Hello skippers!

We are back with the next major release - B126. This version is focused mostly on quality of life improvements, fixes and stability. It comes with multiple technical improvements in the game that should push it one step forward from Early Access title towards a full release!

While it's not mandatory, we strongly recommend to start a new campaign on this version to enjoy it fully as some of the improvements require a fresh start to have effect.

We are now going to move back to the work declared in our roadmap. We are excited about some of the next features ahead and hope that you are too!

Changelog

Gameplay improvements:

- It's now possible to disband crew members to clean up the list.
- AI now tries to avoid joining battles that have too many participants already to avoid performance drops. This behaviour is moddable in the data sheets.
- Lost contacts are now using a special icon with the question mark before disappearing to let the player know that this group is no longer being actively detected.
- There is now a floating warning above nearby contacts with high radius that explains that these contacts may be inaccurate.
- Aircraft now usually won't be starting from the bases shortly before sunset until sunrise. They will also try to get back home during day. They may still occasionally stay around at night, if they already found enemy u-boat, until their fuel will start to run out. Aircraft spawn rates were increased to compensate for these changes.
- Added "Harcore aiming mode" to the gameplay settings.
- Setting torpedo speed, depth and salvo spread is now possible in the torpedo launcher screen.
- It's now possible to hide the detection hint in the gameplay settings.

Technical improvements:

- Added mouse rotation sensitivity slider to the control settings panel.
- Added additional warning that tutorial is considered obsolete.
- Bug reporting system gives a very clear warning that mods are enabled before allowing to send a report. Mod list is now also uploaded along with the bug reports.
- Game now checks integrity of the most important files before starting and informs the player, if something is wrong. We noticed a major rise in problems caused by missing files in the installed game (500+ affected users). It affects only some players updating from B124 on Steam, fresh installations seem to be safe from this kind of problems.
- It's now possible to disable vignette effect and to invert mouse for the periscope view in the game's settings.
- Optimizations to saved game states size and loading speed.

Graphics:

- Small tweaks to water normals for a better look.
- Decreased noise post-processing effect intensity.
- Disk space and memory usage optimizations.
- Added night lamp lighting to all base game ports.
- Large random freighter hulls weren't receiving all damage effects used in the game.
- Improvements to maps texture in the control room.

Localization:

- New German translations by Ruby.
- New French translations by Sword.
- Added a few new Spanish translations suggested by anonymous player through the reporting tool (thank you).
- Polish localization fixes.

Fixes:

- Too many neutral freighters could spawn at certain periods.
- U-boat propellers had wrongly assigned meshes, they both had linked meshes from the other side.
- Game window would flicker after selecting regular fullscreen mode in the settings and then adjusting gamma slider.
- Game states saved near minefields and anti-submarine nets had some problems related to them after loading.
- Fixes to many automatically reported problems.
- Infinite loading when entering land areas.
- Fixes to a few problems related to diving to wrecks.
- Fixes to saving and loading game states.
- Aircraft moving very slowly on the map.
- Characters could sometimes end being incorrectly rotated, for example leading officer after vacation ended.
- Group and ship AI fixes and performance optimizations.
- Gamma settings weren't applied in menu since B125.
- There were two memory leaks per each NPC ship that were increasing memory usage with each game state save and reload.
- Objective to sink a lost u-boat couldn't be completed, if player saved a game state after receiving it and reloaded the game state before proceeding.
- Ally asking for resources was continuing to wander around, even if its enemies were shot down or they left the area.
- Aircraft that ran out of bombs could occasionally search for submarines despite that.
- War correspondent could sit on seats occupied by other characters after 2.5 hours of in-game time.
- Steers UI was overlapping with mission summary after performing certain steps.
- After zooming camera out of binoculars/periscope/hydrophone manual mode geometry of character head would be visible from the inside for a fraction of the second.
- 4th and 5th engine gears were reverting back to 3rd after submerging, surfacing or swapping the engines manually.
- Characters that had equipped a rebreather, combat helmet or any other accessory were refusing to transport cargo between cargo storage.
- Foam trail on the sea could appear in a different place than the ship after meeting NPC group or sometimes after entering land areas after experiencing a lag.
- Medical aid with a medkit wasn't working properly.
- Target group in the lost ship mission, ally help mission and sink ship mission could in rare occasions move with u-boat on the map for some time.
- Minor leak in the toilet wasn't selectable and only AI could initiate the repair.
- Game states saved while looking through the periscope weren't loading correctly.
- Increased compartment flooding tolerance for the officer working at the navigation table.
- Better physics stabilization at high time compression. It improves dinghy behavior on the max compression with enabled map and paves the way for the new travel mode that we have in the plans.
- Recruits in ports are periodically disappearing from the list, making place for the new ones.
- Sailors promoted to officers could become cloned after reloading the game state, if officer count on board was already at the limit.
- Port of Alexandria didn't had any AA guns and mission with finding their positions was being instantly completed.
- War correspondent was loosing his camera after re-loading a game state.
- Crew list is now sorted by rank, level, class and name.
- Discovered AA guns count wasn't properly restored from the saved game states.
- If player would enter and then leave a character screen of any sailor during dialogue with recruitment officer, unwanted UI elements would appear on the screen.
- Character could sometimes drop a very unusual shadow, after player entered FPP view, that was blocking a large part of the light from the flashlight.
- Level of detail on some parts of Flower-class corvettes and Illustrious carriers was fading too fast, leading to weird graphic artifacts.
- Conning towers could turn invisible after installing them, if certain steps were performed.
- Rarely, enemy NPC groups wouldn't correctly unspawn from the scene and remain permanently spawned even hundreds of kilometers away.
- NPC groups could sometimes have problems with decisively resolving encounters between themselves. That could lead in the long run to formation of many hot points on the ocean, where multiple groups would jump into battle and stay there for a long time. This was increasing game state size and affecting performance.
- It's no longer possible to add sold items to wrong warehouse tab and have them restocked there.
- Setting spawner activity to zero in the data sheets was causing problems in the game.
- Accessories equipped by the officer couldn't be removed without reloading a game state.
- Coastal patrols spawn probability decreases with each group already spawned.
- Mines in ports no longer explode when friendly ships pass above them. Historically they were being switched off by a port crew at such time.
- Spawned mines sometimes weren't fully cleaned up from the memory.
- Land passage that appears after docking in port wasn't recognized by crew pathfinding, if player installed Turm II (possibly also Turm IV) and reloaded a game state while being docked.
- War correspondent article progress was being severely set back, if player spent reputation points on any purpose when he was on board.
- Icons for detection on map could be wrong, if a few types of detection happened in a specific order and remained valid together for some time.
- Torpedo launching now cannot be performed at a depth greater than 20 meters.
- Notifications that saving a game state is not possible should be much more rare.
- Multiple fixes to saving game states during short events like character transitions, torpedo loading animations and camera transitions.
- Fix for a permanently looped audio at a spot after loading a game state saved during certain animation transitions.
- Improved animation alignment on the navigator's station, also navigator's helper now joins the officer on the station.
- Possible fix for occasional black screen after clicking "continue" on the assignment summary screen.
- Snorkel was affecting ship's visibility even, if it was hidden under the deck.
- XP bars weren't displaying correct progress, if character had a high level of experience. XP bars can be now hovered to see exact number of experience points.
- If player encountered a coastal patrol that sailed very close to the coast during encounter and then player left the area, this patrol could in rare cases travel through the land to the next patrol target.
- Potential fix for portrait rendering problems on some systems.
- Alignment fixes for skipper animations on bed.
- Occasionally contact marker could disappear, but the pulsating circle around it would still remain on the screen for some time.
- Collision sound was continuously played after laying submarine on the seabed with enabled collision damage in the settings.
- Tooltip on the valves wasn't changing from "Flooding..." to "Flooded" after ballast tanks became full.
- Character destination pointer on the floor could become rotated a bit in relation to the ground.
- Skipper no longer comments switching between diesel and electric engines, if they are switched only temporarily because of snorkel being flooded by a wave.
- Fix for the problem with unexpected tilting of the periscope that was usually happening when the periscope was locked on a quickly sinking target.
- Assignment summary panel could clip with the screen edges on low resolutions.
- NPC u-boats that are targets of player missions attract less enemies from now on.
- Rudder rotation is now reset after docking.
- Small model changes in Battery Room no. 2 to give more space to sleep for the skipper.
- Radioman could become stuck at his station.
- Fixes to automatically reported problems.
- Snorkel compartment in the deck was disappearing after reloading a game state.
- Radio range wasn't displayed correctly in various descriptions.
- Better alignment for tooltip action descriptions and support for longer parameter names.
- Subtitles for hydrophone operator warnings are displayed, even if his voiceover doesn't contain such recordings (such as skipper voice).
- Echosounder ping actions are now temporarily disabled, when the latest operation still wasn't finished.
- Action state in the wheel menu is now regularly refreshed.
- Sea was beginning to stutter, if high time compression was used for a long time (this problem was linearly growing in intensity with passing time).
- Target ship velocity sometimes couldn't be determined by the officer.
- Update to NVidia Texture Compression library.
- Fixes to automatically reported problems.
- Officers were trying to punish themselves, if they burned eggs in the kitchen.
- Removing currently controlled officer in FPP from the crew was resulting in an error.
- Fix to one more problem that could lead to endless loading of a game state.
- Periscope locking/unlocking tip was always stating "Unlock". Provided various improvements to how this tip works.
- Periscope couldn't be locked on the randomized freighters using keyboard, only mouse was working in their case.
- Ships stationing in a port that changed owner are now escaping from the port.
- Fixes to automatically reported errors.
- Turm I, II and IV had a small part of U-96 badge visible on them, even if played with a different u-boat.
- Knocked out sailors that panicked were appearing at crew quarters and permanently stopping to work on the ship. They are now being actually knocked out and need to lie in the bed for some time before returning to duty.
- Officers could sometimes advance above max level, causing some small errors.
- Fuel/energy savings from having additional sailors with the officer at the engines weren't applied after switching engines until engineer was reassigned to the new engine.
- Errors appearing, if player started vacation when one of the crew members was smoking on the conning tower and then player upgraded conning tower during a vacation.
- Countries added by mods are now added to the world for loaded game states.
- Fixes to automatically reported errors.
- Crew was sometimes carrying to safety sailors that were already in a bed without any danger nearby, soon after they were taken there by somebody else.
- Sailors who are unconscious now cannot be promoted to officers until their recovery.
- Reworked add/remove sailor buttons tooltip.
- Assigned sailors count in the action tooltip wasn't correctly highlighted, if player added more sailors than could work at the current station.
- Added tooltips to actions listed in the action queue.
- It's now possible to open map using a keyboard shortcut when looking through the periscope in a fullscreen mode. Also going back by pressing a keyboard shortcut again opens directly manual mode.
- Fix for "coordinates spotted" intel being added to the journal.
- Control room collider improvements that should decrease cases of character ragdolls being stuck there in unusual poses.
- Port weren't alarmed by exploding torpedo after reloading a game state with that port nearby.
- Changing target wasn't possible in manual periscope mode when torpedo launchers UI was open.
- Torpedoes are now much less detectable to sonars.
- Escort ships AI could sometimes chase torpedoes for a bit.
- Skill tree is no longer accessible for regular sailors on the character screen.
- Hydrophone volume could be adjusted above 100%.
- Decreased memory allocations.
- Improvements to water physics performance for large convoys.
- U-boat could be moved a large distance on the world map without reason after meeting certain groups.
- Officer could have accomplishments with 0 point value in the summary for decoration.
- In the recruitment list, next character is automatically selected after recruiting to allow for bulk recruitment.
- Nelson-class battleships should be a bit easier to sink.
- Added new audio setting: "Play music in FPP". It's now enabled by default, which is a different behavior than before.
- Bug reports sent by F11 tool should now be always sent successfully, as long as Unity servers are online.
- Button for resetting periscope orientation now zeroes on the target, if periscope is locked on something.
- State tooltip on the galley was wrong, if it was checked right after starting a new game.
- Added draught to the ship identification book.
- Position estimation quality by navigator is now displayed on the map view at the upper right corner of the screen.
- Radio stations were stopping to work, if they belonged to a group that changed ownership.
- Added new animations to the navigator's station. Second sailor can now join the officer at the station.
- Food in the control room is now hanged a bit higher to clear up some space in a busy area.
- Chief boatswain is now more likely to work at the navigation table instead of socializing with the crew.
- Probable fix: boxes hanging on the hooks at the stern torpedo room were behaving odd after reloading a game state.
- Improved tooltip for the navigation quality in the upper right part of the screen in map view.
- Anti-aircraft guns in ports didn't had a checked flag to actually attack aircraft and were targeting only surface vessels.
- Ship's hull could duplicate during cracking, if game states with that ship nearby were saved and reloaded a few times.
- Fix to a very old bug in Screen Space Reflections effect that was causing ghosting in the interior of the u-boat. It was most intensively visible on meters and labels.
- Ports could not load, if there was more than 20 enemy groups nearby.
- Changed camera position for the navigator's station, because officer was often wandering out of frame due to the new animations.
- Gun rotations are being reset upon docking.
- Gauges on a diesel compressor were black due to a shadow cast by the railing.
- Drawn map markers were carried over between loaded game states.
- It's no longer possible to travel to a checkpoint when u-boat's position isn't known.
- Improved collider for Kirov and Nelson stern.
- Sea could disappear completely, if wind speed was extremely low, below 1 knots.
- Fuel cost in the warehouse was displayed as "500" until slider was moved for the first time.
- Using mouse wheel or panning in the journal no longer affects camera in the background.
- Unescorted transports (but not escorted convoys) that were attacked by NPC u-boat were slowing down to 1-2 km/h instead of following their path with full speed.
- After clicking with a right mouse button on a mission ship with selected officer on the map view to open actions list, course was changing to that ship.
- Switching devices on/off is now always possible, even if the compartment has a toxic air or is flooded (doing so may damage the device in the second case).
- Officer could be wrongly positioned in a dinghy, if his travel was initiated from a crowded area in the interior.
- Officer could be sent to other ships, even if u-boat was submerged.
- Ship upgrades were appearing in the budget summary with both signs together e.g. "+-4000".
- Camera can be now zoomed in closer on the torpedoes in the orbiting view.
- Slightly decreased probability for investigating a lost ship mission.
- Some operations in the budget tooltip didn't had a specified cost.
- Newly promoted skipper was counting double towards the officer limit on board.
- Skipper promotion description was wrong on the character screen.
- Textual warnings weren't presented for the action that involved officer leaving u-boat to other unit.
- Launched torpedoes and dinghies were disappearing from the scene, if player used "Teleport" command in the development console.
- Leaving area before enemy ship sunk completely would disallow cleaning its individual group from the world.
- Engineer was staying at the diving planes station even after ship surfaced, until player manually ordered him to stop.
- Multiple memory leak fixes that were increasing game states size for long campaigns.
- Added text wrapping to the decoration screen.
- Hydrophone targeting action didn't had a progress bar on the portrait.
- Patrol distance wasn't expressed with units selected in the settings, but kilometers.
- Added bearing display in the hydrophone manual mode view.
- "Next" button on the decoration screen didn't had a sound feedback.
- T5 torpedoes homing improvements.
- Nearby groups can now continue their journey when time is skipped during crew vacation and ship maintenance to avoid occasional "traffic jam" in a port after staying there for a few days.
- Game wasn't allowing to fire a gun with incompatible ammunition type, but it still would be displayed in the gun UI as available.
- Fixes to automatically reported errors.
- Order labels in the TAB menu had a second line cut off, if the first line ended with ellipsis ("...").
- Torpedo maintenance action had a missing indication of the launcher number in the TAB menu.

Modding notices:

- It's now possible to add parameter "Unlimited=1" to ship production task in Sandbox.xlsx/Tasks. It ensures that a count of ships in reserve for this class will never fall below 1, so they still may become rare, but they will never run out completely. It can be used to ensure that, for example, a country will never run out of freighters and other baseline units.
- New parameter: "General.xlsx / Settings / World / Max Groups Per Battle". There is a note in the sheet that explains the usage.
- "Sandbox.xlsx / Settings" sheet should now follow normal modding rules.
- Exposed officer decoration textures.
- Additional fixes to modding "Sandbox.xlsx / Settings" data sheet. It should be completely functional now.
- Improved error reporting for encountered data sheet problems.
- Data sheet loading logging can be enabled in "General.xlsx / Settings / Logging / Data Sheet Logging". Having this setting enabled impacts loading time and log file disk usage.
- Locales.xlsx sheet should now follow normal modding rules.
- Vacation image is now resized to the size of the provided bitmap.
- Improved logging for spawner coordinate parsing errors.
- Fixes to Locales.xlsx modding. It wasn't completely functional.

Yours,
Deep Water Studio