eh... Its not supposed to be like this..

[Lognoreng]

Earlier tonight i played some SH5. Found a huge 32 ship taskforce and attacked it. Went rather terrible.. Managed to cripple 2 ships. They started burning alot, so im confused they werent destroyed in the first place. (If those kind of fires were present on any real life ship, the sailors would get the hell off it. and fast). Anyway, i apparently destroyed the engine on one of those ships. So i observed it and happily waited for the rest of the convoy to leave their friends behind for shark food. Once it seemed safe i got up, sunk the ship with the deck gun, since i was fresh outta eels. After that i gave myself a pat on the back and set up a nice route to head home for some sauerkraut.

Sometime during this journey i was ordered by my "captain" to join her in the sofa for some TV. So i saved the game and were fed some junk TV instead.

Now later i decided to pop in to just sail home and start my second patrol. I Load the save, and was surprised to see it rather far down the list, and sure enough, the save was old. Altho the timestamp said othewise. I got mad, and reloaded another auto save, which, luckily enough was at a point where i was waiting for the convoy to move away from the crippled ship. Hooray!.. Altho, when i peered thru the periscope that ship was not burning anymore. and was happily trying to catch up with their friends..

And all i could do was to laugh. and get angry.

My theory is as follows:
To reduce the file size of the save games, because they are transferred to the stupid UBI servers. Minimal info is saved.

The reason i had to load that save is also because somewhere my real save game disappeared, which is UBI's servers fault.

If i hadn't bought the game digitally, i would have thrown this piece of crap out the window.. I had some hope for this game, but all the bugs and other gameplay issues. And recently the DRM servers not working and even savegames vanishing from the face of the earth have finally gotten me fed up...

Needed to vent some anger and frustration, and i shall stop now before i end up typing stupid things about the devs and such..

[jwilliams]

Originally Posted by Lognoreng

My theory is as follows:
To reduce the file size of the save games, because they are transferred to the stupid UBI servers. Minimal info is saved.

The reason i had to load that save is also because somewhere my real save game disappeared, which is UBI's servers fault.

You can turn online saves OFF.

but i doubt this would make any differance since :-

This is an old save bug.... present from SH3... so i would say the rules for saving would be the same advice from SH3....

DO NOT SAVE
when submerged.
when within 50km of a ship.
when within 50km of a harbour.
When within 50km of a sunk ship.

But Ubi have made the bug issue worse with this online saves.

*Edited to add more info.*

[SteamWake]

Originally Posted by jwilliams

This is an old save bug.... present from SH3... so i would say the rules for saving would be the same advice from SH3....

DO NOT SAVE
when submerged.
when within 50km of a ship.
when within 50km of a harbour.

But Ubi have made the bug issue worse with this online saves.

There have been several reports of save rollbacks.

Wether or not it is realeted to the old SH3/4 "rules of save game etiquette" has yet to be confirmed.

Though I must add that I continue my habit of save games with not only the 'auto saves' but a rolling set of three saves x1 x2 x3 every so often overwriting the oldest with the newest.

So far I have not had save game issues (except the morale bug).

[jwilliams]

Originally Posted by dssgmarine

after I got back from dinner I loaded it back up, only issue I had? I took 1% Hull damage, and crew lost their morale, but everything was fine.

simply make a new save, don't overwrite, make a new one.

The bug from SH3 is

save while submerged = sometimes the uboat loses boyency and sinks.(possible game braker if your in deep water)

the 50km rule near harbour = ships lose their waypoints and crash. (just funny seeing all ships crash and burn)

the 50km rule for ships = see above.

50km rule for ships sunk = upon reload this is no longer sunk and sails on. (umm u still get kill from before save, but can be annoying to see ship respawned). ------> This is what appears to have happened to the OP.

[Ships-R-Us]

I can't afford to buy the game until the first of April, and at which time I may find myself also filled with disgust.

Some members are having problems, and some are not.......Is it possible that some problems are simply related to how efficient our computers are, proper maintenance, getting rid of unwanted running processes???
I do not know but will have to wait 3 weeks to find out.

