UBOAT - game review

[Onkel Neal]

A solid newcomer appropriately and rather simply named UBOAT, which has been in development over the past few years from Deep Water Studios, has exploded into the Atlantic Theater of Operations, once again putting players in command of the storied German sub fleet of World War II. Despite still being in the throws and growing pains of a continued development, support for the product is on point, and with Uboat, Deep Water studios has crafted the latest attempt to deliver players their coveted wish list items while attempting to stack up adequately against previous titles. For UBOAT… the name of the game is potential, potential, potential!

So let’s sound the alarm and dive right in!

https://www.subsim.com/ssr/uboat/review_uboat.php

https://www.subsim.com/ssr/uboat/review39.jpg

[AVGWarhawk]

Nice write up. Game looks very good. I was tossing around purchasing but the review has sold me. :Kaleun_Thumbs_Up:

[les green01]

nice write up

[vhngvhfghfg]

Yeah the potential is there, I just hope the devs deliver a good foundation for the mod community. The games direction is not as hardcode as I would like. Still had tons of fun testing the vanilla version.

[Joe S]

I have a question about the multi-player option. If you want to join forces with a friend who is at a remote location, can that person be a member of your crew or would he command his own boat?
How much micro management does the Captain have to do? Do you have the option of being the Captain as in SH or are there certain details you have to personally attend to besides fire control and giving the basic orders to maneuver the boat?
thanks!
Joe S

[XenonSurf]

This game would be much of interest to me if the crew management could be exactly chosen with options to activate/deactivate specific crew members from intereaction and make them - or part of them - completely automatic so that I can play this game simply as a Skipper like a 'classic' sub sim. If not currently, I hope this will be implemented.


ATM, I can only imagine that managing ALL your crew is terribly difficult and time-consuming. By doing so you may forget the tactical situation outside there...But I don't own the game to judge that, it's only my impression.



:Kaleun_Cheers:XS

[GoldenRivet]

How much micro management does the Captain have to do? Do you have the option of being the Captain as in SH or are there certain details you have to personally attend to besides fire control and giving the basic orders to maneuver the boat?
thanks!
Joe S

adjusting speed, setting course, ordering depth etc is all basically the same as Silent Hunter Series of games'

If you use the depth gauge to order periscope depth or crash dive or decks awash or any specific depth, thats all there is to it, there is no micro management. click and done

Planesmen will automatically walk from their bunks and man the dive planes, an officer will automatically open the ballast tanks and flood for dive all you have to do is stand there and watch the magic happen.

as for warming up of weapons, this happens two ways. Your torpedo officer will periodically do this automatically without prompting from you. He just has his job aboard the boat to do and thats one of the things he does

HOWEVER - the weapons will cool over time, if you happen to encounter a convoy or a lone merchant you want to torpedo and it just so happens to be between the normal intervals he would automatically warm up the fish on his own - you can press ALT to bring up the detailed row of officer icons, and with two clicks tell that officer to warm up a specific torpedo. done. takes two seconds

shooting the enemy is much the same as what we are used to in the SH series of games. Remember how in SHIII you could order your weapons officer to plot a solution, OR you could do it yourself.

same thing happening here. not really that much different. either manually work the scope and collect the firing data, or just click on the target ship, then click on the officer icon and have him plot the solution automatically without any input from you

In the event that someone holes your boat. The officer nearest the damage will prioritize and repair it without you doing anything except standing there like a bump on a log. Now... if that specific officer might be better suited for another type of repair or another task elsewhere on the boat, you can pull him from his current job and make him do something else and put another officer on it. Or if the damage is pretty severe you can order another officer to help him out. But again, this is done in just a couple of seconds with minimal clicking about.

If you are flooding and submerged, an officer will not automatically engage the pump - you have to order this to happen - because it is a noisy operation and you dont want an officer running over and turning the pump on at the first hint of minimal flooding. so you will have to order such an operation. otherwise - if this was automated, you might be making a lot of noise every time your trying to hide because some eager officer keeps running over and turning the pump on giving away your position. which is why the dev team did it this way im sure

If the flooding has stopped and you need water moved to the bilge then you will have to order someone to do that, youll have to assign a couple of crew to an officer and click the little "move water to bilge" icon in the given compartment, thats it. so some of the more critical things are automatic without your input, others will need your orders.

one minor annoyance is the lighting, there is one switch to control the boat lighting Red light, blue light and white light. It is not automated, i think it should normally alternate to red light during low light hours, and switch to white light during day. Currently if you want to change it you have to manually do it. in my opinion red and white should engage automatically depending on time of day - with an option to change to red or white manually if so desired. Blue light (your way of ordering silent running) should be the only one that isnt automatic.

