Sea Power News

[h2]Mission Saving and Loading, Tac View integration, and the JMSDF units[/h2]

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Hello from Triassic Games! We are very excited today to announce a massive update filled with new units, features, and more! As you've seen in past dev blogs, we are actively working away in the background. Let's go over some of the new and exciting content shall we?

[h2]Saving and Loading[/h2]
Yes, we know it's been awhile in the making, and we are feeling more comfortable with it now to roll it out to public. However.. This does include the disclaimer that this feature is still new, and we expect issues with it to arise. We highly encourage issues with loading missions and saving to be reported through the in-game reporting system accessed via the ESC menu. What does saving and loading include you ask?

• Quick Saving/Loading (F5 to save, F9 to load)
  
• Save File and Load Files (Located in AppData\LocalLow\Triassic Games\Sea Power\Saves) (in-game ESC menu has a save button, with a load button being accessed via the 'Scenario' tab at the bottom)
  
• Autosaving (set the time (in mins) via the in-game options menu)
  

[h2]Tac View![/h2]
We are pleased to be offering integration with Tac View and are grateful for the Tac View team for such an awesome product! This feature, when enabled via the options menu, will record your battles and allow you watch them in post! However, this will be an early roll out, and therefore we are aware of some issues around it, especially when loading a existing save file. This will be a WIP feature, so please pardon our progress if you encounter issues with it!
The Tac View files are currently located in the log files folder under steamapps\common\Sea Power\Sea Power_Data\Logs



[h2]Tactical Display feature - Night Mode![/h2]
This new feature is enabled in a AUTO mode by default, so at night time, it will change the map color to be less blinding for those who prefer the dark color themes many of us enjoy today! You can change the settings on the fly via the 'hamburger' menu (button has 3 horizontal lines stacked on top of each other -> Theme expanded menu). We hope it's a bit easier on the eyes during those intense night battles!

[h2]JMSDF Deploys to Sea Power (and more)![/h2]
One of our biggest content additions yet is a whole shipyard worth of new units for everyone to play with, this includes the following;



JMSDF Units:

• Takasuki
  
• Yamagumo
  
• Minegumo
  
• Tachikaze
  
• Haruna
  
• Yushio
  
• Asashio
  
• Uzushio
  
• F-4EJ
  
• HSS-2
  

Bonus JMSDF Units:

• SAM Truck - Type 81
  
• APC - Type 60 and Type 73
  
• MBT - Type 74
  

USA/NATO Units:

• A-3B Skywarrior
  
• P-2H Neptune
  
• QH-50 DASH drone
  
• RA-3B Skywarrior
  
• Skyguard GDF
  
• M51 Skysweeper
  
• M42 Duster
  
• TPS-43 and TP3-63 Radars
  
• APC - AAV-7
  
• MLRS - M270
  
• SPG - M1110A1
  

Soviet Units:

• FCR for Krug SAM - SA-4 Long Track
  
• FCR for Kub SAM - SA-6 Straight Flush
  
• New modernized SA-2 site Layout
  
• and a new SA-3 Site
  

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[h2]Community Corner![/h2]

[h3]Screenshots we like![/h3]

From reddit u/X3asYG a beautiful Iowa shot: https://www.reddit.com/r/SeaPower_NCMA/comments/1jo1qee/firing_the_big_guns/


From BuOrd: Naval Modding Community user Cadia:


From BuOrd: Naval Modding Community user Cole²:


[h3]Community Mod showcase![/h3]
Cuban Missile Crisis (1962): https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3366592598

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[h2]Patch notes v0.1.2.0:[/h2]

Aircraft/Helicopters

Bug Fixes:

• Aircraft stuck in VID submarine state
  
• Too large Taxi interval for B-52
  
• Aircraft stuck in eternal circle while attacking surface target with gun
  
• Il-38 LOD pivots offset fix
  
• Incorrect bomb aiming during dive attack
  
• Fix to make aircraft not die on own cluster bombs
  
• F-4D CAS loadout dropped all clusters at once
  
• Aircraft was not trying to stay within launch altitudes when engaging air contact. Potential problem case: attacking target directly above and above max launch alt - will result in aircraft softlock
  
