UBOAT, WW2 subsim 4/30/19 on Steam

[JasonPratt]

Turns out I did experimentally verify this in my Part 2, although I forgot I had done so!  <:-)

Relatedly, Part 2 is now edited up, but needs compiling and then uploading. That should be accomplished some time Wednesday afternoon...

[W8taminute]

I've got 16 hours into this game to date.  Yes with every patch that comes out it breaks your previous saves.  This is what Alpha/Early Access is all about so I'm fine with it. 

If you are the kind of person who just wants a new submarine game I would highly recommend waiting until the finished version is released. 

If you are a fanatical sub simulator maniac or just a computer gaming maniac looking for a new fix this game is worth it right now provided you are willing to participate in developing the game or at least put up with frequent patches.  I've got no regrets as this game is a lot of fun and will be more so once the final product is completed.  I knew what I was getting into and accept my destiny. 

[Father Ted]

I knew what I was getting into and accept my destiny.

That's pretty deep

[em2nought]

Just great, now I've got the uncut mini-series in DVD region 1 format(hopefully, amazon can be a little sketchy sometimes on their descriptions) for $9 on the way.  Hopefully it plays in my machine.  I've never seen the almost 300 minute version.  I think just about the last date I ever went on was to see Das Boot in the theatre. LMAO  I don't even remember her name.  ;D

3 cents per minute of viewing. lol

[JasonPratt]

Video compiled and ready to start uploading tomorrow morning.

How many lives can Radio Officer Huw save?!

(Relatedly, how many ship groups can be tracked at one time....  >:D )

[DoctorQuest]

I knew what I was getting into and accept my destiny.

That's pretty deep

As befits a Romulan Commander.

[W8taminute]

I knew what I was getting into and accept my destiny.

That's pretty deep

As befits a Romulan Commander.

Thank you that's right.  We are creatures of duty after all.

[trek]

Anyone here have problems with the game going into slo-mo at times? Also, any problems with your crew responding to orders promptly or sometimes not at all?

Almost finished the tutorial but then the game locked-up around the time I was going to attack the carrier. I think I've learned enough to just go into the sandbox mode. I'm finding going up and down the ladders in the ship very frustrating at times though. The commands don't seem to be very fluid in my case.

[Pete Dero]

There are still many bugs (it is early access after all) but so far I didn't have any CTD or slow down (on a not so new system).

At some time my boat refused to dive (or go to persiscope depth or any other level) so I got bombed by a plane.
Reloaded my save and still couldn't dive.

Found out no one was on the valves to flood the tanks but no one could take control of the valves because according to the game that station was in use by the engineer (who did nothing and wasn't visible) ...
Only way out of this was to designate the engineer as the medic what made him leave that station (discovered this after much trial and error).
Now the ship responded again when I ordered it to dive ...

A couple of design choices I'm not happy with is the fact that you can only stay submerged for a few hours before you run out of power and air, and that it is very easy to lower the crew discipline to zero what makes you crew go crazy (e.g. being in a combat situation for an extended period of time even when there is no danger to the boat like when you are hunting an unarmed convoy or when the crew feels they have to work to much).

[W8taminute]

I agree with you Pete on the crew morale plummeting too quickly.  It should drop when there are exploding depth charges all around your boat but not when you know the enemy is nearby but they have not found you yet. 

I've also noticed that if I switch jobs for certain crew members they will perform the work you ask them to do instantly as opposed to when you tell them to do something and they just sit there.

Case in point for me was when I told my chief engineer to take 88mm shells out of the storage locker and bring them up to the deck gun and he simply ignored me.  Once I changed his job from chief engineer to quartermaster he immediately did what I told him.

[JasonPratt]

There are various ways of getting the crew to do things. In no particular order...

0.) Leave them alone and they tend to do things anyway.

1.) Add sailors to officer teams. When officers are at a station with extra slots, the sailors will also be assigned there; otherwise the sailors will do some menial tasks roughly connected to the officer. But if sailors are unassigned they'll still do things that make sense sometimes. I've never once bothered to order anyone to mop excess water out of an area for example, and a sailor will always start cooking around food time.

2.) Holding down the tab key brings up the officer list with drop-down menus showing most or all available tasks you can assign to that officer. I have seen some evidence that assigning tasks this way teleports them directly to the position! (See video below, plug, plug.)

3.) On the side-view, little buttons at the bottom of each area will toggle sailors and officers to close off the area, pull the breakers on an area's electricity (this can be done manually in FPS also, though I forget where the breaker box is), and/or.... um... do something with the water? I've forgotten whether the blue button helps focus pump activity to get certain areas drained faster, or whether it tells the crew that an area needs more manual water removal.

4.) The side view also allows you to left-click the officer portraits and then left-click stations on the sub. They'll trot over there promptly, bringing any assigned crewmen with them (if there are extra slots at the station available. This is one key difference between assigning an officer to the nav periscope compared to the attack periscope. See video below, plug plug.)

5.) Taking over an officer character and going over to attach him to the station yourself. Sometimes this also allows you to manually work the station, which is mostly useful right now for setting up attacks.

6.) Assigning roles to officers, which will focus them on doing particular jobs of their own volition.

[JasonPratt]

Part 2 of my sandbox mission which ends in the world being obliterated by forces beyond my control!

....really!

.....no, really!

[Pete Dero]

Do you know if you can check the things you already researched (so you remember what to upgrade in port) ?

[JasonPratt]

Yes and no? I haven't seen the latest build yet (b118), but as you can see toward the end of my video the latest successful research projects stay on the sidebar for a while as being recently completed.

If you go to the HQ mission map (from the dropdown "menu" in the upper right -- which really needs to be clickable by the way, because the engine gets a little confused sometimes over whether it's supposed to rollover open it or when to close it), that mission won't be there any longer, although some other similar mission might. This is not immediately obvious.

If you go to the upgrade shack at port (the warehouse iirc), and mouse around on your sub you can of course tell which projects have been unlocked, though now they must be paid for. In my case, I couldn't go on and buy my hydrophone upgrade because I had already accepted a new (patrol) mission and naturally it would take time to install the new 'phones. Which makes sense; I hadn't thought far enough ahead to anticipate that the devs might have coded in a timeframe for upgrade installations, much less that doing so would interfere with my mission!

What I really want however -- which I didn't bother showing at the end of my video because with the new build breaking saves it doesn't matter -- is for the upgrade menu in the warehouse to more clearly highlight areas of the boat with upgradeable tech options. As of build 114 (which I was playing, and I haven't seen notes indicating an improvement here yet), all I see is a standard cutaway side of the boat at dock, with visible stations simply marked as usual! I only found out by accident, clicking around, that clicking on a station will bring up the upgrade menu for that station, showing which techs are available to research, and which have been researched and are available to buy.

Relatedly, when the game starts there seems to be only three stations on the boat that can even be clicked in the upgrade side-cutaway: the conning tower (more armor and more AA machineguns  <:-) ), the radio room (the "meteor" project for detecting radar, if I recall correctly), and the listening room (hydrophone upgrades). I never did see, for example, a place on the periscopes to open up showing snorkel tech was able to be researched, even though I showed back in episode 1 that snorkel tech is on the HQ mission map (in Holland where it would be expected, btw!)

This admittedly might be ineptness on my part: originally I didn't see that the radio and listening posts could be clicked on at all! But this gets back to my improvement request: to make upgradeable stations more obviously obvious.

[Pete Dero]

^ thanks

It would seem obvious to me that you upgrade all the things you've researched once you are back in port.
Now (like you) I mouse over my ship to see if anything can be upgraded, a guaranteed way to miss something.

Some icons turn green what I think means they can be upgraded with research, but that doesn't seem to mean that you already researched the upgrade...
More colour codes could be usefull (or a clickable ingame list).