Bugged Patrol Assignment? (Philippine Sea Crash)

[Nikdunaev]

Hi All!

I have recently encountered a very strange technical problem that I do not recall seeing before.

I seem to be stuck on the third patrol since the beginning of my current career.
It is March 42, and I get an assignment to patrol off the east coast of Japan, in the Philippine Sea. The orders literally say "Patrol off Honshu Island".
So, I head out in that direction, and everything seems perfectly fine, may go bite a random convoy along the way, but then, *suddenly*, as soon as I get past the Mariana Islands, and into the sea, it starts lagging and stuttering *like crazy*, at any decent rate of time compression and just crashes.

Like, in the open ocean, it runs liquid smooth at x8000. I can make the trip from Pearl in a couple of hours of real time no problem. But about the time I cross the islands, it becomes laggy at as little as x64 or x128. Barely responding and unplayable at x512. A bit like when you suddenly bump into a bunch sound contacts and it stutters for a second or two before resetting the time compression. Except this effect is continuous and no contacts show up.

Then it just crashes without warning.

It could crash when switching to a different crew station or view, or giving an order, or just completely randomly.
Could crash anywhere between immediately after entering the area, and several days in while roaming around. With or without contacts in sensor range.

But it always does crash within the laggy area.

It is very weird, because during my previous two patrol sorties, I was hanging out in the area extensively, with the only trouble coming from the Japanese escorts.

Initially I thought it was a save game problem, so I decided to load from the home base, and repeat the whole patrol from scratch. The result was exactly the same. And I seem to be stuck on this assignment. Like, even if I load in the office, back at Pearl, at the end of my previous patrol, I still get the same exact orders every time.

I run the latest steam version from the Silent Hunter Collection. (1.5 + UBM)
NO MODS, completely stock game.

What is happening there?
Any ideas?

Update 1

Right, so I tried to load one of my earlier saves, albeit from a different career, with a different boat. This patrol was from December 41 through January 42. I left Pearl Harbor and headed straight for the area of interest to hang out in there for some time.

Guess what, it worked like a charm. Worked the very same way it worked for the first two patrols of my current boat and crew.

Update 2

Then I wanted to somehow test it with my current career.

So I loaded the supposedly bugged patrol, at base, once again received the same orders, but, in order to avoid doing this assignment, I decided to deliberately run the boat aground shortly after leaving and just damage it to have an "excuse" to return to base.

Surprisingly, despite my "poor" seamanship, the headquarters praised my decision, and I even got decorated, I suppose, for bringing everyone home alive. But more importantly, I was offered a new command, a brand new and shiny Gato class boat, and new mission orders.

Once again, I took this boat straight to the Philippine sea, and from there even further, to my assigned area in the Korean Straight.

Once again, it seemed to work perfectly fine. No trouble enroute, or when loitering in either area.

What is this? Could it be, that the *at base* save is, itself, corrupted?

****, I definitely do not want to have to whack my boat and hurt my crew, just to get out of these impassable groundhog days, even if, somehow, I get rewarded for it