• Iraq MD500 swashplate and weapons
  
• FlightDeck: aircraft was not aligning on elevators
  
• Slava's helicopter clipping through hangar roof
  
• Non-wrapped value of elevator rotation angle lead to inability of vehicles to leave EmbarkElevator state of Flight Deck
  

Improvements/Additions:

• SU-24M loadouts upgrade
  
• Ability to specify loadout for air units
  
• Su-24A added gun to model, tweaked textures accordingly
  
• Aircraft now can change altitude at RTB
  
• Airstrike tweaks
  

Vessels/Submarines

Bug Fixes:

• Tarantul animation
  
• Snorkel unable to function close to max allowed speed
  
• Alligator missing ESM collider
  
• Kazbek has incorrect prop blade count information
  
• Missing localisation support for unable to raise snorkel mast messages (measurement units)
  
• Error in Damage Control flooding removal
  
• Submodels that have "_crew" in their names are also hidden when object is destroyed
  
• Damage falloff for system was not applied due to raycast problem
  
• Sovremenny colliders errors
  
• MOSS still locked in USN SSN's magazines
  
• Sloppy gun setup on soviet minesweepers
  
• Knoxx can now use its mixed loadout for ASROC launcher - Harpoons and RURR-5. Thanks to nuclearstonk for investigating that it is possible.
  
• Dhows have oil slicks
  
• Kilo bowplanes animations
  
• Typo in Kresta-class names
  

Improvements/Additions:

• Reduced probability for consequent secondary explosions for 10 seconds
  
• EXPERIMENTAL: Makeshift way to reduce fire spread
  
• Ability to specify loadout for ship variants
  
• Min speed for carrier ops is 20knots
  
• Non linear damage falloff for systems
  

Land Units / Installations

Bug Fixes:

• Akureyri airbase decal mesh fix, should be back to good looking
  
• Partial pass on fixing LandUnits sound
  
• Land units (e.g. airfields) sometimes did not position properly on the terrain
  
• T-72 updated NSVT gun model
  
• 2S3 Akatsyia slightly updated model
  
• Immobile land units in formation set max speed of formation to zero
  
• T-55 turret position
  

Improvements/Additions:

• wp_airbases 1 to 5: new more faint decal textures, new (in fact older) decal meshes that leave no transparent band around runways and aprons etc
  
• TPS-43 and TPS-63 radars
  
• 1S19 "Straight Flush" radar
  
• "P-40 Long Track" radar
  
• Pat Hand radar (WIP, uses P-40 as stand in, awaits dedicated model)
  
• M51 Skysweeper AAA
  
• M270 MLRS rocket launcher + M26 rocket
  
• M110A1 artillery
  
• WIP on AAV7 amphibian
  
• wp_radar_trailers textures updated with more track and wheel bits
  

Weapons

Bug Fixes:

• AS-4B was capable of attacking ships
  
• SA-13 lack of spare reloads
  
• Wrong barrels mesh definition for one of Iowa's 127mm guns
  
• All weapons except Guns and CIWS on non Air Units were unable to switch target point on LandUnit
  
• Incorrect weapon attachment on RAF Rapier
  
• Unkillable NATO radars
  
• CIWS could attack not identified targets
  
• Failsafe: Auto end alignments of "isGuidingWeapon" type if said weapon is destroyed
  
• Guns drops engagement if target is undetected
  
• Weapon vehicle not destroyed in some cases when weapon is pulled by pooling system
  
• Gun effects were not despawned
  
• D-10 cannon had better range than newer cannons
  
• Moskit changed to early variant 3M80 with 90km range
  
• CIWS can intercept multiple targets at once
  

Improvements/Additions:

• Profile pictures for some weapons
  
• Pass on Vega sam site to make it less invincible
  
• SA-2 "modernized" SAM site
  
• SA-3 Goa Sam site
  
• Damage multiplier for weapon system
  
• Added MBD3-U6-68 MER for soviet aircraft (Su-24 etc)
  
• Preset attack works against undetected enemy
  
• Slightly adjusted profile cropping on ZU-23, Grad emplacement, M51
  
• Additional condition for WH torpedoes to transit from ToBearing to SearchMode modes, aimpoint now required to be in 5 degree cone
  
