Dear captains,

There is a new patch ready for version 2024.1.

- Added new recordings for announcing an alarm by the officers when enemy ships or aircraft are spotted.
- Added new emergency voice variants for order confirmations during an alarm.
- When reporting contacts, officers now say that the target is "straight ahead", instead of at "0 degrees".
- Fix: If an officer with zero energy was controlled in FPP during an alarm, then the alarm was disabled, and then player left the FPP mode, the officer was standing in place and wasn't going to bunk, despite being exhausted.
- Fix: After loading a saved game state with injured officers, they were rendering with closed eyes on their portraits, and the portraits remained in such a state even after a full recovery.
- Fix: "hold.. hold.. fire!" voice said by officer at the deck gun, is no longer played at high time compressions in map mode.
- Fix (regression of 2024.1): On Type VII U-boats, move orders issued with a right mouse button weren't working on some parts of battery room no. 1 and battery room no. 2.

- Fix: Guns on Liberty ships were lacking ammunition and weren't firing.

- Fix: The destination marker, that appears after issuing a move order to an officer, was appearing partially under the floor in the stern torpedo compartment on Type VII U-boats.

- Fix: When multiple officers have levelled up at once, the associated sound effect had multiplied volume.

- Fix: "Days later" screen, that appears after clicking a quick return to port button, could get stuck indefinitely in certain situations after changing an U-boat to another type during the same play session without leaving.
- Fix: Fixes to save system.

Yours,
DWS

Dear captains,

There is a new patch ready for version 2024.1.

- French localization update by FvJ and Placebo.
- Russian localization update by Hard.

- Fix: If a button for viewing tuberculosis event was quickly clicked several times, before a transition to a new view was over, the captain was becoming indefinitely blocked on a bunk of an ill sailor.
- Fix: Officers could sometimes become permanently idle on the deck after a decoration cutscene. They were blocking diving in such state. This fix will also repair this problem in existing game states that already have this problem.
- Fix: Increased tolerance of a helmsman station and a galley to water in a compartment, especially on Type II.

- Fix: Once a screen faded out to black after clicking a quick return to port button, it was sometimes still possible to click on UI elements, even though they weren't visible.
- Fix: Further adjustments to a transition to a character screen. Among other things, there was often an unnecessary deselection sound effect played when it was being opened.

- Fix: Improved defined imports and exports of Norwegian ports, especially Narvik as they were in a conflict with its description in a tooltip (this change takes effect in new games only).

- Decreased the price of explosives by 25%.
- Fix: Slightly improved animation of officers looking at the map in the HQ, to make it more seamlessly looped.
- Fix: Reworked an interaction with a Japanese submarine, to handle a case when the U-boat is full and it's not possible to load mission cargo.

Yours,
DWS

Dear captains,

There is a new patch ready for version 2024.1.

- Once a routine hydrophone check is ordered, a progress bar for that order is displayed on a radioman's portrait that gets tasked with it.
- The game is now asking, when an officer is being tasked with loading a torpedo, if he should only load it, or maintain it first and then load.
- Crew no longer verbally reports friendly and neutral units near friendly ports, since it's rarely useful and there are often many such contacts. Notifications still appear with no changes.
- Fix: A small clipping was present when a character was wearing a beanie and had a face of type X.
- Fix: Right after resting, officers weren't considering orders waiting in the global order queue (for example, torpedo loading orders) and were always doing something else from their assigned role.
- Fix: Characters could sometimes incorrectly rotate for an animation, when there was a high time compression in use and they handed out a report to an officer just before starting another animation (for example, if they went to their bunk for any reason after handing out a report).
- Fix: Officer's hat, hair and beard could disappear, if he was controlled in FPP and certain steps were performed, involving saving and loading the game states in a specific way.
- Fix: When there were multiple injured people on the ship, some of them could heal indefinitely after being treated.

- Added tooltips to controls displaying a number of sailors, officers and survivors on the ship.
- Clicking on a notification about free specialization points, now opens an associated screen where they can be spent.
- Improved transition to a character screen.
- Fix: Once a screen for releasing survivors was closed, the transition was slightly wrong. The fade in and out animation was played completely and only afterwards the UI was changing.
- Fix: Japanese navy flags weren't visible in UI, only in the 3D scene.
- Fix: Orders queue was sometimes appearing partially outside the left edge of the screen.

