UBOAT News

Dear captains,

We're thrilled to announce that the Full Release update is now ready for beta testing, starting on May 27th, 2024!

All players owning UBOAT are invited to participate. We will post an announcement at the mentioned date once the update is ready to download.

We can't wait for you to experience all the new features and refinements we've been working on. This is a major milestone for us, and we're incredibly excited to invite you, the UBOAT community, to join us on this final leg of the journey. Your feedback and insights during this beta phase will be invaluable and together, we can make this the best U-boat experience yet!

Using this opportunity, we will also delve into some final changes... welcome to our dev log #8! ⚓


The Full Release introduces camouflages, which you can swap in any port's upgrade mode. Additionally, conning tower emblems are now possible to obtain in various ways during the game. Joining flotilla will unlock its associated emblem, and you may even encounter painters offering unique designs for a fee.




This version will introduce a simple skill system for the regular sailors. Each sailor will be able to gain specialization that contributes to better overall stats of the boat like faster diving.




We are also introducing a new way to play the game, where you play in first-person perspective as the skipper. While playing in this mode, once you pause the game, the camera transitions into the section view to give a quick overview of the situation and let you pass orders to your officers.

We plan to keep this mode marked as experimental for several months, independently of the full release. We want to gain feedback from FPP players and polish it over time.




We've also implemented numerous smaller enhancements, including:

• Smooth transitions between all views.
  
• Audible buzzers when telegraph values change.
  
• Reworked Type VII engines with historically accurate models.
  
• Historical Kriegsmarine clocks.
  
• Net cutters on the bow of certain U-boat types.
  
• If you play with map mode without revealed circle of sight (fully paper map), you will hear sounds around you, like you would be still in the boat.
  

Yours,
DWS

Dear captains,

As the wait for a beta test continues, we've decided to release another dev log, to give you a heads up and also use this opportunity to present a few major features that are coming soon with the Full Release Update.

Without further introduction, let's proceed.


We've created various random events that may happen on your U-boat or around it.

These events mirror the real challenges faced by U-boat crews. Injured crewmates might need land-based recovery, overtaxed engines could demand extra grease, or tensions aboard might flare into a brawl. But with each challenge comes opportunity e.g. complete a daring mission, and you might find a personal gift from the admiral stashed in your storage.


We've prepared many such events to make your patrols feel more unique and immersive. They won't disrupt the core gameplay, but instead will remind you that life at sea is full of surprises. Most of them are inspired by the authentic struggles found in books and U-boat KTBs.


Using this opportunity, we've also improved missions with a war correspondent. We've greatly expanded his pool of questions and made interactions with him more user friendly.




Another addition, is that warships and aircraft deploy flares to illuminate the surrounding area when they know that submarines are around. You will also be able to use flares yourself, if you want to. Being close to deployed flares, increases your sight range, but also makes you more visible.


All warships in the game now also carry functional searchlights that aid them in searching for U-boats lurking in the darkness. They keep them disabled when they travel in a convoy and use them only when they go into battle stations mode.




There are now Vickers Wellington bombers in the game. These aircraft start to appear in the game in 1942 and will attack your U-boat without any warning at night using a combination of ASV radar and a Leigh Light. These attacks look quite spectacular and starting with 1943 sometimes include rockets.


We've also recreated effective counter-measures to employ against this danger, that may ensure the safety of your U-boat. We've added diving schedules, with which you can set your U-boat to travel underwater at a specific time of day (in the discussed case - at nights).



Another, even more effective counter-measure are radar waves detectors, which we improved to work more consistently and we made it easier to understand what their purpose is for new players.


We've ensured that attacks from the surface during moonless nights now work properly, especially if you sneak with electric engines. It was a very common tactic employed by many skippers and we felt that we had to make it effective in the game too.

By employing this tactic, you will be able to avoid the risk of detection by the sonars while sneaking into a convoy. Once the enemy illuminates the area, you can then quickly dive and escape, before being spotted.