• Harpoon rebalance
  CHANGED: Harpoons split into A, B, C and D variants
  ADDED: AGM-84A, AGM-84D, RGM-84A, RGM-84C, UBM-84B
  ADDED: New parameters for pop-up setup
  REPLACED: noname Harpoons with A,B, C and D variants
  
• Polished: SON-9 FCR
  
• RIM-24B Tartar
  
• AGM-78 Standard ARM
  
• Oerlikon GDF 35mm AAA
  
• SA-13 stats update
  
• UGM-84A
  

Sensors

Bug Fixes:

• Tico radar rest angles
  
• Range and power of Top_Pair (MR-800) radar
  
• More relevant text for shallow sea level effect on convergence zones for DM panel
  
• RWR works only on illuminated unit
  
• Alvand's AWS-1 radar is now AirAndSurface
  
• Indestructable radars
  
• Airfields SensorData
  

Improvements/Additions:

• Unified seeker data display in DM for all weapons
  
• TPS-27 and FPS-177 radar
  
• 1S91 Straight Flush radars for SA-6 Gainful
  
• ARM targeting system - a type of ESM that creates tracks, but can't identify it or localize its position
  
• Radar for SA-6. Setup SA-6 to operate with radar, like SA-10
  
• Own depth, Layer depth and target depth to sonar seeker info in DM
  
• US/NATO radars names made unique and easier to differenciate in mission editor and ingame
  
• Debug Panel: ability to stop sensor updates
  
• Adjusted SON-9 aka Fire Can radar gain to get 55 km detection range against Small targets
  

Mission Editor

Bug Fixes:

• Numerical submarine depth was read incorrectly from mission file
  
• Precipitation and fog checkboxes remained checked from the previously loaded mission
  
• Missing texts for Objectives in Mission Editor for various languages
  
• Red side intel updates could not be loaded if there were no Blue side updates (wrong iterator in the for loop)
  

Improvements/Additions:

• _CustomMission.ini file now always refreshed when loading Mission Editor and created if not present
  
• WIP on Objectives
  
• WIP on Action Objectives for Triggers
  
• Intel Items added
  
• Add Intel to Triggers in Mission Editor
  
• Free Content Window Trigger
  
• Objective side now assigned properly on Load; small adjustments
  
• Handlers for removal of objectives from Triggers' lists
  
• Load of Action_Objectives for Triggers from mission file
  
• Save of Objectives to complete and fail for Triggers
  
• Disposal of Objectives
  
• Unit filename backwards compatibility to Mission Editor
  
• Supresssed object reference exceptions when unit group is loaded from json file with Simple Object Parameters being null
  
• Error message window for faulty units when loading Unit Group from json file
  

Map / Terrain

Bug Fixes:

• Autogen: Found and fixed leaks of 2 tiny ComputeBuffers in AutogenManager
  
• Objects height calculation called terrain utils function which could create "jobs called within jobs" error due to changes in terrain framework
  
• Ground units faded out on load
  
• Memory leak for new terrain loading when returning to the main menu
  
• Units should be correctly positioned on load
  
• Terrain Loader race conditions
  
• Corner case for land unit rotation to alignment
  

Improvements/Additions:

• Major overhaul of terrain system and map
  
• Greatly improved Autogen performance by implemented a dynamic dispatching mechanism. This optimization greatly reduced the unecessary amount of GPU dispatches by at least 50%.
  
• Improve terrain loading performance & memory utilization
  
• Disable autogen option to Options Menu
  
• Map night mode
  

Misc

Bug Fixes:

• Broken convoy reform caused chaos in neutral units movement in "Charlies" mission
  
• It was possible to rebase other vehicles to Flight Deck while its vehicles were on cooldown or in air
  
• Formation with null leader prevented context menu from being created
  
• Potential unwanted camera roll rotation which will be reset now when switching objects
  
• Change the way the Pause Button is highlighted to see if it fixes highlighting not loading properly on loading a save game
  
• Encyclopedia weapon entry secondary target type display, launch altitudes display, attack altitudes display
  
• Messages from different triggers could be shown simultaneously
  
• Encyclopedia display of max range and empty mass for aircraft and helicopters
  
• Undesired effect auto destruction
  
• Units of formation with OverrideSpawnPositions were moved to incorrect positions
  
