Hello!

A second hotfix for version B126 is up. It's again mostly fixes to the most common problems from your reports and also updates to translations provided by the community members.

We will prepare at least one more patch before moving on to the next major version.

This version is fully compatible with the previous one regarding saved game states.

- New Russian translations by ZNC.
- New Spanish translations by Tordo.
- War correspondent fixes in French localization.
- Beard, complexion and voice customization options weren't translated in the summary panel.

- Convoys with escort carriers could expand their area radius indefinitely in some cases.
- Fix for a square artifact that was appearing around the hatch on the conning tower under water.
- "Scrollable view modes" setting was disallowing to zoom camera in and out in the orbit view. It wasn't intended.
- Water could turn pink for some time, if many torpedoes exploded and multiple ships started to burn simultaneously.
- Sunk ships weren't listed in the assignment summary after ending a free roam.

Yours,
Deep Water Studio

If you are the owner of UBOAT, you will get the 15% loyalty discount when buying Tank Mechanic Simulator, which releases February 20th - the discount option will be displayed on its store page.



Tank Mechanic Simulator is a game about World War II tanks, their crews and their contribution in military history. As a tank museum owner, your task is to recover destroyed or abandoned tanks and renovate them.

More info about the game:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/407130/Tank_Mechanic_Simulator

Release Date Trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtauzwwpKmk

Gameplay Trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6QPPHsE9wU

Cinematic Trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_z2nyTnWAA

Kind regards,
PlayWay Team

Hello!

A first hotfix for B126 is up. It addresses some of the most common problems that were reported so far.

- French localization fixes by Sword.

- Torpedo solutions weren't updated for the selected G7a (T1) torpedo speed.
- Light color wasn't possible to change after loading a game state saved during a light color transition.
- Officers could stop to regenerate energy in a bed due to an error.
- Label stating name of the officer that received the decoration was cut off at lower resolutions.
- Characters could become stuck during carrying ally action.
- Various buttons were stopping to work after cancelling a bug report form.
- Fire button on the torpedo launchers UI could remain blocked after performing certain steps.
- Fixes to automatically reported errors.

Yours,
Deep Water Studio

Hello skippers!

We are back with the next major release - B126. This version is focused mostly on quality of life improvements, fixes and stability. It comes with multiple technical improvements in the game that should push it one step forward from Early Access title towards a full release!

While it's not mandatory, we strongly recommend to start a new campaign on this version to enjoy it fully as some of the improvements require a fresh start to have effect.

We are now going to move back to the work declared in our roadmap. We are excited about some of the next features ahead and hope that you are too!


- It's now possible to disband crew members to clean up the list.
- AI now tries to avoid joining battles that have too many participants already to avoid performance drops. This behaviour is moddable in the data sheets.
- Lost contacts are now using a special icon with the question mark before disappearing to let the player know that this group is no longer being actively detected.
- There is now a floating warning above nearby contacts with high radius that explains that these contacts may be inaccurate.
- Aircraft now usually won't be starting from the bases shortly before sunset until sunrise. They will also try to get back home during day. They may still occasionally stay around at night, if they already found enemy u-boat, until their fuel will start to run out. Aircraft spawn rates were increased to compensate for these changes.
- Added "Harcore aiming mode" to the gameplay settings.
- Setting torpedo speed, depth and salvo spread is now possible in the torpedo launcher screen.
- It's now possible to hide the detection hint in the gameplay settings.

- Added mouse rotation sensitivity slider to the control settings panel.
- Added additional warning that tutorial is considered obsolete.
- Bug reporting system gives a very clear warning that mods are enabled before allowing to send a report. Mod list is now also uploaded along with the bug reports.
- Game now checks integrity of the most important files before starting and informs the player, if something is wrong. We noticed a major rise in problems caused by missing files in the installed game (500+ affected users). It affects only some players updating from B124 on Steam, fresh installations seem to be safe from this kind of problems.
- It's now possible to disable vignette effect and to invert mouse for the periscope view in the game's settings.
- Optimizations to saved game states size and loading speed.

- Small tweaks to water normals for a better look.
- Decreased noise post-processing effect intensity.
- Disk space and memory usage optimizations.
- Added night lamp lighting to all base game ports.
- Large random freighter hulls weren't receiving all damage effects used in the game.
- Improvements to maps texture in the control room.