other noisy things that might get you detected like turning on the ventilation system - much like the pump - are captains orders only. as they should be. But dont overlook it because men will begin to suffocate if you dont mind your responsibilities as a captain

at first, some of this might seem counter intuitive, but after a shake down cruise or two you should pretty much have it figured out. supposedly a more in depth and detailed tutorial is in the works (may already be in the latest release as i type this) and i think that will help out a lot.

the game has some realism things to iron out, and with as much support as the team is giving this product, i think they will iron this thing out into a damn good subsim

[XenonSurf]

@GoldenRivet,


Thanks for these detailed explanations, appreciated. I have not figured out before that Mr. Joe S had the same questions, so we for sure are more enlighted now...
I have watched videos in the meantime showing that you can take the role of specific crew members for some time if you want. If you do so, will this increase their skills if you play well in their role (and decrease skill if you fail) or has this no effect on them?

And what about the feature that you can actually board enemy ships for looting technology, is this a legend or is this in the game? In one video I've seen a crew menber (maybe yourself as captain) heading towards such a ship in a little bark...Amazing... Can you actually go onboard other ships in 1st person?



Thanks and greetings!
:Kaleun_Cheers:XS

[GoldenRivet]

@GoldenRivet,


Thanks for these detailed explanations, appreciated. I have not figured out before that Mr. Joe S had the same questions, so we for sure are more enlighted now...
I have watched videos in the meantime showing that you can take the role of specific crew members for some time if you want. If you do so, will this increase their skills if you play well in their role (and decrease skill if you fail) or has this no effect on them?

And what about the feature that you can actually board enemy ships for looting technology, is this a legend or is this in the game? In one video I've seen a crew menber (maybe yourself as captain) heading towards such a ship in a little bark...Amazing... Can you actually go onboard other ships in 1st person?



Thanks and greetings!
:Kaleun_Cheers:XS

lets just say yes and no...

It is my understanding that you cannot simply board any ship you come across. For example, if you shoot up or torpedo a merchant ship and it is dead in the water, you cannot just pull alongside and board and explore it.

my experience so far is as follows:

you will have a side mission that will radio into your radio operator for example "One of our u boats has gone missing and has not responded to repeated attempts to contact them, their last known coordinates are marked on your map, conduct a search for the missing u-boat and attempt to locate her and any survivors" (or something to that end)

you go to the map location and search around a bit and spot a u-boat listing to port and pull along side. you CAN send a member of your crew to the other u-boat but what happens next is you will just see a 3D view of the exterior of the u-boat and a pop up message:

----------------
"Commander Helmut explores the battered wreckage of U-501, it appears the boat collided with a sea mine and sea water flooded the batteries filling the boat with chlorine gas killing the crew, the boat is filled with dead sailors with blood running from their eyes and noses. you should sink U-501 to prevent her from falling into enemy hands.... what do you want to do?

( ) Sink U-501
( ) place scuttling charges"

----------------

If the officer you sent over has the demolitions ability you can select to place charges, he will return to your uboat and a few moments later U-501 will explode and sink, side mission completed. otherwise you must deck gun or torpedo the other uboat. obviously sending over an officer with demolitions skillset will save you ammo or torpedoes to do the job

other similar missions include giving spare parts out of your on board storage to a damaged boat. You have to give one of your officers the requested amount of spares and send him over on a skiff, then you get a progress bar "transferring spare parts" and he then returns. so in the current release, you dont explore the other uboat. perhaps another uboat has a food shortage and you must rendezvous with them t transfer some of your own food stocks.

when you sink a ship, sometimes their cargo will remain afloat, crates for example can be brought aboard deck of your uboat. You can look through the crate and see if there is anything you can use. You may be low on food for example, and the crate may contain 20 cans of canned fish, or 20 units of fresh fruit. etc other times it may contain scrap for making spare parts, or it may contain nothing at all. I feel that eventually, crates will always contain something - whether or not it will be anything of use to you is another story

i really like the XP and medal awarding in this game over SH3... in U-Boat, the game remembers what sailors did something good during the patrol and rewards them specifically. even if you were playing as them.