• WORKAROUND: IR capability was always "no" for visual sensors in Encyclopedia
  
• Falling back to English will also allow briefings to show
  
• DM will remain in previous state on screenshot
  
• When unpausing the game sometimes the physics engine messed up and created fancy behavior of units as the physics loop doesn't run in paused mode
  
• Condition/Action Unit Add/Remove Buttons
  
• Handle the case when an objectbase is destroyed, repooled, unpooled , and then a new vehicle is created for it in between sensor update pulses. Added a bunch of logging to provide more info when a related issue comes up again.
  
• Make log writing async to avoid locking conditions
  
• Suppressed exception caused by change of weather caused by the trigger action
  

Improvements/Additions:

• Saving/Loading
  
• Auto Saving including options menu to change the interval
  
• Formation Ceasefire function:
  - Double tap cancels engagement of all formation members (who follows the formation) who are not guiding weapon, but clears all consequent engage tasks.
  - Tripple tap cancels engagement for ALL formation members, regardless of what they are doing and recals them.
  
• Formation CeaseFire and Formation recall all buttons to Context menu
  
• Dock position in Breakthrough
  
• Middle Mouse Button no longer switches to formation leader while canceling AttackState
  
• Encyclopedia sorts variants in alphabetical order
  
• Updated translations
  
• Finland flag
  
• TaxiInterval exposed in ini
  
• Some basic formation attack of non-air units via Right Mouse Button
  
• Sri Lanka nation
  
• Change of cursor on drag and drop
  
• Formation Control Mode in Formation Manager for Air Units
  
• Add a context menu item to remove all aircraft
  
• Remove ability to hide FormationManager to allow repurposing of function to start with it open or closed
  
• Polished more rules of sorting ammo in bottom bar
  
• Camera uses unscaled delta time now for better zoom and movement in pause and slow motion mode
  
• Operation Praire Fire mission
  
• Updated Noesis to 3.2.7
  
• Fx tweaks: Krug boosters timing fix, added more smoke to separation and tweaked flames size and opacity a bit
  
• Fx tweaks: shell hits - reworked effects using new spritesheets
  
• Fx tweaks: bombs hits against ground and objects
  
• Fx tweaks: new small vehicles smoke class to effects.ini + prefabs for future additions
  
• Fx tweaks: Water Spike Animater 1 and 2 material "lit" pass brightness toned down, was overexposed during day
  
• Fx: Added large artillery firing dust effect for firing large land based guns like M100 BUT possibly also some others
  
• Fx: Added medium artillery firing dust effect to KS-19 and M51 as rule of cool, replaced large arty effect with medium one for Paladin and Akatsyia reserving large one for guns of 175-200+ mm ranges
  
• Fx: Added dust effect to launchers
  
• Fx: Vehicle movement dust effect
  
• Fx: Torpedo, bomb water splashes reworked
  
• All formations are able to use Lead/Sync/Local control scheme
  
• Separate category for Helicopters in Encyclopedia
  
• Method to allow reopening of Modal Dialog to see information again (in intel log)
  
• Ability to setup night brightness via DM (mainly for streaming purposes)
  
• Basic TacView support
  
• Error Messages to Load Screen
  

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[h2]Saving/Loading - What you should know![/h2]
Saving and Loading will be going to the release build later this month! It will remain in the public beta branch for a little while longer while we continue to make sure some bigger changes are worked out. With this, we've also added a new in-game bug reporting system that can be accessed within a mission by hitting ESC -> send debug report. This will automatically generate the following info and be sent to us for debugging:

• A new autosave is trigged and save into your save folder (%appdata%->LocalLow->Triassic Games), which we get a copy of.
  
• Both game logs (lets us check for null refs, or otherwise) and the event logs (allows us to see missiles hit chance, engagement orders, etc.).
  
• a copy of the mission file (to help debug more specific mission related errors).
  
• Basic system specs (OS, hardware, driver info)
  

All of the information above will greatly improve our ability to reproduce some of the errors that have been harder for us to track down with what information has been normally shared. If you run into issues in-game, we HIGHLY RECOMMEND YOU USE THE IN-GAME REPORTING. If there is an issue that you CANNOT send via that tool, please resume reporting through either the Microprose discord (link here) or via the steam forums for your respective game branch.