- New German translations by Ruby.
- New French translations by Sword.
- Added a few new Spanish translations suggested by anonymous player through the reporting tool (thank you).
- Polish localization fixes.

- Too many neutral freighters could spawn at certain periods.
- U-boat propellers had wrongly assigned meshes, they both had linked meshes from the other side.
- Game window would flicker after selecting regular fullscreen mode in the settings and then adjusting gamma slider.
- Game states saved near minefields and anti-submarine nets had some problems related to them after loading.
- Fixes to many automatically reported problems.
- Infinite loading when entering land areas.
- Fixes to a few problems related to diving to wrecks.
- Fixes to saving and loading game states.
- Aircraft moving very slowly on the map.
- Characters could sometimes end being incorrectly rotated, for example leading officer after vacation ended.
- Group and ship AI fixes and performance optimizations.
- Gamma settings weren't applied in menu since B125.
- There were two memory leaks per each NPC ship that were increasing memory usage with each game state save and reload.
- Objective to sink a lost u-boat couldn't be completed, if player saved a game state after receiving it and reloaded the game state before proceeding.
- Ally asking for resources was continuing to wander around, even if its enemies were shot down or they left the area.
- Aircraft that ran out of bombs could occasionally search for submarines despite that.
- War correspondent could sit on seats occupied by other characters after 2.5 hours of in-game time.
- Steers UI was overlapping with mission summary after performing certain steps.
- After zooming camera out of binoculars/periscope/hydrophone manual mode geometry of character head would be visible from the inside for a fraction of the second.
- 4th and 5th engine gears were reverting back to 3rd after submerging, surfacing or swapping the engines manually.
- Characters that had equipped a rebreather, combat helmet or any other accessory were refusing to transport cargo between cargo storage.
- Foam trail on the sea could appear in a different place than the ship after meeting NPC group or sometimes after entering land areas after experiencing a lag.
- Medical aid with a medkit wasn't working properly.
- Target group in the lost ship mission, ally help mission and sink ship mission could in rare occasions move with u-boat on the map for some time.
- Minor leak in the toilet wasn't selectable and only AI could initiate the repair.
- Game states saved while looking through the periscope weren't loading correctly.
- Increased compartment flooding tolerance for the officer working at the navigation table.
- Better physics stabilization at high time compression. It improves dinghy behavior on the max compression with enabled map and paves the way for the new travel mode that we have in the plans.
- Recruits in ports are periodically disappearing from the list, making place for the new ones.
- Sailors promoted to officers could become cloned after reloading the game state, if officer count on board was already at the limit.
- Port of Alexandria didn't had any AA guns and mission with finding their positions was being instantly completed.
- War correspondent was loosing his camera after re-loading a game state.
- Crew list is now sorted by rank, level, class and name.
- Discovered AA guns count wasn't properly restored from the saved game states.
- If player would enter and then leave a character screen of any sailor during dialogue with recruitment officer, unwanted UI elements would appear on the screen.
- Character could sometimes drop a very unusual shadow, after player entered FPP view, that was blocking a large part of the light from the flashlight.
- Level of detail on some parts of Flower-class corvettes and Illustrious carriers was fading too fast, leading to weird graphic artifacts.
- Conning towers could turn invisible after installing them, if certain steps were performed.
- Rarely, enemy NPC groups wouldn't correctly unspawn from the scene and remain permanently spawned even hundreds of kilometers away.
- NPC groups could sometimes have problems with decisively resolving encounters between themselves. That could lead in the long run to formation of many hot points on the ocean, where multiple groups would jump into battle and stay there for a long time. This was increasing game state size and affecting performance.
- It's no longer possible to add sold items to wrong warehouse tab and have them restocked there.
- Setting spawner activity to zero in the data sheets was causing problems in the game.
- Accessories equipped by the officer couldn't be removed without reloading a game state.
- Coastal patrols spawn probability decreases with each group already spawned.
- Mines in ports no longer explode when friendly ships pass above them. Historically they were being switched off by a port crew at such time.
- Spawned mines sometimes weren't fully cleaned up from the memory.
- Land passage that appears after docking in port wasn't recognized by crew pathfinding, if player installed Turm II (possibly also Turm IV) and reloaded a game state while being docked.
- War correspondent article progress was being severely set back, if player spent reputation points on any purpose when he was on board.
- Icons for detection on map could be wrong, if a few types of detection happened in a specific order and remained valid together for some time.
- Torpedo launching now cannot be performed at a depth greater than 20 meters.
- Notifications that saving a game state is not possible should be much more rare.