[Sunfighter]

Originally Posted by Lognoreng

Earlier tonight i played some SH5. Found a huge 32 ship taskforce and attacked it. Went rather terrible.. Managed to cripple 2 ships. They started burning alot, so im confused they werent destroyed in the first place. (If those kind of fires were present on any real life ship, the sailors would get the hell off it. and fast). Anyway, i apparently destroyed the engine on one of those ships. So i observed it and happily waited for the rest of the convoy to leave their friends behind for shark food. Once it seemed safe i got up, sunk the ship with the deck gun, since i was fresh outta eels. After that i gave myself a pat on the back and set up a nice route to head home for some sauerkraut.

Sometime during this journey i was ordered by my "captain" to join her in the sofa for some TV. So i saved the game and were fed some junk TV instead.

Now later i decided to pop in to just sail home and start my second patrol. I Load the save, and was surprised to see it rather far down the list, and sure enough, the save was old. Altho the timestamp said othewise. I got mad, and reloaded another auto save, which, luckily enough was at a point where i was waiting for the convoy to move away from the crippled ship. Hooray!.. Altho, when i peered thru the periscope that ship was not burning anymore. and was happily trying to catch up with their friends..

And all i could do was to laugh. and get angry.

My theory is as follows:
To reduce the file size of the save games, because they are transferred to the stupid UBI servers. Minimal info is saved.

The reason i had to load that save is also because somewhere my real save game disappeared, which is UBI's servers fault.

If i hadn't bought the game digitally, i would have thrown this piece of crap out the window.. I had some hope for this game, but all the bugs and other gameplay issues. And recently the DRM servers not working and even savegames vanishing from the face of the earth have finally gotten me fed up...

Needed to vent some anger and frustration, and i shall stop now before i end up typing stupid things about the devs and such..

Yea i made the mistake of saving just after i crippled 6 ships, i go to reload, ALL of them hightailed it out of there after reload. Didnt matter i suppose..i was all out of ammo...but i still wanted to toy with them to see if i could sink them by the classic weight down the side they are sinking from...but oh well..

[Sunfighter]

Originally Posted by dssgmarine

I think the problems some people are having is..

they are trying to use saves made when the game was v1.0.5, and they've patched to v1.1.5

this does have problems.

another thing is is my D2D version DID NOT auto patch itself so I was 1.0.5.

I had to manually go and run the gu.exe file that downloads the latest patch and installs it, people do not post what versions they have in which they're receiving these issues, so it's hard to tell if its from 105 or 115 if you get what i'm saying.

I'm using the latest version 1.1.5

the morning of March 2nd, I had reformated my PC to clean everything off the HDD for a fresh start, reseated the CPU heatsink with fresh thermal paste/grease. took my air compresser and blew all the dust out.

btw this is the lazy version of my spring cleaning, had I been in the mood I would of probly strip the PC apart and cleaned each part piece by peice hand cleaning the fans and heatsinks. and doing a systematic install of software Windows> latest Service Pack> Windows updates> latest Video & Sound Drivers> all other software> run disk cleaner & defrager> enjoy my 2 year old computer like it was brand new and yes.. I have no girlfriend. and don't say I have no Life.. as I am a gamer, I have many lives....

And no, this isnt the problem. Ive had a couple autosaves already revert to day old saves, and ive had one personally named save revert to an older save as well. From now on I save between 3 different names and overwrite in rotation. I am 110% certain sometimes autosaves are getting overwritten with older content thanks to that brilliant sync idea.

[SteamWake]

Originally Posted by Sunfighter

And no, this isnt the problem. Ive had a couple autosaves already revert to day old saves, and ive had one personally named save revert to an older save as well. From now on I save between 3 different names and overwrite in rotation. I am 110% certain sometimes autosaves are getting overwritten with older content thanks to that brilliant sync idea.

Wow really... I havent noticed this. But then again I'm not all that attentive

Honestly I havent been playing all that much... still on first patrol well after like 4 restarts.

[JScones]

Originally Posted by SteamWake

Wether or not it is realeted to the old SH3/4 "rules of save game etiquette" has yet to be confirmed.

One has to admit, it is starting to look that way.

Given the number of pre-existing bugs that were carried forward to SH5, it wouldn't surprise me if the save game bug(s) did too.

[Reece]

I have never had any issue in SH3 when saving and loading games near ships, even if a ship is sinking, I save then reload the ship is still sinking, certainly shouldn't save underwater or near ports though.

[Arclight]

Never had any issues either, but I can confirm for SH5 damaged ships are restored to health on load.

Had a 1 time issue with saves being reverted, but that was partly my own fault (should have restarted launcher after toggling sync option).

Don't use any special rules for when to save, but use 3 saves, overwriting the oldest every time.

[Ducimus]

Originally Posted by Lognoreng

reloaded another auto save, which, luckily enough was at a point where i was waiting for the convoy to move away from the crippled ship. Hooray!.. Altho, when i peered thru the periscope that ship was not burning anymore. and was happily trying to catch up with their friends..

And all i could do was to laugh. and get angry.

My theory is as follows:
To reduce the file size of the save games, because they are transferred to the stupid UBI servers. Minimal info is saved.

Unfortunatly, you cant blame DRM on this one. Here's a tidbit that i just assume is common knowledge because it's the same behavior in SH3, and SH4.

The game keeps track if basic info. Speed, heading, position, ship type, stuff its equped with, etc. It does NOT keep track of things like damage incurred, shells expended, things of that nature.

What this means, is that in SH3, Sh4, and Sh5, when you damage a ship, you MUST follow through. The damage incurred, shells it expended, etc, is only kept track of while the ship is within 30KM of your own. ( At least i think its 30KM). After a ship gets away from you, and has exceeded 30KM distance, it is no longer rendered. So all temporary information is reset. After that, the game ony keeps track of basic information again, and does not render the ship until it is within 30KM. It does this to save system resources. (consider how many convoys and single ships the game is simultaniously tracking).

So as an example, you can create a single mission where a convoy of Allied battle ships are traveling in a 60KM circular route, but passing some stationary axis battleships. As the allied task force goes by, it will incurr damage, and use its shells firing its guns. Sit there and wait for it to come back, and it will be fully restored to prestine condition because it exceeded 30KM distance. The game stopped rendering it, and when it started to render it again as it came closer, it called upon the data files for the specifications of what to render.

This is what your encountering when you reload a saved game where you know you damaged a ship. The damage is not tracked. Its temporary data not written to file. So the moral of he story is, if you damage a ship and you really want to sink it, DO so before it gets too far away from you, or before you decided to save the game and quit.

[Sheppard]

Now, I was willing to be lenient with Silent Hunter 3 having these bugs, because it was Ubisoft Romania’s first major subsim and because a major game element (dynamic campaigns) were inserted into the game at the last minute due to a concerted community push. However, they’ve had two A++ titles since then (Silent Hunter 4 and 5) to fix these bugs and problems inherent in the game engine design.

By contrast, Fallout 3: Game of the Year Edition, which I recently finished playing through last month, basically kept track of the location of each weapon, body, item, and whatnot over a massive 26km2 map, and also tracked their damage states; yet Ubi can't do that for ships in convoys? At any one time, there weren't *that* many ships at sea in WWII; a couple thousand probably, which can be tracked given today's computer memory capacities.

[Immacolata]

Originally Posted by JScones

One has to admit, it is starting to look that way.

Given the number of pre-existing bugs that were carried forward to SH5, it wouldn't surprise me if the save game bug(s) did too.

You kind of get the impression that the entire programming team of SH3 had been sacked after development in 2005 and those new recruits are totally in the dark about the code. So they stick to "modding" what they understand.
IT sure feels like they are trying to not start over on coding but having a start-all-over-crew trying to develop on top of the unfinished business of SH3.

[Arclight]

Maybe they never managed to track down the cause of the issues. I never had them, many others didn't either, so it may have more to do with individual systems Makes it pretty much impossible to track down, especially if it doesn't occur on their test platforms.

That they repeat, not that strange imho (yet to be confirmed though). They have settled on certain programming techniques/habits. Since they're working with the same data, though on a different but similar engine, it just pops up again.

Having such a limited timespan to crank out a new engine and create all the specific data for SH5 probably didn't help either.