[h2]Dynamic Campaign is delayed![/h2]
The Triassic Team will be delaying Dynamic Campaign testing from it's Q2 release window to continue work on the base game. With this delay, this will afford us more time to gather the team around various improvements like the AI behaviors, Aircraft micromanagement QOL, and other features to improve the overall base gameplay. If we continue to work on Dynamic Campaign currently, it will only come back to bite us even if we make the dynamic campaign on time due to the base game systems being less polished.

[h2]Tac View integration testing![/h2]
While we know there is a demand for a replay system, we will be implementing Tac View with Sea Power in the near future! Not only do we think this will be used to help analyze post battle actions, but could even help us with debugging due to the fact we won't have to create an entire new system to work on. We are excited to start experimenting with this idea internally first, before rolling it out to Beta later on!


[h3]What's next Triassic Games?[/h3]
With saving and loading coming soon, we will be focusing on delivering our next content drop this month! This will include JMSDF Units (and some bonus units for other nations through in too!), Mission Editor Improvements, further performance optimizations, and more! We've been hard at work in the background working on improving our autogen tech as well, as we are making plans to try and expand it's functionality to allow for more objects to be added to it. Our first experiments will be with trees, and if it goes well, there is potential it could be expanded to underwater boulders, ice caps/shelves, and smaller objects. Triassic Games is still very much aware of the AI improvement goals, but our limited bandwidth forces us to focus on one to two core issues at a time. We thank you for your patience with us as we work!

[h3]New window type (freestyle window with XAML editing)! -Beta Branch-[/h3]
The Free Content Window is a new UI Window that you can create with a Trigger. This window is empty by default and you are able to provide content for it in the same way that you can for Mission Briefings, by specifying an Assets directory (for things like images) and an XML file which defines the content. See here https://www.noesisengine.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3610 for a handy UI tool that you can use to help create these. The Free Content Window has two additional features built in. These are "Commands", which you can use to interact back with the game world from the UI. The first is the OpenFileCommand which allows you to switch the content of the window to that defined in a new XML file, you specify the file through the CommandParameter of UI Elements like buttons. The second is the ExecuteTriggerCommand which allows you to cause a trigger to be executed on a button push. These are referenced via the Trigger Name and again defined in the CommandParameter field of a UI element.

[h3]Bonus Units for April! (Sneak Peak)[/h3]
While you all have seen some photos thus far about the JMSDF units, we also will be including some new land units for this months content drop! (Units depicted: M51 Skysweeper, M110 arty, MLRS, Type 60, Type 81, Straight Flush)


[h3]Closing Words[/h3]
Hello everyone, Zelos here again! Just want to of course continue to thank everyone in our community for the feedback, awesome screenshots, videos, and memes you all create! Going forward, we will be updating our roadmap media to be more accurate to reflect these changes that we mentioned above.
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[h2]Community Showcase![/h2]
[h3]Our favorite screenshots![/h3]
MPS Discord - Cadia9529

MPS Discord - nuclearstonk

MPS discord - allhacknoskill

SP Reddit - X3asYG


[h3]Our favorite mod from the workshop![/h3]
Check out this awesome mission by Pax featuring Air superiority, coastal bombardment, long range confrontation, convoy escort!
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3440001215

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Hello again from the Triassic Team! So we are finally ready to start stress testing saving and loading into the public beta branch. We know it's one of the most requested feature, and have been working on it ton in the background. However, there will likely be some issues with mods, missions, and other specific setups, so please expect and report on defects. On that note, we have some new features as well for reporting.


[h2]How do I (you) join the beta branch?[/h2]
Steps to join the beta branch:

1. Open Steam and enter your Library.
   
2. Right click on Sea Power and select “Properties”.
   
3. In the pop up go to Betas
   
4. Select 'stable - Beta branch'
   

[h3]Beta Branch Disclaimer:[/h3]
By joining the beta branch, you may get crashes, bugs, and other issues that are not present on the release ver. of the game. User should only play on the beta branch to help testing efforts for new systems, and to see if some hotfixes fix previous issues.