For example, if an officer repairs a critical leak, when you return to port he will be rewarded with XP and may receive an iron cross

"Lt. Werner has been awarded the iron cross second class for repairing a critical leak thereby saving the boat."

or

"Lt. Helmut has been awarded the iron cross second class for successfully plotting a firing solution on three freighters"

it remembers who did what - and awards them accordingly.

if you have the budget for a vacation, the different vacations have different benefits, some vacations double XP received from the previous mission for example. so any sailor that would have received 50 XP, if he is given a certain vacation he will now receive 100 XP.

eventually i think other areas of port will be explorable. i think that eventually we will be able to go on vacation with the crew and each destination will be explorable in 3D, like a french chateau similar to the movie dirty dozen, :D but i dont know this for sure - just seems like an eventual possibility

[PANCAKEOFDOOMS]

They seem to prefer adding content rather then fix the bugs.

[bluegoon]

Built on UNITY, the modding potential here is beyond insane, sky is literally the limit, and it's got Workshop support! The devs' core decisions were ON POINT, BABY! :D

[Harddrivegames]

Just a reminder: it's on Alpha state.

Other great games like KSP took a lot of time to become the great game it is today, and hugely thanks to the awesome Mod community that since its early stages had been creating parts, overhauls and stuff!

(so the UNITY thing is one of the high points of this game, it gives some sureness that if developers don't make it great, modders will eventually do).

Right now, its a somewhat playable promise of a game.

Personally I placed my bet by buying it.

[Torvald Von Mansee]

Currently on sale on Steam

[KleineUboot]

Bought the game some time ago. There is definitely some potential, but the controls are way worse (way less comfortable) than in SHIII/SH5. However, given the amount of bugs in SH5, the game might as well become way better in 2021, since it continues to be updated by the devs unlike the SH5.

[AVGWarhawk]

Bought the game some time ago. There is definitely some potential, but the controls are way worse (way less comfortable) than in SHIII/SH5. However, given the amount of bugs in SH5, the game might as well become way better in 2021, since it continues to be updated by the devs unlike the SH5.

The controls are a bit quirky but over time clicking with the mouse or pressing the keyboard keys for what you need becomes second nature. Overall it is quite good IMO.

[Torpex77]

Played a Few Hours, so still learning the game. Overall I like it, definitely tons of eye candy, as well as solid simulation qualities.
That said....I DO NOT like how they vocally respond when I order more or less speed! LOL Also It feels like it needs a few more people, maybe not. I would like a "Task window" that lets me know what needs to be done. For instance, pumping water, air compressors charge. Either I do it or I assign an Officer? Seems strange that monitoring bilge levels and Air capacities would be my job. I would expect an Office to "Request Permission to..." To that I would authorize or deny due to tactical reasons. Not a hard gripe just a thought. ))

[AVGWarhawk]

I find it kind of odd to direct officers to turn on the compressor and or bilge pump all the time. This should be something assigned once to one of the officers and never needing to worry about it again. Overall, it is a great simulation and will only get better IMO. It appears a lot is in the works. Stay tuned.

[Paajtor]

I DO NOT like how they vocally respond when I order more or less speed!
You mean the schneller, schneller! (faster, faster!) ?
There's a mod on steam to disable that.
And you're right, it's extremely annoying.

[Torpex77]

You mean the schneller, schneller! (faster, faster!) ?
There's a mod on steam to disable that.
And you're right, it's extremely annoying.

Staying away from Mods for now...lol But Thanks for the info!
Might I add.."A ship at 12 oclock" WTF..This is a NAVAL unit..calling an airplane at the clock is fine, not ships..lol

I served on Subs...Submariners are Traditionally methodical, detail oriented...So me having to remember to take a sounding before diving, turning on the pump or compressors is workable but annoying, Especially if I am engrossed in a tactical situation..Now why the weapons officer/mechanic isnt asking me what torpedo i want in what tube is perplexing.

This Mission to investigate the sub not answering messages...was really spooky..lol Loved that one.

[Fatrider]

This game has really come along. Ive been playing the early access since about B127 and it has improved by leaps and bounds. They just announced the developement roadmap for 2022 and it looks like a major overhaul patch coming soon with one more big patch and then full release. If you havent checked this one out its worth a go.

[tonschk]

This game has really come along. Ive been playing the early access since about B127 and it has improved by leaps and bounds. They just announced the developement roadmap for 2022 and it looks like a major overhaul patch coming soon with one more big patch and then full release. If you havent checked this one out its worth a go.

I totally agree, so far for me is really really good, above expectations :yeah:

[TONY1958]

UBOAT CTD and hangs up my PC sound as well such that I have to re-boot. Anyone else have this problem? My OS is Win 7 64bit.

[Jean Led]

Awesome, refreshing and challenging were my first impression of the game.
I started my campaign in 1942 in Bergen aboard u-606 tracking Arctic convoy supplying the soviet union.

I was impressed by the graphics and the crew management. The map was intuitive and the missions simple yet bringing a lot of novelty to the genre.



