Hello Admirals,
The release of the new major update v1.3 approaches but before we make it available for everyone, we would like to make a beta testing so that it becomes released at the best condition possible. Below you can read the preliminary changelog of the current playable beta.
MAJOR FEATURES
- Detailed map province borders: Previously the map borders were showing up incomplete and were not including many provinces that the game used. Now all the map provinces not only have their visual borders but also become highlighted when you hover the mouse cursor on them, with a color according to their controller.
- New detailed weather system: Previously the visual weather system was a predefined set and the accuracy modifiers were independently randomized without proper correlation to the actual visuals. Now the weather is fully implemented. The 3D battles can occur in a realistic sea environment that has different daylight, wind, waves visualization and effects according to time of day and weather conditions. Night battles, dusk, late evening battle landscapes, rain, storms, and many other dynamic weather factors enrich the battle immersion and also seriously affect the accuracy with various modifiers.
- New binary save system improving game performance: Previously the saves were using a text mode system which could create very large files, over 150 MB for campaigns, and this caused huge loading delays. We have improved the save system to store files in binary mode, making files extremely much smaller and loading times much faster, thus improving the game experience significantly. We will later offer a binary editor to open save files for players that are accustomed to editing them.
NEW HULLS
- PENDING: Many new hulls and part models.
NEW GUNS
- New USA guns for calibers spanning from 6-inch to 20 inch across all Mark tech levels.
- New China guns for small/medium caliber guns for late tech levels.
- New barbettes.
- A few fixes and improvements on scales for older guns.
BALANCES & FIXES
- Ship handling physics improved following the new weather system additions.
- Minor improvements on shell ballistics.
- Battle fps performance optimizations.
- Fixed issue which could cause guns to get jammed and not rotate.
- Fixed bug that caused empty hulls to be saved as valid designs, when you exited the ship design interface.
- Fixed bug that could cause an empty hull to be loaded upon the hull you were designing (this needs testing if it can happen again).
- PENDING : Campaign balances.
- PENDING : Various bug fixes.
As with all the previous beta versions of the game, you can find the simple installation instructions and share your feedback in the Steam forum here:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1069660/discussions/3/
***IMPORTANT***
Before you play the beta, make sure to back up all your previous saves, in case you want to switch back to the current live version. Due to the new content, map additions and the binary save system, all previous saves will become automatically converted when you launch the game to be compatible with the binary system and cannot work with the "live" build.
***It is strongly recommended to delete any old saves for campaign, custom battle, naval academy and shared designs, so that you do not get any bugs, which this update is not responsible of.***