Boat Crew News

Greetings Captain,

Welcome to another diary. Last week, we talked about the improvements to your crew. This week, we'll be talking mainly about the improvements to your squadron boats, or if you can take things far enough, squadron ships. Let's get right down to it.



First of all, the squadron boats selection will be greatly expanded, split into four pages with 6 options each, for a total of 24 options.

On the first page, you'll have certain presets on offer, with one being available for each playable boat. The second page will have the exact same boats with the exact same weapons, except with the addition of torpedoes.

That's right, your squadron boats will be able to use torpedoes on the next patch! Unlike normal PT boat ammunition, these torpedoes are limited, and must be reloaded at a base or a tender, and they consume supplies for doing so.



In order to avoid inconveniencing you and causing confusion, the whole squadron will re-arm without problem as long as the base or tender has non-zero supplies. Supply value will go to negative in this case, with the base acting as though it has zero supply until this shortfall is accounted for. Tenders will offload the supply burden on the next base they visit. This mechanic will be in play within the coming weeks, as the map supply distribution system will also be reworked, until then the experimental builds will allow repeated use of squadron torpedoes without rearming.

The third page has boats that are much better equipped with the cost to match, and they will have a better torpedo payload as well. The fourth page will have non-playable ships, including Tenders and up to as heavy as the Fletcher, as highly expensive purchasable options for your squadron. It goes without saying that this is for the absolute end game so don't expect fair prices. It's only for those among you with a few tens of thousands of RP burning holes in their pockets!

Pages 2, 3 and 4 will have to be unlocked by progressing throughout the Resourcefulness tree by the stable version, but for the duration of the Experimental, they will be unlocked, so have fun experimenting!



A common feedback we have received is how the range system can feel artificial at times, particularly when the Captain is put next to squadron boats that outrange them. It has gotten a rework, with all units being unified to the fire control system initially meant for larger ships, and range now being simplified to a function of a detectability parameter.

What this means is that you'll be able to target further, and the enemy will be able to do so as well, as long as you are spotted. So expect enemy land defenses to be much better at counterbattery fire; no more firing mortars from outside of their range without fear of retaliation.

A night time accuracy penalty is also installed, which applies to everyone. In your case, it can be reduced through Gunnery Score; you will find that an expert crew is much better at night fighting than a novice one.



Through sheer luck, we stumbled upon an almost three year old, difficult to detect bug that caused dive bombers to not attack if the player in any other mode than the passive mode, such as Targeting Mode or Torpedo Mode.

Airplanes actually make use of torpedo launchers since bombs are implemented as torpedoes, meanwhile torpedo inputs are only supposed to work within the mode. Aircraft did not have this mode set to anything particular but the mode check was there in code applying to them, only allowing them to know torpedoes were ready when player was in passive mode, this was only eventually revealed while debugging the squadron torpedo AI ːsteamfacepalmː.

Considering you would most likely be in one of those two modes during a pitched battle, this made your dive bombers a lot worse and a lot more inconsistent than they should be.

That will now change, and you should notice a marked improvement in dive bomber consistency now.



Last but not least, we also added some often requested features: the ability to rename your crew members, the ability to cycle crew roles in the crew selection screen and also the ability to prioritize guns for your gunners to man.



We're hoping these additions and quality of life changes will be to your liking when you check them out tomorrow at the Experimental Branch.

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

[h2]v1.7.0.2 Experimental[/h2]

- Reworked crew equipment effect system.
- 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.
- Other crew equipment minor visual improvements.
- Added Sun Sensitive trait. Sailors with this trait should wear sunglasses but only when the sun is shining.
- Added No. 101 Attack Transport.
- Character face improvements.
- Fixes to some slot conflict handling issues.
- Furutaka-Class Cruiser now has a chance to appear in early game Strategic Targets, and is guaranteed to spawn in later Strategic Targets.

Welcome aboard Captain,

Welcome to the third entry to our current diary reboot series. Captain. Last week, we talked about the changes we are making to the qualities of the men under your command. This week, we'll be talking about the equipment your men can get to improve their chances in combat.



First of all, your crew is getting a glow-up after all these years! In addition to a series of mouth shapes and eyebrows options for the character generator to pick from, we are also adding new period-authentic clothing options and changing the effects of the existing ones to fit the new system.

Previously, we had the problem where it wasn't clear what effect clothing had, and to what extent. That will be fixed in this update, with each clothing item giving a specific increase to certain character attributes, and a decrease in some cases. This also indeed means that the Binoculars will have a gameplay effect after all this time.



In addition, clothing options will now have an associated cost, so no more free armors for your entire crew. However, these costs will be modest and the attribute boosts should more than make up for it.

Last, but not least, we are also adding new handheld weapons; namely the M1919 Machine Gun and Rifle Grenade Launcher. The M1919 is a more expensive upgrade over the BAR, giving you decent anti-aircraft and soft surface target firepower, while the Rifle Grenade Launcher is a cheaper alternative to the Bazooka, lobbing explosive grenades.

