Once lovingly called The Big Update throughout our Developer's Diaries, the update Hammer and Anvil has now reached the Stable build. There are too many changes and additions to list in detail, but you can read a summary here:
- Overhauled base defense positions, implemented AI mortars, added extra base tier known as Fortresses. - The first cruiser class "Nagara" has been added for the Imperial Navy. - Bases will now deploy torpedo nets. - Improved AI and spawn system for open sea skirmishes, naval AI will now chase or run away from you more efficiently in general. - Destroyers and above now coordinate their own weapons with dedicated fire control systems. - The threat system has been reworked. Location of player relative to territory, time of day and weather, squadron size, and so on all have effects on your effective threat level. - Naval patrols are also deployed when the threat system catches you. - Having high level threat occasionally grants a unique call-in award. - Added supply drop option in transmitter which will place a timer and let you refill resources from it when it counts down. - General rebalancing of convoy groups, autobattles, timings, etc for the campaign. - Fixed a bug that made machine guns and autocannons too accurate against surface targets for both factions. - Sound effect improvements for some impact noises and player machine guns.
We have heard your feedback that the Campaign can feel too short, and so we hope that these changes will serve to make the game pace better while also making the individual fights you have more interesting.
As usual, we will be active on the Steam forums as well as on our Discord, so feel free to share your thoughts and feedback on the update!
We will be resuming Developer's Diaries at the end of March.
That's all for now, Captain, T.T.
v1.4.3.3 Stable
[expand type=details] - Squadron slot occupancy is now visible in the lower left corner of the campaign UI. - Fixed "Fortress" shown as "Very Heavy Base Defenses" on clipboard.
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.
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.
Full Salvo - 19th of January - Developer's Diary S3
Greetings Captain,
We are pleased to be together for another diary. In the previous Developer's Diary, we talked about the threat half of the upcoming major update we are currently working on. Today, we will be talking about the other half, and that half is all about bases! We figure that if you'll be spending a lot of time around bases, they should be more interesting than they are, and so they are getting a major face lift to serve that purpose.
Before we begin talking about bases however, we'd like to proudly present, the Nagara-class Cruiser!
Coming in roughly twice the displacement of the Akizuki-class Destroyer that has already been terrorising you, the Nagara is one tough customer and will be the largest ship in the game at the time of her inclusion. She is generously armed with 6 single-mount 14 cm/50 3rd Year Type naval guns and ample 25mm AAA, making sure she has bite to spare both up close and from afar. She even has a fully functioning floatplane launcher!
The 14 cm guns, being of a much older design, do not have the fire rate or accuracy enjoyed by the 12.7 cm guns found on the Fubukis. In the game, this will be modelled as them having longer range and higher damage, but with their shells being easier for you to avoid. The Nagara will have to fire salvos in more clever patterns to compensate for the shortcomings of her guns and make the most of their strengths.
The 14 cm shells will probably be the largest shells you can survive a direct hit from with some luck, which already isn't a given with the Fubuki's guns, so try to not get hit! Even if you do survive a direct hit, your boat probably won't be in fighting condition afterwards, so try to give the biggest gun of its class the respect it is due when you meet in combat!
An icon of Army aviation in the Pacific, the twin-boomed P-38 is also diving into the battlefield of the Solomons at high speed! Available as a high-end ally or call-in support, the P-38 will carry a standard armament of .50 cal MGs and a single 20mm Autocannon or more rarely a 37mm Autocannon, alongside a secondary armament of either a lot of bombs or rockets. Fast, versatile, and tough, the P-38 is sure to be a helpful asset to have in your corner.
The models for the Nagara and the P-38 were made by Shigure, who we believe did justice to their beauty. Shigure himself is a talented artist, and we are really looking forward to his future contributions to both the gallery of nautical horrors that you will be facing, as well as the ranks of your allies that will help you withstand them.
Now, onward to the bases!
Base System Improvements
Unlike the threat system, which we felt was in need of a major rework, bases themselves aren't inherently problematic. They were just a little boring, with the concepts of fortifications, force projection and patrols being non-existent. Our plans are to remedy these issues, and to have bases feel more like bases rather than ramshackle groups of gun positions.
Firstly, we're implementing dynamic vision range rather than the current default of 4 km, instead scaling with the base development level. Bases will be able to have perfect vision of everything within this range, and so the distance at which bases will start building up threat just by observing you will go higher and higher based on development. This is the first half of our planned abstraction for small patrols, with the understanding that more developed bases have more patrols around them and thus a larger zone of awareness.
The second half of the patrol system is dynamic generation of skirmishes between patrols. If there is friction between hostile bases with overlapping littoral zones, patrol skirmishes will be dynamically generated on the border. You can safely ignore these small scale conflicts, but keep in mind that the base that loses the skirmish will lose some amount of supplies, so you don't want them happening too often if it can be helped. Base development has an impact on the strength of these patrols, but there is also a randomness factor to ensure that the stronger base does not always bring in more to the fight.
Light base defenses will be more or less the same, as they indeed represent little more than some hastily put together AAA and MG positions. Moderate base defenses are a different story however, and they will have torpedo nets that help protect docked ships against torpedoes and wooden stakes of various shapes to impede movement close to the coast. The medium coastal gun, the same 12.7 cm found on the Fubuki, will also have a chance to be spawned at this base strength tier, at up to 1.
Heavy base defenses will have all that, plus bunkers and concrete platforms that are tough to kill, as well as a new medium coastal gun modelled after the same 14 cm found on the Nagara.
Currently, most cannon type base defenses are on concrete platforms, which is something we would like to change. More appropriate wood and sandbag based models are planned for the existing base defenses, with anything concrete being a special occasion variant available in the heavy base defenses tier as well as...
...Fortresses. Fortresses are the 4th tier of enemy-only base defenses, and only one can exist on an island at a given time. The first batch of Heavy Base Defenses on an island are upgraded to a Fortress. Fortresses are even tougher than Heavy Base Defenses, and all bases on the same island as a Fortress are Alert, meaning their effective threat level is increased by 1.
Successfully reducing a Fortress enough to be assaulted gives an RP windfall, and the AI will never assault Fortresses on its own otherwise. A fortress that is reduced below 30 Strength is instantly demoted to Heavy Base Defenses, and a new fortress can’t spawn on that island for another in-game week.
Fortresses improve assault strength as well, adding a decent stacking bonus to assault strength. This makes it important to take care of them sooner rather than later.
Hopefully, these changes will make bases a lot more interesting indeed! We have even more in mind for them, but those changes fall out of the scope of the upcoming major update so you will have to wait and read about them in a future diary.
That's all we have to share for now, Captain, T.T.
v1.4.2.8 Stable | Rockets Rework and New Dual Oerlikon
v1.4.2.8 Stable
Features
★ Rockets aiming and balance rework. ★ Added Dual Oerlikon as a main gun slot option, firing behavior adjustments for single Oerlikon, minor improvements to Oerlikon 3d models and rigging. - Added crew level up audio/visual notification. - Added control mode popup hints. - Implemented Target Framerate and VSync options in favor of the 60 FPS limiter.
Changes
- Improved campaign assault behavior by adding maths that encourage more spearhead type advancements rather than simply going for the weakest and somewhat closer bases. - Increased coastal tanker small arms weapons HP by %40. - Balance changes to all utility weapons. - Fire rate balance pass for Lewis Gun, M1919, M2, and M45. - Changed how RPM is displayed so that how many barrels a weapon has is shown. - Removed irrelevant RPM display for mortar and M3 AT gun. - Increased trait effectiveness on chance of being thrown overboard. - Mortar shells no longer deal damage to underwater components. - Camera transition adjustments.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed ocean absorbing rapidly falling projectiles a couple meters too early to impact. - Fixed "New Campaign" overlay not having a cancel button and allowing clicks behind the blur. - Fixed notification boxes not having extended clickboxes. - Fixed notification boxes scaling bad at both ends of the resolution spectrum. - Added resolver for the player map navigator to prevent it from being soft-locked on a shore pixel.
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.
v1.4.2.7 Stable
v1.4.2.7 Stable
- You can now cancel target locks in targeting mode by right clicking on the target, this input is remappable. - Finished keybinding pass so that every remappable input is applied without having to restart the game or to return to title screen. - Squadron boats will now detect RP pickups like the player boat. - Fixed UI glitch related to ghost air units appearing where they used to be upon returning to the title screen and back. - Fixed air units spawning frozen upon returning to the title screen and back while the engagement clipboard is open. - Fixed front deck right repair box and mousetrap selection conflict in the Elco. - Minor English localization changes.
v1.4.2.6 Stable
v1.4.2.6 Stable
- Campaign groups and units balance pass, added two air units from challenge levels. - Torpedo input buttons are now axis based rather than event, the game engine appears to have some event registration issues with some keyboards. - Fixed an issue in the loadout screen which skips displaying the already visibly selected item for the first time a slot is accessed. - Fixed an issue in crew loadout customization when there is an empty crew slot, which causes incorrect visual assignment to the loadouts. - Fixed role selection UI not being updated properly. - Fixed FPS limiter setting to either use 60 fps or the monitor refresh limit. - Fixed 81' prototype bad mortar repair position. - Fixed player targeted air groups ceasing to spawn since v1.4.2.5 stable, reintroduced them with increased cooldowns. - Fixed boat name typo "Little Jue"-> "Little Joe" - More adjustments to pier generation. - Removed placeholder text for some news event popups.
v1.4.2.5 Stable
v1.4.2.5d Stable
Notable Notes Review
- Pathing functionality and improvement for bases. Enemies will undock and chase threats, squadrons and landing craft will avoid piers. - Increased night brightness. - Torpedo pricing adjustments. - Reduced RP penalty for boat loss 40%->25%. - Behavior and flow tuning for assaults. - Zeroes will create engagements with friendly supplies. - Engagement preview clipboard will now update and also add first time seen target items in the target list. - Added auto fast-forward cancel when player is under threat, specifically when the enemy fires a shot at the player. This is only applied for click based fast forward. - New keys available in the keybinding screen such as secondary torpedo slots and fast forward options. - Invert Camera Y axis option.
