Hello Sailors,
Thank you for your patience. We know it's been a while since we posted B121 at the unstable branch. Now, properly tested, we are giving it to all the players waiting. This is the biggest update so far. Lots of changes, plenty of fixes. We went to extremely deep waters with it for you. Without further ado, please take a look at the changes.
Travel system overhaul
- Fast travel mode was removed from the game and replaced with a stronger time compression mode which functionally is pretty similar, but without forcing perspective, unnecessary cheating and added the possibility to use it at all times.
- Travel system was streamlined and no longer speeds up units depending on the current sea size etc. The time needed to pass X km on the world map should be just as expected. Please note though that time will still pass faster than normal even without time compression when the game is in the travel mode. We will probably add an alternative, realistic travel system at some point, but the current one will always be the default one in the game. With this update, it should be much closer to what simulation games community wants, while still being user-friendly.
- Officers gain and loss fatigue much more slowly.
- Fixed very numerous physics problems that were appearing at newly added high time compression level.
- Script optimizations for smoother performance when time compression is being used.
- Electricity consumption in travel mode was reworked.
- U-boat's range on diesel engines now matches the real values.
New off duty system
- Moving large quantities of goods from port and refitting u-boat is no longer instant and requires some off duty period.
- Crew gets weary over time when being very long on the sea and gains discipline penalties.
- Crew can be sent on a vacation to reset their mood, while u-boat is undergoing maintenance work.
- Added game mechanic for quickly skipping long periods of time while u-boat is off duty.
- U-boat upgrades now also require off duty time to be installed.
Storages overhaul
- It's now possible to open storages and torpedo storages to view their contents and issue transport/loading orders without having any officer selected. Such orders are later completed by officers with certain roles and their helpers.
- Added progress bars and labels to the storage UI that indicates, which items are currently being moved somewhere else.
- Transported items are now always dropped in a storage slot chosen by the player instead of the first free slot.
- Characters will carry items in both ways to save time if there are orders to transport goods in two directions between storages.
- It's now possible to buy shells directly into ammunition storages.
General improvements
- Assignments are now completed after talking with the leading officer. They cannot be completed on the sea like before. This change, among other things, allows the player to report all events normally after completing the main objective of the assignment.
- Orbit view camera was improved to better present ship's bobbing/elevation changes while moving through the waves.
- Added new action icons on portraits: blowing ballast tanks, flooding ballast tanks, wounded, treatment.
- Fixes and improvements to many port textures.
- Reworked navigation table. It's no longer possible to get lost soon after navigator had worked for a substantial time at it.
- Added research for sonar decoys. Removed sonar decoys from the starting equipment.
- UI sound effects are now stereo panned and most of them are quieter by default.
Performance improvements
- Crew's RAM and VRAM usage was considerably decreased.
- Generation of character meshes was rewritten to be as asynchronous as possible on the current version of the engine. It should fix the most common hiccups in the game occurring during weather changes, boarding crew, etc.
- Texture compression tasks are now asynchronous.
- Physics should run more smoothly near ports.
Fixes
- Sun lens flare could be visible under water during sunsets. It could also be visible in some fogs.
- Fixed clearly visible boundary on the sea at some distance from the ports.
- Injured characters could get some automated orders.
- Font fixes.
- Camera could orbit target that was no longer visible.
- Buoyancy force is additionally stabilized when physics precision is decreased. It fixes exaggerated bounce of a few ship types on time compression.
- Rudders sway much less to the left and right when traveling forward with enabled time compression.
- Ambient occlusion was incorrect on lower levels of detail for characters, making the transition clearly visible.
- Sandbox could start with loading popup still on the screen.
- Characters were flickering after transitioning between the port and the deck.
- Diesel engines range estimation was off and didn't consider the engineer's skills.
- Time compression is becoming disabled after entering or leaving the travel mode.
- Player could enter land areas without seeing any notification aside from the paused time.
- Reflections on the sea were too foggy.
- Transfer count slider in the storage UI now takes into consideration remaining capacity of the target slot. It's no longer possible to declare transfer larger than possible.
- Leo Loris wasn't working on the actions queued in the global queue.
- Various fixes to torpedo storages bugs.
- Fixed exploit that was making instant torpedo loading possible.
- Torpedo loading tasks in the global order queue are now performed only by engineers following the torpedo mechanic role.
