed. If I took strong evasive action and narrowed the field of view to exclude the harbinger TF, i could occasionally prevent disaster and the game would return to normal.

09-21-19, 01:50 PM	#15
Mios 4Me Sonar Guy Join Date: Feb 2019 Posts: 394 Downloads: 38 Uploads: 0	No issues on this career from 1941 until 8/1/43, when I reentered the Western Pacific from the ECS. I approached a convoy 50km SSE of Okinawa when the external camera view of nearby targets went nuts. Even saving and doing a full restart bought me only a couple of normal images before the issue returned. Just prior to this approach I had 21 kills of around 200k tons, around 2/3s of a normal patrol. Duration might have been up somewhat. I thought I saw a non-DD convoy blink once beforehand but can't be sure. No TC issues, yet.