- Added UnityEngine.JSONSerializeModule.dll and System.Xml.dll to compiler for use in the mods.

- Fix: Too many decision buttons were appearing after a search of an abandoned merchant ship was completed.

- Fix: Type VIIB U-boats had green positional lights on both sides of the conning tower due to an issue with UV map.
- Fix: Fixes to certain problems with flickering lights in submarine pens.

- Fix: If an interaction screen was opened and closed without selecting any decision, during a rendezvous with a Japanese submarine, it wasn't possible to open it again.
- Fix: It was sometimes not possible to load the cargo from B1 submarine and continue the mission.

- From now on, when ports are restocked, some of the stored equipment is replaced with new items. This fixes an unwated situation, that an outdated equipment was sometimes occupying port storage indefinitely.
- Combat music and elevated stress among the crew are now maintained for 10 minutes after loosing enemy contacts, if there is a clear reason to believe that the enemies are still somewhere close. Automatic alarms are also maintained slightly longer in such situations.

Yours,
DWS

Dear captains,

There is a new patch ready for version 2024.1.

Technical:
- Fix (regression of Patch 15): The game could crash when an aircraft carrier has moved away from its original group and has disconnected from it along with several other ships.

Yours,
DWS

Dear captains,

Days are getting shorter and the autumn starts to set. Having the full release behind us, we are here to discuss our current short to mid-term plans for UBOAT.

A part of our team is currently working on the next playable U-boat types from the Type IX lineup that will be released in a DLC expansion. These large U-boats are well-suited for extended operations in distant waters, such as the eastern coast of the North America and the Indian Ocean. With six torpedo launchers and a powerful armament on the deck, they are a force to be reckoned with!


Along with those U-boats, we plan to introduce new types of missions tailored for their capabilities and expand the in-game world appropriately.


We will be sharing the progress of this work along the way in the next dev logs. Currently, they are still on early stages and we expect to finish them sometime in 2025.

There is still a lot to be done in the other departments. Our plan is now to focus on a more normal-sized updates that can be delivered faster into your hands.

We've already started initial work on the next update that will improve sinking physics, along with several other improvements. We expect to complete it in early 2025 and will provide more details about it later on as it develops.


We will take a short break over the next few weeks to recharge our energy and approach the new challenges in UBOAT with a full enthusiasm. Once we are back, we plan to release several small patches more to 2024.1.

Yours,
DWS

Dear captains,

There is a new patch ready for version 2024.1.

- Russian localization update by Hard.

- Fix: Budget operations related to ship upgrades and crew vacations were displayed incorrectly in the budget history in languages other than English and Ukrainian.

- Fix: It was possible in certain cases, to not get "Convoy? What convoy?" achievement, despite sinking all ships in a convoy that qualified for it. This fix will work in a full extent only for newly encountered convoys.

- Fix: A small inconsistency in the calculation of a task priority for work at the navigator's station.

Yours,
DWS

Dear captains,

There is a new patch ready for version 2024.1.

- Ukrainian localization update by vovanvoks.
- Russian localization update by Hard.
- German localization update by Ruby.

- Fix: Underwater effect was temporarily disabled when zooming in the camera from the orbit view to the section view, if camera was previously placed in a specific position.

- Work at the navigator's station in publicly known areas now has a decreased priority instead of having zero priority. This makes it possible to force navigator to work on this station at all times for a fuel consumption modifier.
- Fix: "Focus" skill description was improved and is different when playing with disabled periscope stabilization.
- Fix: Many fixes and improvements to character voices played when using a deck gun.

- When a character screen is opened for an officer who has a pending level up with unspent skill points, the screen automatically opens up on the skills tab.

- Fix (regression of Patch 15): The game was crashing after sinking an aircraft carrier.
- Fix: Another error that could sometimes make a saved game state unloadable.

- Notifications no longer play their associated sound effects during return to port cutscenes.
- Fix: North Labrador weather station campaign objective banner was displayed at a wrong position on the map after loading any save file.
- Fix: If a merchant ship's evacuation was ordered during an inspection, the ship's captain was later missing on the lifeboats.