Base Improvements
Bases now generate necessary information for the AI to use, allowing the AI implementation in the challenge levels to start acting in the campaign.
Units will chase threats that are detected in base engagements, this is active for both assaulting and defending forces.
Scramble Into Action - 22nd of December - Developer's Diary S1
Greetings Captain,
It's been a while. The last Developer's Diary was back in August, and Boat Crew has come quite a way since then. Our efforts between that time and now were mostly focused on fixing bugs, adding smaller polishing touches to the game and making the overall experience smoother. While sweeping reworks, new and exciting units for both sides and new playable boats have not happened during this time, the foundation for them has been set, and we can now look forward to the months ahead that should be a lot more content focused. To document this journey and to keep you in the loop, we are rebooting the series a second time, indexed by S#, for second reboot, if you will.
We'll be resuming our cycle of experimental builds, with an Experimental Build scheduled for, well, right now, with all of the changes we talk about here and more. These experimental builds will allow us to push updates a lot more often, and work issues out before they reach the live build. Feel free to join us on the Experimental Branch if you would like to get in an early peek at what's coming, and also if you would like to help us figure problems out. Now, let's get right down to it!
Let's begin with a change that has already been pushed to the live build. It appears that we have erroneously modelled the rear engine exhaust mufflers on the "78 Higgins boat when they only appeared at Elco boats. The exhausts are now correctly placed in three pairs at the sides of the engine room. This was helpfully pointed out to us by Jerry from Save the PT Boat.
Save the PT Boat is a non-profit organization dedicated to restoring and preserving PT-658, the only "78 Higgins PT Boat that can sail under her power today and one of the inspirations for Boat Crew. If you're interested in PT Boats as we know you are, you should drop by their website, and if you're nearby, perhaps even go visit them.
One thing that has bothered us for a long time, and apparently many of you as well based on the feedback we've been getting, is that boats/ships sit idle at anchor not doing anything but shoot in the middle of combat, or even a full-blown assault! This was rather immersion breaking and also made sinking large ships at port a little too easy. Now, once combat is initiated, boats and ships will slip anchor after some delay.
Having a threat level might cause them to scramble before you even initiate combat, as the enemy will be more alert knowing that you are around. Therefore, the window of opportunity for a port strike will be smaller, alleviating a balance issue and allowing the enemy to put up a better resistance. This also means that your allies will be a lot more proactive when you are helping them defend a base.
We will expand on this system once the threat system is reworked, but we hope you'll agree once you play the Experimental Build that it already makes combat around bases notably more interesting.
Early in a list of several AI behavior related updates to come, we have made it so that squadron mates will avoid piers like the plague. Piers are liable to make them capsize, which is not something anybody wants to see happen to an expensive investment. We understand this has been a source of frustration before, and have taken measures to fix it. Hopefully, crews will be a little less eager to turn their boats upside down because of navigation errors, but there is still nothing stopping you from doing so if you wished.
Enemies will now also sporadically raid allied convoys, and though defending them won't give you any rewards directly, doing so will help you indirectly by allowing base development to grow unimpeded. This is a rather experimental feature that we would like to elaborate on eventually, along with some sort of reward that is more tangible, but for now we didn't want to rock the proverbial boat too much.
Last but not least, we have increased the ambient light on night time based on player feedback. We agree with you that the night sky was too dark previously, making it difficult to enjoy the sights in combat. Increased lighting will hopefully help the vibrant colors of the Solomons stand out more at night, and make night fighting, a staple of PT Boat action, visually more interesting.
Looking back, our earlier waves of Experimental updates lasted for too long, and the Stable Build went un-updated for a prolonged period of time. Although we were still working, and many of our players were already following our progress closely in the Experimental Branch, we're afraid it gave those of you who opted to remain in the Stable Branch too much of a waiting period for an update. That's why we'll be pushing Experimental patches to Stable a lot more often than before, and you'll be able to keep up with Boat Crew even if you don't join the Experimental Branch, with the Stable pushes probably staggered by a few days.
On a closing note, December has been an unprecedented month for Boat Crew, with many new Captains joining the fight for the Solomons. We wanted to take a moment to share our appreciation of you, whether fresh recruit or old salt, for your patience and confidence in both us and in Boat Crew. We've been doing our best to address your valuable feedback, which in many cases has helped us to make design decisions and figure problems out. Thank you, for taking part in our journey to make Boat Crew the best PT Boat game it can be. We wish you happy holidays, and a happy New Year in advance.