Communication with bdu was nice to have, reporting when you reach a patrol objective or when you spot convoys, or sink a ship. However I did not encounter drawback from using the radio, such as airplane dashing to my location.



Now I barely encountered anything in the arctic, but bdu informed me of a convoy leaving east england, going north. With a ship containing crucial cargo that had to be sunk. I plotted an intercept, finding the gps tracking of the convoy almost exact location ( 17km circle) a turn off. I made my interception North of Scotland. Not realizing immediately that depth was as low as 60 meters.
I managed to slip by the two frontal escort at a depth of 40 meters going ahead 1/3 ( 3kts in this game, note on this later) and found myself in the middle of the convoy. Once there I started a carnage, aimed at the best angled furthest ship with one torpedo, and put two in the closest one, which was my target from bdu. Keeping one tube in front for a large tanker, and firing my stern tube at an escort. All torpedoes impacted with the target ship sinking immediately and the furthest one fighting a fire. Tanker was now in range and escorts hot on my tail. I now had two tubes ready in the bow and fired at the tanker, immediately crashing diving to 80 meters.

Here is where I encountered my error in planning, I scrapped the bottom at 60 meters, and escorts still behind me. I went flank speed in a sharp turn to the north, were there was more depth. The first depth charges missed me. I went completely silent beside for ahead 1/3 to try to get away towards deeper water.

I thought the escorts lost me, I heard a pattern being dropped and wasnt worried about it, no way they knew my exact course and location after all these explosions and me going silent, not being pinged...

Welp.. That pattern went straight on me, and I noticed it too late, I was at 65 meters and I had a bit more depth to play with now, I went flank speed ahead and ordered deeper.. too late, the rear of my ship got hit by several depth charges, massive hole in the stern torpedo room, filled up almost immediately, sailors in there unconscious from the impact and drowned instantly. I had big leaks in the engine compartment and the galley, escape hatch letting in a lot of water. My injured crews there were able to get evacuated, but causing flooding to other part of the ship while opening hatches. If I had been slower to react entire ship would have been hit though, I got some crucial depth and depth charges exploded too high.

But my ship quickly sank and layed on the bottom at 82 meters. I was now thankful for the low depth of the water.
But my situation was not good:
-7 crew injured
-some crew dead in the stern torpedo room, flooded too fast to see how many.
-Stern torpedo room completely flooded
-Engine room and galley almost completely flooded, with big leaks filling it up

-Crew bunks flooded halfway but no way to open the hatch from engine room due to pressure.
-ballast valve destroyed
-depth keeping valve destroyed
-pump damaged
-one leak in the control room.
-2 escorts above me

And on my way to intercept the convoy I intercepted transmission of a damaged uboat requiring parts. I helped him out, and now was short on parts..
I had 3 parts and had to think fast. I sent an engineer to repair the leak in the engine room, and another to fix the pump.
While I was micromanaging the repairs and trying to get access to the rear bunks, my 7 injured crew member died of their wounds. Oh well we are going to need all the air we can get.
Leak was controlled when water was thigh high in the control room. Pump was now repaired and running. I had one last part.. it had to go to repair the ballast valve in hope to restore buoyancy..
The escorts above were still circling above but lost our trace.

Pump got rid of the water in the control room after some time. There was minor flooding in the forward compartments but I had to pump it out trying to surface to give me the best chance.. And with the escorts lurking we couldn't blow ballast now anyways.

The pump was too slow for forward compartments so I ordered two officers with two men each to grab buckets and get the water from the forward compartments into the control room to speed up the process.

This helped, and while this was going on, somehow I could now open the hatch to the stern bunks. Maybe some water managed to get through the hatch and the pressure 'equalized' enough. I opened it and the water spread to the control room. Great, now we could pump all that water out and we might end up surviving this..
While all this water was pumped out of u-606 the escorts left, probably thought they sank us good and went to rejoin the convoy.

Compressed air 82 percent.. From firing torpedoes and decreased slightly overtime. We have to blow now before it decreases further.
I got the buoyancy from -90 percent to -70 percent by removing water already

I wish I could get the engine running to give us some thrust upwards.. but no access to them.

If I make it up the plan is to get rid of the water in the stern compartments by residual flooding overtime and pump it out now that we are above water and not taking anymore water there. Radio bdu for spare parts and hopefully a uboat nearby supplies us with some parts to repairs our engines and leaks.

The order is given, full blow, buoyancy slowly increases ,-60, -50,-40, but almost out of compressed air... -30 aaaand thats it, no more air. Not even the nose of the sub raised up. We are doomed to die out of carbon dioxide poisoning. U-606 at a depth of 80 meters, north of Scotland, sank with all hands..


