Boat Crew News

Greetings, Captain!

Once lovingly called The Big Update throughout our Developer's Diaries, the update Hammer and Anvil has now reached the Stable build. There are too many changes and additions to list in detail, but you can read a summary here:

- Overhauled base defense positions, implemented AI mortars, added extra base tier known as Fortresses.
- The first cruiser class "Nagara" has been added for the Imperial Navy.
- Bases will now deploy torpedo nets.
- Improved AI and spawn system for open sea skirmishes, naval AI will now chase or run away from you more efficiently in general.
- Destroyers and above now coordinate their own weapons with dedicated fire control systems.
- The threat system has been reworked. Location of player relative to territory, time of day and weather, squadron size, and so on all have effects on your effective threat level.
- Naval patrols are also deployed when the threat system catches you.
- Having high level threat occasionally grants a unique call-in award.
- Added supply drop option in transmitter which will place a timer and let you refill resources from it when it counts down.
- General rebalancing of convoy groups, autobattles, timings, etc for the campaign.
- Fixed a bug that made machine guns and autocannons too accurate against surface targets for both factions.
- Sound effect improvements for some impact noises and player machine guns.



We have heard your feedback that the Campaign can feel too short, and so we hope that these changes will serve to make the game pace better while also making the individual fights you have more interesting.



As usual, we will be active on the Steam forums as well as on our Discord, so feel free to share your thoughts and feedback on the update!



We will be resuming Developer's Diaries at the end of March.

That's all for now,
Captain,
T.T.

[h3]v1.4.3.3 Stable[/h3]
[expand]
- Squadron slot occupancy is now visible in the lower left corner of the campaign UI.
- Fixed "Fortress" shown as "Very Heavy Base Defenses" on clipboard.
[/expand]

[h2]v1.4.3.2 Experimental[/h2]

[h3]Campaign[/h3]
★ Fortresses.
- Base strength recovery nerfs.
- Multiple assault and supply groups have been reworked.
- Auto-resolve parameters configured to shorten engagements at sea while slightly lengthening assaults.
- Victory Points gain is reduced to avoid anti-climactic endings.
- Victory Points will now influence enemy spawn rates more strongly, causing stiffer resistance as the player gets closer to victory.
- Resource capacities are now displayed in world map UI.
- Added limits to how close the player can get to a group on the map, enemy groups will cause you to be pushed away.

[h3]In Game[/h3]
- Added concrete machine gun bunkers exclusive to fortresses.
- Artillery call-ins are now less accurate, with heavier calibers getting more accurate.
- Ground positions are now always visible by all units.
- Added map boundary visual ring to minimap.
- Submarine movement speed is nerfed.
- Japanese small patrol boat speed is nerfed.
- Landing boat durability of both factions are nerfed.
- Fixed boundary positioning issues in skirmishes.
- Fixed P-38 call-in radar visual being blue instead of green.
- Fixed end of piers not syncing position due to torpedo net related implementations.




Visit our forums for detailed discussion about this update!

[h2]v1.4.3.1 Experimental[/h2]
- Added call-in award system that scales based on threat level. Awards show up on your news feed, the contents are added to your reserves automatically. The chance of being granted an award scales with your threat level.
- Added P-38 Lightning call-in exclusive to award system.
- Added supply request option to transmitter.
- Replaced impact noise for mechanical components.
- Recalibrated rocket pod aiming for air units.
- Fixed jitter in utility weapon aiming.
- Fixed Katakana spelling on some Akizuki variant hulls.
- Gave Nagara cruisers imperial seals.

[h3]v1.4.3.0x Lettered versions[/h3]
[expand]
v1.4.3.0e Experimental
- Fletcher model upgrade.
- Improved spawn system for threat based surface enemy spawns.
- More selective placement of torpedo nets.
- Fixed a bug causing minor mismatch of the targetability range of a unit and the red circle on the minimap.
- Fixed ground positions retaining the red circle after elimination.
- Increased idle cruising speed for skirmish units.
- Minesweeper mass adjustments.
- Optimized trajectory calculations.
- Fixed air groups in the campaign world focusing the player despite respawns.

v1.4.3.0d Experimental
- Torpedo net model and physics optimizations.
- Spawn cap system for base positions.
- Fixed an error that results from submarines dropping crates.
- Fixed issue in dauntless causing deselection of rear gun and errors as a result.
- Terrain culling for foliage and crossfade tuning.
- Fixed an issue preventing shadows for foliage.
- New palm tree coloring and LOD.

v1.4.3.0c Experimental

- Reverted imported rendering system for foliage due to suspected crash cause, reimplemented inhouse system.
- Fixed boats falling through floor when too many torpedo nets are spawned. fixed torpedo nets not having a depth sample limit range, increased ocean depth sample buffer limits.
- Reduced torpedo net spawn rate by base development.
- Fixed non-campaign engagements navigation AI locking up and throwing errors.

v1.4.3.0b Experimental
- Implemented crash and error reporting.
[/expand]




Visit our forums for detailed discussion about this update!

