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Old 10-08-21, 08:19 AM   #1
Bubblehead1980
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Default If anyone wants to tackle the TMO bug for conning towers.I am at a standstill

The conning tower and equipment upgrade bugs in TMO linger. There has to be a correction. If I understand FOTRS team corrected this? I never encountered in my testing of FOTRS.


I have tried various things and just does not hold aside from stopping the upgrades and being forced to hand edit files, which is somewhat complicated, time consuming and not user friendly. Want to correct this old bug in the mod but afraid all my efforts have failed. Perhaps new eyes on it could handle things.


The issues are:


Every class of boat, when received the conning tower upgrade, loses equipment installed....SD radar, SJ radar, AA guns and deck guns, typically going back to basic equipment. Then crew slots for guns disappear. When player loses SJ radar and requips, the radar does not work, the scopes are turned off. SD radar is iffy, sometimes will work, sometimes wont.


Its a bit ridiculous and makes it difficult to player an entire career. I received the upgrade for my Salmon in September 1942(thought had edited it out but another mod caused it to kick back in) and lost aft deck gun crew slots, as well as SD radar. I had not equipped SJ yet as wanted to wait one more patrol and have enjoy challenge of playing without surface radar a little longer.
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Old 10-08-21, 04:14 PM   #2
propbeanie
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I wouldn't classify it as "fixed", only 'partially minimized'. CapnScurvy came up with some of the "fixes", s7rikeback with others, and I did some. Remember that some of our tweaks looked like they initially worked, but would also eventually fail, situationally dependent. Now, one thing to remember though, is that some of those "defects" are not defects, such as losing any "purchases" you may have made with the previous conn. That is the way the game is designed. If you paid money for an improved radar and then qualify for a new conn, you will have to 'purchase' that improved radar again, unless it is part of the new conn and you have passed the normal "active" date. Think of it as the submarine is designed with the basic stuff, and you have to pay for the options.

However, in Stock, as well as TMO, or any other mod, including FotRSU, if the upgrade parts do not match, then you will completely lose the gear. As an example, if you have a submarine that uses a "Supported" radar, ie: uses an antenna mount that attaches to the conning tower superstructure, and the radar called is using an unsupported radar antenna shaft, then you will not have radar, and will not be able to purchase one. What we finally did with FotRSU was to put ALL of the subs on the same upgrade "schedule", so that it was easier to see stuff. We then spreadsheeted it all, and went through and attempted to match everything, from the subname upc file to unitparts upc to the upgradepacks up to the equipment upc file for the sensors, and the weapons upc for the guns. We even had to dig into the ammunition links for a couple of the guns.

The irritating part is that something completely unrelated to the failed piece of gear can bork the whole mess, such as what we have found while attempting to get the deck crew and their clothing to display properly in FotRSU. Of course, we have different "calls" for the crews, and part of that contributed to the deck gun issue. I do not think though, that the issue can be completely "solved", since it seems to be extremely sensitive to how changing the guns is accomplished by the player. Even with everything seemingly in-place in FotRSU, it is still possible to end up with missing gun crew slots - which does not look like it should be able to happen, since they (the crew members) are completely "described" in the subname upc file, whereas most mods (and stock) just have NULL placeholders.

To top it all off, these "errors" in the game have a cumulative effect, leading to (as mentioned) erroneous diagnosis (es??). The publisher of the game never did publish a "modding interface", so everything we do is by trial and error - mostly "error" in my case... lol - CapnScurvy used to say "when in doubt, follow Stock", which is true for roughly 95% of the issues - but as attested to by Webster's famous mod, it does have issues also... One last thing to remember is that some of the "upgrades" have to be "initialized". This is somewhat like activating a mod, in that the information in the Save folder has to "update" for things to function correctly. This is why after say, changing a bow gun to an aft gun, you will not have a gun crew display, in spite of having the slots "populated". Save the game, exit, come back in, load the Save, and the gun crew displays now when calling Battle Stations...
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Old 10-09-21, 12:43 PM   #3
Bubblehead1980
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Quote:
Originally Posted by propbeanie View Post
I wouldn't classify it as "fixed", only 'partially minimized'. CapnScurvy came up with some of the "fixes", s7rikeback with others, and I did some. Remember that some of our tweaks looked like they initially worked, but would also eventually fail, situationally dependent. Now, one thing to remember though, is that some of those "defects" are not defects, such as losing any "purchases" you may have made with the previous conn. That is the way the game is designed. If you paid money for an improved radar and then qualify for a new conn, you will have to 'purchase' that improved radar again, unless it is part of the new conn and you have passed the normal "active" date. Think of it as the submarine is designed with the basic stuff, and you have to pay for the options.

However, in Stock, as well as TMO, or any other mod, including FotRSU, if the upgrade parts do not match, then you will completely lose the gear. As an example, if you have a submarine that uses a "Supported" radar, ie: uses an antenna mount that attaches to the conning tower superstructure, and the radar called is using an unsupported radar antenna shaft, then you will not have radar, and will not be able to purchase one. What we finally did with FotRSU was to put ALL of the subs on the same upgrade "schedule", so that it was easier to see stuff. We then spreadsheeted it all, and went through and attempted to match everything, from the subname upc file to unitparts upc to the upgradepacks up to the equipment upc file for the sensors, and the weapons upc for the guns. We even had to dig into the ammunition links for a couple of the guns.

The irritating part is that something completely unrelated to the failed piece of gear can bork the whole mess, such as what we have found while attempting to get the deck crew and their clothing to display properly in FotRSU. Of course, we have different "calls" for the crews, and part of that contributed to the deck gun issue. I do not think though, that the issue can be completely "solved", since it seems to be extremely sensitive to how changing the guns is accomplished by the player. Even with everything seemingly in-place in FotRSU, it is still possible to end up with missing gun crew slots - which does not look like it should be able to happen, since they (the crew members) are completely "described" in the subname upc file, whereas most mods (and stock) just have NULL placeholders.

To top it all off, these "errors" in the game have a cumulative effect, leading to (as mentioned) erroneous diagnosis (es??). The publisher of the game never did publish a "modding interface", so everything we do is by trial and error - mostly "error" in my case... lol - CapnScurvy used to say "when in doubt, follow Stock", which is true for roughly 95% of the issues - but as attested to by Webster's famous mod, it does have issues also... One last thing to remember is that some of the "upgrades" have to be "initialized". This is somewhat like activating a mod, in that the information in the Save folder has to "update" for things to function correctly. This is why after say, changing a bow gun to an aft gun, you will not have a gun crew display, in spite of having the slots "populated". Save the game, exit, come back in, load the Save, and the gun crew displays now when calling Battle Stations...


Ah man, I've tired a lot of what you said, based on following the FOTRS threads, look through files. I'm just missing something. Fortunately, I managed to undo the damage by going back to previous in port save, upgrading the conning tower manually, equipping radar. Next upgrade is no until January 43 its November 43, so will make a mod to stop upgrades until am ready to do it manually. I want to solve the issue as much as possible, it is a lot to ask for players to do. Plus, then when have major refits to boats like guns added forward etc, have missing gun slots. I had the issue with my Tambor career when made it to 1943.


Ill keep trying but looking for fresh pair of eyes, why I posted.
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