Greetings, Captain.
We are with you at the tail end of our longest Experimental cycle yet, and are happy to say that update v1.7 Coordinated Assault is now ready for your enjoyment.
As usual, we thank all Captains involved in the Experimental branch, helping us put together the biggest update on Boat Crew yet, overhauling most of our core systems to make them more engaging and to bring them up to our current polishing standards while adding new features as well. Your assistance was indispensable.
Each aspect of the update has been covered in detail in our recent Developer's Diary series, the links to which has been placed at the bottom of this post for your convenience. We will also be providing a summary of the changes and additions here, as well as the full changelog. Now let's get right into it.
Our biggest addition that's not a rework of an existing system is the Progression system, which provides 20 permanent upgrades at one per Captain Level, with each level unlocked by weakening the enemy and helping your side make progress.
At each level, you can pick one out of four upgrade trees to go down. The upgrades are generally passive, simple, and powerful.
The Armament tree makes you better at killing the enemy, the Leadership tree allows you to have up to 5 additional crew, the Survivability tree makes you better at not getting killed by the enemy, and the Resourcefulness tree gives you access to an additional playable boat option, better and cheaper squadron boats, and eventually, Squadron ships.
The upgrades in a tree must be unlocked in sequence, but you are otherwise completely free in picking which tree you want to invest your points in as we ended up deciding against implementing the lowest-level limitation we were talking about in the original diary that covered this feature.
We are hoping that this will improve the sense of progression throughout your Campaigns, while providing new and interesting tools to accommodate a variety of playstyles.
The next new addition is the Elco 77' PT Boat, which was originally supposed to be the first playable boat we added during Early Access. Other priorities took precedence, and we eventually added the Huckins 78', so the smaller sister of the 80' got shelved. Until now.
More manoeuvrable and quicker to accelerate than her larger sister, while also boasting better speed in reverse, she has less top speed in a straight line and can't carry two pairs of destroyer-sized torpedoes.
Last, but not least, the helm of the Elco 77' is not a place to be merely walked to; the would-be helmsman and any medic coming to assist them will have to slide in and out over the structure of the boat, and we have a cool, unique animation for this.
With this addition, we have now added all the PT Boats we planned to add to the game. The Elco 77' is available from the start, replacing the Higgins 78' boat, which has now been turned into an unlockable boat with an RP cost and even higher overall performance and durability.
In addition to the Attack Transport, an ordinary new unit without anything of note going for it, the last completely new addition we have are the Configurable Difficulty Settings.
A highly requested feature that has been a long time coming, we didn't want to commit to changeable difficulty for a long time so as to get the basic balance of the game down right. We seem to get an equal number of complaints that the game is too easy and that it is too hard, so we feel confident that the basic balance of the game is at a good spot.
However, we acknowledge that not all Captains are equally experienced, nor do they share the same appetite for challenge, or have the same ideal Campaign duration in their mind. To accommodate a broad range of preferences, we have parametrized a bunch of properties of the Campaign and given them sliders for the Captain to customize their experience to their taste.
If you're happy with your time in Boat Crew so far, but wish you could easily change some things about the Campaign, we strongly encourage you to go through the options provided. We are also offering 5 presets, balanced for increasing difficulty in ascending order.
You should check the Projectile Velocity Realism parameter out in particular; which is a sliding scale for interpolation between our gameplay values for projectile velocities, and the real life velocities of those same projectiles. What this means for you is that, bigger guns are a lot, lot faster, while shots from smaller guns tend to benefit less or even slow down depending on the exact weapon.
That wraps up our completely new additions and it's time to move on to the major system overhauls.
The crew system has been completely reworked in multiple ways. First is the introduction of the attribute system, which is a set of six attributes that are displayed in a classic hexagon diagram. Traits are now less common, and they directly modify attributes, making it much easier to see what exactly they are doing.
New convenience features have also been added, as you can now cycle the information shown in the crew panel, change default crew roles from the crew screen, and even rename your crew.
We also now have a score system, which allows crew members to contribute to a boat-wide score based on their veterancy at a role and their Cooperativeness stat. This allows veteran crew members to have boat-wide effects that apply to fresh recruits and make their lives easier, while also encouraging you to train everyone at every role to further boost the performance of your crew.
Some new gear has been added, including two new handheld weapons; the M1919 Machine Gun and the M7 Grenade Launcher.
Most pieces of gear now come with an RP cost and are no longer free, and they now boost attributes with clear definitions of what exactly it is that they are doing. Except for the Bandolier. The Bandolier remains as bespoke and undecipherable at a glance as ever, with the cryptic "Cooldown Rate" standing for the cooldown rate improvement when used by a Gunner on a mounted weapon, or by any crew member with a handheld weapon. So it is no longer a Loader item.
Another oft requested feature was the ability to assign gunner priority to determine which weapons should get Gunners first, which has now been implemented.