We've added several ports to the game that have Arabic architecture in the cities. It's a massive boost for immersion on the Mediterranean, which previously lacked ports in general. New ports include Tobruk, Haifa and Tunis. Existing ports of Alexandria and Malta were improved. There is also new port of Marseille and Salamis naval base, both of which can serve as your home base.




While we've maintained this state during Early Access for variety of reasons, we've always intended to change this for the Final Release. Starting with this update, you will face a much more curated selection of missions offered by the command, and there is also a mode, in which you don't get any selections at all, and simply carry out with the orders as they come from the command.

While setting up the campaign, you will also be able to determine the type of missions that will be offered - varied or more centred on routine patrols.




At this time, we expect the beta testing to commence in a few more weeks. It's taking a bit longer than we hoped, but not overly so and hope to reach the stable version soon.

We still have to work out several things that could otherwise make for a frustrating experience and hope for your patience and understanding.

Once everything is done, we will announce the start of the beta testing with a week in advance to give you time to prepare.

Yours,
DWS

Dear captains,

We are back with the next dev log for the upcoming Full Release update. This time, we'll delve into details on how you'll progress through new U-boat types, discuss new mission content, and highlight other improvements.


As we announced previously, the Full Release update will bring several new playable U-boat types to the game. We've heard your questions about the differences between individual U-boats, and now that we've worked out the details of the progression system and how to obtain these vessels, let's dive in!

If you choose to, you will be able to start with the Type IIA. It's a small and cozy U-boat with a limited range, sufficient to perform patrols around the British Isles in 1939 - 1940. The big upside of these U-boats is their smaller size that makes them harder to spot on the surface or detect with sonar under water. They also have more compact engines and less numerous crew, which emit less noise and make them harder to detect for enemy hydrophone operators.

Type IIA lacks a UZO and a deck gun capable of sinking ships, but once you upgrade to Type IID, it's going to be a quite decent variant, equipped with UZO and a range nearing that of the Type VII.



Type VIIB is going to be a familiar territory, if you played the game before. It's much more heavily armed than Type II, with one additional launcher on the bow, one on the stern, much larger torpedo capacity and a deadly deck gun. It can also dive much deeper than Type II.

Type VIIC is a similar experience to its predecessor, but it has a better conning tower and supports more upgrades. It's also equipped with a much improved T. Vh. Re. S3 torpedo calculator that will make your torpedo solutions more accurate. That new TDC, in contrast to C/37 present on the older models, adjusts torpedo solutions for your own course changes in real time, as well as allows you to launch torpedoes during a turn.



The last U-boat, Type VIIC/41 is the one you may be familiar with from real-life as U-995 in Laboe is of this type. The main upgrade of this U-boat is its much higher pressure resistance than its predecessors, but it also starts with heavily armed Turm IV conning tower by default.

All these U-boats can be unlocked with the newly introduced ship upgrade points that are granted for completing certain campaign objectives.


We also have a good news for all simulation lovers. We've added a new gameplay mode that doesn't have the integrated 3D view on the map, but instead, the map is always presented in a 2D paper-like style.

To make such mode practical, we've also ensured that ports are now drawn directly on the map. As you may have noticed, previously port wharfs weren't present on it and only after approaching the port it was possible to see them in 3D.




For the next update, we've added several new historically-based missions. For example, there is a new mission where you will land a demolition team to sabotage a railway near Alexandria. These new missions belong to two new multi-stage campaigns, one for the Atlantic and one for the Mediterranean.



We've also reworked most of the old missions present in the game to make them more historically accurate and interesting to play. For example, missions about landing a spy now take place at historical locations, while regular patrol assignments have been enhanced with a few new side missions and endings to add variety.

All missions in the game now include a list of historical sources on which they are based on.


It's a small feature, although it's something that was often requested and is actually very aesthetically pleasing. The officer assigned to the lookout crew no longer sits all day near the UZO but uses binoculars like the rest of the watch crew. He goes to the UZO only when ordered to prepare a torpedo solution.