- Multiple fixes to saving game states during short events like character transitions, torpedo loading animations and camera transitions.
- Fix for a permanently looped audio at a spot after loading a game state saved during certain animation transitions.
- Improved animation alignment on the navigator's station, also navigator's helper now joins the officer on the station.
- Possible fix for occasional black screen after clicking "continue" on the assignment summary screen.
- Snorkel was affecting ship's visibility even, if it was hidden under the deck.
- XP bars weren't displaying correct progress, if character had a high level of experience. XP bars can be now hovered to see exact number of experience points.
- If player encountered a coastal patrol that sailed very close to the coast during encounter and then player left the area, this patrol could in rare cases travel through the land to the next patrol target.
- Potential fix for portrait rendering problems on some systems.
- Alignment fixes for skipper animations on bed.
- Occasionally contact marker could disappear, but the pulsating circle around it would still remain on the screen for some time.
- Collision sound was continuously played after laying submarine on the seabed with enabled collision damage in the settings.
- Tooltip on the valves wasn't changing from "Flooding..." to "Flooded" after ballast tanks became full.
- Character destination pointer on the floor could become rotated a bit in relation to the ground.
- Skipper no longer comments switching between diesel and electric engines, if they are switched only temporarily because of snorkel being flooded by a wave.
- Fix for the problem with unexpected tilting of the periscope that was usually happening when the periscope was locked on a quickly sinking target.
- Assignment summary panel could clip with the screen edges on low resolutions.
- NPC u-boats that are targets of player missions attract less enemies from now on.
- Rudder rotation is now reset after docking.
- Small model changes in Battery Room no. 2 to give more space to sleep for the skipper.
- Radioman could become stuck at his station.
- Fixes to automatically reported problems.
- Snorkel compartment in the deck was disappearing after reloading a game state.
- Radio range wasn't displayed correctly in various descriptions.
- Better alignment for tooltip action descriptions and support for longer parameter names.
- Subtitles for hydrophone operator warnings are displayed, even if his voiceover doesn't contain such recordings (such as skipper voice).
- Echosounder ping actions are now temporarily disabled, when the latest operation still wasn't finished.
- Action state in the wheel menu is now regularly refreshed.
- Sea was beginning to stutter, if high time compression was used for a long time (this problem was linearly growing in intensity with passing time).
- Target ship velocity sometimes couldn't be determined by the officer.
- Update to NVidia Texture Compression library.
- Fixes to automatically reported problems.
- Officers were trying to punish themselves, if they burned eggs in the kitchen.
- Removing currently controlled officer in FPP from the crew was resulting in an error.
- Fix to one more problem that could lead to endless loading of a game state.
- Periscope locking/unlocking tip was always stating "Unlock". Provided various improvements to how this tip works.
- Periscope couldn't be locked on the randomized freighters using keyboard, only mouse was working in their case.
- Ships stationing in a port that changed owner are now escaping from the port.
- Fixes to automatically reported errors.
- Turm I, II and IV had a small part of U-96 badge visible on them, even if played with a different u-boat.
- Knocked out sailors that panicked were appearing at crew quarters and permanently stopping to work on the ship. They are now being actually knocked out and need to lie in the bed for some time before returning to duty.
- Officers could sometimes advance above max level, causing some small errors.
- Fuel/energy savings from having additional sailors with the officer at the engines weren't applied after switching engines until engineer was reassigned to the new engine.
- Errors appearing, if player started vacation when one of the crew members was smoking on the conning tower and then player upgraded conning tower during a vacation.
- Countries added by mods are now added to the world for loaded game states.
- Fixes to automatically reported errors.
- Crew was sometimes carrying to safety sailors that were already in a bed without any danger nearby, soon after they were taken there by somebody else.
- Sailors who are unconscious now cannot be promoted to officers until their recovery.
- Reworked add/remove sailor buttons tooltip.
- Assigned sailors count in the action tooltip wasn't correctly highlighted, if player added more sailors than could work at the current station.
- Added tooltips to actions listed in the action queue.
- It's now possible to open map using a keyboard shortcut when looking through the periscope in a fullscreen mode. Also going back by pressing a keyboard shortcut again opens directly manual mode.
- Fix for "coordinates spotted" intel being added to the journal.
- Control room collider improvements that should decrease cases of character ragdolls being stuck there in unusual poses.
- Port weren't alarmed by exploding torpedo after reloading a game state with that port nearby.
- Changing target wasn't possible in manual periscope mode when torpedo launchers UI was open.
- Torpedoes are now much less detectable to sonars.
- Escort ships AI could sometimes chase torpedoes for a bit.
- Skill tree is no longer accessible for regular sailors on the character screen.
- Hydrophone volume could be adjusted above 100%.
- Decreased memory allocations.
- Improvements to water physics performance for large convoys.
- U-boat could be moved a large distance on the world map without reason after meeting certain groups.
- Officer could have accomplishments with 0 point value in the summary for decoration.
- In the recruitment list, next character is automatically selected after recruiting to allow for bulk recruitment.
- Nelson-class battleships should be a bit easier to sink.
- Added new audio setting: "Play music in FPP". It's now enabled by default, which is a different behavior than before.
- Bug reports sent by F11 tool should now be always sent successfully, as long as Unity servers are online.
- Button for resetting periscope orientation now zeroes on the target, if periscope is locked on something.
- State tooltip on the galley was wrong, if it was checked right after starting a new game.
- Added draught to the ship identification book.
- Position estimation quality by navigator is now displayed on the map view at the upper right corner of the screen.
- Radio stations were stopping to work, if they belonged to a group that changed ownership.
- Added new animations to the navigator's station. Second sailor can now join the officer at the station.
- Food in the control room is now hanged a bit higher to clear up some space in a busy area.
- Chief boatswain is now more likely to work at the navigation table instead of socializing with the crew.
- Probable fix: boxes hanging on the hooks at the stern torpedo room were behaving odd after reloading a game state.
- Improved tooltip for the navigation quality in the upper right part of the screen in map view.
- Anti-aircraft guns in ports didn't had a checked flag to actually attack aircraft and were targeting only surface vessels.
- Ship's hull could duplicate during cracking, if game states with that ship nearby were saved and reloaded a few times.
- Fix to a very old bug in Screen Space Reflections effect that was causing ghosting in the interior of the u-boat. It was most intensively visible on meters and labels.
- Ports could not load, if there was more than 20 enemy groups nearby.
- Changed camera position for the navigator's station, because officer was often wandering out of frame due to the new animations.
- Gun rotations are being reset upon docking.
- Gauges on a diesel compressor were black due to a shadow cast by the railing.
- Drawn map markers were carried over between loaded game states.
- It's no longer possible to travel to a checkpoint when u-boat's position isn't known.
- Improved collider for Kirov and Nelson stern.
- Sea could disappear completely, if wind speed was extremely low, below 1 knots.
- Fuel cost in the warehouse was displayed as "500" until slider was moved for the first time.
- Using mouse wheel or panning in the journal no longer affects camera in the background.
- Unescorted transports (but not escorted convoys) that were attacked by NPC u-boat were slowing down to 1-2 km/h instead of following their path with full speed.
- After clicking with a right mouse button on a mission ship with selected officer on the map view to open actions list, course was changing to that ship.
- Switching devices on/off is now always possible, even if the compartment has a toxic air or is flooded (doing so may damage the device in the second case).
- Officer could be wrongly positioned in a dinghy, if his travel was initiated from a crowded area in the interior.
- Officer could be sent to other ships, even if u-boat was submerged.
- Ship upgrades were appearing in the budget summary with both signs together e.g. "+-4000".
- Camera can be now zoomed in closer on the torpedoes in the orbiting view.
- Slightly decreased probability for investigating a lost ship mission.
- Some operations in the budget tooltip didn't had a specified cost.
- Newly promoted skipper was counting double towards the officer limit on board.
- Skipper promotion description was wrong on the character screen.
- Textual warnings weren't presented for the action that involved officer leaving u-boat to other unit.
- Launched torpedoes and dinghies were disappearing from the scene, if player used "Teleport" command in the development console.
- Leaving area before enemy ship sunk completely would disallow cleaning its individual group from the world.
- Engineer was staying at the diving planes station even after ship surfaced, until player manually ordered him to stop.
- Multiple memory leak fixes that were increasing game states size for long campaigns.
- Added text wrapping to the decoration screen.
- Hydrophone targeting action didn't had a progress bar on the portrait.
- Patrol distance wasn't expressed with units selected in the settings, but kilometers.
- Added bearing display in the hydrophone manual mode view.
- "Next" button on the decoration screen didn't had a sound feedback.
- T5 torpedoes homing improvements.
- Nearby groups can now continue their journey when time is skipped during crew vacation and ship maintenance to avoid occasional "traffic jam" in a port after staying there for a few days.
- Game wasn't allowing to fire a gun with incompatible ammunition type, but it still would be displayed in the gun UI as available.
- Fixes to automatically reported errors.
- Order labels in the TAB menu had a second line cut off, if the first line ended with ellipsis ("...").
- Torpedo maintenance action had a missing indication of the launcher number in the TAB menu.

- It's now possible to add parameter "Unlimited=1" to ship production task in Sandbox.xlsx/Tasks. It ensures that a count of ships in reserve for this class will never fall below 1, so they still may become rare, but they will never run out completely. It can be used to ensure that, for example, a country will never run out of freighters and other baseline units.
- New parameter: "General.xlsx / Settings / World / Max Groups Per Battle". There is a note in the sheet that explains the usage.
- "Sandbox.xlsx / Settings" sheet should now follow normal modding rules.
- Exposed officer decoration textures.
- Additional fixes to modding "Sandbox.xlsx / Settings" data sheet. It should be completely functional now.
- Improved error reporting for encountered data sheet problems.
- Data sheet loading logging can be enabled in "General.xlsx / Settings / Logging / Data Sheet Logging". Having this setting enabled impacts loading time and log file disk usage.
- Locales.xlsx sheet should now follow normal modding rules.
- Vacation image is now resized to the size of the provided bitmap.
- Improved logging for spawner coordinate parsing errors.
- Fixes to Locales.xlsx modding. It wasn't completely functional.

Yours,
Deep Water Studio

Discover the secrets of Mars Rovers with Rover Mechanic Simulator! Early Access starts today!

If you had been excited about the Pathfinder Mission, watched the Spirit rover take the first Martian selfie, or if you are waiting for a safe start of the Mars2020 mission or other rovers this year, we have something for you.

If you own Uboat you can now buy Rover Mechanic Simulator Early Access with an additional -15% off as a loyalty discount! The discount will be valid for the next week and together with the game's launch discount you can get it for 30% off!



https://store.steampowered.com/app/864680/Rover_Mechanic_Simulator

Dear Skippers,

We are back with the next major update to UBOAT. This one is probably the largest update to the game so far. If you haven't tried it by now on the testing branch, then hopefully it will surprise you in a good way!

We already described the first features of this update when it hit the testing branch for insiders:
https://steamcommunity.com/games/494840/announcements/detail/1612779851182114038
During the testing it became even bigger though, so let's discuss the new features one by one.

Assignments are now selected in a new way that gives you a much cleaner overview of the objectives and area of operation.



You can expect new challenges like a battleship presence in the area of operation as well as some twist to existing missions. Sometimes a war correspondent will join your crew, while in other times you may be given a task to test experimental torpedoes.

Some of the objectives and rewards for existing assignments were also reworked.





All your officers will collect points toward decorations of various types. They are awarded for notable bravery in combat or veterancy.



New mission summary presents a much more cleaner overview of completed objectives, collected rewards as well as a log from the patrol.



Talented modders from the community already created mods that draw attention. Since this version is now going public, Steam Workshop now also becomes publicly available.

If you would like to start modding for yourself, check our guide on the game's wiki:

https://uboat.fandom.com/wiki/Modding

Aside from that, there was a few other notable additions:

• Sea near Bergen is now much more deeper and much closer to the real world bathymetry maps.
  