Last, but not least, crew can now sprint, whether when ordered by double clicking or on their own during an emergency.
All of these changes were made possible by the complete rewrite of the crew AI, which allows them to work together on tasks, respond quicker to events, and automate sprinting. This AI system also found its way into the Supply Rework, which we will be talking about next.
Our old supply flow system worked with pre-created supply lines, resulting in more rigid behaviour than desired. The new crew movement AI is used to make supply work more in terms of jumps between bases, with the next leg of the jump being determined dynamically.
The old pips based system of displaying supply has also been retired, with supply instead being shown as an exact amount and progress to the next base level.
Ammunition expended by you and your squadron now has a supply cost, which will be tallied as debt to be offloaded at any base (or group with a Tender) with a positive supply amount. Bases can go into negative supply, but this will stunt their growth and block further resupplies until they are back to having a positive balance.
We are hoping these changes will make the supply system both more intuitive and impactful.
The Squadron System has also received a major overhaul, with the addition of basic commands, torpedo-equipped boats, advanced boats and even squadron ships, including destroyers or your very own tender.
With these changes, you can order your squadron to move to a specific place, decide when you want them to drop torpedoes, or when you want them to get out of harm's way.
The squadron options are cleanly split between four different pages, with each page being unlocked at levels 1, 3 and 5 of the Resourcefulness tree respectively. You can have up to 5 PT Boats and 3 ships in your squadron, which won't change, but discounts are provided at levels 2 and 4 of the Resourcefulness tree to make them more accessible.
Last but not least, the targeting UI has received a glow-up, and now comes with a built in range finder and a cleaner viewing picture for easier locking-on of targets.
Units in a faction will also now spot for each other, which should hopefully address concerns about squadron boats outranging the player. Now, you will be able to stand back and provide fire support with your larger guns, provided that they have enough range to do so.
This also applies to ships, so if you spot targets for allied ships, they will be able to provide gunfire support at longer ranges. The same applies to the enemy, however.
That was a long list, and we tried our best in compressing 6 diaries worth of content into one update post. As mentioned before, for further details, we encourage you to read the diaries themselves directly, go through the changelog, or really just get out there and try the changes out for yourself in the field of battle.
With this update, Boat Crew is all but complete and almost every system we want in place is now in its final state. Without any spoilers, we still have a couple more big things coming, and are now entering what we are calling the pre-1.0. phase.
You can look forward to one last big patch with a couple of new major features, a lot of polishing, and smaller content additions. That will have to be a discussion for a future diary series however, and for now, get out there, and enjoy v1.7 Coordinated Assault!
Finally, with the game nearing completion (but once again, not quite there yet!), your reviews will be more representative of the game and are thus more important than ever. If you have been enjoying Boat Crew so far, we would greatly appreciate it if you could leave a review on the Steam page for the game. How well do you think we are doing? Let us, and future Captains-to-be know.
That's all for now,
Captain,
T.T.
v1.7.0 Full Changelog
Crew Rework
- Reworked crew equipment effect system. - Added bonus effects to boat and crew for category sum of veterancies. - Character leveling adjustments. Gunners no longer get XP depending on score of the target but instead a flat rate per tagged kill. This XP is tripled for air kills. - Player PT Boats can now support up to 14 crew members by progression. - Crew AI full rewrite. - Crew can now run. Running is automatically triggered by conditions on the boat and environment, it can also be triggered by double clicking a point on the deck or hotkeying roles. - Characters are no longer given traits for challenge levels, they are generated with equal attributes. - Rewrote the overboard mechanic to rely on the "Resilience" stat. Gunners have halved chance and the person manning the wheel has a quartered chance proceed with a rolled overboard trigger. Traits (like featherlike/cowboy) are currently disconnected from the overboard mechanic. - Crew uniforms are now automatically assigned by ranking class. Selecting enlisted vs officer specific clothes manually is no longer possible, but other gear is still shared. - Added character rename feature. - Added character screen role cycle feature. - Added M7 Grenade Launcher and M1919 Handheld version for crew personal weapons. - Added Flak Jacket for the vest slot. - Added Dog tags and Communication Gear for the neck slot. - Added Cowboy Hat, Blast Helmet, and Talker Helmet for the head slot. - Added Sun Sensitive trait. Sailors with this trait should wear sunglasses but only when the sun is shining.General Additions
- Added Elco 77' player boat. - Added Campaign difficulty setting selection for new campaigns. - Added distinguished slots for squadron ships, ships now contribute more to the threat gain percentage. - Added distance delayed sounds for large explosions. - You can now refund squadron cards with the "X" hotkey. - Expanded purchasable squadron units. - Reworked Targeting Mode. - Added gun priority feature. - Added No. 101 Attack Transport. - Basic implementation of a squadron management mode. - New music direction.General Balance