Hello there, Captain.

We're with you with yet another Developer's Diary. Our Experimental Branch development is going full steam ahead, and we have gathered a lot of valuable feedback from you already. As we've said before, if you ever wanted to have a role in guiding the direction of the game, now is a better time than ever, so hop on the Experimental Branch and don't forget to visit either our Discord channel or the forums' Experimental Branch megathread to share your own thoughts.

Now let's get right to it!



First of all, the Fletcher-Class Destroyer has received a much needed makeover, courtesy of Shigure. This dependable destroyer is one of the most powerful ships of her class of her time, and her model was unfortunately a little lacking in details. This has now been remedied, and we'll have a much more crisp looking Fletcher joining to fight the good fight, now up to the same visual standards as the rest of the ships in the game.



Upon receiving your feedback, we have recognized the need for supporting aggressive playstyles some more. Now, you'll be able to call in supplies with the transceiver, taking some time to arrive and costing a decent chunk of change for the luxury.



We also plan to eventually let you resupply from groups with tenders on the strategic map, so having tenders around will still be the main way of resupplying while underway. As a result, we expect this to be a niche option for those of you who truly cannot wait to go back into the action and would rather skip returning to the port, so now you'll have the option to keep the momentum up as long you can handle the increased expense.



Finally, the P-38 we have previously talked about is being implemented and will be available, exclusive to the high Threat call-in giveaways we have also previously mentioned. To get them, you simply need to have 3 slots that are either empty or occupied by depleted cards, and keep your threat up. The higher your threat is, the better the chances are you will end up with additional support powers, capping out at about 25% chance to get support each day for maximum threat.

All of these changes, you can expect to see in the Experimental Build soon, hopefully early next week.

That's all we have for now,
Captain,
T.T.

[h2]v1.4.3.0 Experimental[/h2]
[h3]In Game[/h3]
★ Base defenses rework.
★ Added Torpedo nets.
★ Added Nagara.
- Added proper fire control systems for destroyers and above.
- Added threat level to passive combat heat gain conversion.
- Added threat notifier dialog.
- Added weather and time of day effects to threat system.
- Added navigation system to skirmishes. Pursuits away and towards to the player are now more direct.
- Removed minor target hit assistance for projectiles, engagement distances will matter a lot more.
- Improved machine gun noises.
- New foliage rendering system.

[h3]Campaign[/h3]
- Added assault cooldown system.
- Added variable RP bounty and display to targets list.
- Added variable vision ranges for bases.
- Added friendlies vision transfer of map.
- Threat gain by electronics as been capped to the first threat level
- Threat gain is now calculated according to which territory the player is in.
- Player will not be attacked by threats in friendly territory.
- Changed player vision range UI element to be displayed as ticks.
- If a base is engaged without scouting, returning from the engagement no longer skips the scout bonus that is given when a bases score is revealed.
- If a type of unit in the targeting list is wiped out, they will be listed again as II, III, IV, etc so that bounty collection can continue.
- Spawn system rework.

[h3]AI behaviors[/h3]
- Cut jagged pathing short if no terrain or obstacles are detected

[h3]Misc[/h3]
- Increased autosave capacity 3->12.

[h3]Bug Fixes[/h3]
- Fixed reserves that were marked wounded with a hidden wounded flag being deleted on player boat death, these wounded flags were cleared on every player spawn, causing it to be somewhat rare.
- Fixed things inside smoke being able to target outside by adding a reverse raycast check.
- Fixed territory visual offset glitch when returning from customization menus.
- Fixed base capture revealing enemy assault line if an assault was coming from that specific base.
- Fixed map targets being displayed at the same point when multiple named vessels are spotted.
- Fixed call-in weapon systems/launchers not being properly reset for every object.
- Fixed squadron Elcos having engine sounds.
- Fixed aircraft noise not cutting off on splash.




Visit our forums for detailed discussion about this update!