• It's now possible to move in FPP on the step at the front of the conning tower like the crew does, to clearly see what's in the front of the u-boat.
  
• Collision damage and sounds.
  
• German localization was updated (warm thanks to Ruby for providing it).

This update adds a considerable amount of new content and thus memory usage had to go up a bit. We implemented new optimizations to the game to offset that, but it's still going to be 10% - 15% higher than before. It probably won't affect most systems.

If your system is low on memory though or you use a software that consumes a large part of RAM you can increase the page file in Windows like described in this article to avoid problems (12 GB should be more than enough):

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/how-to-manage-virtual-memory-pagefile-windows-10,36929.html

Also, if you would experience any sort of crashes, please verify game files integrity in Steam by entering game properties, going to "Local Files" tab and clicking appropriate button there.

Yours,
Deep Water Studio

Good evening everyone!

It's Christimas time! We would like to use this opportunity to wish the UBOAT community Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

We also take a short break from working on UBOAT. We will be back after Christmas to continue work and push B125 on the stable branch.

Thank you for your continued support and for your everyday contact.

Yours,
Deep Water Studio

Greetings!

The nominations for the Steam Awards are here, and to us, UBOAT has always been a “Labor of Love”. Conveniently, you can nominate our game in this category in the Steam Awards.

First of all, thank you all for your continuous feedback which help us make UBOAT better and better every single day. Thanks to your suggestions and constructive criticism we were able to improve the experience in terms of gameplay, visuals as well as immersion.

That’s not all! Even if we have a lot of adventures behind us there is still plenty to come. With the latest v125 update we entered the Early Access Roadmap which means more changes and new features in upcoming months!

Here is the list of things that you can expect in series of new updates:

- new missions
- new units
- more interactions
- campaign
- continuous visual and technical upgrades
- changes based on your suggestions


We wish you a happy voting and thank you for your love and support!

Best,
The UBOAT Team

Hello!

We are back with a major update to UBOAT. It just hit the "unstable" branch for testing. You can switch to this branch by going to "beta" tab in the properties of the game on Steam.

Main feature of this version is a full modding support. Pretty much anything should be possible to change and your imagination will hopefully be the only limit.

We will soon start to post guides on how to start modding UBOAT on the fandom wiki and in Steam articles section. Please post your feedback and if there is anything missing we will be happy to improve.



Along with that we release the first two official mods:

• UBOAT Inspector (Steam | subsim | Nexus Mods) - which is a useful tool for modders.
  
• Saint-Nazaire Port in France (Steam | subsim | Nexus Mods).

Our mods are meant as modding examples and resources and some of them may eventually be integrated into the main game.

Note: While this version remains on the testing branch, Steam Workshop is going to be hidden. Please join this group on Steam to gain access to it.

Immersive start feature from the roadmap is now complete. When starting a new game you can select a starting scenario for the campaign, which influences many things in the game, especially starting u-boat, crew and date.

If you would like to say goodbye to the old crew, they will be sticking in the tutorial scenario until its removal next quarter.



This version introduces two new ships.

Kirov-class cruisers
Russian fleet enters UBOAT without compromises.



C3 freighters
These are one of the largest American-made freighters.



Since this version UBOAT has a launcher application. It features a built-in mod manager and a news section that will let us communicate certain things better.



It's a common request that is now in the game. It's no longer necessary to adjust them in the main menu.


There were many visual upgrades both small and large to the u-boat interior and exterior and the main menu. We encourage you to take a look around and see, if you can notice the changes.



Iron sights were an often requested feature and we managed to implement it in this version for all guns in the game. There are also major recoil and animation upgrades related to guns. Please check that out in the game and let us know what you think.



We continued to work on improving FPP experience by programming useful meters and devices on board:

- Papenberg gauge and inclinometer are now functional and add a few points to the immersion.



- Echosounder texture was created from the scratch with a much better resolution to make the results readable directly in the scene.



- Missing engine RPM meters on the starboard were added.
- All other meters on board had their display resolution increased for a better look and readability. There were also a few corrections on their scales.



While this version just hit the testing branch and may introduce a few bugs related to the new features, there are many fixes to the existing game base. Most notable fixes include:

- Sailors assigned to an officer would sometimes ignore orders while manning AA guns on the upgraded conning towers.
- Fixes to clipping of certain cloth combinations.
- Indicated depth under cursor on the map is much more precise and consistent. It should be much easier to navigate near Bergen with this upgrade.
- Characters no longer levitate above beds during certain animations.
- Recruitment officer no longer ignores your officers and doesn't instantly look away.
- Important AI fixes for coastal areas.

For the rest of this quarter we will be focusing on the remaining work from the roadmap, bug fixes and supporting the modders. We probably won't be adding extra things like in this update.

Just to remind you, mission overhaul and evacuation from the roadmap are planned for this quarter. We think we will finish them in time, but in case of a delay we will keep you updated.

Yours,
Deep Water Studio

As promised, here comes our roadmap and our plans overview for the Early Access period. We will be updating the graphic below each quarter or so and we'll try our best to keep you up to date.


(Please right click on the image and select "Open image in a new tab" to see it in the full size.)

Please note that the feature list visible on the roadmap is not exhaustive and focuses on large tasks that may affect gameplay in impactful ways.

Let's discuss planned work in detail.

We see our current sandbox and mission system as a good base for new content. Unexpected events tend to happen, and each assignment, despite similar goals, can turn out differently each time. Having said that, we're going to make some changes soon.

First, we want to start with some groundwork and rework assignment briefing. We want to add more flair to it and make all objectives visible on the map during selection. In the current version, it's often hard to tell, for example, where is the sector that needs to be visited without closing the interface first and checking that on the map manually.

To battle the repetitiveness we want to add more variation to existing missions, by providing additional, clearly described conditions to them. Your ship may be fitted with experimental gear for the mission, storms might be expected in the target area or maybe a journalist will join your crew. These are some examples of things that may be enriching assignments soon.

We also feel that assignments need to be a bit more rewarding and offer additional challenges. We modeled 17 historical medals from various sources. We are going to use them soon by awarding them to the player and officers for completing multiple challenges during the assignment.



After the groundwork is done, we will start adding more content to existing missions and add completely new ones. We will also resume work on a campaign that will span through the whole World War II.

We plan to add a configuration screen soon. There, each player will have the possibility to choose the starting year, exact U-Boat to be roleplayed and the starting crew.

We are already taking steps to add new units to the game. You can expect to see completely new ships types like oil tankers, enemy submarines and German surface ships along with more variety among the existing unit types.



We're also working on replacing our current tutorial with contextual hints, explanations and adding training missions in the game world.

And last, but not least, we'll add submarine pens to the game world that will be buildable in HQ. They will look like the one in the main menu.

Crew management is going to see some changes. There is going to be a new screen where the player will be able to define various rules for the crew.

It's going to be possible to start rationing the food, order a sailor to be always ready to flood the tanks or define if the idle crew should run to the bow compartment during a crash dive.

These rules will require spending management points that will be provided to you by experienced officers who will be overseeing their implementation in life. It will simulate the effect of your crew gaining experience and working well with each other as time goes on. It will also add some automation but in a balanced way.

At the later stages of Early Access, we will be adding more crew events on board, as well as more interactions with objects in the world. It's going to be possible to take aircraft crew as captives on board or rescue survivors from a sunk ship, although that will be banned in 1942 after Laconia incident.

With each update, we did some small steps to add full modding capabilities to the game. We consider them now to be in pretty good shape and we'll start releasing our modding tools and guides soon. They will come with Steam Workshop support.

Although we declared this in Q4, it may start slowly rolling this month.

Technical issues will remain our top priority.

We already solved a great deal of them by version B124, but we will continue our commitment to solve them in the future.



The most effective way to report bugs to us is to use the in-game bug reporting tool that, by default, is assigned to the F11 key. This tool sends us useful diagnostic data that helps to prepare proper fixes.

For general suggestion and discussion about further development, we invite everybody to visit the latest pinned topic about unstable version testing. We make a new topic with each version.

Today we are going to mark our old forum for bug reporting as deprecated. We removed the link to it from the main menu of the game a few versions back and posting on that forum will be disabled.

Yours,
Deep Water Studio