- Engine cooling rebalance on all PT boats. - Doubled engine overheat damage. - Added 5 second stall to weapons that come from under sea level. - You can now lock on to targets that are being detected by the rest of your squadron. - Increased capsize prevention force. - Rebalancing of weapon health components of major ships. - Added markers for target that is being locked on. - Reworked gunner AI and visibility mechanics. - Search range and detectability general rebalance. - You can now lock on to targets spotted by squadron. - Doubled airplane health. - Added gun sway effects. Avoid low "Hand-Eye Coordination" characters and level gunners to reduce these effects.Campaign Balance
- Nerfed USN side in the campaign starter engagement. - Atlanta made to be a lot more common. - Reduced spawn weight of the smallest IJN supply groups. - Furutaka possibility added to first carrier hunter group. - Leaving a base under 10 points should now trigger a player raid despite there not being any destruction. - Assault behaviour adjustments to prioritize closed off sectors. - Campaign faction supply distribution behaviour rework. - Usage of guns, torpedoes, and items (except ammo box) will now tally as player used supply. - Bases now require positive supply to rearm the player and reset the player used supply counter. - Map air bases now require a positive supply value to launch sorties and also drain supply for each sortie that isn't targeting the player through the threat system. - Furutaka-Class Cruiser now has a chance to appear in early game Strategic Targets, and is guaranteed to spawn in later Strategic Targets.Major Fixes
★ Fixed dive bombers bombing consistency. Fixed long lasting issue of dive bombers being affected by player control mode due to them sharing torpedo launch systems. - Fixed an issue causing carrier hunter groups to have greatly reduced traversal.Fixes and Adjustments
- Fix front meatchopper having parts not properly synced to camo on some boats. - Fix ground positions friendly team issue in challenge/tutorial levels after defending friendly campaign base. - Fixed a rare issue where an assault group can be left pathless after leaving base. - Fixed tender circle remaining active until despawn instead of moment of sinking. - Renamed "targeting in idle mode" accessibility feature to "lowered targeting view" and fixed ammo display issue when active. - Renamed Yūgiri to Yuugiri due to font issue causing it to appear named as "Y". - Reduced time it takes for boat control authority to be active at the start of engagements. - Added on spawn captain to helm teleport pass. - Targeting lockon detection adjustments to help with locking of alternate targets on ships. - Improvements to air AI handling of flight model, planes should fly much more smoothly. - Anti-air aiming calibration adjustments. - Targeting point scaling and detection adjustments. - Entity search call optimizations. - Enlarged Ki-45 main gun projectile to stand out. - Fixed broken naval AI pathing in challenges. - Fixed utility weapons causing aimed at enemies to evade. - Fixed campaign fast forward hotkeys not working after boats menu is accessed. - Adjustment to boat handling direction swap when boat reverses. - Crew now raise barrels when they are finished handling their guns. - Weapons that require crew to be crouched to use no longer cause the crouching stance when they are not active. - Prevent nets from moving while crew is climbing.Graphics and Animation
- Removed image contrast and saturation filters in favor of a color curve focused color grading. - Ocean and sky color adjustments. - Reduced bloom for nighttime, increased brightness. - Optimized VFX of AA shells and small splashes. - New damaged component material. - Character face improvements. - New models for ammo box and repair kit. - New crew animations for loading ammo, revival, and grabbing items. - Added duct tape animations to distinguish itemless repair action. - Added wrench animation to distinguish repairs of deck components.
v1.7.0.10 Stable
- The refund amount for a hovered squadron is now visible at the bottom. - Nerfed USN side in the campaign starter engagement. - Lowered Elco 77' lower tub turret angles to allow straight forward shooting. - Gun dispersion completely removed from player 3-inch gun AP shells, 37 mm AT Gun, 37 mm Autocannon and 75 mm Pack Howitzer. - Player 3-inch gun now deals most of its damage as direct damage so it can better (at all) benefit from Armament 1 upgrade. - Renamed "targeting in idle mode" accessibility feature to "lowered targeting view" and fixed ammo display issue when active. - Fixed submarine weapon not working since v1.7.0 weapon AI unification, added 5 second stall to weapons that come from under sea level. - Fixed front meatchopper having parts not properly synced to camo on some boats. - Fixed ground positions friendly team issue in challenge/tutorial levels after defending friendly campaign base. - Fixed aircraft dogfighting pursuit velocity doubling and aiming calibration. - Minor reduction to music volume.
You can also find all the Developer's Diaries related to this update below:
Moving Up In the World - 29th of April - Developer's Diary V1
Human Resources - 8th of May - Developer's Diary V2
New Faces - 15th of May - Developer's Diary V3
Pack Tactics - 22th of May - Developer's Diary V4
Sinews of War - 5th of June - Developer's Diary V5
Shoring up the Line - 19th of June - Developer's Diary V6