THIS was my best sub game experience, having played the silent hunter series for 7 years. I felt like I was in the movie das boat, getting my crew together while sitting at the bottom of the sea,repairing damage while light goes out in the back and floods completely, close hatches an doom crew at the back, manage your air, compressed air, repair parts..


BUT now having played some more, I find that its replayability is low.

The different kind of missions are original, but become dull fast and not enough variety.

I now barely ever take damage and its now mid 1943, why? Because if you go ahead flank somehow the escorts struggle to catch up while you do 10 knots underwater. Once you are where you want, aka under ships in the convoy, let them drop on you by slowing down. Then ahead flank again, drop decoy when the depth charges explode and build as much distance and depth from it. Now go completly silent and escort wont find you. Even with an occasional ping.. Worked on a dozen convoy or so.

Also not sure if there radar works, or if they have any, I managed to close on the surface easily.

And an annoying this is you cant go 1 or 2 knots underwater like in sh, 3 knots seem to get you detected quite often although 55 rpm. If you are ahead of an escort trying to get in a convoy it will detect you everytime. Even at 90 meters completely silent.
Complete view of ships underwater if you have hydro, need feature to disable that on the map.

If attacking a convoy more than once, escorts will not retake position, either tracking behind the convoy or detached from it..



This game as so much potential but very few mods out there. I wonder if this will change, it doesnt seem to get as much love from the subsim community, or maybe they are waiting for full release not to interfer with updates. I think this might be the best subsim with proper mods. ( no clue of this game is as moddable though)

[AVGWarhawk]

@Jean Led

The repairs and what not is quite good. I had a similar experience and was successful in surfacing. Limped back to port. I do like the missions. The game re-playability for me is good. I do not know about mods as I want to enjoy the game w/o mods. Hopefully the developers continue to make patches with new added content.

[Harmsway!]

A lot of good feedback in this thread. After 300 plus hours of gameplay I want to add my thoughts as well. The more I play the more I am loving this sim. It does a lot of things right, especially crew management. But that's not apparent at first. It takes a few patrols and experience to get the hang of managing the crew.

I do have an overall positive impression of this sim. But it currently has one unfortunate weakness. It does not have a realistic means to set up an attack. Sure you can use the TDC mod to input data and get a solution. I'm not talking about that. Getting the data through a birds eye window of all enemy targets is not much different then an arcade style game.

I'm sure there are a lot of things on players wish list, in the following video I present some of my top wishes for an even better sim experience.

enjoy,
https://youtu.be/XnoKZYT7MS8

[Marko_Ramius]

Hi guys of the sea :Kaleun_Cheers:
This game was nice three years ago. Today, it is fantastic, what a surprised !!


I won't talk about details of this statement. But guys, if you have not tried this game and if you loved SH3, GWX, you will love this one ! And it's far from finish.


Look for a mod called 2022.1 TDC mod. Youl will be able to manual targeting.


Look for a mod called UBE (Uboat expand). This put this game at GWX level and beyond)




Oh, in game, if you cross the road with a tanker (dale class or war class), shoot her with few shell and be prepared to see the secondary explosions : absolutely spectacular Whoooo !!!




Again, this game is an outstanding surprise. Futur should be bright for this one !

[ReallyDedPoet]

Hi guys of the sea :Kaleun_Cheers:
This game was nice three years ago. Today, it is fantastic, what a surprised !!


I won't talk about details of this statement. But guys, if you have not tried this game and if you loved SH3, GWX, you will love this one ! And it's far from finish.


Look for a mod called 2022.1 TDC mod. Youl will be able to manual targeting.


Look for a mod called UBE (Uboat expand). This put this game at GWX level and beyond)




Oh, in game, if you cross the road with a tanker (dale class or war class), shoot her with few shell and be prepared to see the secondary explosions : absolutely spectacular Whoooo !!!




Again, this game is an outstanding surprise. Futur should be bright for this one !

Will be trying the UBE Mod soon :yep: Do you find it more taxing to run on your computer? Similar to the effect
GWX or other related mods had with SH3.

[cristic]

Will be trying the UBE Mod soon :yep: Do you find it more taxing to run on your computer? Similar to the effect
GWX or other related mods had with SH3.

It is more taxing but you can try it, for me it works fine. Make sure that you read the incompatibly list so you don't clash with any other expanded mods.

[ReallyDedPoet]

It is more taxing but you can try it, for me it works fine. Make sure that you read the incompatibly list so you don't clash with any other expanded mods.

Thank you :up: