UBOAT News

Dear skippers,

Update B129 Preview 11 is now ready to download on the public testing branch.

This update brings fixes to the most frequently reported bugs and issues, as well as adds some general improvements. Please take a look at the changelog below, if you would like to find out more.

[h2]Changelog[/h2]
[h3]Periscope:[/h3]
- Update of the ship measurements presented in the identification book to better match the actual dimensions of the ships.

[h3]Crew management:[/h3]
- Food stored on the u-boat is no longer consumed when the u-boat is stationing at a port.
- Improvements to crew pathfinding, that should result in less traffic jams on the u-boat, for example when a sailor sits on the bunk and blocks the passage.
- Fix: Crew members were becoming stuck in the toilet, if they tried to block a leak inside.
- Fix: It was possible to move in FPP to the u-boat's deck, order a dive and stay there.
- Fix: After loading certain game states, there was a permanent alarm enabled on the u-boat.

[h3]Graphics:[/h3]
- Improved lighting in the skipper customization scene.
- Fix: After initiating an interaction with a lifeboat, camera was sometimes appearing inside a nearby ship's hull.
- Regression fix: One of the haircuts was having gaps when viewed from a distance.
- Regression fix: NPC crew on C3 ships was moving outside the ship.

[h3]Optimizations:[/h3]
- Optimizations to crew pathfinding, that should slightly improve the performance, when a high time compression is being used.
- Removed a per-frame memory allocation, that was affecting performance.
- During loading, there is now an increased time budget for various background tasks, that should result in a slightly faster loading time and a decreased need to continue some of these tasks after the loading is complete, which usually affects the performance.
- Increased the memory buffer used for uploading textures to the graphics card. It should slightly decrease the time it takes to load the game from the main menu, decrease framerate drops caused by background loading and possibly fix a related crash to desktop issue. This change costed an additional 40 MB of VRAM.
- Various other optimizations.

[h3]User interface:[/h3]
- Improvements to how survivors are released. A list of survivors present on the ship is now opened along with specified rewards, to claim the rewards from there.
- There is now a warning on the screen that suggests to dive deeper, when player tries to use the hydrophone from the surface.
- It's now possible to manually enter a number of items to move between the storages instead of using a slider.
- Fix: Gun UI was sometimes displaying a fractional ammunition count.
- Fix: Survivors could be moved off the ship in a port without actually releasing them for a reward.
- Fix: After a milk cow was sunk by the enemy, it was still being displayed in the HQ. Note: We are going to add a notification that will inform about supply ships sunk by the enemy soon.
- Fix: Pulsating glow around mission markers was behaving erratically, if a high time compression was being used and there was an active mission with a time limit.
- Fix: There is now a scroll present near the officer portraits when a torpedo launchers UI is open and it takes some of the portraits space.
- Fix: It was possible to select survivors from sunk ships for various interactions and for HQ tasks.
- Fix: Improved positioning of various tooltips to make them appear near the hovered UI controls, instead of appearing on top of them.
- Fix: Auto-save settings were changing after loading another game state.
- Fix: Recently added button for changing the depth steers mode was sometimes not present in the TAB menu.

[h3]World simulation:[/h3]
- Fix: During the patrol summary, penalties were assigned for sinking neutral ships in the enemy convoys - it wasn't intended.
- Fix: Swiss rubber transports had empty cargo holds.
- Regression fix: Path to the docking point at Bergen couldn't be plotted.
- Regression fix: Wrecks of ships were not spawning, if they were sunk at deep water.

[h3]Balance:[/h3]
- Decreased ventilation capacity from 50 kg to 40 kg to match the weight of a full stack of potassium absorbers.
- Potassium absorbers are now consumed more slowly, but they are also less efficient at refreshing the air inside the u-boat.
- Fix: Decreased oxygen consumption on the dynamic travel system.

[h3]Localization:[/h3]
- Complete Russian localization provided by Hard, based on his Workshop mod "RU advanced".
- French localization update by FvJ.
- Turkish localization update by tokyo.
- Italian localization update by BeeTLe BeTHLeHeM.

[h3]Map:[/h3]
- Fix: After performing an air reconnaissance and reloading the game state, one of the icons that mark each of the port defences would reappear in a slightly different location.

[h3]Interactions:[/h3]
- There is now a different description displayed after searching the cargo hold, if the ship carries a military cargo.
- Fix: Items selected for the team after initiating an interaction were disappearing later, if they were manually equipped before starting the interaction.
- Fix: It was possible to start an interaction with a shot down aircraft for only one time. The button was stopping to respond later on.
- Fix: If a ship turns out to carry tea, but documents stated something else, there is now a different flow of the story that doesn't ignore this fact.
- Fix: After searching an abandoned ship, there was a mention of a sailor from the crew being present during the search.

[h3]AI:[/h3]
- Warships behaviour is now improved when they attack non-submarine targets.

[h3]Physics:[/h3]
- Fix: Probable fix for the issue where damage was inflicted to the conning tower, while the u-boat was travelling at the periscope depth in a shallow area and 140x time compression was being used. More testing is needed to confirm this fix.

[h3]Modding notices:[/h3]
- There is now a logging added during story sequences / interactions, that should make potential modding of them easier to debug.

[h3]General:[/h3]
- It's no longer possible to undock from a port with survivors on board.
- Added a new auto-save setting for saving the game state before leaving the game.
- Fix: Depth displayed on the map was sometimes positive for the sea, if it was beyond the sight range.
- Fix: Various fixes to errors that we spotted in the log files from the user reports.

Yours,
DWS

Hello skippers,

The next update for B129 is ready. It brings fixes to the most commonly reported issues encountered in your play-throughs as well as general improvements. It's now ready to download on the public testing branch.

[h2]Changelog[/h2]
[h3]Missions:[/h3]
- Added Enigma machine as an actual item carried by the rescued radioman in the Enigma recovery campaign mission.
- Fix: The u-boat's wreck and the German merchant ship's wreck could disappear, if they were left alone for long enough with the warships nearby.
- Fix: Ships that were marked on the map during the lost ship and ally calling for help side missions and the side mission with sinking a specific merchant ship inside the convoy were being tracked on the map after mission has ended without any means for the player to have up to date information on them.
- Fix: If an encounter with the warships during the gold recovery mission was lasting for a long time, certain errors would start to be written to the log at periodic intervals.

[h3]Crew management:[/h3]
- Fix: Crew members that were either blocking the leaks or making repairs near the torpedo loading hatch, were blocking the entrance to the bow torpedo room for the other characters.
- Fix: If crewman was manually equipped with a diving suit (not through the group selection and equipping UI) and sent onto a mission, he would later stop reacting to any orders until the game was reloaded.

[h3]Graphics:[/h3]
- Increased allowed vertical looking range in FPP.
- Fix: Funnel smoke effect was sometimes restarting with no apparent reason on certain ship types.
- Fix: Lifeboats should no longer capsize with the crew inside.
- Fix: If player initiates an interaction with the lifeboat, camera now switches to it like in the other interactions.
- Fix: The blurring effect that is visible at the edge of the sight range, where it fades into the fog of war, was being performed only vertically rather than in both directions. This effect was also affecting the map performance a bit more than intended.
- Fix: When map was being zoomed out, the scene visible inside the sight range was sharply changing the brightness at some thresholds.
- Fix: When map was being zoomed out, the terrain was disappearing at a much higher threshold than it was re-appearing when zooming in.
- Fix: Crew members that were in a ragdoll state had most of their body invisible, if player saved the game state at this moment and reloaded it, until another crew member would help them.
- Fix: Boxes under crew members involved in the leak repairs were not visible after re-loading the game state.

[h3]Interactions:[/h3]
- Fix: The interaction that allowed to send a diver to the wreck remaining at the seabed was fully functional only, if it was a part of the campaign mission with recovering gold from the sunk merchant ship.
- Fix: Ships from which cargo was being loaded onto the player's ship, could sometimes unspawn during the time skip and the transport operation would be interrupted.
- Fix: It wasn't possible to send a crew on an already evacuated merchant ship.
- Fix: In some cases, after selecting a radioman for the outgoing group, the whole interface would close and the selected radioman would salute in a loop.
- Fix: C3, N-A1 and Liberty ships weren't fully supporting the inspections. It wasn't possible to see their cargo in the cargo hold and there would be no scene with the crew standing on the deck.

[h3]Balance:[/h3]
- Searchlight balance adjustments. The sight range increase in the darkness is weaker than before, while the sight range increase in the fog is much weaker.
- Fix: Searchlight sight range increase was affecting only the "Clear sight" range, but not the "Max sight" range.

[h3]User interface:[/h3]
- Added icons for the campaign missions. They are displayed in various user interfaces.
- Rescued sailors and officers from NPC ships are now listed in the crew list.
- Removed the helmet button from the unit selection panel.
- Added a button to the TAB menu to switch between the electric and the manual mode of the vertical steers (known issue: this button may be sometimes missing - we are going to fix this in Preview 11).
- Fix: Tooltip was missing for the "Tutorial" campaign setting.
- Fix: If player pressed an escape, while selecting the target square for a milk cow, some UI elements would remain on the screen and it was hard to leave the HQ scene.
- Fix: After closing the HQ map, sea ambience was audible inside the HQ scene.
- Fix: Highlight and tooltip weren't disappearing from the icons displayed in the scene, if player haven't moved the mouse, but moved the camera in such a way that the icon would no longer be under the cursor.
- Fix: After performing certain steps involving loading another game state, the background under launcher index could be displayed blue as if the launcher was flooded, while it wasn't.
- Regression fix: Certain campaign missions had their descriptions missing since a few updates.

[h3]Periscope:[/h3]
- Fix: Periscope was sometimes instantly rotating in a different direction during measurements. It could be interpreted as if the ship would disappear.
- Regression fix: Errors were written to the log, if stadimeter was used without identifying the ship first since Preview 9.
- Fix: Chronometer UI was using the actual ship's length to estimate the speed, rather than the length of the ship's class selected in the identification book by the player.

[h3]Localization:[/h3]
- Major Italian localization update by BeeTLe BeTHLeHeM.
- Spanish localization update by Tordo.
- Turkish localization update by tokyo.

[h3]World simulation:[/h3]
- When units present in a convoy move away at a considerable distance, they are now separated from the convoy. They are treated as a separate contact moving forward and will act individually. This fixes various issues and makes many things more practical.
- Fix: Wrecks spawned in the scene, could in some cases fall below the terrain, if the location was shallow.

[h3]General:[/h3]
- Fix: Various fixes to errors that we spotted in the log files from the user reports.
- Fix: Game states from a play-through could become not loadable after a rare occurrence of technical nature.

Yours,
DWS

Hello skippers,

The next update for B129 is complete. It tweaks the game's balance and fixes bugs based on your recent feedback. It's now ready to download on the public testing branch.

[h2]Changelog[/h2]
[h3]Crew management:[/h3]
- Fix: Guns installed on Turm I couldn't be repaired.
- Fix: It wasn't possible to move ammunition from the storage to the AA guns ammunition storage.
- Regression fix: It wasn't possible to move ammunition from the storage to the deck gun ammunition storage since Preview 7.

[h3]Graphics:[/h3]
- Regression fix: After opening the map and loading another game state that was saved in FPP at an exterior area, the sea was no longer displayed until the map was opened and closed again. It was also having some effect on the performance.

[h3]User interface:[/h3]
- When there are few interactions available near the player, the button to initiate the interactions changes into a dropdown that allows for selecting one of them. This change fixes a related issue in the Enigma recovery mission.
- Fix: The selected auto-save setting was wrong after the interface was re-opened, if player selected 1 auto save to be kept at a time.
- Fix: The survivors taken on board were treated like officers in some user interfaces, specifically the Management tabs: Squads, Tasks and Schedule.
- Fix: Newspaper about Operation Barbarossa had missing contents.
- Fix: Compressed air notification wasn't disappearing in some cases after reaching 100% due to rounding.
- Fix: After submerging, the arrow near the player's u-boat icon wasn't becoming semi-transparent along with the ship icon.
- Regression fix: If the time compression was enabled, then after returning to the main menu the time compression was continued and the animation was much faster.

[h3]AI:[/h3]
- Fix: NPC u-boats were attacking all neutral ships.

[h3]Missions:[/h3]
- Regression fix: If player waited for the investigation on the lost u-boat mission to end, while having open the story user interface, the investigation would repeat each time and the mission wouldn't progress.

[h3]Headquarters:[/h3]
- Fix: After researching the upgraded pistols, the torpedoes with the old pistol are now no longer produced. They may still appear in the warehouse for some time, until they are all used up by the player and the other u-boats.
- Regression fix: It was possible to research LUT torpedoes before researching the T3 torpedoes. It was not intended.

[h3]Modding:[/h3]
- Scripting mods are now recompiled after each game update.

[h3]Naval simulation:[/h3]
- Fix: The impact detonation setting on torpedoes, due to an error, had noticeably increased dud rates in situations where it wasn't intended.
- Fix: The stadimeter was using the actual mast height of the ship being targeted rather than to use the data from the page selected by the player in the identification book.

[h3]Localization:[/h3]
- French localization update by FvJ.
- Spanish localization update by Tordo.
- Turkish localization update by tokyo.
- Fix: Missing characters in certain languages.

[h3]General:[/h3]
- Fix: Fixed a reported case of infinite loading screen.
- Fix: Officers were receiving XP for premature detonations of torpedoes with the magnetic setting.
- Fix: The camera could swap to a wrong ship after torpedo detonation, if the hit ship was different than the one which was initialy targeted.
- Fix: The camera wasn't swapping to the hit ship, if the torpedo was launched manually.
- Fix: Various fixes to errors that we spotted in the log files from the user reports.
- Regression fix: Button to wait for the approaching convoy in the upper right corner wasn't appearing since initial B129 releases.
- Regression fix: A tooltip wasn't appearing after hovering the deck gun and errors were writted to the log.

Yours,
DWS

Hello skippers,

There is a new update ready to download on the public testing branch. It fixes some of the most often reported issues from the last few days, but there are also other worthwhile additions present like the auto-save system. We hope that you will find it useful.

[h2]Changelog[/h2]
[h3]Crew management:[/h3]
- Regression fix: Crew could become stuck at the conning tower after participating in certain story sequences. This fix was designed to remove that issue also in the existing game states.
- Regression fix: Sailors weren't joining the officer at the deck gun, after performing certain steps.

[h3]Graphics:[/h3]
- Fix: Character textures could be atlassed in a wrong way in some cases after loading a game state. This was making the character look very unusual after moving the camera at a certain distance from him.
- Fix: Diesel exhaust was visible after loading a game state that was saved when the u-boat was docked at the port, but there was nobody working at the engines.

[h3]Localization:[/h3]
- Turkish localization update by tokyo.
- Fix: New torpedo names weren't translated in some parts of the UI.

[h3]User interface:[/h3]
- Added notification that informs that the currently received radio message was stopped to be transmitted at the source (for example after sinking the ship).

[h3]General:[/h3]
- Added auto-save feature.
- Fix: Restored partial compatibility with B128 version of TDC mod.
- Fix: Upgraded torpedo pistols are now researched at the start in all scenarios. They were intended to lack only in the future 1939 - 1940 scenarios.
- Regression fix: Torpedo wasn't disappearing after explosion, if player launched it manually without choosing a target.
- Fix: Various fixes to errors that we spotted in the user reports.

Yours,
DWS

Hello skippers,

We finished the next update for B129. Preview 7 overhauls torpedoes in the game by adding various pistol designs and control programs, opens up the possibility to uninstall the deck gun, as well as fixes many issues reported by you during the last week. This version is now ready to download on the public testing branch.

To implement some of the new features, we had to break the game states compatibility. We tried to finalize all changes that required this at once, so that there won't be a need to do this again in the closest future.

[h2]Changelog[/h2]
[h3]Torpedo overhaul:[/h3]
- There are now quite realistic and hopefully more interesting pistol designs in the game: Pi1, Pi1 revised, Pi2, Pi3 and Pi4. Certain torpedo types exist in a few variants depending on the installed pistol.
- Torpedoes can be now switched between the impact (AZ) and magnetic (MZ) pistol setting, each with its own advantages and drawbacks.
- Added FAT and LUT torpedo control programs that make the torpedo follow a certain pattern after a potential miss. Such control mechanisms are being installed on T1 and T3 torpedoes once these programs are researched.
- Impact pistol trigger chance now depends on the impact angle rather than being a flat chance.
- Magnetic pistol flaws include detonation on its own before reaching the target or not exploding when reaching the target.
- Added checkboxes in the torpedo UI that allow the player to specify which of the flooded torpedoes he wants to launch.
- T2 torpedoes are now free, while T1 require additional payment. Historically T2 were 2x cheaper in production and balance-wise are often also worse in overall.

[h3]Graphics:[/h3]
- Added scenes that visualize the story when player meets with another u-boat in the mission where friendly u-boat calls for the help.
- Fix: Terrain often had missing segments inside the sight range that weren't generated.
- Fix: Sight range had graphic artifacts near the border when a map skin different than the paper-like was used.
- Fix: Officers were loosing their hair after performing an inspection, if they had equipped headphones before going out.
- Fix: Corrected crew positions on the pontoons.
- Fix: Light bulbs were constantly flickering for some time, if player reloaded an older game state from the current playthrough.
- Fix: If player disabled lighting inside the compartment, saved the game state, enabled the lighting inside the compartment and reloaded a game state, it was no longer possible to change the lighting state inside that compartment.
- Fix: Some textures were glowing after visiting Aruba.
- Regression fix: Black screen flickering, if the main menu was in the animated mode.
- Regression fix: U-boat in the main menu had a few missing elements.
- Regression fix: During moonless nights and heavy storms very intense reflections were appearing on the sea.

[h3]Equipment:[/h3]
- Added a possibility to uninstall the deck gun for less drag under the water.

[h3]Balance:[/h3]
- Ventilation system and breathable air balance pass.
- Fix: County-class cruisers were too resistant to damage.

[h3]Missions:[/h3]
- Fix: Rewards for completing the campaign objectives weren't assigned.
- Fix: Weather station is now removed from the storage and character backpacks when it's being built on the land.
- Fix: U-boat's wreck in the Enigma recovery mission and merchant ship's wreck in the gold recovery mission were missing, if player entered and then left the area.
- Fix: Weather station mission had a missing objective for testing the weather station's signal.

[h3]World simulation:[/h3]
- Removed all fast travel points from the game.
- Fix: NPC u-boats were often gathering into large fleets near friendly ports.
- Fix: Probable fix for ships spawning below the land in Scapa Flow when there was more ships on the anchor than expected. More testing is required to confirm this.
- Fix: After ordering the milk cow to move to a different square, it was always moving to BB square instead.
- Fix: Milk cows could be moved only once, because the icon was disappearing from the map.
- Fix: Sunk ships are now being cleaned from the world after some time, instead of instantly once the player leaves their direct vincinity.

[h3]User interface:[/h3]
- New loading backgrounds.
- New torpedo icons.
- "Sight" range circle was renamed to "Clear sight" to make the intentions behind it more understandable.
- Added a special icon for the pilot NPCs.
- Ship names in various parts of the interface are now consistent. Lifeboats are no longer being called pontoons.
- Fix: After clicking the right mouse button on a port icon, when the port was loaded in the scene, the click was ignored and path to it wasn't computed.
- Fix: Port icons sometimes had question marks on them.
- Fix: Progress bars below campaign photographies on the map, were not being updated after loading a different game state during an ongoing playthrough.
- Fix: Mission type icon wasn't appearing on the mission objective notifications during campaign missions.
- Fix: Progress bar on the research notification was often missing.
- Fix: Long names in the unit selection panel could expand outside the panel.
- Fix: After loading a game state saved in the zoomed map view at location where a campaign objective photography is usually displayed, clicking anywhere would open the campaign details view.

[h3]Crew management:[/h3]
- Fix: Officer could occassionally enter an infinite loop of rest and work changing every a few seconds.
- Fix: Removed the old way of diving to the wrecks at the bottom of the sea. All features of the old system will be gradually implemented into the new one.
- Fix: Sailors were trying to block leaks in evacuated compartments.
- Fix: If player entered the periscope or UZO manual mode and sent the officer working here somewhere else, using the TAB menu, the view was acting strangely and it wasn't possible to leave it.
- Fix: A possible fix for the officer duplication. More testing is required to confirm this.
- Fix: Special characters like the captain and first engineer were appearing in more than one instance, if player performed specific steps that involved starting an inspection and reloading the game state at specific stages.
- Fix: Propeller recognition skill was causing some issues with the radioman's AI.
- Fix: After player took all survivors from the lifeboat it was still possible to interact with it.
- Fix: It was possible to send a crew onto a delegation when the u-boat was in the decks awash mode and it was causing various issues.
- Fix: "Navigator" skill was missing in the leader's skill tree.
- Fix: After saving a game state during a story scene with more characters sent that can be displayed in the scene and reloading that game state, there were many issues encountered later that included depending on the story: performance degradation, not being able to assign sailors to officers and not being able to end the story sequence.

[h3]Optimization:[/h3]
- Regression fix: Fixed an error that could lead to performance degradation.

[h3]AI:[/h3]
- Ships that use a false flag now don't try to run away when they spot the enemy to make the deception more convincing.

[h3]Localization:[/h3]
- French localization update by FvJ.
- Turkish localization update by tokyo.
- Spanish localization update by Tordo.

[h3]General:[/h3]
- Fix: Various fixes to errors that we spotted in the user reports.
- Fix: Resource amounts are now represented with more bits of precision inside the memory to avoid numeric issues, for example it was possible to travel large distances without loosing fuel, if time compression wasn't used.
- Fix: An issue in the save system that could make certain game states not load, if they were loaded three times in succession.

Yours,
DWS