Oh, and Sun Sensitive characters will also wear sunglasses, so be on the lookout for those cool sailors!



A feature that was commonly asked for by the community of our Captains was the ability to prioritize guns for Gunners; so you could assign gun positions as particularly high priority for your gunners to occupy. We're happy to say that this will be implemented!



Finally, we are adding the Attack Transport, a heavily armed landing craft that will find its way to many assault groups. A better armed and better armored sister to the Coastal Tankers, the Attack Transports will also carry more supplies for you to plunder.

The design goal for this unit is to add some additional RP rewards to assault groups, so playing for defense doesn't feel unrewarding, which was a common complaint we have received from some of our Captains. The previous addition of the Coastal Bombard was also meant to serve this purpose, and the Attack Transport is here to help that further.

So while not exactly a flashy unit, we are hoping for them to be interesting enough to fight using early game weapons while improving upon a small niche of units. Oh, and this is only one of the variants of this ship; there is another variant with less reward and a nasty surprise up its sleeve! Do you feel lucky, Captain?



You can see most things we have talked about here on the Experimental Branch update tomorrow. Due to time constraints, the gunner priority feature will not make it to the Experimental Build patch tomorrow, but you can expect to see it in the game before too long, most likely next week.

That will be all for now,
Captain,
T.T.

[h2]v1.7.0.1 Experimental[/h2]

[h3]Crew Characters Rework[/h3]
- Crew now rely on specific numbered attributes than just traits for their performance. Traits are given at a lower rate.
- Added gun sway effects. Avoid low "Hand-Eye Coordination" characters and level gunners to reduce these effects.
- 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.
- 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.

[h3]General[/h3]
- 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.
- Added duct tape animations to distinguish itemless repair action.
- Added wrench animation to distinguish repairs of deck components.
- Prevent nets from moving while crew is climbing.
- 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.
- Fixed crew loadout customization missing some spawn points for the new extra crew slots.
- Fixed v1.7.0.0 unwired repair heal and loader crew XP gain.
- Fixed v1.7.0.0 unwired ammo bonus from gear (gear will also be reworked so this is still subject to change again).
- Fixed new progression UI level indicator breaking above level 9.
- Fixed hotkey hints breaking at 4 hints with the introduction of squadron mode hint.

At ease Captain,

Welcome to the second entry to our current diary reboot series. Captain. Today's diary will be about the changes we are making to the qualities of the men under your command. Let's begin.



First of all, we are introducing a new attribute system consisting of 6 attributes, shown in a classic hexagon diagram. These stats are Resilience, Agility, Hand-Eye Coordination, Cooperativeness, Adaptability, and Grit. These stats affect various parameters, so let's go through them one by one.

Resilience determines the total health of the sailor and contributes to how likely they are to be pushed overboard.

Agility determines the sailor's movement speed, as well as reduces their sprint cooldown.

Hand-Eye Coordination generally makes slight improvements in speed to most tasks, but also offers some gunner-specific effects. It also determines the sailor's skill with handheld weapons.

Cooperativeness determines how effectively the sailor's proficiencies contribute to overall team performance.

Adaptability determines the sailor's rate of experience gain.

Grit determines how easily the sailor will come back from the brink. For now, it will simply determine the instant death chance of the sailor upon losing all of their health, as well as how long they'll last when downed.



Sailor attributes are generated upon character creation, and are also affected by traits and eventually, character equipment.

Aside from a factor of age in certain attributes, which is a new parameter you can see along with weight and height, they are more or less completely random but will tend to cluster around the middle. Officers will also get a different stat distribution than Enlisted, favoring Cooperativeness over other attributes.



Traits are no longer universal and given in the same amount to all sailors; they will instead follow a more random distribution as we no longer need to rely on them to handle all of the personal variation. So no more getting enough Traumatized Drunkards to fill your boat up, Captain.

They will generally affect attributes, though some special traits will have bespoke effects and will be clearly marked as such.

You might also have noticed the numbers on the top right that change as you swap crew members around. That's our new score system; which can best be described as a weighted sum of the veterancies of the crew, which map to the Mechanic, Medic, and Loader+Gunner roles respectively. The contribution of a crew member to the overall score is determined by their Cooperativeness attribute.

Increasing score improves the overall performance of your crew in relevant fields, with diminishing returns as you get higher score. Individual veterancy effects still remain, and are still important, but now your crew can help each other excel so consider cross-training your sailors on rotation!



Last but not least, we are making it so that clothing items will be tied to status, so Officers will automatically swap to Officer clothes when assigned to a role. So you will no longer have to worry about that when moving crew around.

That about wraps up what we have for this week. Hope you've been enjoying the Experimental Branch so far. As usual, it's a period of hectic development, and so is your best chance to be a part of Boat Crew's direction. Don't be shy to hop on, and to give us any thoughts and comments either on the community forums or on our Discord channel.

You'll be able to see most things we've talked about for yourself in the Experimental update tomorrow.

Fair winds,
Captain,
T.T.