Be seated, Captain.
We are with you in the final diary of the third reboot series, to talk about the upcoming Big Update, henceforth to be called the v1.5 Floating Fortresses update, after its highlight feature of the new aircraft carriers and the Strategic Target groups they will be a part of.
Since the Experimental Branch launched on the 16th of August, we have been getting a lot of valuable feedback from you, and ourselves have been hard at work, iterating on existing systems and putting some ideas previously ruminated on into practice. This has helped us sustain our fastest experimental cycle yet, and to show for our combined efforts, we had an Experimental update on Monday, with some major changes and improvements that you can read about at this link, and another one three days later, today. So once again, our thanks to those of you who are participating in the Experimental branch.
At the bottom of this diary is the changelog for v1.5.0.2 Experimental, released today, which is considered to be feature complete and a reasonably close representation of what the v1.5 Floating Fortresses update will be like. The rest of the experimental period until the stable release will be focused on bug fixes, balance changes and minor improvements.
With all of that said, let's talk about the most recent changes and additions.
Going above their ordinary bomb load when engaging heavier ships or while flying at shorter ranges, carrier aircraft would be loaded with heavier, often armor piercing bombs. Emulating that, we decided to give 1600 lb Armor Piercing bombs to special carrier variants of the SBD Dauntless and the D3A for each side respectively, that deals twice the damage at half the explosion radius of what an ordinary 1600 lb bomb would do.
This distinction makes them better at hunting ships, giving carriers an extra punch in whatever engagement they are directly participating in. These carrier variants of the dive bombers are exclusive to the planes you physically see on the ships in direct engagements, and the air wings spawned in the zones of control that are projected from the carriers will not have this distinction. The armor piercing bombs will also be available as a rarer variant of the Dauntless call-in, replacing the MG-only configuration. Nobody wants a bomber with no bombs, after all.
Carriers will also now periodically spawn air wings to join nearby engagements or attack enemies that they can see and expect to win against, which are culled every night. They can even spawn groups to join engagements directly involving them, so if you find a Strategic Target group participating in an ongoing engagement before you're there, you can expect several aircraft to be already in the air, though you will still be able to sneak up on them.
Speaking of sneaking up on enemy strategic targets though, that will not be as easy as it was at the beginning of experimental. We took the time to implement a proper formation feature for our, ahem, flagship feature for the update, and the seaborne tyrants will now be safely cocooned inside a loose formation of screening ships, sending their minions to do their bidding for them. The benefits of this new formation system have also trickled down to existing groups with multiple large ships, resulting in an overall improvement to the AI behavior of larger ships.
This is a good time to remind you that a carrier battlegroup, even one with light carriers, is not meant to be a fair matchup for a few boats made out of plywood. We intend for taking on a Strategic Target to be the most difficult thing you can do in the game, to the point of feeling unfair to the majority of players.
Feeling that way is intended, expected, and in fact, encouraged. Destroying a Strategic Target will not be required to win the game, after all, so no need to feel bad if you can't do it. But if you did want to prove yourself a legendary PT boat Captain, there is no better way than to do so.
The final unit we are adding in this patch is an IJA conversion of the Coastal Tanker that is currently in the game, replacing its fuel cargo and deck gun with several mortars, an outrageous amount of ammunition and an improved AAA complement. Ever in competition with the Navy and not to be outdone by letting them have the most explosive ship in the game, the Coastal Bombard is a tongue-in-cheek nod to the historical Japanese military craftiness in turning civilian or otherwise unarmed vessels into improvised combat ships.
While we couldn't say with perfect honesty that this unit is no joke, its got surprisingly high throw weight, providing a credible threat to allied base defenses and careless Captains and bringing some much needed fire support to early game landing operations. It's got an even larger amount of supplies than the Coastal Tanker, and a mean temper when damaged. You would be well advised to maintain a healthy distance from the big tub of explosives, as its even more temperamental than the Coastal Tanker in matters of blowing up.
All in all, we made this admittedly bizarre unit to acknowledge the historical improvisation efforts, to create a charmingly strange unit for you to fight, and also to add some monetary incentive to early game base defense missions. Don't expect to see them everywhere though.
Last but not least, we are expanding the tutorial from one mission to not two, but three tutorial missions at once. The first addition is a longer player weapons tutorial that teaches new players about torpedoes, rockets, and utility weapons, while the second one is a simple torpedo/rocket practice map of an endless cavalcade of supply ships.
We're hoping this will be sufficient tutorialization when combined with the low level Challenges, which new players are encouraged to check out after playing the Tutorial and before hopping on to the Campaign. We will be happy to hear about any feedback, particularly from newer players, on this matter, once these improvements reach the stable branch, as we have been meaning to improve on the Tutorial for a while but only had the chance to do so recently.
All of what you've read here should be in the patch that has been released today, and will naturally also be in v1.5 Floating Fortresses, which is scheduled to be released on the 28th of August. Until then, take a look at the changelog below, and consider switching to the Experimental build. There are still 6 days left before Stable release, and if you wanted to participate in the development of Boat Crew by giving your feedback, there is no better time to do so than during experimental cycles.
That's all for now, Captain,
T.T.
v1.5.0.2 Experimental Highlights ★ Multiple tutorials support. New Weapons Tutorial and Weapons Practice added. Weapons Tutorial is a crash course on the player controlled weapons except the anti-submarine weapons, while Weapons Practice is a firing range with unarmed, respawning targets. ★ New AI dynamic formation system will now make skirmishes make more sense. ★ New unit added; Coastal Bombard. A rather bizarre improvised coastal bombardment unit, it is relatively rare and quite fragile. Leaves behind a decent amount of supplies upon sinking. Changes - Airbases and carriers will now launch active air wing groups instead of arbitrarily contributing to engagements by damage. - Both sides can now schedule reinforcements into combat if they have a carrier or airbase nearby. - Carrier groups will now leave the map if strength or carrier units are diminished. - Acoustic torpedoes will now factor in the engine powers of potential targets. - Acoustic torpedoes will no longer target ships with inactive engines. - Increased despawn timers for ships so they can remain floating for some time after being disabled. - 1600 lb AP bomb added, and dive bombers that spawn directly on carriers are armed with these high damage, low explosion radius bombs. Rare-call in variant of Dauntless with an AP bomb added. - Comprehensive rebalancing of support powers, mostly buffs rather than nerfs. Rocket Pods on aircraft now have a lot more ammo, and Artillery is more combat heat hungry, but now benefits from veterancy, firing additional shells at higher veterancy levels. - Submarine cargo convoy led by the Jingei-Class Submarine Tender made a lot more common. - Japanese 90 mm and 150 mm mortars giving substantial direct damage. This won't change the outcome of a direct hit against the player much, but it will make them hurt other AI targets more. Bug Fixes - Carrier groups should no longer identify as suppliers simply because they contain some trigger units. - Fixed plane icon on carrier groups being visible through radar before getting close enough. - Engagement report notification sorting fix and faction separation for post engagement notification. - Clipboard fixes for landing unit visibilities, they will no longer be hidden but instead grayed out. - Fixed previously damaged units exploding on engagement start by thresholding persistent damage into binary states. - Fixed autocannon still having rotation limits in the Higgins and the 81' Experimental. - Nerfed autocannon recoil due to unwieldiness when shooting sideways.