- Global order queue could hold only one non-ending action. It's no longer a case.
- Electric engines battery drain was lowered.
- Certain transport tasks could become stuck at 100%.
- Time compression now correctly stabilizes torque changes from buoyancy to make watching it more comfortable.
- Purchasing torpedoes into stern torpedo storage wasn't working.
- Carry item orders assigned to officer with helpers were sometimes ended prematurely with a few items left in the source storage.
- Quartermaster role wasn't working since 121 Preview 1.
- Quartermaster could transport a fractional number of shells to the ammunition storage. He was also never resupplying the storage completely and wasn't re-using slots in the storage.
- Displayed item count was often wrong when the slot was a target of a transport task.
- Code related to now deprecated skipping calendar dates feature was removed from the game. It had a minor impact on performance.
- Time skipping of the resupply at the port was often ended prematurely.
- Storage weight limits weren't respected if all items were queued to be moved at once between storages.
- Fixed multiple problems resulting from moving one shop item to a few u-boat's storage slots.
- Some crew members could start working with a briefcase or a backpack after vacation.
- Improved performance during time skipping in port.
- Headquarters task duration is now expressed in days, if appropriate, instead of hours to improve readability.
- Hydrophone can be now correctly downgraded to GHG at ports.
- Localization fixes.
- Selling items to the warehouse no longer resets their count.
- Items that aren't produced by a given country or are at a low stock are no longer restocked in the warehouses.
- Number keys no longer initiate dialogue options when various UIs opened through dialogue are open.
- Keyboard shortcuts could stop to work if a player left to the menu during a dialogue.
- Torpedo arm distances were adjusted for faster torpedo types (they were noticeably higher than for the slow ones).
- It's no longer possible to detect groups hidden behind land by any means.
- Various fixes to conning tower observation animations.
- One part of the conning tower wasn't being visually damaged by the explosions.
- Attempt at fixing Unity's background thread crash after entering HQ.
- Map grid could have a gap at the bottom part of the screen after entering the land area.
- Lens flare quality improvements. Fixed lens flare flickering every 10 minutes of in-game time.
- Ammunition Production I task wasn't doing anything due to a bug.
- Failed missions weren't handled properly and the player could get rewards for them.
- Espionage assignment fixes.
- Fixed Unity's background thread crash after entering HQ.
- Console wasn't properly displaying some messages after optimizations from B120.
- ON convoys could travel through the land on the way to Halifax.
- Physics of the items hanging on the hooks in the stern torpedo room could become permanently corrupted, especially when large time compressions were used.
- Torpedo mechanic could get stuck outside of the pressure hull after loading or warming torpedoes. Also, the end of the loading animation was erratic.
- Selection of portraits could stop working after performing certain steps.
- One part of VIIC u-boats was remaining visible even after losing them from the sight.
- Possible fix for duplicated/ghost units which couldn't be reported after sinking.
- Diver could become not selectable under certain circumstances.
- Leaving tutorial by clicking the button at the end was causing minor issues.
- Caps were sometimes visible in FPP.
- Minor storage UI fixes.
- Minor render pipeline fixes.
- Localization fixes.
- Underwater effect wasn't working inside flooded compartments since at least a few versions.
- Torpedo and hatch animations now respect current time scale. They were moving too fast on a pause and too slowly on a time compression.
- Activator banners react more consistently to being occluded by the scene elements (labels were previously unaffected).
- Loading screen music now respects current audio settings.
- Various fixes to first aid.
- Fixes to various path-finding related warnings that probably didn't have any impact.
- Multiple fixes to having two torpedo mechanics at the same time.
- Propeller audio effects were audible above the surface of the water for up to a few minutes after loading a game state. This problem could affect a few other audio effects too.
- Inactive characters that were on a vacation or investigating other ship were coming back to the scene after loading a game state.
- Reworked internal compartments of smaller units to make them more easily sinkable.
- Added balancing factor to the torpedo damage formula.
- Ships evacuated by the crew receive more damage and floodings are more likely to spread to simulate the fact that they lack any kind of direct damage control at such point.
- HQ now requires more definite sinkings for a reward.
- Font fixes.
You must admit, that looks impressive, but let's face it. We would never do it without you and your feedback. Once again, massive thank you for each conversation, each report, each review. You're the best!
Sailors! Dismissed!
Yours,
Deep Water Studio