Yours,
DWS

Dear captains,

There is a new patch ready for version 2024.1.

- Fix (regression of Patch 15): Game could crash in certain cases, when a large group of ships was split into smaller ones.

- Fix: Sailor's cap LOD levels were sometimes slightly clipping with a sailor's head.

Yours,
DWS

Dear captains,

There is a new patch ready for version 2024.1.

- Chinese localization update by Alex Zheng, JM-LeiDao, 36 D, Xenon_Tennessee, 人生多忐忑, 肚子困脑袋饿, Parrot with Carrot.
- Ukrainian localization update by vovanvoks.
- German localization update by Ruby.

- Fix: T5 torpedoes no longer react to a sound emitted behind them.
- Fix: Nelson's hull was impossible to break in half in certain circumstances.

- Various improvements to the assignment on Hopen Island to make it clearer which structure to locate and where to look for it.
- Fix: If a button for quickly leaving a port was used during tutorial no. 2 in Brest, the previously plotted route was cleared and it was necessary to plot it once again.
- Fix: Tutorial missions were providing more fuel to Type IIA U-boats than their maximum fuel capacity.

- Discipline now regenerates during time skipping.
- Fix: If a sailor with a specialization was wounded, his associated specialization point was lost, but after he recovered, the point wasn't coming back until other event triggered a recalculation.
- Fix: Sometimes an officer with a suitable role wasn't automatically coming back to observe the surroundings from the conning tower after surfacing from a periscope depth, but instead was continuing to use a periscope.

- Increased a number of AA guns in several ports.
- Improved the default undock route in Brest.
- Fix: When a very large group of ships was approaching a waypoint (for example a waypoint of a convoy), all ships in the group were heading to a single spot, before heading to the next waypoint on the route. This behaviour became especially apparent with the recently added larger convoy sizes.
- Fix: Improved algorithm that splits large groups of ships into smaller ones. It could sometimes cause mild AI issues or make it so that ships were loaded too close to the U-boat, especially with the recently added larger convoy sizes.

- Fix: Incorrect view could be rendered for a duration of a time skip, if the time skip was initiated on a zoomed out map.
- Fix: Lighting wasn't smooth on an attack periscope tube on Type II U-boats.
- Fix: Black pixels on the side, when looking up from the inside of Type II U-boat through an open hatch.
- Fix: Added texture precaching during an assignment summary sequence, to avoid displaying a blurred out map on the table at the end, before it was streamed in a full resolution.
- Fix (regression): The night illumination of UZO / periscope graticule introduced in Patch 13 wasn't looking correctly, when a periscope was used in a fullscreen mode.
- Fix: If a manual periscope usage mode was left using a mouse wheel, sometimes the transition wasn't fully smooth, and there was an instant FOV change.
- Fix: Improved crew pathing on Type II, to avoid sailors clipping with the storage or galley.
- Fix: If a crew member remaining inside the U-boat was picked for an external interaction and then he was removed from the selection, he had a wrong lighting on him later on and could also become invisible in some circumstances. There were other, more complicated, ways to make this happen, but all of them revolved around sending a crew member to an external interaction. This problem was clearing itself once he left the U-boat's interior and entered back.
- Fix: There was a gap in the Brest submarine pen's ceiling due to occlusion culling in a map view.

- Improved descriptions of certain budget operations in the tooltip.
- Removed keyboard navigation on items in the MENU dropdown.
- Fix: Points added on the map using drawing tools, now remain draggable, even when they are in a place covered by a contact visualization (blue / green arcs) and drawing tools aren't used.
- Fix: If any ship was selected and a list of officers that could target it was opened, and then the ship was deselected, and then UI scale was adjusted, then after selecting any ship again, the list of officers was in an incorrect place.
- Fix: The notification about missing watch crew, was sometimes appearing too fast, before a ship fully surfaced and anybody could go out.
- Fix: Ongoing tasks listed in the HQ view were not reacting to clicks on the officer portraits inside them.
- Fix: After following certain steps, it was possible to make it so, that the red arrow on the UI telegraph was blinking indefinitely.
- Fix: Added a larger timeout to the missing cook notification. It was sometimes appearing without a need.
- Fix: Change course orders spoken by the skipper were missing in the crew reports log, if they were initiated using an UI compass.
- Fix: "Course to view" command on the UI compass was sometimes not working correctly.