While we've finished the content that we planned, as things stand there is clearly still work left with bug fixes and prepping the final release.

For this reason, we've decided to organize beta testing before we leave the waters of Early Access. Doing this will let us work together to finalize this update and finish this last phase faster. It will also be a chance for the modding community to adjust the mods to the base game changes.

We plan to run this testing for about a month and everyone who already owns the game will be able to participate. We will provide you with more details in a separate announcement, as soon as we have all the details ready!

We can't wait to show you what we've been working on. While it's still the same UBOAT we all know, it now feels more fleshed out and different in many ways. We hope to see you soon back on the Atlantic.

Yours,
DWS

Dear captains,

There is a new small patch available for the latest stable release of the game. It's a Steam-only release, as it fixes just one issue that appeared after one of the updates to Steam. Changelog:

[h3]Launcher:[/h3]
- Fix: Launcher could crash or have display issues on some systems with enabled Steam Overlay.

Yours,
DWS

Dear captains,

We hope that you had pleasant holidays and a good start to 2024. In this diary we will dive back again into various simulation aspects on which we were working on for the Full Release update.

Our goal with these changes is to accommodate more playstyles, but without forcing them in any way. If such technical things are not your cup of tea, don't worry as everything discussed here is going to be fully optional as it was always the case in UBOAT.


Imprecise contacts, such as those provided by the hydrophone operator, are now displayed as arcs or lines on the map that appear outside of the direct sight range. They are also merged or split, as necessary, when contacts start or stop being distinguishable from each other.

It's a change we are really excited about as it makes the encounters much more natural. They provide all the information they should, without spoiling anything they shouldn't.



If you look for an even more hardcore gameplay, and wish to plot everything on your own, we've also added an option to disable all contacts completely on the map.


Along with the addition of the torpedo calculator, we've decided to upgrade all other systems related to the torpedo attacks. While it's not our top priority, we hope to make most of the devices on the boat possible to use manually over time.



The torpedo launchers were completely overhauled and they can be now used manually, if you wish to do so. It's possible to open and close the breech doors, flood, drain and launch the torpedoes on your own. The gyro angle receiver panels are also useable. We've also improved the models on Type VIIC U-boats, to make them resemble better their historic counterparts.


If you would like to see how the entire process worked, the torpedo fire control boxes in the control room are now also simulated. It's not necessary to use them, but if you prefer to, you can setup everything manually there.



We've designed the system, to be flexible and allow for various ways of executing a successful torpedo attack.

If you wish to do so, you will be able to do everything from the periscope, by passing all measurements to the TDC operator with newly added buttons. They are passed verbally by your character and repeated back by the officer at the TDC. Once everything is set, you can order to launch the torpedoes.


We've also eliminated the "unlock" tip from the periscope views. It was a common suggestion on the forums to enhance the immersion.


With the full release update, it's going to be possible to play without the green dots that point mission targets, in cases where you only have a partial information about your target, to let you find them for yourself. Headquarters may give an update from time to time, that will ensure that the mission is still possible to complete, when the target for example changes its course a lot.




We've also implemented a better atmospheric scattering effect into the game. It's visible as a blue tint on distant objects with some effect on ambient light of the overall scene.




Currently, everything remains on track, and our estimated completion date for this work is still March - April 2024. If there are no unforeseen surprises, we should have a specific date to report relatively soon. The main thing that extends the development time, are interior models for the new playable U-boats, that will be introduced in the Full Release Update. You can read more about them in this dev diary.

While our artist is busy finishing the new U-boats, the rest of the team, among other things, gathers feedback on the forum, so if you have something you always wanted added or changed, feel free to post. It's important to us, to make you satisfied with the upcoming release.

Also, we still have a few exciting things to share about the upcoming update and will soon in the upcoming dev logs.

Yours,
DWS