Something interesting I noticed last night

[trenken]

Maybe this is old news around here, but it's something I just noticed.

I was in the middle of a patrol when a merchant popped up. Then something went wrong graphically and I had to just CTRL+ALT+DLT out of it without saving. Then I loaded up my save, and that same enemy popped up in the same spot.

So is it true that as patrol is actually a scripted thing, without being truly random?

[trenken]

My next point was if I start a new game again, will everything be the same as it was in my 1st play though?

No.

There is a bunch of randomness there. Why it sometimes gives you the same thing is something I don't know.

[AlanSmithee]

Originally Posted by trenken

Then I loaded up my save, and that same enemy popped up in the same spot.

That's the campaign behaving as it should. If you were to reload the save again, the ship would appear again - because the save is keeping a record of the locations of all the ships in the ocean at that time. As far as I know, the campaign randomly generates ships which travel until they arrive at their destination. It isn't simply randomly generating ships within your sensor range. The ship you saw is likely mid-cruise, and during this patrol will be there, whether you see it or not. Next patrol, however, the campaign may not randomly generate a ship which crosses that location.

[STEED]

Originally Posted by trenken

My next point was if I start a new game again, will everything be the same as it was in my 1st play though?

NO if it did that I would soon get fed up with the game.

[Kilamon]

Just for testing purposes, I loaded up a save I had where I was a couple kilometers out of sonar range of a convoy and in 3/5 reloads of the same save, the convoy, it's escorts and their layout had changed. Only twice did I get the same convoy. This would seem to indicate that the game either picks random convoys based on a logarith or it has pre-made convoys which are picked from like a deck of cards. I've also done saves from port (standing on the bridge, not in the office) and the ships themselves are different when encountered in the same positions.

[jasondef]

Originally Posted by Kilamon

Just for testing purposes, I loaded up a save I had where I was a couple kilometers out of sonar range of a convoy and in 3/5 reloads of the same save, the convoy, it's escorts and their layout had changed. Only twice did I get the same convoy. This would seem to indicate that the game either picks random convoys based on a logarith or it has pre-made convoys which are picked from like a deck of cards. I've also done saves from port (standing on the bridge, not in the office) and the ships themselves are different when encountered in the same positions.

Interesting. I always do a save at the start of every patrol when I'm still at the dock and before I give the first command. Reasoning that should I come across something cool and unusual, like a task force, and I'm too far away to catch it, I can start again and alter my beginning course so that when that same task force pops up again, I can be in position to catch it. But perhaps that reasoning is flawed, and maybe that task force won't be there the second time around. I wonder if anyone knows for sure?