- Fix: If a mod's source code was recompiled, the mod's assembly was loaded twice into the memory. It could cause issues in some cases.
- Fix: Mod compilation errors weren't written to a log (mods were compiled before a logger was fully initiated).

- Updated Polish version of Uboatopedia.

- Optimizations to physics and particle effects that are mostly aimed at improving performance of a high time compression near large convoys.
- Fix: An error that could sometimes make a saved game state unloadable.

- Fix: If certain steps were performed before initiating a carry items order between two storages, it was possible for an item that was present in the officer's backpack (for example, a med-kit) to end up in the storage that doesn't accept such an item type, for example an ammunition storage.
- Fix: If certain steps were performed on Type VII U-boats, it was possible for some of the torpedoes in a salvo to be announced as a dud and sink right after they were launched.
- Fix: Meat hanging in Type II control room was sometimes clipping through the ceiling into the conning tower.
- Fix: Fuel consumption reduction that could be obtained after completing weather station placement assignments, was being lost after changing U-boat to another type.
- Fix: Errors spotted in the player logs.

Yours,
DWS

Dear captains,

There is a new patch ready for version 2024.1.

- French localization update by FvJ and Placebo.
- Ukrainian localization update by vovanvoks.
- Japanese localization update by かねのもうじゃ.
- Russian localization update by Hard.

- Sailors assigned to officers are no longer counted towards overwork penalty if they don't do anything.

- Fix: It wasn't possible to use map drawing tools on areas covered by contact visualizations (blue / green contact arcs).
- Fix: After loading another game state in-game, the silent running and alarm buttons in the TAB menu were remaining in the previous state, and potentially weren't reflecting the actual state of a silent run and an alarm.
- Fix: In the machine room and the torpedo room of Type II U-boats, there was a carry water button appearing in the bottom UI, but it didn't make sense in the case of these U-boats as the water may flow freely between the rooms.
- Fix: If an attempt was made to scroll text in a radio message view using a mouse wheel, the view was closed instead of scrolling the text.
- Fix: Assignment name was sometimes not fitting into the text area for some assignments in some languages.
- Fix: If a map drawing tool was toggled, something was started to be drawn and then another tool was toggled without completing the previous drawing, the previous drawing would remain on the map and wasn't possible to remove.

- Fix: Sometimes sunk merchant ships were later displayed as having an unknown origin and an unknown destination. This problem may stick around for a while in the old game states but should disappear after some time passes in-game.
- Fix: Fixed probably all causes of a relatively rare situation where after sinking a ship with a certain name, a new one could be encountered with the same name shortly after. This problem may stick around for a while in the old game states but should disappear after some time passes in-game.
- Fix: After leaving a submarine pen and docking in another pen nearby, the leading officer from the previous pen could remain and duplicate.

- Fix: Asset loading error that could cause various issues: pink particle effects, sailors with missing jacket geometry, etc.
- Fix: Unusual, intense reflections around the lens of an observation periscope on Type VII and both periscopes on Type II.

- Fix: If certain steps were performed, it was possible to obtain a Needle In a Haystack achievement for sinking a ship in a group smaller than 15 ships.

- When binoculars are used in manual mode, from now on an attempt is made to load a fullscreen overlay from such a path: "Images/Periscope Overlays/Binoculars Fullscreen". This allows mods to use a different overlay for the binoculars than for UZO.

- Fix: In some cases, the amount actually paid for various U-boat upgrades was lower than initially declared in the UI (sometimes they were completely free).
- Fix: Autosave on dock wasn't working if a quick return to port was used.
- Fix: Sometimes the external hatch wasn't being closed, even though the entire crew entered the U-boat. Consequently, the sailor responsible for flooding the tanks would await closing the hatch indefinitely.
- Fix: Quick mission completion wasn't working correctly if it was clicked while using a device in manual mode (for example, a periscope).
- Fix: In some cases, if a ship was accidentally hit by its ally, it could take away credit for sinking from the player.
- Fix: Fixes to various errors spotted in logs sent using a bug reporting tool.

Yours,
DWS