Gutted

I've lost my last patrol. A whole weekends worth of destruction. The save seems to be corrupted. It was over 150k including a Yamato and 2 x Ise battleships.

I've seen something on here regarding saves being corrupted when your shortcut points to gu.exe, however mine points to sh4 and always has.

Is there any way I can reduce the likelyhood of this happening again? I've seen something mentioned about not saving when other ships are around?

[rubenandthejets]

Sounds like you found the "happy hunting ground"!

Safest bet is to save in your home base. Failing that, save on the surface well away from contacts.

If you are running any mods, check the relevant threads but this isn't something I recall seeing as a problem in the major mods...

Aye, Yamoto on route to Truk and the 2 x Ise near Rabaul.

The only mod I use is the latest TMO. Using Vista 64bit if that makes any difference.

From now on I'll make sure there's nothing near me when I save, hopefully it won't happen again.

Thanks.

[jazzabilly]

I was having many problems of corrupted saves, and many thousands of tonnage thereby lost.

Now I only save in port, in the middle of a patrol (NOT submerged or near targets), but I have had reasonably reliable saves after getting contacts and saving while being surfaced. I also save just before RTB.

[Rockin Robbins]

I have performed hundreds of saves in all kinds of conditions, now including with a torpedo in the water! I can reload that save dozens of times and see the torpedo flawlessly continuing its journey and impacting the target. This is a submerged save, surrounded by contacts, during battle, torpedo in the water on the way to the target, not facing Mecca or uttering any incantations whatever. All I have is hundreds of consecutive trouble-free saves in every conceivable situation.

I can only suggest that you've changed mod setup since you made your save, or have corrupted files. That can crash you every time. But I find the SH4 game saving system (unlike SH3) totally flawless and trouble-free.

Welcome to Subsim, brilhasti! Hope you can get a handle on it and keep your career going.

[Fincuan]

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

I can only suggest that you've changed mod setup since you made your save, or have corrupted files. That can crash you every time. But I find the SH4 game saving system (unlike SH3) totally flawless and trouble-free.

+1
I've had a corrupted save in SH4 exactly once, and the cause was precisely that. Upgrading from one version of OpMonsun to the next was enough. Lurker isn't kidding when he tells you to start a new career after upgrading to the next version.

Imho any big changes in mod setup should always be accompanied by deletion of My Documents/SH4/data/cfg/UserPlayerContext. Failing that you should at least start a new career. The problems might not be obvious at first, and might only kick in after you get a new sub, install a new upgradepack, get a transfer to a new flotilla, etc. This might happen several succesful saves and reloads later.

[old_tex]

I have had the problem of losing a career. However, now, I do a little housekeeping during the mission. I delete previous missions so that the file remains relatively small. After saving at an intermediate time, I select "save" again and go and delete unnecessary missions. I just keep the automatically saved start and the current mission. Seems to work for me. Old_tex

Originally Posted by Rockin Robbins

Welcome to Subsim, brilhasti! Hope you can get a handle on it and keep your career going.

Thank you very much :-)

As mentioned elsewhere I'm quite new to SH4. I've never really been into sims to be honest but after playing Medieval 2: Total War to death I wanted a new game that would have some longevity. I stumbled across a review for this and it grabbed my attention.

I'm absolutely loving the game. Still not progressed to manual targeting but I'm getting there. Just discovered you can destroy lifeboats (with a hilarious over-the-top explosion) for an extra ton a piece. So evil but so much fun...

[kylesplanet]

I've read so much about bad saves but I have only had one since the games release and it was just what RR said, making a change on a mod during patrol.
I save during action, near land, submerged and never any problem.

I even run the evil Vista.

[rubenandthejets]

Originally Posted by brilhasti

Thank you very much :-)

As mentioned elsewhere I'm quite new to SH4. I've never really been into sims to be honest but after playing Medieval 2: Total War to death I wanted a new game that would have some longevity. I stumbled across a review for this and it grabbed my attention.

I'm absolutely loving the game. Still not progressed to manual targeting but I'm getting there. Just discovered you can destroy lifeboats (with a hilarious over-the-top explosion) for an extra ton a piece. So evil but so much fun...

Gotta love the TMO "ammunition loadout" lifeboats!
Toshio: "Should we take some snacks and fresh water?"
Tetsuya (AKA Bernard):"Nah, but don't forget the 25mm AA shells"

PS with MIITW, I thought I'd played it to death, then I found the "For King or Counrty" mod. and now I'm fighting the English Civil War, sacking Roundhead cities and giving Oliver Cromwell the sound thrashing he so rightfully deserves!

Well it seems Neptune is smiling upon me. I redid the patrol and got 233k. 2 x Kongo 1 x Ise 1 x Hiryu all from the same Task Force.

Had no bad saves since but I'm making sure only to save on the surface well away from any contacts, so all seems good.

[DarkFish]

I have had some corrupted save files too in the past (mostly because of saving with bugged objects nearby - usually a result of me modding files that shouldn't be edited).
To counter this problem I always save into a number of files.
That is, the 1st save of a patrol is called "1", the 2nd "2" and so on until 4 / 5 saves, after which i start at "1" again.
Now in the rare occasion a save is corrupted I load the previous one, which generally works 'cause there were other objects near the sub when I made that save. This way I never lose more than something like 15 minutes.