[EA SITREP #2] New Fixes, New Features, New Scenarios

Note & credit: action screenshots were provided by players on the game's discord. Big thanks to them!

Welcome back, admirals!

It’s been another busy week, building the game around a strong - if somewhat stress-inducing - launch. To soothe everyone a bit, here’s the latest contribution from JP Ferré to our marketing efforts, who compiled a few unused trailer rushes into an original video. A good way to kick off this update on an oneiric note.

The News of the Week

As we were saying, so far, the game works properly for most of you, foundations are good, we're now busy with improving the rougher mechanics & the polish overall. We have kept on updating the game on our testing build, and the following changes, fixes and improvements are expected to be pushed next week. Some were already as part of the February 5 update (please refer to the in-game patch notes on startup for more details)

Air Ops

• Added a "Clear Deck" button to the Air Plot screen. This moves as many aircraft as possible into the hangar; any remaining aircraft are moved to the bow. This feature is experimental - if you experience crashes while using it, please report them and include your email.

• Fixed cases where aircraft could remain stuck on the flight deck indefinitely with engines running and landing gear up.

• Updated SBD payload configurations to more relevant ones:

  • Offensive configuration now uses a single 1,000 lb Mk13 bomb.

  • Endurance configuration now uses one 500 lb Mk12 bomb and two 100 lb Mk4 bombs.

• B-17s and B-26s now use 500 lb Mk12 bombs instead of 1,000 lb Mk13 bombs, as they historically should.

• Improved the B-17 flight model.

Naval Ops

• Improved aircraft ship avoidance (mostly visible during torpedo attacks).

• Fixed wrong assignations in the AIR OOB panel when splitting/merging fleets.

• Fixed bugs in formation editors when working with multiple fleets.

Eye Candy & UI

• Added proper tactical map 3D models for most of the missing ships.

• Improved Akagi's nets rendering.

• Fixed bad textures on USS Atlanta.

• Added true Benham class destroyers in the Midway scenarios.

• Fixed old empty shells still being listed in the AIR OOB panel.

• Fixed planes & pilots marked as MIA by the original carrier after some time despite having landed properly elsewhere.

• Fixed pilots not being properly marked as available when a mission about to takeoff is canceled because of damages.

The tactical map 3D models are important, not only as a way to streamline the visual experience, but also because they are used for the future upgraded Tacview library. Gone will be the days where a B-1 or a B-2 silhouette was flying in the skies above your 1942 task force! Big thanks to Skyblazer for his hard work.

As you can see with the family reunion, pretty much 50% of all ships and aircraft are already in-game by now. Some of the missing ones aren't too simple to integrate (Wasp, I am looking at you) and we still need to complete many auxiliaries, but we're closer to the end than we are from the beginning (fortunately, you'd say!). Talking about auxiliaries, we have a few new victims waiting for their last trip to the paintshop before final deployment.

Big thanks to Rizki and Julien for the new upcoming models, to Akos for the research, and to Reis for their integration (along with an impressive list of fixes for gun directors!).

Next stage is all about more "critical" hardware, as