- Searchlight vision functionality for night battles. - Kamikaze is now a controlled feature (accidents can still happen).
Changes
- General rebalance to bases and the amount of groups roaming the map. - The transmitter now allows access to call-in management. - Every time the transmitter is switched on there is a consequence for threat level. - Overall balance changes to player weapons. - Increased RP crate pickup range. - Increased ground anti-air placement range. - Player machine guns will now fire in bursts, gunner level affects how long the bursts are. - Added time buffer for guns that are just about dialed on target, this will help weapons like the Bofors have a better chance on hitting their first shots. - Overboard crew now retain their roles.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed issue related to skirmishes too close to coasts. - Added an extra check to player triggered assaults to prevent "Blunder" message from appearing. - Minor inaccuracy in aiming lead input parameters causing shells to land a few meters short of target when source is moving. - Fixed issue related to landing boats being immune to death when landed. - Fixed bug causing muzzle flashes having arbitrary offsets over time.
v1.4.1.2b Experimental
Features
- Binoculars widget that shows up when you press left shift to zoom in.
Changes
- Adjustments to how visibility works. - Adjustments to the spawn timing of certain convoys in campaign. - Increased world prewarm simulation time for new campaigns.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed issue where groups can leave bases immediately when a save is loaded.
v1.4.1.2 Experimental
v1.4.1.2 Experimental
Features
- Crew recruit routine is now always visible in campaign UI. - Torpedo mode now displays guidance lines.
Changes
- Crew loadout is preserved when player sinks. - Game is forwarded to the loadout screen after characters are selected for the first time or when player sinks. - Increased starting crew in reserve to 12. - Acoustic torpedoes can now target submerged submarines.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed bug causing crew recruit routine to be double the time than intended. - Torpedo hitbox adjustments to submarines.
v1.4.1.1b Experimental
Changes
- Enemy air squads may now join engagements depending on your threat level, they are scheduled by time. - What territory you are on now affects how long it takes to be clear of accumulated threat level, how close you are to an enemy base is also a factor to that. - Minor buffs to dual bofors systems on friendly vessels.
Bug Fixes
- Adjustments to engagement generation code to avoid some errors. - Adjustments to how close units spawn to coast during engagements. - Prevent Elco 80' rear floating high up when dealing with rough waves. - Ship trails do not reset when they are spawned/positioned, leading to random long foam lines. - Ports are not visible in minimap.
v1.4.1.1 Experimental
v1.4.1.1 Experimental
Features
- Added arrow keys, numpad, and +- buttons for campaign map movement
Changes
- Nerfed Ki-45 and coastal tanker. - Running out of fuel now has a time and threat level consequence. - Threat system balance adjustments and new triggers.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed an error preventing new crew from acquiring a set of traits. - Fixed issue with finding the closest settlement to a distant engagement to write in report. - Fix attempt for bases sometimes missing in the UI after landings. - Fix attempt to get the campaign to recognize edge case types of player deaths in engagements. - Fixed issue related to leading air targets with the new flight model.
v1.4.1.0 Experimental
v1.4.1.0 Experimental
Features
- Campaign Preview V1.5, start a new campaign game! - Customizable call-in system. - Crew traits system. - Vessel variants and target list system. - Reworked log system. - Reworked flight model. - Vessels with supplies will let their crates float so they can be picked up for points. - Weather effects in campaign. - Binoculars, use the mouse wheel while zooming to activate them.
Changes
- Crew Menu shows up at start. - Added x8 options for x16 resource slots. - Boat should stop if captain is ejected or there is no crew left. - Captain level effects boat controls.
Polish & Bug Fixes
- Boat Customization screen improvements. - Surfaced submarines can now be hit. - Bases can no longer repair/develop during landings. - Camera movement calculation fixes.
Note: Full v1.4.1 changelog will be posted on stable release.
Bounties of War - 14th of August - Developer's Diary R17
Greetings Captain!
It's been a while since we had one of those more technical and text heavy Developer's Diaries where we go on and on about planned mechanics and how things will be working, However, this might be a particularly rewarding one to read, as most if not all of the things we discuss here will be making it to our major update on the 28th of August, which will be the penultimate build in Early Access! So put on your reading glasses and take a look at what you can look forward to as we move towards the end of our journey.
First of all, the target list we've previously discussed has been implemented in earnest. Named ships, mostly Fubukis and some Akizukis for now, will be given to you as priority targets for you to hunt down. They, of course, will not be alone; they will have light to medium boats and sometimes even other Destroyers accompanying them. They will patrol and fight like normal task forces, and will even be engaging allied forces they come across and take damage accordingly. This will dynamically create opportunities for you to pounce on them. On the rare chance that they are sufficiently mauled by an allied force, they will retreat to recuperate, and eventually come back again provide you an opportunity for you to engage and sink them.
Successfully scratching a target off the list will give you a nice windfall of Resource Points and a permanent trickle of Victory Points. These two concepts, of course, are in need of elucidation. We've talked about the former before but the latter is our entirely new solution to how, the game, so far, lacked an apparent win condition other than conquering the entire map, which can lead to the end game being a little more grindy than we would like. Victory Points will be our solution to this. Now let's talk about both in detail.
Observing a vessel at the correct angle with binoculars reveal the vessel's name in Romaji.
Resource Points are quite straightforward; they are our new currency, replacing the rather inelegant dollars. They are used to buy everything you can already buy with the dollars. However, they will also be awarded to you every tick, proportional to total allied development in the region. Beyond that, scratching targets off the target list and taking out enemy supplies will also give you a windfall. Sinking random enemies will no longer give you any resources; so you can allow your focus to shift further into completing the objective and not feel like you're missing out if you don't kill everything everywhere you go.
If you've already played the current iteration of the Campaign, then you'll know that the current currency exists more or less as your budget; it's not actually spent, it's the sum total of what you can add to your boat and is entirely fungible. Effectively, it is 100% refund on any part. This will remain to be the case; we intend for you to be able to customize the ship any way you want and try out new things. However, with the inclusion of trickling income, we felt the need to also have some resource sinks that should give you a compelling reason to spend; permanently, some of the RP you've been accumulating. Our support powers and the new companion system will fulfil this role, making your life a little easier if you're willing to part with some of your hard earned spoils.
The companion system is effectively what we already have in Fleet Endurance, where you can buy boats to join you in your battles. We will be transplanting that system to the Campaign, with the key differences that, for one, sunk boats will not respawn or refund, and for two, the number and type of boats available to you as companions will vary with progression. A Fletcher at your side will cost you something dear and will not be available until more or less endgame, but a faithful flock of 80' boats will join you sooner rather than later. Hopefully, these will be reason enough to give cause for deliberation; on whether you will focus on your own boat or whether you will be using support powers and companions to keep the momentum going.
During playtesting we found that giving the binoculars camera a height boost while in targeting mode does wonders for the artillery targeting reticle usability.
Victory Points are also quite descriptive; have enough of them, and you win! The way you get them is that each allied base will give you a trickle of them based on their development, and each enemy held base will give you a deduction. Now, you can't go below 0 Victory Points, and the enemy doesn't accumulate them for themselves either, so you won't lose in this manner, but you won't start winning until you hold at least half of the development on the map if your intention is to win through conquest.
You can expedite this process by collecting bounties on the priority targets in the target list; this will also give you a permanent trickle of victory points that will help you win the tug of war. Be warned, however, that enemy presence will ramp up the more your victory point income is; even if it is not yet enough to push the needle. Think of it as the enemy increasing their commitment to the region the more resistance they meet; culminating in one last hurrah before they have to concede defeat and abandon the Solomon Islands, winning you the Campaign.
As you can tell, it's a very straightforward system that should give an impression of tangible progress while also being another lever for customization in the future when we get around to adding options.
The new arrangement for management related buttons. Loadout, Crew, and Call-ins buttons are only accessible when at port.
Finally, we'd like to talk about Fleet Endurance. Fleet Endurance was a game mode we came up with on the spot; the time between us getting the initial idea and the release of the mode in one of our earliest Early Access builds was less than a month. For an idea that was implemented rapidly, we are quite proud of the results. However, its most unique feature, the fleet companion system, is something we are now adding to the Campaign. An endless gauntlet of enemies, as fun as it can be, is less interesting than having the context of a grand campaign to all the fighting. Which is why we must announce that it is intended to be cut from the game for now and will not be back in the foreseeable future, with the effort that would have gone into its development going into the Campaign instead. If you still want to play it, however, earlier builds with it will be available on the Betas tab.
That's all for now, Captain! We intend everything mentioned here to make it to the release build soon, and there may or may not be more we can sneak in if time allows. We hope you are as excited as we are to see Boat Crew become the experience it was meant to be!
Good luck out there, Captain! T.T.
Measure of a Man - 1st of August - Developer's Diary R16
Greetings, Captain!
We're here with you a special Developer's Diary as it is the first year anniversary of Boat Crew since its debut in Early Access! Looking back our initial diaries, we can tell a great deal has changed and we've come quite far. Our initial planning didn't pan out, but we've been steadily working on fulfilling our goals for over the year. As the checklist grows ever shorter, let's talk about what has happened recently, and what you can look forward in the next big Early Access update!
The first big thing is our new onboarding screen, where you recruit and assemble a crew! This will be the first thing you see when you load into a Campaign, and it is the screen you will use to manage crew on a given boat. The usual crew recruitment panel will stay, and the boat screen will be where you assign reserve crew to their boats. Information about the selected crewman as well as an overview of everyone else is provided.
The second big thing, as you might have noticed in the previous picture, are crew traits! Crewmen will have certain traits; qualities to them that are a part of their background or nature and can't be changed throughout their experience on the front. Some traits will be positive; others negative, and there's no guarantee of a fair distribution. Some men will thrive in war, while others are simply not meant for it. The degree to which you can hand pick your men will increase as your successes pile on and your clout increases; in the beginning, you might have to make do with what you get whereas in the late game, you will be able to command a group of the finest the Mosquito Fleet has to offer. We hope this addition will further add to the crew management aspect of the game, and offer interesting possibilities for modders as well.
Traits aren't meant to shoehorn men into certain roles, but can be slightly helpful or slightly detrimental in particular to certain roles every now and then. However, they are not meant to ever cause problems that cannot be overcome through grit and training.
Oh, and the crew information cards are now a little more colorful with the addition of the trait icons!
Finally, the support power assignment screen is quite similar to the crew assignment screen, and provides a fast and intuitive way of buying support powers with your Requisition Points; which will form the basis of our actual economy and are a topic for the next Developer's Diary, so stay tuned! It's been a while since we dropped any hints for the next diary in a Developer's Diary, hasn't it?
That's all for now, Go get them, Captain! T.T.
Forward Observation - 17th of July - Developer's Diary R15
Hey Captain!
Following an unscheduled delay, we are back with our 15th diary of the reboot series, this time talking about some cosmetic changes, the continuation of our support power system and visible damage! Let's dive right into it!
First, we've added visible damage to enemy ships. We've always felt that it was a little unimpactful to see your torpedoes hit an enemy Fubuki, and see the still seemingly fully intact ship slowly go down. There should be visual feedback when you deal damage more than a puff of smoke; certainly so for torpedoes, after all. Steel should bend and buckle, fires should pop up where the target was hit, and in the case of torpedoes, massive holes should appear as torpedoes detonate under the hull.
The unfortunate Akizuki you see in the picture has been hit hard and is not long for this world. Although this isn't the ideal depiction of torpedo damage, we it's a good compromise between the artistic constraints of the game and visual identification of how much of a bloody nose you've given your opponent.
We finally have usable binoculars, the competent Captain's favourite tool for situational awareness! You cannot aim weapons in this mode as it would not really be practical to do so in the context of Boat Crew's aiming mechanics. However, it's the perfect tool for getting a closer look at your opponents', and also for...
...calling down artillery strikes! You will be able to aim your "skill-shot" support powers with the binoculars, allowing you to decide on the perfect placement yourself. As opposed to the fairly hands-off planes that are good, reliable support, we intend for artillery support to be high-risk, high-reward that should shine in the hands of players with good aiming and intuition. Well-placed barrages will be able to truly maul enemy formations before the battle is joined, making the rest of that engagement that much simpler.
Off-map barrage support will come in a variety of weight classes and other randomly generated stats as we have discussed in the earlier diary about support powers, with these affecting cost, time to arrive, damage and shell count. What's intuitive will work here; such as light barrages being better against swarms of light boats whereas heavier barrages will be for proper ships.
Overall, we intend for artillery to be a more player-involved power compared to planes that should pay off with the appropriate target practice.
That will be all for now, Captain! T.T.
Fortunate Winds - 26th of June - Developer's Diary R14
Greetings Captain!
Today, we're here to talk about the continuation of our work on destroyer variants, the new weather system, and our plans for a sort of "hit list" and dynamic radio chatter that will replace our previous plans for special missions. We've talked more than once about our plans for special missions to emulate notable engagements on the historical Solomon Islands campaign, but after much deliberation, we couldn't find a suitable implementation that wouldn't take away from the dynamic nature of the campaign. That's the summary of what we are going to talk about; now let's get into it!
Here you can see the Akizuki, which will finally get named variants. The Akizuki-Class ships would be some of the largest that get the name written on the hull, as anything larger would be a capital ship, which did not historically have their names written like that. Named ships will come in the configuration they historically came in, and so should be visually identifiable from a distance.
On occasion, named ships, along with their entourage, will be spawned on the map, and you will be informed of their presence. They will be tougher than usual opponents, but the encounter will also be more rewarding should you succeed. Scratching off a target from the kill list will unlock the last encounter, culminating in a "boss battle" after you go through several engagements of increasing difficulty. These engagements can happen anywhere on the map rather than on premade maps, and fit better with our vision of a dynamic campaign than fully scripted missions would have. We hope that this system will perform the role of a side quest chain that we previously intended for special missions to fullfil.
We are also looking into adding dynamic radio chatter; the messages of the sort you see in the Challenges. Now of course, Challenges are scripted missions, with precise timings for when you receive a message, and it's quite tricky to find a balance between bombarding the player with similar messages on repeat and not meaningfully engaging enough to make the world feel alive and vibrant. This is something we would like to look into and implement if we can manage a satisfying implementation. We imagine these messages to be a commentary on your actions and on the engagement, as well as warnings and recommendations on occasion.
Overall, this would be the second half of the cannibalization of the original concept of special missions; the missions themselves would be woven into the map through the kill list system, and the worldbuilding through messages would be made dynamic and added into the Campaign itself.
Last not but least, we have been working on the weather system. As you can see, we have improved visuals for the rain and the wind, and the wind will in fact slightly affect your movement and come in from ever changing directions with ever changing ferocity. So, make sure to take the sailwinds after you!
That's all we have to share for today, Captain.
We will see you on the next diary, T.T.
Wave Raiders - 12th of June - Developer's Diary R13
Greetings Captain!
We greet you with another Developer's Diary, talking about various little improvements we've been working on these last two weeks. It will be another one of those short and sweet diaries that showcase progress in between the bigger diaries; nothing major, but progress nevertheless.
The first thing we'd like to show off is our new procedural generation system for docks. Docks will now be procedurally generated based on development level, location, and random chance. As you can see here on the gif, the length and the number of branches on the docks are both changeable, and there may or may not be defenses as well depending on how developed the base is. It's not much, but it's an improvement we felt we could do to keep bases from feeling the same each time.
Now, while the docks generation system is nice in itself, the real reason these changes were made was to be a stepping stone to adding docked vessels, which is an important part of the game as it enables the entire concept of port strikes. Depending on a variety of factors, such as the time of day or whether a convoy or task force is disembarking or gathering, sometimes the enemy ships will start the engagement docked and won't actually be able to move around. Their weapons will also be disabled for a certain amount of time, giving you the perfect opportunity for a port strike.
We hope that this mechanic will reward proper timing and scouting, and organically create windows of opportunity for your raider fleets to do what they are best at.
We also now have a message system, which will inform you of engagements happening around the map as well as impending threats and allied operations in an automatically scrolling format. Messages can be dismissed and can also pan the camera to where the engagement is about to happen/is happening if applicable. Overall, this should be a nice quality of life improvement and a way of keeping up situational awareness.
That's all for now, Captain! T.T.
Angels on our Shoulders - 29th of May - Developer's Diary R12
Greetings Captain!
Due to an unscheduled delay, our previous diary time was skipped. However, development continued in the background, and we're happy to return to our diaries with something to show! Today, we'll have a short and sweet introduction to our support powers system!
First of all, say hello to the F4F Wildcat, the second fighter and third aircraft to enter the USN roster! Compared to the Corsair, the older Wildcat is a more commonly available aircraft that is nevertheless quite effective in both air combat and in supporting you with various armaments.
Those of you with sharp eyes might notice that it is carrying bombs in the picture. Naval aircraft of the war, particularly those used by the USN, were generally fighter-bombers, capable of carrying rockets and bombs to be used against surface targets when they were not required to achieve air superiority. Therefore it stands to reason that they will also be capable of doing that in Boat Crew.
Speaking of armaments, here's the first visual on our card-based support powers system. Support powers are randomly generated as purchasable cards, using the resources made available to you throughout the Campaign based on your progression. These cards can be exhausted; and have a limited amount of charge that can be used. The inherent randomness of type and payload, among other parameters, is meant to simulate the ever changing conditions and uncertain availability of support on the frontline.
Each card is freely placeable on any one of the slots, which is effectively a power and cost multiplier for a support ability. This multiplier also affects how much charge is drained from the card per use of the ability, so the total utility of a card to you will always be the same regardless of which slots you prefer to use it on.
We still have our heat-based system, and you will still need to generate heat by fighting off enemies, preferably getting combos in the process. The power level of a support power, which is seen on the top right of each card is always a number from 0 to 100. This power level is determined by the supporting craft, its payload and the crews' veterancy.
When you use a power, you will always have to pay the full heat cost for that slot, but any remainder power you get will be refunded after the conclusion of the ability, as denoted by the gray bar you see. For example, suppose you had an ability with a power rating of 80 and used it in slot 3, consuming 3 bars of heat. After the ability is concluded, you would be refunded (100-80)/100 x 3 = 0.6 bars of heat. This ensures that you never have to worry about whether a power would be worth it in a given slot.
There will be non-aircraft related support powers as well, and the artillery barrage/PT support from the existing system will be revised to fit within this new system.
