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 [b]v.1.5 Floating Fortresses[/b] 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 [url=https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1633370/view/4365760039544523671]with this one[/url], 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 [url=https://discord.gg/X6whdW7mFc]at our Discord[/url]. Most importantly of all, enjoy [b]v1.5 Floating Fortresses[/b]! [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/40896017/599dc47772b0844c67487513336058975342d36b.gif[/img] [quote][h3]Changelog Summary Since v1.4.3[/h3] - Carriers and strategic targets added, creating unique, powerful battlegroups that patrol and assist their side in other engagements. - Secondary explosions/damage control system added for all ships greater than and including the minesweeper, causing further damage to damaged parts or healing damaged parts, determined randomly with chances based on the state of the hull component. Crippling or catastrophic detonations now possible, with ship health increased across the board to compensate. - [url=https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1633370/view/6692998230485830539]Full torpedo balance pass and added two torpedo types.[/url] - Major balance passes on aircraft in almost every aspect. Developing strategies to avoid them in campaign and dodging them in combat should be much more intuitive. - Player boat and weapon masses have been overhauled, making mass matter more for boat handling. Engine properties have also been tweaked, with more unique heating, cooling, and flank speed behaviors across the boats. - Boats can now be freely swapped and renamed. - Call-in manager UI "use number" quality of life addition. - Fully spent call-in cards are now immediately disposed of. - M4 Autocannon and 60mm Mortar can now be rotated further, with crew ducking and moving to leave the line of fire. - The utility weapons, M4 Autocannon, M3 AT Gun and M2 Mortar, all have their total damage doubled. - New AI dynamic formation system will now make skirmishes make more sense. - Increased despawn timers for ships so they can remain floating for some time after being disabled. - If an enemy has fired a shot in the last 2.0 seconds, weather time effects will be bypassed in visibility calculations. - If an enemy has fired a shot in the last 0.2 seconds, they will be 33% faster to lock on within that duration since the shot. - Torpedo trajectories are now much more consistent with the path overlays, issues with tubes should be fully resolved. - Casablanca and Ryuujou carriers added. - Added Jingei-Class Submarine Tender and No.4-Class Subchaser. - Added Coastal Bombard variant of Coastal Tanker for IJA usage. - Added Ki-45, Ki-84 Hayate, and P-40 Warhawk. - Multiple tutorials support. New Weapons Tutorial and Weapons Practice added. Weapons Tutorial is a crash course on the player controlled weapons except the anti-submarine weapons, while Weapons Practice is a firing range with unarmed, respawning targets. - Balance passes on all challenge levels. Removed Shifting Shadows, Flyswatter and Night Stalker due to incompatibility with updated mechanics.[/quote] [url=https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1633370/view/6692998230485830539?l=english]Experimental Release Changelog[/url] [url=https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1633370/view/6692998230496240667?l=english]Experimental Patch #1 Changelog[/url] [url=https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1633370/view/4237411074219090370?l=english]Experimental Patch #2 Changelog (+Diary)[/url] [url=https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1633370/view/4237411074237575051?l=english]Experimental Patch #3 Changelog[/url]