SHIPS AT WAR news & patch notes

Happy new year everyone! This patch brings some crucial bug fixes and makes building ships much easier. Biggest change: Players no longer need to add Outer Plating to their ship for it to float. --------- SHIPPART: Germen torpedo bomber: Fieseler Fi 167A Ballast tanks which can decrease the bouyancy of your ship. --------- SHIPS: HMS Nelson --------- MAINMENU: Ships can now be deleted Ship downloads can now be sorted by downloads Ships are now listed in a grid pattern for selection. --------- EDITOR: Ships are now watertight by default. 'Outer Plating' has been renamed to 'Watertight steel' and is only used to build watertight compartments. --------- BUGFIXES: Metal fatigue sounds are played too frequently Players were able to delete parts of the enemy ship. Battles only chose ships from the players own coalition. Now players get the chance to unlock and fight ships of the enemy coalition. --------- BATTLE: Weather and time changes were disabled. Score and settings panels are now seperate in the battle scene. Hedgehog depth charges nerfed against surface ships.

- Players were unable to copy any parts in the Editor

This patch adresses some major issues of the game like ships breaking apart in heavy weather, a step by step tutorial and finally adds the UNDO feature to the editor. The french and italian navy will come with the next patch. --------- EDITOR: Undo button in the editor Step-by-step guide for the Editor with speech bubbles explaining all features --------- BUGFIXES: Loading ships in ships selection for battles take too long Ships falling apart in heavy weather or while driving Equipment falling off the ship after filling up with water Fire spreading too fast and consistently Ships breaking apart when turning in another direction --------- BATTLE: Steam pressure gauge now indicates the pressure Enemy ships were unable to extinguish fire in a reasonable amount of time and burned up --------- GAMEPLAY: Extinguishing fires was too sluggish and unresponsive --------- UPGRADES: Default upgrade sets for every ship class --------- MAINMENU: Downloaded ships had no icons

My dearest members of the Ships At War community, I have some sad news in regards to the future development of SAW. You might have noticed that the development of SAW has been quite slow in the past couple of months. This slowdown came from some personal issues (corona, broken arm and now nerve damage) but most importantly the existential dread of SAW as a game. My original vision for SAW back in january 2021 was: A small multiplayer game where each player builds a ship during battle and tries to sink the opponent. (Forts but on water) However the game has become something drastically different and the Forts - High Seas DLC has made the original idea obsolete anyways. That means that some of the features which were planned for the original Idea no longer fit the game that SAW has become. (especially the multiplayer) I have come to the unfortunate conclusion, that multiplayer will not be technically feasible because the ships are made out of too many moving parts. I would have to make some fundamental changes to the way ships are build in order to allow multiplayer. This would make any and all current ship designs obsolete and unusable with just one patch... After pondering on this decision for a long time, I came to the conclusion that, I will scrap multiplayer and rather embrace what the game has become: A small sandbox game with a lot of creative freedom. I will also have to scrap mod support because the budget and time constraints do not allow for it. tldr: Multiplayer, Mods & the DLC had to be removed from the roadmap due to technical & budget related issues. The planned DLC content (modern weapons) will be included into the game for free. My plan is it to : 1. polish SAW as much as possible (especially the editor) 2. implement new weapon types 3. add more ships And release the game out of early access in Q4 of 2022. I am sorry to let those of you down, who bought the game for the promised multiplayer. Thank you for your understanding. - Julian

--------- PHYSICS: Ships jumping out of the sea and destroyers floating too low

--------- PHYSICS: Bouyancy was a bit too low, causing destroyers to sink. Ships breaking apart too easily - increased strength --------- BATTLE: Fire spread way too fast

--------- GAMEPLAY: fires that can spread through ship limit time a submarine can remain submerged - diesel engines no longer procude steam when submerged. submarines should become invisible when under water they should also no longer be able to see other ships sonar will make them visible Bomber squadrons instead of a long line of planes Add explosion effects when a weapon is destroyed Removed Limit of Outer Plating. Outer plating now costs firepower and is counted as a defensive part. Depth control where players can choose to dive or submerge --------- SHIPPART: barrel depth charges Depth charge bombers --------- BATTLE: Kamikaze Planes: Crashing planes set fire to ships they hit. Clouds --------- STEAM PAGE: Add gifs to game description Improve description in the store page --------- BUGFIXES: torpedoes should float a minimum of 20cm below see level Shell trails are horizontal when shells get re-used. Fix effects on aircraft AI did not move close enough for torpedoes to be in range. Sign In reward showing up every time one comes back from the editor Liners, submarines and merchant ships could not be unlocked through battle. Can now be unlocked in sandbox battles. Sometimes Icons of ships vanished after leaving the editor Ships broke apart too easily in heavy waves. (Especially the HMS Couragous) Size scala of ships is broken Enemy bombers would often miss the ship completely --------- UPGRADES: Remove water from entire ship Upgrade Increase bouyancy upgrade Watertight Hull Upgrade --------- MAINMENU: Animations in the loadingscreen Intermittend loading screen when loading another scene Option to enable AI on the player ship in sandbox battles. Removed all locks on ships for sandbox battles. --------- EDITOR: Materials should display the length as a tooltip Bomb test weapon Depth charge test weapon

--------- BUGFIXES: Some players were not able to select a coalition. I really hope this helps!

--------- BUGFIXES: Some ships broke apart during heavy waves. Allied ships were part of the axis powers and vise versa.

This patch adds a progression system to the game and 10 more ships. Gain XP by winning battles and spend them on upgrades which can help you during battles. Upgrades such as: thicker armor, faster pump speed or decreased reload times make can alter the course of a battle in a meaningful way. --------- EDITOR: Subcategories for planes Parts info panel was on top of cursor info panel Changed armor plates by giving them a thickness instead of layering them ontop of each other Increased Health of structual- and superstructure steel --------- SHIPPART: Added fuel bunkes which increase capacity and production of steam from boilers Surface torpedo launchers Boiler decoy for players who want to battle ships without an acutal boiler. --------- BUGFIX: ships fell apart when turning Penetration chance of shells. Crashed fighter still shot at other planes Anti Air fireing when submerged Fighter shells making too much damage on ships shells hitting own superstructure and ship parts AI Ships always shot at a 45 degree angle which resulted in mortar-like trajectories. Torpedoes fired at the same time fired from the same ship hit each other Game crashed when leaving the editor or a battle Fighter shells reaching below water level --------- BATTLE: Reduced the overall speed of battles and made it more strategic. Increased damage of shells and increased reloading times of guns. Tutorial for battle scene Active upgrades have an effect on ships, projectiles or aircraft Sliding with mouse in mininmap Increased depth of sea Updated the results menu after a battle is won/lost Moving a ship uses steam --------- MAINMENU: make the player decide between two coalitions: Axis or Allies Coalition selection screen when first generating playerStats or when the player chooses to switch teams. Players get a 'sign in reward' in form of XP every 24 hours Upgrade selection to battles Upgrade selection panel --------- GAMEPLAY: Upgrade sets which can be used in battle Sandbox battles where players can use any ship without limitation in a battle Increased maximum firepower of all classes by +300. ships of the opposite coalition are locked until they have been defeated Players can now change the range of torpedoes by adjusting the aim. --------- SHIPS: The british battlecruiser: HMS Couragous The US Battleship: North Carolina The german Project 50 Submarine cruiser The british Odin class submarine The british Battleship: HMS Prince of Wales The US aircraft carrier: USS Lexington The US cruiser: USS Cleveland The German Battleship: KMS Admiral Scheer The British Battleship: HMS Malaya The british cruiser: HMS Belfast --------- PHYSICS: Increased bouyancy of small ships and decreased bouyancy of large ships

IMPORTANT NOTE: Please disable anti-aliasing if you have bad FPS in the main menu's settings panel. This was the only reason I published this patch now, I didn't think It was ready but I wanted to have this fix out before christmas. Enjoy the two new ships! Settings menu in the main menu Search filter for ship-selection Time-Control to battles Performance when loading ships Performance when showing health bars during battles - New Ships - Z16, German Destoryer IJN Nagato, Japanese Battleship

Snow in the main menu crashed the game sometimes Supermarine Spitfire not fireing

A bit of christmas decoration and music Cease fire option for firegroups Infinite planes Torpedo Launchers and Depthcharge Launchers fireing when selected Rendering details from far away - New Ships - IJN Yamato - Japanese Battleship KMS Graf Zeppelin - German Aircraft Carrier KMS Köln - German Cruiser This will probably be the last patch of the year because I am currently working on big features like the upgrades-system and the new physics-system. These features are pretty much the foundation for multiplayer which will be next. Wish you happy hollidays and a good slide into 2022. - Julian

- Planes - Fighter & Torpedo Bomber behaviour Japanese A6M Zero Fighter Japanese B5N2 Torpedo Bomber U.S. Grumman TBF Torpedo Bomber U.S. Dauntless SBD Dive Bomber British Swordfish Torpedo Bomber British Supermarine Spitfire Fighter British Fairey Barracuda Dive Bomber German Ju-87C Dive Bomber German BF-109T Fighter - Audio - Ambient water and wind noise Sounds to the turbine Sounds to the boilers Sounds to the propellers Sounds to the smokestacks Sounds to the AA impacts Metal creaks when ships sink Music to the title screen Soundeffect to torpedoes Audio is not played when the source is off-screen - Changes - A bumpy ocean floor Nerfed magazine explosions Increased range of AA AA no longer hits own ship Planes now crash when shot down Torpedoes now deal piercing damage instead of blast damage Increased Hull limit for submarines - Fixes - Torpedoes no longer 'fly' over the water surface Download-Section not showing any ships after leaving a battle or the editor Cutoff audio when a lot of audio is played Fixed planes trying to fly from carrier decks which were under water - Firepower System - Firepower limit for every ship Hard limit on armor steel The new firepower value limits the player on how many parts he can place in his ship. Parts are now divided into 'defensive' (AA, armor steel, pumps etc.) and 'offensive' (guns, torpedo launchers, aircraft etc.) parts. This firepower value gives a more strategic touch to the game and removes any hard limits (except for outer plating). - New Ships - HMS Fiji Class Cruiser IJN I-400 Experimental Submarine aircraft carrier

Submarines, merchants and liners can now be unlocked by fighting them with a destroyer.

Sounds for the Hellcat Sounds for the D3A1 USS Iowa as a ship-preset IJN Akizuki as a ship-preset

This patch fixes an issue where the 'START' button of the battles section could not be pressed.

This patch fixes the in-game workshop.

Ships no longer showed up in the ship selections panel Planes no longer 'slip' into ships when landing or taking off

Ship sharing panel where players can publish their own ships or download those of others Social media buttons

I am now working on multiplayer. I hope I can get it implemented as soon as the 16th of august. There won't be a lot of updates until then.

Reload progress indication to firegroups

AA-Shells stuck in the air when hitting the D3A1 aircraft D3A1 not getting damaged by AA Boilers were not disabled when plunged underwater Carrier deck material is no longer acting like armor Reduced stored aircraft health from 500 to 250 Increased bomb damage threefold Doubled shell damage

Planes sometimes getting stuck when landing Wrong graphic enabled on the Hellcat Some primary guns not finding a magazine Fire group not correctly displayed in tooltip of aircraft Reduced Health of structual steel from 1000 to 250 Reduced Health of outer plating from 1000 to 250

Arrow key movement during battle Scenarios showing as completed as default Cam zoomed in when selecting a ship in scenario Next round button vanishing and not reappearing Player not being able to destroy merchant ships in scenario

Issue with aiming when selecting a firegroup

Volume Slider

AI was hitting too consistently Aiming for main guns Ships not getting listed because of non-alphanumeric characters in their name This patch changes the aiming drastically. Battles feel less clumsy and I really like the system now. You are more of a manager and less hands on with firing which feels way better and is less stressful. Hope you like it too!