[h2]In-Game Bug reporting[/h2]
That's right, no more being asked to join the discord server or using other sites to post issues. We've added a new button in the pause (ESC) menu for bug reporting! These new tool will also include your save files (for debugging save/load issues, and please mention if you did a quick save or what file your loading from in your report), the event log (helps show missile hit chance, damage, and other misc. stats from gameplay), and the game log (for finding NullRefs that can increase memory usage, crashes, and other stats). Please put your bug reports in English! We still like to encourage users to use services like Youtube and Discord for sending media of more edge case defects and bugs, as media can be important for reproduction steps.


[h2]Steam Sub Forum (Beta Branch Bug Reports)[/h2]
With this new beta starting up, we will also be making a separate sub forum on steam for bugs encountered on the beta branch. If the in-game bug reporting is not working for any reason, we still want to have a redundant area as a backup. However, it's important to note that we may ask for the following: Save Files, Error from crash log, the entire game log, or media (depending).

[h2]Save File Location[/h2]
Save files can be located by going to the LocalLow file on your system. (Windows Explorer->Typing in %appdata% into the address bar->going back one step to view the root folders-> LocalLow). Once there, there will be a folder called Triassic Games->Sea Power->Saves. This is where you can find your save files for bug reporting defective saves.

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[h2]TFA Needs your Support![/h2]
Another Microprose Project, TFA, just launched their Kickstarter Campaign and a playable demo on Steam! With this, we would like to help bring more awareness to their project as thanks, as they have also helped the Triassic Team out. Feel free to check out some of the info below, and some screenshots!

[h3]What is TFA you ask?[/h3]
"Task Force Admiral (volume 1: American Carrier Battles) is a full-3D, PC command simulation that is trying to recreate the complexity, the adrenaline and the uncertainty inherent to WW2 naval command. We are aiming at recreating the kind of product we used to play in the 1990s, when wargames and simulations were at their apex as gaming genres. To do so, we specifically aimed for good production values, hands-on diegetic interface and (hopefully!) a visible passion for the historical topic & its lore." - Drydock Dream Games


[h3]What is TFA going to feature?[/h3]

• Fully playable U.S. Navy side for air and surface operations
  
• 30 + historical & hypothetical scenarios (December 1941 to February 1943)
  
• A random scenario generator
  
• A fully-fledged scenario builder
  
• Working savegames & replay module
  
• South Pacific (Solomons, Western New Guinea) & Midway fully modeled
  
• The extra gameplay options cleared by the Kickstarter campaign & a clear roadmap of future developments
  

[h3]Why you should support the kickstarter compared to steam?[/h3]
For one, you can join the beta access program via specific pledge tiers range of tiers and pledge levels available for naval strategy fans. Two, there is a range of exclusive goodies from discord badges, to hi-res art, and even special physical treasures (Signed Photos, Challenge Coin, and more)!









KickStarter Link: Task Force Admiral Kickstarter campaign


Store Page Link: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1281220/Task_Force_Admiral__Vol1_American_Carrier_Battles/

Hi everyone, as you might know there is an issue with the Mission Editor which is fixed with this patch. Thank you all for your understanding and patience!

Bug Fixes:

• Saving/loading: fix nullref in RecoveryTask/Rollout (assumes parented unit)
  
• Mission Editor: Groups loaded from json templates missed localisations and workable FlightDeck that could lead to inability to save a mission
  
• Mission Editor: Flight deck window was available when new empty group was added after removal of previous group where FlightDeck was enabled
  
• Wrong F-14 squadrons on Enterprise
  

Improvements/Additions:

Hi everyone, here comes another hot fix which mainly fixes the "Unit Enters Area" condition which was broken for all missions. Happy Sunday and have a great start into the new week!

Bug Fixes:

• Implemented a fix for saving/loading which should work for units that are still in a hangar or taxiing
  
• Null refs
  
• Add error if you try and upload StreamingAssets or StreamingAssets/original to Steam.
  
• Broken "Unit Enters Area" condition
  
• Workaround: Helicopters stuck when dropping sonobuoys
  
• Carrier inis used nonexistant parameters
  

Improvements/Additions: