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Anime Boat Crew - Motor torpedo boat in WW2 Pacific theatre
- Thread starter Taka-Haradin puolipeikko
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Escalation of Hostilities - 06th of January - Developer's Diary S2
Greetings Captain,
Welcome to another Developer's Diary. Much has been happening behind the scenes, and we've been working on, among other things, an overhaul of the Threat system in the game.
The Threat system rework we'll be talking about today will actually be one of the two major parts of an overhaul we've been working on, which we intend to bring in as a single major update as the individual parts are not complete game mechanics of their own. It's going to take a while for it all to come together, and you'll be able to track our progress via the diaries.
That's not to say there will be no updates until the big one, in fact, we have one planned for very soon next week. Now let's talk specifics!
Upcoming Update
Let's begin with what you can expect to have in your hands soon. We're adding the 20mm Dual Oerlikon as a primary weapon, available on the 80' Elco and 78' Higgins boats.
The 20mm Oerlikon is already a favourite among players based on the feedback we've received, given how much firepower it packs into one gun manned by one gunner. The Dual Oerlikon furthers this by adding even more gun per gunner; twice as much in fact.
It will fill the gap between the single 20mm and the M45 Meat Chopper in the role of single gunner primary weapons, hopefully proving to be an interesting midgame upgrade.
We're also tweaking the costs on some Primary weapons, all in the form of reductions, to make upgrades more gradual and available earlier so you can enjoy them for longer throughout the Campaign. You'll see the exact numbers when the update lands as things are still subject to change, but you can expect some stat changes to accompany these cost reductions as well.
The Utility weapons have all been tweaked, with Mortar in particular being made substantially less effective against ships while getting more ammo efficiency in return. We had a lot of feedback on how the mortar is overpowered against ships, but we also didn't want to make the weapon unsatisfying to use.
Improved ammo efficiency should further enable creating smoke screens to line up for torpedo attacks, which was the originally intended way for Mortar to be used against ships. However, if you want to attack them directly with explosive shells, this will still be possible, just not effective to the point of making other much more expensive Utility weapons obsolete. The changes should also not affect its anti-ground performance, as while it will take more shells to destroy base defenses, ammo efficiency is increased to compensate.
The AT Gun will get better ammo efficiency in return for losing a bit of its splash damage. We wanted to make it a more dedicated sniper's weapon, and reduced splash means you'll want to target specific components rather than bombarding center mass until the ship sinks. It has substantially increased ammo efficiency to compensate for the reduction in damage, and so it can be said to be a better weapon overall. It will also overkill less against small boats thanks to this.
M4 Autocannon got major buffs, getting its direct damage doubled while also getting a cost reduction. It's still meant to be a sidegrade to the AT Gun rather than a strict upgrade, so it maintains its reduced accuracy and muzzle velocity, but it should be more interesting an option now.
Last but not least, we've added an animation and sound effect to announce when a crewman has gained veterancy! This is one of the polish changes we meant to do in the pre-1.0 polishing rounds when the game is otherwise feature complete, but we've received feedback from many of you that the game can be a little lacking in notifying you of things, so we figured we would do this one sooner rather than later.
Threat System Rework
In the current version of the game, Threat acts as a brake to your progress, only helping the enemy cause you more trouble. You're put in a situation of either ignoring the increased enemy activity and pushing forward, or going back to port to wait the threat out after every action. We felt that it's perfectly fine to play cautiously and to keep threat low, but thought that there should be some reward to keeping it high so it's a more meaningful choice to make.
Threat is being reworked to become more of an escalation mechanic, an abstract representation of how much attention is on you and your actions. This attention could be on the enemy side, making them more alert in places where you are operating, scrambling aircraft and surface patrols more often, and sending air wings to harry you in hostile and also neutral territory to a lesser degree. That so far is nothing new, and has already existed in the game. It's being tweaked and improved with some changes, but the core idea remains the same.
What's entirely new is that Threat will now also signify how much attention your allies are paying you. You don't get high threat without stepping on some toes, which will be duly rewarded as a measure of how much of the war effort is now following your initiative. Threat will exponentially increase the chance of support power rewards, where you're given additional assistance in the form of a free high quality support card. You'll have up to 25% chance to get additional support per day in this manner, a number that's subject to change depending on how playtesting turns out.
We're also adding a cooldown to player-spawned assaults that spawn in response to your Base Raids. We've heard from multiple channels and have also ourselves thought for the longest time that the game leans a bit too much towards base raiding, and given you can functionally invade bases on your own, this both makes the game go too fast and the action of raiding bases too rewarding.
The part that makes this relevant to the threat system is that your threat level will be the only way of reducing this cooldown. The idea here is that threat is a measure of your momentum, and you'll be able to keep the ball rolling as long as you can withstand the increased enemy opposition.
You will also passively gain heat in combat, scaling with your Threat level. Heat, for those who don't know, is the yellow score bar that fills up during an engagement which you use to call for support powers. At higher threat levels, you will gain more and more heat over time without killing any targets, allowing you to bring in the cavalry sooner rather than later.
Overall, these changes all serve to give you a reason to decide: You can still play cautiously, but then you'll have to settle for a reduced pace of progress. We hope this will make keeping threat low or going full steam ahead a more meaningful choice.
Finally, making noise, for better and for worse, is not as easy for a single PT Boat as it is for a whole squadron of them. Each squadron boat will now give you increased threat gain as a multiplier. This is particularly relevant because threat is now on an exponential scale rather than a linear one, meaning later threat levels will be more difficult to reach than earlier ones. Decay is also exponential, so you won't lose much threat just going back to base to re-arm, while ensuring you won't have to sit for days at port waiting for threat to decay if that's what you wanted.
That's all we have to share for now, Captain. This was a text heavy diary, but we hope it was informative on what is to come. The next diary will most likely be about the second half of the planned major update, but more on that later.
You've been briefed,
Captain,
T.T.
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Directed Fire - 2nd of February - Developer's Diary S4
Greetings, Captain!
We're with you in another Developer's Diary, which will be of the short and sweet variety in the buildup to the big update, covering incremental additions of what we have mostly already talked about in the previous two diaries. It is told, rather ironically, that it is better to show than to tell, so let's get right down to it!
To begin with, Boat Crew now has torpedo nets! Little more than heavy wiring held up by a line of buoys, the torpedo net is nevertheless effective at thwarting torpedo attacks on docked ships. A common sight in moderate base defenses and pretty much abundant in better fortified bases, torpedo attacks on docked targets will no longer be as easy as it is currently.
Mind you that newly conquered (or lost, from your perspective) won't have time to deploy torpedo nets, so you will still have the advantage while conducting port strikes during a counterattack. The enemy, of course, will be expecting a counterattack and thus be Alert, meaning the effective threat level for the engagement will be increased, but that doesn't mean that it is impossible to sneak in and launch torpedoes without being noticed so don't write port strikes out just yet!
Next up, we have these renders of the Ki-84 Hayate. Admittedly an anachronism, given it didn't enter service until 1943 in actual history, we're nevertheless excited to introduce the Ki-84 as a high performance enemy aircraft. Mostly operating in its own groups, the Ki-84 is the second Imperial Japanese Army aircraft to enter the game, which is not a nuance that's lost on us.
Indeed, there will be a marked distinction between the ways you may encounter Army Air Service aviation and Naval aviation in the future, but that's the topic for a future diary. For now, enjoy this crisp model made by Shigure, and soon you will also be shooting them out of the sky!
The Nagara has been implemented in earnest, and she even has a functioning floatplane catapult! Although not likely to affect the outcome of an engagement with the Nagara one way or the other, we felt it adds quite a bit of charm to this new ship, making her more distinct from what we already had.
The new fire control direction we alluded to in the previous diary has also been implemented to the game. Now, instead of each gun firing at will, guns will fire in pre-determined patterns in salvos, with the outcome being something more resembling of actual naval gunfire.
Sequential firing is also one of the available "patterns", though only the Nagara can somewhat sustain fire with the Fubuki and Akizuki having higher fire rates and longer rest times. We wanted sustained fire to be something to set Nagara apart, and it will generally be more in the realm of heavier ships in the future.
The system allows for a lot of customization in the shapes of the firing patterns, which we hope to use to coordinate the batteries of shore installations and perhaps larger ships at some point as well.
We hope these changes will make ship gunfire both visually more interesting and also more predictable to make it easier to learn avoiding incoming fire.
That's all we have to share for now.
Until next time,
Captain,
T.T.
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Defense in Depth - 16th of February - Developer's Diary S5
Hello Captain,
We're here with another show, don't tell, kind of Developer's Diary. The implementation of base defenses is almost complete, so let's take a look together!
First off, we have the shore obstacles that are little more than a pile of rocks held together by barbed wire and stakes. Such improvised fortifications were cheap and effective, and as such are a common sight on fortified beaches in Boat Crew. They generally don't stray too far out into the sea and should not affect your mobility appreciably, but they contribute to completing the look of a fortified base.
In the next layer up, we have the shore fortifications, generally wooden bunkers or sandbag gun positions overviewing obstacles made of wooden stakes or barbed wire. Wooden bunkers are a step up from mere sandbag positions in terms of survivability, and higher ranked bases where the enemy had more time and opportunity to dig in will feature them in greater proportion.
Wooden bunkers will not merely disappear after being shot, but will instead remain as defunct husks that act as shot blockers, giving some directionality to engaging a gun position with direct fire. Explosives, such as the mortar or rockets, will be your friends here, being more or less unaffected by this mechanic, though wooden bunkers will still be vulnerable to direct fire for the most part.
Inland mortar pits are being added, coming in a variety of either triple mortar pits or heavy mortar pits. They will attack you at high angles much like your own mortar does, and will generally outrange you, but neither variety should be too difficult to dodge unless you stand still. They're mostly there for flavor, and to give the enemy the ability to fire back when you're besieging them with your mortars, so even an unlikely hit from them will be quite dangerous so watch out.
Finally, concrete fortifications will also appear in mid to high end bases, increasing in proportion with base development level. These will be quite the tough nuts to crack without artillery of your own, so come prepared if you want to take them out.
On top of all of these, there have also been some improvements behind the scenes. The foliage renderer has been updated, allowing us to get smaller and better scaled trees while making them notably denser. Trees will now react to wind as well!
Perhaps most importantly, the bug we had where some players sometimes ended up with a sea of floating trees should now be fixed. End of an era, this notorious bug has previously given us much headache and is hopefully gone for good now.
Shoreline detection and defense placement systems have already been updated to enable us to generate cohesive bases as well.
Finally, waves have been updated to match the shore, and you may feel a difference in severe storms.
Last, but not least, you will see all of these changes and possibly more on the Experimental Branch due to release next Friday!
That's all we have to share for now,
Captain,
T.T.
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Helping Hands - 1st of March - Developer's Diary S6
Hello there, Captain.
We're with you with yet another Developer's Diary. Our Experimental Branch development is going full steam ahead, and we have gathered a lot of valuable feedback from you already. As we've said before, if you ever wanted to have a role in guiding the direction of the game, now is a better time than ever, so hop on the Experimental Branch and don't forget to visit either our Discord channel or the forums' Experimental Branch megathread to share your own thoughts.
Now let's get right to it!
First of all, the Fletcher-Class Destroyer has received a much needed makeover, courtesy of Shigure. This dependable destroyer is one of the most powerful ships of her class of her time, and her model was unfortunately a little lacking in details. This has now been remedied, and we'll have a much more crisp looking Fletcher joining to fight the good fight, now up to the same visual standards as the rest of the ships in the game.
Upon receiving your feedback, we have recognized the need for supporting aggressive playstyles some more. Now, you'll be able to call in supplies with the transceiver, taking some time to arrive and costing a decent chunk of change for the luxury.
We also plan to eventually let you resupply from groups with tenders on the strategic map, so having tenders around will still be the main way of resupplying while underway. As a result, we expect this to be a niche option for those of you who truly cannot wait to go back into the action and would rather skip returning to the port, so now you'll have the option to keep the momentum up as long you can handle the increased expense.
Finally, the P-38 we have previously talked about is being implemented and will be available, exclusive to the high Threat call-in giveaways we have also previously mentioned. To get them, you simply need to have 3 slots that are either empty or occupied by depleted cards, and keep your threat up. The higher your threat is, the better the chances are you will end up with additional support powers, capping out at about 25% chance to get support each day for maximum threat.
All of these changes, you can expect to see in the Experimental Build soon, hopefully early next week.
That's all we have for now,
Captain,
T.T.
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v1.4.3.6 Stable | Loadout Presets
You can now create presets for your boat and also crew!
Greetings, Captain!
We are with you today with the last phase of the Hammer and Anvil update, introducing loadouts as a much-requested convenience feature. You will now be able to store loadouts of your boat, your entire crew, as well as individual crew members, and apply them easily!
Loadouts are created by simply equipping what you want and then going to the loadout presets menu to create a loadout under any name you choose.
They are easy to apply on demand, and are preserved in between saves, so this should make it much faster to implement tried and tested builds. Total RP cost for preset is also stated for additional convenience.
This will likely be the final feature update until the next Big Update, and the last entry to the current Developer's Diary series will be on next Friday. We'll be talking about what we can expect for the near future of Boat Crew and what will be coming next, as well as progress so far on the things to come.
See you soon,
Captain,
T.T.
v1.4.3.6 Stable
- Loadout presets for both the boat and crew.
- Fixed an issue with the Challenges button being unresponsive for new players on recent builds.
- Fixed an issue with the continue/load buttons when the campaign autosave folder is deleted specifically.
- Increased number of physics frames a crew needs to be calculated underwater to be sent overboard during fast forward timescales.
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Controlled Airspace - 26th of July - Developer's Diary T1
Greetings Captain,
You know the drill. We're back with another reboot of the Developer's Diary series, indexed T# for third reboot. The last Developer's Diary was back in March, and the game reached its current version all the way back in April.
Although we were active in both our Discord channel and the Steam Community forums, we recognize that we have gone too long without a Developer's Diary. Therefore, before we get into the main subject matter of today's diary, we would like to explain the long bout of silence.
Those of you who follow our discussions on the Discord channel might remember that we mentioned working on a unit creator. The unit creator was meant to be a tool that would expedite the process of bringing models into the game as functional units.
Our thinking was that this would both help us add units into the game more quickly, which is something that takes quite a bit of time with the way Boat Crew is structured, and it would also be something we could release before too long as a modding tool.
A bit more than a month into the process, we realized that the unit creator would require a lot more work before it actually made things faster for us compared to performing the same process in the Unity editor. So while we are still interested in finishing it at some point as a modding tool, for now we had to admit it was a dead end and shelve it in the interest of not delaying 1.0 further.
Further complicating matters was that our lead developer, Cotanius, had to take an extended break afterwards for personal reasons. We're happy to say we are now back on track though, and we indeed have quite a lot to talk about, so let's get to it!
First of all, we have noticed a lot of discussion about how unfun planes can get in their current implementation, with relatively limited windows to dodge their shots and to attack them. Those of you with more experience in the game had the opposite problem, that they are trivial to deal with once you are used to them and also have some boats in your squadron. We have heard you, and we tend to agree going by our own experiences with aircraft in the game.
We will be modifying aircraft to move at varying speeds rather than at fixed speeds, and have them fly lower and slower in general to improve your odds of hitting them when they aren't directly moving towards or away from you. Their tracking will also be modified to give the impression of a human pilot struggling to stay on a nimble target, rather than having the targeting circle smoothly slide towards you. To compensate, their durability will be increased, so they don't get shot down as soon as you can hit them. Your choice of weapons when engaging them will matter more, as will your gunners' gunnery skills.
On the strategic map, there will also be changes. airbases will now exude a zone of control, in which air raids against you via the threat system will be a lot more common. But rest assured, outside zones of control, the chance to spawn an air wing against you will be reduced in proportion. This is something we wanted to do to make air wings, in a word, less spammy. Fighting air wing after air wing is not fun, and while it can cause tension to have an air wing pounce on you while you're on your way back from a long fight, it happened too often to not cross the line from tension generating to annoying.
Once the Big Update hits the Experimental Branch, it will have the aircraft related changes for everyone to test out, and we will be keeping an ear out for feedback.
What about friendly zones of control, you may wonder? What's that zone of control in the middle of the sea you see above? Well, we're happy to introduce our first Strategic Target (more on that later) class of ships, the carriers!
The carriers in Boat Crew will be limited to the light/escort carrier variety, with only the lighter carriers being risked in the relatively inland seas of the archipelago. Carriers, in addition to being tough targets with many planes to throw at you in direct combat, will also exude zones of control on the strategic view. Allied Navy aircraft will assist you in engagements that happen within an allied zone of air control created by a carrier, while allied Army aircraft, such as the P-38, will assist you in zones created by your airbases.
The Ryūjō-class light carrier will be the carrier on the enemy side, while the Casablanca-class escort carrier will be joining the fight on your side. We'll have more to say about carriers in the next diary, but for now, feast your eyes on the Ryūjō conducting flight operations!
In closing, we are excited to be back and to announce a new Big Update (v1.5.x), which will be lovingly called that, as per tradition, until it finally receives a name upon stable release.
That's all we have to share for now.
Fair winds and following seas,
Captain
T.T.
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Angels on our Shoulders - 2nd of August - Developer's Diary T2
Greetings Captain,
If you've been with us for a while, you may be surprised to see a Developer's Diary today. So far we have always kept at least two weeks between Developer's Diaries, so why should that change now? What's the occasion?
Well, the occasion is that today is the 2nd of August, the second anniversary of Boat Crew's release on Early Access. Two years ago, when Boat Crew launched, we thought Early Access would last 6 months with the game having a considerably smaller scope than it has now. The overwhelming support we have received since then prompted us to develop the game much further than our original plans entailed.
It's been a wonderful two years and we can't overstate how much we appreciate your support of Boat Crew. She is a labor of love, and with your support, combined with our effort, has come a long way in the last two years.
We're happy to say that we still have quite a bit we'd like to add, and so this upcoming Big Update won't be the last one, but it will certainly be a Big One. So let's get right back into talking about it!
To begin, we have made it so that the carrier Ryūjō will now tilt her masts to horizontal level before starting flight operations, as was done by IJN carriers at the time. This is a detail we initially missed that was brought to our attention by a player in the comments in our previous diary, and it makes for a more visually satisfying aircraft scramble procedure while also giving you a little bit more of extra time during a surprise attack.
We greatly appreciate it when the community points out mistakes or omissions such as these, so please, if you see such details that could be corrected or added, feel free to let us know. Unless it was part of a deliberate gameplay design decision, we will most probably fix it.
We have mentioned in previous diaries that we'll be making a distinction in the future between Army and Navy aircraft. Well, that future has arrived since, with the P-38 being added a while back through the threat system update where they were occasionally given as powerful call-ins.
P-40s will be added to supplement that, being given out in larger amounts than the P-38 but otherwise being similar to the Wildcat in performance, though notable for always carrying a pair of bombs when encountered in the wild. It's still a free support power, so don't look a gift horse in the mouth!
Another role for the P-40s is that they are the bread and butter of the Army Air Corps in the region, and will be joining fights that happen within friendly zones of control produced by airbases, alongside the occasional P-38. This puts them in a mostly defensive role, so you won't be seeing them outside friendly territory all that often unless you are the one calling them in.
All in all, we expect P-40s to be commonly available all-rounders, assuming you are keeping your threat level high. They might not be the best support power to use in any given situation, but will also not be the worst either.
Speaking of allied zones of control, here is the allied counterpart to the Ryūjō, the Casablanca-Class Carrier! The most produced aircraft carrier class of all time, the Casablanca was a little late for the time period of the game, but was our choice for being the most prominent class of escort carriers to serve in the Pacific front, including in the famous Battle off Samar.
Similar to its Japanese counterpart that will be able to operate both fighters and dive bombers, the Casablanca will also be able to operate Wildcats and Dauntless bombers. This may annoy some of you naval enthusiasts who might be tempted to point out that the Casablanca historically did not operate dive bombers. While this may be correct, this is a gameplay decision we had to make because having only the Wildcat (she couldn't operate Corsairs either) would be a little boring, don't you think?
Similar to how the Japanese destroyers get their names written in the side of the hull amidships, the Casablancas often had their hull numbers painted on the flight deck. These numbers will be dynamically generated, meaning you will be able to uniquely identify which specific Casablanca-Class carrier is assisting you today.
Fun fact; despite being an aircraft carrier, she also has the largest number of weapons to be held by any ship in the game, boasting an impressive AAA complement of 22 20mm cannons, 8 dual 40mm Bofors gun positions, and a 5 inch Dual Purpose gun. You may not have to worry about enemy dive bombers all that much after all!
In the previous diary, we teased the concept of a Strategic Target, working name, without delving into what it is supposed to mean. Now is a good time to explain.
Strategic Targets are relatively powerful battlegroups without any baggage; that is, landing crafts or small boats. Each side can only have one such battlegroup on the map at a time, and they won't participate directly in assaults, but try to stay off shore within range of them to provide air cover.
While there is no assault going on, they may occasionally go to a port or be out at sea patrolling. On detection, their presence on the map will be announced, and they will be identified with a special marker. As the player, your goal is to sink enemy Strategic Targets wholesale. In a way, it can be said to be analogous to Fortresses at sea; tough targets that defy you to go and raze them.
Friendly Strategic Targets will need to be defended, as the AI will target them with special assault groups that focus on seeking and killing ships. These assaults will distract them from landing operations of course, and since they will be particularly beefy groups, create large delays for them in invading your bases due to the resources expended. Similarly to hostile Strategic Targets, they will try to assist assaults or be idle otherwise.
Strategic Targets are created by a hidden bar, which will be configurable in Campaign settings eventually, that needs to be filled. The bar is filled over time based on total development, with a time factor as well as Victory Point factor for the Japanese side, meaning both your VP progress and the time elapsed in your Campaign will contribute to how often they get a battlegroup. Strategic Targets will eventually expire and leave the map if they are not destroyed in time, and the cooldown before the next battlegroup will be reduced according to how much of the battlegroup remains intact, giving you further reasons to defend your own strategic targets well.
All in all, we hope this new mechanic will elegantly create setpiece battles for you to both marvel at and join in, and break up the monotony of most major fighting happening around bases, while also directly including naval aviation at the tactical level.
In addition to featuring in these battlegroups, carriers will occasionally be found escorting particularly large, late game supply groups, and will have a similar effect on the strategic map with their aircraft, but won't be proactive with their positioning.
Finally, we are adding boat swapping! A much requested feature, the Big Update will make it so that you can swap boats without losing a boat first. Now you will be able to try a different boat out without having to jump through hoops.
In closing, thank you once again for being with us in our second year anniversary. We love to both develop, talk about, and play our game, and it's through your support that we get to do all of these things! We hope you share our excitement for the upcoming Big Update, and we hope to see you in the next Developer's Diary as well.
That's all for now,
Captain,
T.T.
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Auxiliary Countermeasures - 8th of August - Developer's Diary T3
Greetings Captain,
We are breaking the record for the smallest amount of time between two Developer's Diaries for the second week in a row, as our now weekly diaries will be published on Thursdays instead of Fridays from now on due to a scheduling conflict.
After a grandiose two diaries showcasing the biggest, toughest and meanest ships we have in the game, the third diary of the series will be about the unsung heroes of Boat Crew, the auxiliary units that play a huge role in gameplay, even if they are often swept aside without so much as a second thought. This time around, we'll be introducing three new units entering the fight on the Japanese side that are sure to leave an impression.
The first is the Ki-84 Hayate, a high-performance fighter from slightly outside the game's time period, joining the fight against the PT boat menace that is consuming the Solomons. Coming in three variants, based on the Ko, Otsu and Hei variants respectively, the Ki-84 is a fighter-bomber like the P-40 we have previously shown, packing even heavier bombs with all three variants while also being a beast in dogfights.
The Ki-84, alongside the Ki-45, will form the IJA aviation presence in the region, and you will most commonly run into them around zones of control that extend from enemy Airstrips or Airbases, the distinction between which we will be extending upon in the next diary.
You can expect the normal and Elite Ki-84 variants to give you as much trouble as the Elite and Heavy variants of the Zero respectively, with the Heavy variant being an unprecedented threat packing 2 30 mm cannons not seen on any other unit, on top of the 2 20 mm cannons that are on the nose.
They will all carry bombs and dive at higher speeds, meaning both you and they will get less time to shoot at each other. We hope they will create an immediate threat against allied ships, more so than the slow and fragile D3A, leading to some intense moments.
Also entering the fight is the No.4 Class Subchaser, the Japanese counterpart to the PC-461 class Subchaser. Fulfilling a role that is similar to the existing No.101 Minesweeper, which is also getting some additional AA guns in this update.
Lacking the 3 inch gun of the Minesweeper, the No.4 compensates by packing a pair of Dual Bofors guns. Now that might have caused you to do a double-take, and we get it; the Japanese using Dual Bofors is quite the use of artistic license.
This is indeed what's happening, as the 40mm guns used by the class in real life were copies of the QF 2-pounder gun, which, in effect, would be a less effective version of the Bofors with less coverage. In a word, we thought that would be boring, so we imagined that in the Boat Crew universe, where the IJN is a lot stronger and more competent, they managed to capture multiple shipments of Dual Bofors guns and place them on their Subchasers to act as force multipliers against the PT boat menace.
In short, the No.4 will be a medium range and AA powerhouse that is held back by its low speed, making it wise to engage her at longer ranges. The Bofors positions are quite vulnerable, being open mounts, so de-fanging the boats from a distance using a utility weapon before approaching them is highly recommended.
Last but not least, the Jingei-Class Submarine Tender is joining the fight against, you guessed it, the PT boat menace. She's a rather heavy ship with similar displacement to the Nagara, using fewer of the same guns, some additional lower caliber guns, and a decent number of AAA guns, being the first ship in the game combining the small caliber cannons with the full size ship cannons. Her main weakness will be her meandering speed, and the fact that she will be lightly guarded, if at all, when encountered, due to her special position as the leader of submarine groups.
Currently, Supply Submarines are a favorite snack of the avaricious PT boats, sailing around in groups of 2-3 with no defense when not surfaced, and with no additional support. These groups are a source of easy early game income and they tend to disappear later on, taking the submarine presence with them and making anti-submarine weapons somewhat superfluous in the late game. The Jingei will uniquely appear in mid-to-lategame supply groups carrying a larger number of submarines, the Jingei, and occasionally some additional escorts.
We're hoping these new groups will spice anti-submarine warfare up, with the potential for larger rewards and more dangerous engagements due to the presence of surface escorts. This was our solution to the relative lack of anti-submarine gameplay in the late game, and we hope the additional challenge will be welcome.
Wrapping up, with this diary, we have shown every new unit that will be in the upcoming Big Update, all except one. That's a topic for a later diary as the next one will focus on mechanical changes and improvements.
You have been briefed,
Captain,
T.T.
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Hammer of the Destroyers - 15th of August - Developer's Diary T4
At ease Captain,
After briefing you about the new threats you will be facing last week, today's Developer's Diary will be about some additions and mechanical changes we will be making to improve your own options and help you, help us bring the war to a close.
Put on your reading glasses as this will be the most text heavy diary in a while.
Now, let's get down to the brass tacks.
First of all, we are doing a balancing pass on the existing torpedoes, greatly increasing the top speed of the Mark 8 torpedo while preserving its acceleration. While it won't be nearly as zippy as the Mark 13, which reaches maximum speed in less than 4 seconds, this does mean that the Mark 8 will be a more viable pick for longer range shots, a cause for jubilation for 81' Experimental enjoyers in particular.
All torpedoes are getting a large reduction to their splash radius. Previously, torpedoes had a large enough splash radius that hitting a ship anywhere would often damage all of its components, making where you hit a ship less relevant. This change can indeed be interpreted as a loss of lethality, but it is actually done to compensate for another change we are making that we will be talking about later in this diary.
Acoustic torpedoes are also getting a work over. Currently, acoustic torpedoes are about as reliable and accurate as modern day guided torpedoes, finding their way to the target with minimal effort on your part. To compensate for this, they are also very expensive. This is not a state of affairs we were happy with, with the Mark 21 being an egregious offender being a very fictionalized version of an experimental torpedo with the same name that never saw service.
We are replacing it with the Mark 28 torpedo, which, while still highly fictionalized, was actually a torpedo that saw service and was noted as being quite effective, even if its operating crews often overestimated how large of a fire control error its guidance could correct. This was our blueprint for what an acoustic torpedo should be like, an effective weapon with the correct use and a disappointment if the expectations are too high.
So the Mark 28's guidance capabilities are severely nerfed, making it behave like a Mark 8 that can turn near misses into hits rather than a Mark 48 that time travelled back to the PTO. To compensate, its damage and top speed are both greatly increased, and its cost is greatly reduced as well, making it more available.
If you want torpedoes that are better at tracking, the Mark 24 and Mark 27 still have excellent tracking and large numbers, which is compensated by their low damage, making them better at sinking the smaller ships or single targets when used in massed attacks.
Last but not least, a knockback effect has been added to torpedoes and bombs, shaking the ships and pushing them with force that is proportional to the strength of the explosion.
Overall we hope these changes will make all existing torpedo options have their own appeal while making torpedoes feel more impactful.
For a game about Patrol Torpedo boats, we have had a suspicious lack of torpedo related updates. In fact, every torpedo that is in the game has been in the game since Early Access started, with only some balance changes happening since. The next Big Update is a good time to be changing that, in which we will be adding two new torpedoes to the game.
The first one is the Mark 14 Torpedo, a somewhat more expensive torpedo that combines the strengths of the two entry level torpedoes we have, marrying the quick acceleration of the Mark 13 to the sheer stopping power of the Mark 8. In addition, it also has a magnetic detonator, meaning it will explode in the proximity of ships, enemy or allied. We expect these features to make it a popular mid-range (cost wise) option, something that has been missing from the torpedo selection as the options available were cheap starter torpedoes or endgame guided torpedoes.
The second addition is the Mark 15 Torpedo, an oversized torpedo meant for destroyer use. So big and heavy that PT boats can only carry two of them at a time, the Mark 15 compensates for this heft by dealing massive damage to any ship it successfully hits, being enough to smash even the toughest ships. That's really all there is to it; a big, hefty torpedo meant to be used against the biggest targets, or when you're absolutely not taking any chances against that one Akizuki.
A mechanic we have been meaning to add for a while is the system of Secondary Explosions/Damage Control. Opposite ends of the same system, the secondary explosions aspect is meant to be an abstract representation of flooding, magazine explosions, ruptured fuel lines and internal fires, with the damage control aspect being the crew's effort to mitigate these.
Meant to create positive feedback, the game will periodically check each damaged (but alive) component and either cause an explosion, or heal that component, with the chance of a positive outcome being proportional to the health of the component. For example, a hull part at 64% of its maximum HP will have a 64% chance to repair itself by a randomized amount and have a 36% chance to take damage, again by a randomized amount. These minor events will happen at high frequency and thus not be visually telegraphed.
Each faction will have a damage control system bias that will eventually be configurable once we add configurable Campaign Settings; by default, the IJN side gets no bonus, while all US ships will get a +20% effective health bonus (e.g. if they are at 36% health, the calculation will assume they are at 56% health meaning they will be more likely to recover than to sink while an IJN ship with 36% health would be more likely to sink) for purposes of these calculations to account for the superior damage control of USN ships.
Breaking this symmetry, every time damage is taken through this system, there's a chance for a large or massive explosion to be triggered, with an appropriate damage and radius. In addition, there is also a larger chance for an explosion to trigger whenever a hull part is completely destroyed. These explosions are strong enough to severely damage if not outright sink the ship, and though they will rarely have enough reach to hurt you unless you are right on top of the ship, you should keep an eye out for the merchant ships full of highly volatile fuel and ammunition! This is something you will need to keep in mind when sinking a ship; a damaged ship will not necessarily have explosions that are potentially lethal to you, but they will happen unpredictably so you should keep a safe distance.
A part that is heavily damaged will be more likely to end up killing itself than not, whereas applying light damage to a part will give the enemy crew a lot more chances to fix it up. We intend this mechanic to delocalize damage a bit further while giving high impact low fire rate weapons like the torpedoes an advantage in sinking ships. Conversely, automatic weapon fire will also be more effective in sinking ships; it will be harder to sink a pristine condition ship with massed Bofors fire, not that that was ever practical, but every shot will count for more damage once you have used a high impact strike such as a torpedo or an artillery barrage to soften the target up. That said, there is still randomness in the system, so a crippled ship can, if rarely, make a miraculous recovery, or an otherwise pristine ship can be sent to the abyss by a lucky shot triggering a massive explosion.
We are very excited to see the community reaction to such a large mechanical change coming this late in the game's development cycle, and we will be actively keeping an eye out for feedback during the Experimental Build so that we can tune the numbers to a sweet spot.
In addition to our mechanical changes, we have made some changes to the current enemy aircraft roster, improving the weaponry on the Zero variants, giving the Heavy variant a new paintjob, and also adding Elite variants to the D3A and the Ki-45. These variants will have better armament, additional bombs (with the basic Ki-45 having no bombs in the first place) while being tougher targets, hopefully giving you an additional challenge in the later stages of the game.
We understand this has been quite the read, Captain, so we appreciate it if you have stuck with us so far. You may be left wondering when you will get to get your hands on these changes, and we're happy to say that the answer is, soon.
Sooner than you might have thought, in fact, as the Experimental Build will be released tomorrow, on the August of 16th, with every change and addition we have discussed so far.
There will be additional content that will come throughout this Experimental Build cycle, which we will be talking about next week. Hope to see you enjoying and giving feedback on the experimental build, starting tomorrow!
That will be all for now,
Captain,
T.T.
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As far as I know, nothing.
"Crew" seems to signify sub-genre, like "tactics" does in game names.
There's at least abandoned early access game Armored Battle Crew, which doesn't have any connection to Bomber Crew or Boat Crew, besides theme of control of a vehicle and its crew.
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Yeah, I would say that the Bomber Crew simply defined a new genre. You can hardly start suing people for making Rogue-likes or First Person Shooters either.
Modron
Arcane
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You can definitey sue people for using a name and plenty of developers have (hello zenimax), especially when it's using a name and a copying the design. Plus sometimes developers change names because of potential C&D's like this is no longer cyberpunk detective:
Vampire Survivors dude could probably sue a shit ton of clones with survivors in the name but it would cost more than most of them make.
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Floating Fortresses - 22nd of August - Developer's Diary T5
Be seated, Captain.
We are with you in the final diary of the third reboot series, to talk about the upcoming Big Update, henceforth to be called the
v1.5 Floating Fortresses
update, after its highlight feature of the new aircraft carriers and the Strategic Target groups they will be a part of.
Since the Experimental Branch launched on the 16th of August, we have been getting a lot of valuable feedback from you, and ourselves have been hard at work, iterating on existing systems and putting some ideas previously ruminated on into practice. This has helped us sustain our fastest experimental cycle yet, and to show for our combined efforts, we had an Experimental update on Monday, with some major changes and improvements that you can read about at this link, and another one three days later, today. So once again, our thanks to those of you who are participating in the Experimental branch.
At the bottom of this diary is the changelog for v1.5.0.2 Experimental, released today, which is considered to be feature complete and a reasonably close representation of what the v1.5 Floating Fortresses update will be like. The rest of the experimental period until the stable release will be focused on bug fixes, balance changes and minor improvements.
With all of that said, let's talk about the most recent changes and additions.
Going above their ordinary bomb load when engaging heavier ships or while flying at shorter ranges, carrier aircraft would be loaded with heavier, often armor piercing bombs. Emulating that, we decided to give 1600 lb Armor Piercing bombs to special carrier variants of the SBD Dauntless and the D3A for each side respectively, that deals twice the damage at half the explosion radius of what an ordinary 1600 lb bomb would do.
This distinction makes them better at hunting ships, giving carriers an extra punch in whatever engagement they are directly participating in. These carrier variants of the dive bombers are exclusive to the planes you physically see on the ships in direct engagements, and the air wings spawned in the zones of control that are projected from the carriers will not have this distinction. The armor piercing bombs will also be available as a rarer variant of the Dauntless call-in, replacing the MG-only configuration. Nobody wants a bomber with no bombs, after all.
Carriers will also now periodically spawn air wings to join nearby engagements or attack enemies that they can see and expect to win against, which are culled every night. They can even spawn groups to join engagements directly involving them, so if you find a Strategic Target group participating in an ongoing engagement before you're there, you can expect several aircraft to be already in the air, though you will still be able to sneak up on them.
Speaking of sneaking up on enemy strategic targets though, that will not be as easy as it was at the beginning of experimental. We took the time to implement a proper formation feature for our, ahem, flagship feature for the update, and the seaborne tyrants will now be safely cocooned inside a loose formation of screening ships, sending their minions to do their bidding for them. The benefits of this new formation system have also trickled down to existing groups with multiple large ships, resulting in an overall improvement to the AI behavior of larger ships.
This is a good time to remind you that a carrier battlegroup, even one with light carriers, is not meant to be a fair matchup for a few boats made out of plywood. We intend for taking on a Strategic Target to be the most difficult thing you can do in the game, to the point of feeling unfair to the majority of players.
Feeling that way is intended, expected, and in fact, encouraged. Destroying a Strategic Target will not be required to win the game, after all, so no need to feel bad if you can't do it. But if you did want to prove yourself a legendary PT boat Captain, there is no better way than to do so.
The final unit we are adding in this patch is an IJA conversion of the Coastal Tanker that is currently in the game, replacing its fuel cargo and deck gun with several mortars, an outrageous amount of ammunition and an improved AAA complement. Ever in competition with the Navy and not to be outdone by letting them have the most explosive ship in the game, the Coastal Bombard is a tongue-in-cheek nod to the historical Japanese military craftiness in turning civilian or otherwise unarmed vessels into improvised combat ships.
While we couldn't say with perfect honesty that this unit is no joke, its got surprisingly high throw weight, providing a credible threat to allied base defenses and careless Captains and bringing some much needed fire support to early game landing operations. It's got an even larger amount of supplies than the Coastal Tanker, and a mean temper when damaged. You would be well advised to maintain a healthy distance from the big tub of explosives, as its even more temperamental than the Coastal Tanker in matters of blowing up.
All in all, we made this admittedly bizarre unit to acknowledge the historical improvisation efforts, to create a charmingly strange unit for you to fight, and also to add some monetary incentive to early game base defense missions. Don't expect to see them everywhere though.
Last but not least, we are expanding the tutorial from one mission to not two, but three tutorial missions at once. The first addition is a longer player weapons tutorial that teaches new players about torpedoes, rockets, and utility weapons, while the second one is a simple torpedo/rocket practice map of an endless cavalcade of supply ships.
We're hoping this will be sufficient tutorialization when combined with the low level Challenges, which new players are encouraged to check out after playing the Tutorial and before hopping on to the Campaign. We will be happy to hear about any feedback, particularly from newer players, on this matter, once these improvements reach the stable branch, as we have been meaning to improve on the Tutorial for a while but only had the chance to do so recently.
All of what you've read here should be in the patch that has been released today, and will naturally also be in v1.5 Floating Fortresses, which is scheduled to be released on the 28th of August. Until then, take a look at the changelog below, and consider switching to the Experimental build. There are still 6 days left before Stable release, and if you wanted to participate in the development of Boat Crew by giving your feedback, there is no better time to do so than during experimental cycles.
That's all for now, Captain,
T.T.
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v1.5.0 Stable | Floating Fortresses
Greetings, Captain!
As many of you know, we've been hard at work over the past two months, and our Experimental Branch, which began on August 16th, saw many of you helping us test the update and provide valuable feedback.
Today, our collective efforts have borne fruit, culminating in the
v.1.5 Floating Fortresses
update, which includes among many other things, aircraft carriers, their associated Strategic Target groups and several other new units ranging from high-performance fighters to a Sub Tender with the displacement of a cruiser.
There are also new torpedoes, new quality of life features and comprehensive balance changes addressing some of your feedback, and many more things we simply can't mention here without making this post way too long, so those of you who haven't been around recently can refer to the Developer's Diary series starting with this one, assuming you wouldn't rather just go in game and find out for yourself! For your convenience, we are also linking all of the change logs from the Experimental Build period under the changelog in this post.
It has been a point of pride and a privilege for us to create Boat Crew, and we hope you're enjoying playing and contributing through your feedback as much as we enjoy developing and playing the game! We are not quite at the end of our Early Access journey yet, and we'll have more to talk about, but for now, let's all take the time to enjoy the fruits of our progress!
As usual, please don't be shy to give feedback or just share your thoughts and feelings about Boat Crew, either at the Steam community forums or over at our Discord. Most importantly of all, enjoy
v1.5 Floating Fortresses
!
Experimental Release Changelog
Experimental Patch #1 Changelog
Experimental Patch #2 Changelog (+Diary)
Experimental Patch #3 Changelog
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Spear and Shield - 31st of October - Developer's Diary F1
Greetings, Captain!
We are once again breaking radio silence with a reboot of our Developer's Diary series, in anticipation of yet another Big Update. This was meant to be smaller mid-version update, but we noticed that the changelog was getting big enough that it warrants its own version.
By now, many of you are accustomed to the way our experimental cycles work, but for those of you who are newcomers or would simply like a reminder, we will be releasing a build on the Experimental Branch tomorrow, which will be updated regularly with new additions and fixes, based both on our existing plans and on your feedback.
Up until stable release, we will also be having weekly Developer's Diaries talking about what's already been added and what is coming soon.
As we like to say, experimental cycles are always a period of intense development, and are also the best time to give feedback and engage in the process of creating Boat Crew. If that sounds appealing to you, feel free to hop on the Experimental Branch starting tomorrow, and don't be shy to share your feedback and thoughts, either on the Steam Community forums or our Discord channel.
Now let's move on to what you can expect to see in the very first Experimental Update. Be warned that we decided to start the experimental cycle with a bang, and so this will be a longer diary than you are used to.
Joining the fight on the allied side is the John C. Butler-Class Escort Destroyer, a class of lighter destroyers perhaps best known for their heroic stand at the historical Battle off Samar. Admittedly not fitting snugly within our timeline, like some of the other ships and aircraft featured in the game, this class is nevertheless arguably the one with the most historical significance and so was chosen to fill the gap between the Fletcher and the PC-461 chaser.
Armament wise, she's nothing particularly special. You can think of her as the Fletcher but less so. Still, we hope she will be a welcome addition to the gallery of allies that will be joining you in the war over the Solomons.
In addition, Beach Barrage Rockets are being added as an off-map fire support, as a variant of the Artillery call-in you are probably accustomed to by now. Firing a swarm of rockets instead of shells, they are less directly damaging, making them best used against coastal targets instead of ships.
Opposite the JCB is the Mutsuki-Class Destroyer, joining the fight on the enemy side. Similar to her friendlier counterpart, the Mutsuki is here to fill the gap between Subchasers/Minesweepers and the destroyers, offering a medium range challenge. Compared to the Fubuki, she has fewer, if just as capable, guns, but still boasts an impressive AAA complement that can stop enterprising PT boats dead in their tracks should they venture too near.
Those of you who have met more than their fair share of Fubukis on the battlefield should find this new enemy to be quite familiar, as they pretty much are Fubukis, just, you guessed it, a little less so. Still, they are just as capable of sinking you with one (un)lucky hit so be mindful of them as they appear.
A rather significant change to AI behavior also warrants a mention today, with the addition of the evasive action system. In a sentence, enemy ships will now actively try to dodge torpedoes they see coming.
We are making this change to make ship behavior feel more natural, and to curb the effectiveness of long range sniping shots that the enemy seemingly makes no effort to avoid. This isn't to say that these shots will be impossible; large ships such as carriers are often too slow to turn to be able to dodge even torpedoes that they see coming, but they will still try.
Although the enemy will now actually detect torpedoes and do something about them, there are some levers you can pull to stack the deck in your favor. Torpedo wake visibility itself will be a stat based on the torpedo itself, and also be affected by enemy alert status and night/day time. Even the nimblest ships will be very unlikely to successfully dodge a torpedo launched at them at night time when they aren't currently engaged in combat.
We hope this system helps both with making enemy ships feel smarter and more interesting, and also with making torpedo attacks more immersive. The system isn't without its advantages for you either; your squadron mates will now also try to dodge incoming shells so no more blindly and blissfully sailing into gunfire!
To further help soothe the pain of enemy ships now getting a self preservation instinct, we are updating the torpedo sights, complete with a rangefinder. The sights should now be both more accurate, more informative, and easier to use.
We read some of your requests about more realistic torpedo sights, and after much deliberation, came to the conclusion that realistic sights might be a bit too much for the more arcade-like disposition of the game. Launching torpedoes is an integral part of the PT Boat experience, and we wanted it to be accessible to everyone. Overall torpedo launch behavior improvements and the further refined targeting system mean you can expect to feel a noticeable increase in hit rate.
We hope that these changes will be a satisfying compromise for everyone who asked for better torpedo sights. Currently, both the offset angle and enemy ranges are displayed with perfect accuracy, which might change to scale with your crew's progression in a future update.
Utility weapon sights are also getting a much needed makeover, making them easier to read and easier to target with. Better sights should improve your hit rate against specific points on ships, allowing you to methodically dismantle larger ships from a distance.
Last and most certainly not the least, we are adding another playable boat to the game, for the first time since the beginning of Early Access! As the highlight of the update, this really probably should have been mentioned first, but hey, we wanted to leave something rewarding for those of you who stuck with us to the end of this unusually long diary.
The 78' Huckins is a relatively less produced PT Boat variant, looking like an appealing middle ground between the 80' Elco and the 78' Higgins boats. Historically, it's not very prominent, but what it is is a high performance boat that is sure not to disappoint in a variety of combat situations.
Stats wise, it will inherit the stats of the 78' Higgins, which itself will later be turned into a "premium" PT Boat that costs additional RPs to use while having better performance. For a long time now, we have intended the 78' Higgins to be a cut above the others, and it arguably already is, and so we will be making that official by making it cost resources to use. The 78' Huckins will take up the mantle as the less durable but more maneuverable counterpart to the 80' Elco.
As with every boat in the game, it will have its distinct weapon placements and loadout options, the particulars of which should become apparent the more you take her into action.
Despite dragging on for longer than usual, this is still not an exhaustive list of what's coming in the experimental branch
update tomorrow
, so be sure to check the changelog out once it is released. We'll be back with another diary next week.
Good luck out there,
Captain,
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Securing the Beachhead - 7th of November - Developer's Diary F2
Hello Captain,
Today's diary is about the major additions coming in the next experimental update tomorrow and it's all about landing craft and artillery!
Let's get right down to it.
Our first addition is the Nisshin-Class Seaplane Tender, a large, cumbersome support ship meant to, well, tend seaplanes, and was also used as a landing craft by Japan.
Tough, heavily armed and heavily armored, the Nisshin will be a not-so-rare sight in late game and high end assault forces, providing the backbone of the invading force. Each of these ships is a valuable part of the enemy war effort, and so the challenge of sinking one will be adequately met with a generous amount of RPs and VP income.
We should add that this ship was a suggestion from a community member on Discord. Thanks again for bringing this unit to our attention, we hope you'll enjoy fighting her!
Opposite the Nisshin is the McCawley-Class Attack Transport, acting as the US counterpart to the Nisshin. She's not quite as heavily armed or armored, nor does she have a complement of seaplanes. However, she should still be a welcome addition to your corner, providing fire support and remarkable amounts of AAA fire. Similar to the Nisshin, she will be found taking charge of high end invasion forces.
A not so fun fact about the McCawley is that she was mistaken for an enemy ship and sunk by US PT Boats during the Guadalcanal campaign. We sincerely hope you won't be repeating the same mistake, Captain!
To secure a beachhead, landing craft are indispensable, but almost equally important is the fire support to soften defenses on the said beach. Last week, we talked about the newly introduced Beach Barrage Rockets. Joining them as additional artillery variants, are the Smoke Shells and Superheavy Shells.
Smoke Shells are shells that, instead of dealing damage through large explosions, blanket an area in smoke instead, obscuring view. They will be our very first non-lethal support power, allowing you to generate smokescreens on demand, hopefully earning their slot among your call-in options through this versatility. As with all artillery variants, they will have a chance to appear randomly during re-rolls.
Superheavy Shells are Heavy Shells taken one step further, modelling gunfire support straight from battleship sized guns. They will not be available normally, instead given out as rewards through the Threat system, similarly to the army planes.
There are many things in gave development that needs to be decided in advance, but the addition of this weapon is not one of those things. It is no secret that we will eventually be adding a playable PC-461-Class Subchaser, and that she was meant to have access to the 3"/50 Dual Purpose Gun that is available on the AI controlled PC-461s. Upon realizing that the whole gun and mount assembly weighs less than the Dual Bofors, we felt a strong compulsion to just let the PT Boats have it.
As such, we are adding the 3"/50 Dual Purpose Gun as an available primary weapon on the PT Boats! Firing a powerful shell that is the exception to the rule of all weapons having the same total damage per ammo crate, this is the first auto-firing primary weapon that you can expect to give you a fair chance against larger ships in gun duels. Not only that, but it also has access to proximity fused shells; that will automatically be fired at aircraft instead of the usual armor-piercing ammunition meant for surface targets.
Big gun enthusiasts may also find joy in that this weapon is actually replacing another big gun in this week's update, and there will be another big gun added in one of next week's experimental updates, which you'll hear more about in next week's diary.
For now, the 3"/50 will be coming in at a bargain price of 10000 RP. This is probably a low cost for the performance of the gun, but we wanted everyone to be able to try the new weapon without having to sink too many transports for it. Still, don't be surprised if the price increases before stable release.
Another thing that we meant for a future update that got fast tracked is the option to replace your Utility Weapon with a second Primary weapon, with the 80' Elco having enough room to not even require replacing for the smaller primaries! Balanced mainly by your limited crew size, at least for now, you'll be able to engage destroyers in broadside duels!
Everything mentioned here should be in the Experimental Branch (as v1.6.0.2) before the end of the week, and that's all for this week's diary.
Good luck out there,
Captain,
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Relentless Cannonade - 14th of November - Developer's Diary F3
Greetings Captain,
We're with you in the third diary of this series, talking about some additional tools to help you on your request to reclaim the Solomons. Let's start this off with a bang.
In the last diary, we had promised that there would be another big gun, and here it is. We are adding the M1 75 mm Pack Howitzer as a usable utility weapon. The larger, bulkier cousin to the fan favorite 60 mm M2 Mortar, the Pack Howitzer is more expensive, bulkier, and slower to fire, while requiring 2 crewmen to operate it to boot.
As a howitzer, a new type of utility weapon, it will also require considerably better aim to use; coming with an artillery sight instead of the top-down view like on the Mortar.
To compensate, it has noticeably increased damage, range, explosion radius and smoke radius compared to the Mortar. In addition, it has dramatically increased damage per ammo box, above that of any other type of utility weapon.
We are aware that the mortar is a very popular weapon enjoyed by many of you, so we can't wait to hear what you think about the Pack Howitzer! It's different in some substantial ways, but should offer its own brand of high explosive fun.
Joining your side is the P-39 Airacobra, a rather underrated low altitude fighter, equipped with a 37 mm cannon nested within the engine block. Not a particularly tough or fast fighter, the powerful autocannon is what turns it into a remarkable support aircraft.
Carrying HE shells by default and joining airfield-based air wings on occasion, P-39 has plenty of ammunition with which to destroy soft skinned targets, assuming it's lucky enough to survive for a while. An alternative variant with AP shells will also be available, costing a bit more in heat and having less splash damage while hitting much harder on direct hits, allowing it to methodically dismantle tougher targets, again assuming it lives long enough to do so.
Overall, the P-39, while not anything groundbreaking, should be an interesting sight on the battlefield and add variety to the already expansive list of support powers. As with all Army aircraft, it will be available through the reward system at higher threat levels.
During your campaign to retake the Solomons, you will encounter a wide array of boats, aircraft, and ships—both friend and foe. As the saying goes, "knowing is half the battle," so to equip you with crucial intel, we're introducing a feature we affectionately call the Boatuary—a contraction of "Boat Bestiary." While it began as an internal nickname, it stuck around and has now become the official title. It might not be formal, but it’s memorable, and we think it captures the spirit perfectly!
The Boatuary is your go-to guide for every boat, ship, and aircraft you’ll face. Each entry provides a detailed description, an assessment of its threat level, and a 3D model you can rotate and zoom in on for closer inspection. It's designed to give you the edge, helping you anticipate what to expect from any unit you encounter.
Eventually, we would like to integrate it into the Campaign, but for now, it remains as a separate mode accessible straight from the main menu.
We should also add that this was a previously requested feature that we thought would be a fine addition to the tools available to you, so thank you for the suggestion!
As you'll have noted with the 3"/50 Dual Purpose Gun, lately we have been experimenting with alternate ammunition types for use against different target types. Entering the enemy's arsenal are the San Shiki or beehive shells, which are, to be brief about it, are special shells that explode just before reaching their target, showering them in an incendiary blast. Meant for and ineffective at anti-aircraft combat, they're nevertheless effective against soft surface targets.
After all, what is made out of plywood and has the crew exposed on the deck? Your boat, Captain!
Certain variants of certain enemy ships, starting from the Fubuki and going heavier, will be firing beehive rounds at small targets such as yourself, to much greater effect than they have been reported to have in real life. Not every shot will be of this variety, but rather there will be a certain chance that whenever you or an other allied small target is fired at by a shell, that said shell will be a beehive shell.
You can expect to see all of these in the next Experimental update, coming before the end of the week.
That's all we have for now,
Captain,
T.T.
- Joined
- Apr 24, 2015
- Messages
- 20,634
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1633370/view/7094952742456656370
Shock and Awe - 21st of November - Developer's Diary F4
Hello Captain,
We are with you in the final diary of our current series, coming in at the tail end of an experimental cycle. As usual, the upcoming Big Update will now receive a name in anticipation of a Stable release at the 27th of November.
It was another wonderful experimental cycle, and our joint efforts will have soon culminated in the
v1.6. Shock and Awe
update. We thought the name was fitting considering this update's focus on big guns and ships with big guns, among other things.
The Experimental branch is meant to last another 6 days, with further updates not being unlikely, so stay tuned and don't be shy to reach us either at the community forums or over at our Discord channel if you have feedback to give or suggestions to make.
Without further delay, let's get into the main topics of this week's diary.
The second previously unplanned weapon to be added in this update, the 107 mm M2 Mortar is a direct upgrade to the fan favourite 60 mm M2 Mortar. Originally, the 75mm Pack Howitzer was meant to take on the role of the upgrade to the mortar, but we ended up deciding to give it a different sight for gameplay variety, and gave it much better ammo efficiency to compensate for the difficulty in using it.
This left the mortar without a direct upgrade, and upon realizing the extent of your demand for it, we decided to add in a new weapon to fill this niche. That weapon is the 107mm M2 Mortar, a weapon that works exactly the same way as its smaller cousin.
The differences are that the larger mortar will deal more damage, have a larger smoke cloud, and have more range, at the cost of requiring 2 Gunners to use instead of 1 while also costing you more in RP.
Mechanically, it's just the mortar we already have but bigger. It is said it is hard to improve on perfection, and some of you have let us know that the mortar is already perfect. So here is a bigger one we hope you'll enjoy.
Speaking of the Pack Howitzer, your feedback during the Experimental branch has shown us that it is a bit too hard to aim with for various reasons, to the point it takes away the joy from using the weapon and makes it feel like it's not worth it. We heard you, and came to the same conclusion after playing with it ourselves, and decided to make some improvements to the aiming.
First, the reticle will change color when you're trying to target outside its rather narrow aiming cone. Currently the targeting reticle doesn't really make it obvious that you can't fire there, resulting in wasted shots. We considered removing the reticle instead of having it change color, but that would make it difficult for you to find your mouse again, so we settled on a dimmer gray color to indicate you're not aiming properly at the time.
Second, we added live tracking of the range you're aiming at, which still has some issues accounting for elevation differences but should be good enough for use at open sea and not cause an error bigger than the inaccuracy of the gun.
Third, you no longer need to zoom in for the rangefinder to work, allowing you to maintain better situational awareness and a wider field of view while operating the gun.
These changes will also apply to the other utility weapons, and this will be the final revision of the Utility Weapon targeting for the foreseeable future. Getting hits should be much easier overall, though you still shouldn't expect to hit very long range shots to hit reliably due to the innate imperfectness of weapon accuracies.
After all, that would be a game imbalancing factor, and even a partial hit rate can be devastating with the Pack Howitzer considering its strength as it can already sink a destroyer in 3-4 hits or even in a single lucky one. Still, we hope all of this is sufficient to make it, and the other utility weapons, more fun to use.
The 8 cm gun in the game was rather infamously a tube attached to a cube attached to another tube, as a holdover from Boat Crew's earlier, humbler days. The last of the venerable graphics-economizing shell-casters have been removed, being replaced with the 3"/50 Dual Purpose Gun model you can find on your own boat, although colored differently for the Japanese side.
Aside from one barely produced example, the Japanese didn't really use Dual Purpose Guns of about 3" size, with the main example being an outdated variant from before the war. Now it would make sense to put those on merchant ships, but we decided to go with the crisp 3" model we already have, which exudes a sense of agility and multi-purpose lethality. For gameplay purposes we took another artistic liberty imagining that the IJN found them at the same place they found the Dual Bofors guns they use on the big subchasers from.
Said gun will make an appearance on certain ships, including a new variant of the Nagara inspired by the later anti-aircraft cruiser conversion of the Isuzu. Instead of a much larger complement of 25mms, she will instead get a few additional triple 25 mms, 7 new 3-inch dual purpose guns, and 2 twin 127mm open topped turrets; the same as you find on the Ryuujou and certain variants of the Mutsuki.
Both the 3-inch and the open topped 127 mm are now capable of anti-aircraft fire, resulting in more downed planes and for you, a more impressive light show of intense bursts of flak.
Of course, being dual purpose, these rapid fire, high velocity cannons are a major threat to you as well, so be careful when approaching this new variant of the Nagara as they are considerably more lethal to you!
Last but not least, we’ve tackled an issue that’s been bugging us for a while: the way ships are currently numbered, leading to campaign results like "Akizuki III" or the infamous "Ryuujou VIII." This problem is especially noticeable with unique ships like the Ryuujou, which had no sister ships in real life. We’re excited to announce that we’ve finally settled on a solution.
To address this, we’re adding a list of semi-fictional names. Where possible, we’ll use names from cancelled ships of the class, or otherwise follow historical IJN naming conventions to create fitting fictional names. We felt this approach was better than borrowing names from entirely different classes, especially for carriers with iconic names like Akagi or Zuikaku.
While we get away with some creative license, we wanted to respect the historically inclined among you by avoiding names that might break immersion completely. We think this is a solid compromise and a definite improvement over seeing something like "Ryuujou XII."
The ship you see in the screenshot above is the Kiyotsuki, a historically cancelled would-be sister to the Akizuki who came to life in Boat Crew.
We have a long list of names to be implemented, so don't expect all of them to reach the game in one update, but they should all be gradually implemented by the time of the stable release. This list was sourced via our community, in particular by one of our players who goes by the Discord handle Matsuo_Basho.
He was also responsible for suggesting the Seaplane Tender Nisshin that was featured earlier in this series, so thanks again for your efforts in improving Boat Crew. We truly appreciate that you share our passion for the game, and this also goes out to all of you who take the time to share thoughtful suggestions and feedback.
That about wraps up what we wanted to share for this week, Captain. Any further changes will be noted in the changelogs and eventually a full list for the entire experimental cycle will be available at the time of the v1.6. Stable launch. You can expect everything we've talked about here to reach you in an experimental update before the end of the week.
That's all for now Captain,
T.T.
Beastro
Arcane
Hopefully an end game gun option is the Elco Thunderbolt:
https://www.ptboatworld.com/PT_Boat_Info/Mark15Mount.htm
https://www.ptboatworld.com/PT_Boat_Info/Mark15Mount.htm
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