Greetings Captain,
After a week's break from our regularly scheduled diaries, we are back with you with the 6th and final entry to our current reboot diary series, with the Stable Build now in sight. As we near the end of this Experimental cycle, let's talk about what's left for us to add before we are ready to declare v1.7. Big Update to be complete.
Let's get right to it.
The first thing on our list is the fifth and final PT Boat that will be added to the game! The Elco 77' boat, also known as the PT-20-Class, was a transitionary design that saw limited frontline service, instead being built in very limited numbers and used for training or patrol back at home, while also seeing some action early in the war.
In the game, compared to her larger sister, the Elco 80', she will be nimbler and quicker to accelerate, while being slightly less durable and having slightly less top speed as well. Owing to her lower top speed, her engine will cool down quite quickly as well.
Elco 77', like the Elco 80', is meant to be a well-rounded generalist, and an undemanding boat to use you can't really go wrong with.
Originally planned to be the fourth PT boat in the game, the PT-20 had the unique challenge of a helm that the crew can't walk to, which would require some adjustments in pathfinding logic.
This was the main reason she was sidelined and wasn't added until now, with our crew movement changes making it easier for us to implement this smooth entry to the helm without a ladder.
Now that we are adding the fourth boat to the starting roster, we finally feel at liberty to make a change we had been wanting to do for some time; to make the 78' Higgins a "premium" boat.
Since the 78' Huckins got added, she shared her durability and engine performance stats with the 78' Higgins, making their overall performance pretty much identical aside from some differences in deck item placement and placement compatibility.
Our four starting boats cover the basic niches well enough, and the 78' Higgins can be elevated to a higher level than the rest, given its status as the newest and most successful design. The 78' Higgins will now cost RP to use, and will have to be unlocked through in-game progression via the Resourcefulness tree.
To compensate for these barriers to entry, she will get improvements on top of her already formidable engine stats, boasting better top speed and improved engine handling. In addition, she will also be considerably tougher, being able to endure more damage like the 80' Elco.
Speaking of the Resourcefulness tree, it is also being added, unlocking the new pages of the squadron boat options gradually, while also giving you discounts.
In playtesting, we noticed that squadron boats are a little too good, shifting the focus from upgrading your own boat completely to rushing a squadron to play the game for you instead.
We don't want to remove this playstyle, but we do think your squadron's overall cost effectiveness should increase more gradually, and so, squadron boats will now cost more at first before being made cheaper via upgrades in the Resourcefulness tree.
So if you want to rely on your squadron to do the work for you, that will still be possible, but you will have to invest in your Resourcefulness tree.
The other tree we are adding soon is the Survivability tree, giving you a variety of bonuses to your craft's survivability and overall performance.
Generally boring but dependable passive effects, Survivability upgrades are quite self-descriptive and are good investment for Captains who want a little bit more defensiveness, whether to be able to make some room for error or to be able to press the attack more aggressively.
With the addition of these two upgrade trees, that leaves the Armament tree as the last tree to be added, which is the topic for another update that will probably be coming next week.
Finally, we are adding configurable difficulty and difficulty presets! A long time coming and requested almost as often as upgrades, configurable difficulty is now being added, with a certain set of adjustable parameters that will let the Captain modify the Campaign to their liking. Presets will be provided for Captains who'd rather have us worry about the details and get right into the action instead.
Notably among the parameters we are adding, we are adding a Realism factor, which will let you scale projectile velocities between their current values to their realistic values. Sometimes, especially for smaller projectiles, this means the velocities will barely change or even go down.
However, shells from most big cannons get much faster, allowing you to get a taste of what realistic shell velocities would feel like while you're at the helm of a PT Boat. Remember, the name Destroyer comes from Torpedo Boat Destroyer, after all, and this setting might just help you find out why they are called that!
That wraps up what we had in store. Everything we have talked about here will feature in the Experimental branch update tomorrow, though it's looking like there will be at least one more update early in the next week before we wrap v1.7. up and move on to Stable.
That's all we have for now,
Captain,
T.T.