Pressing 'esc' does the trick, press enter to resume!:up:

So it does, that'll teach me to rtfm!

Cheers

Would it be possible to add the ability for the crew to work on repairing the outer hull/dive planes when surfaced (obviously going outside the boat to do so).

Hmm, it's possible. Not sure exactly how that would work but I could try adding some way to open the hatch and allow crew to walk outside... I'll do some experimenting and see what works. In the meantime, remember you can be fully repaired at friendly ports by getting close and pressing Left Shift + R.

Hmm, it's possible. Not sure exactly how that would work but I could try adding some way to open the hatch and allow crew to walk outside... I'll do some experimenting and see what works. In the meantime, remember you can be fully repaired at friendly ports by getting close and pressing Left Shift + R.

Keep up the good work : )

Will do :salute:

By the way everyone, I don't think I've mentioned it before but (because of the way the crew experience/skills system works) it's possible to 'train' crew so they're better prepared for a disaster. Find an empty, unimportant area of the sub with nothing explosive nearby and use Tab to start fires or Left Ctrl to damage walls/floors/objects, then order the crew to extinguish the fires and repair everything. The crewmen will become more proficient at skills they practice regularly, so when a real emergency occurs they will be able to deal with it more quickly and efficiently.

This is a similar process to the training drills run on real submarines to keep the crew disciplined and well-prepared. I doubt they actually set real nuclear submarines on fire just to keep the crew on their toes but it's the same principle!

Just out of curiosity, would it be possible to make this game touch screen compatible, so I can play it with the stylus on my Win 8.1 tab?:hmmm:

edit: I have trouble shutting down both reactors and pumps, then restarting from cold without various things breaking. The worst is a loss of coolant, which causes an irreversable temperature rise and meltdown. Should equipment be this fragile?

Also, I've tried shutting down the reactors and running on the diesels with all vents open and the system purging, but the genny room O2 level still diminishes. Could the inclusion of a snorkel help with this?

Making it playable on a tablet would be very tricky - there are so many keyboard commands it'd be difficult to completely replace it with on screen controls. But I plan to expand the mouse functionality soon (so you can click switches, buttons etc) so I'll see how I go with the touch screen stuff then, if it doesn't seem too hard then you might be in luck.

Shutting down and restarting the reactors should be pretty safe... only thing to watch out for is running the pumps too fast, which can cause damage to them. Also make sure the pumps are running at full speed before you start raising the control rods. But I can't think of anything which would cause the components to start breaking - maybe it was just random failures which happened to affect the reactor? Increasing sub_reliability in gameoptions.ini should improve that if failures are happening too often. I'll look into it though - there's always the possibility of a bug sneaking in and causing failures to happen too often.

Loss of coolant is pretty deadly though, at the moment the only way to fix it is to return to port. I have an idea for fixing this which I will add to the next version. After all, the coolant is just water so there's no reason it couldn't be replaced while the sub is underway.

And thanks for letting me know about the diesel engine problem, I'll tweak the rates for the engine air consumption and ventilation system to fix that. Or maybe add a snorkel, but I think the functionality would be pretty much exactly the same as the purging system.

Version 0.21 released!
Download here: http://goo.gl/PsBCbK

Changelog:

• AI controlled ships can now move around, and warships will actively hunt down your submarine if you are detected. Sonar is now simulated for all warships which were historically equipped with it. Anti submarine weapons are also simulated: many warships are equipped with depth charges, ASROC missiles or mortar systems like the RBU-6000. Evading destroyers is now a real challenge! If detected it's best to stay submerged, move slowly (less than 5 knots is best) and try to either escape or reach a position where you can launch a torpedo at the attacker.
• Passive sonar is now simulated for your submarine. Note that the sonar display is clearest while moving slowly and completely submerged - moving quickly, especially while surfaced, will add a lot of noise to the display and make identifying contacts difficult. Your sonar has a 'blind spot' directly behind your submarine due to interference from the submarine itself. No active sonar, narrowband info or towed arrays yet but they're planned for future updates.
• Related environmental effects are also simulated, like the thermal layer in water which can distort sonar signals. The depth of the thermal layer varies with ambient temperature, currents etc but it is generally shallow (or non-existent) near the poles and deep near the equator. It is marked in blue on your depth gauge.
• Bilge pumps have been added. Select them like a control panel and press + or - to turn the pump up or down, or Z to toggle the pump fully on/fully off. Pumps are more effective at shallow depths.
• The submarine layout has been changed slightly.
• It is now possible to replace lost coolant fluid in the nuclear reactors. The coolant reservoir is simulated (part of the primary coolant pump) and will take damage over time as coolant leaks out. Stopping the leak then repairing the reservoir will replace the coolant. It's important to identify the source of the leak and fix it BEFORE you repair the reservoir, otherwise the coolant may leak out faster than you can refill it.
• Added a couple more ship classes and weapon types.
• Made explosions slightly less common and slightly more damaging.
• Several other bugfixes, including tweaking the rates for oxygen use in the diesel engines and the rate crewmen breathe.

Enjoy! As a special request, could you please let me know how difficult (or how easy) you find fighting destroyers, frigates etc?
(A good way to get some quick action is to play as West Germany and immediately sail east to Rostock, where you will almost always find some East German ships)

Hi Geoff,

What's the maximum range of the passive sonar? I've tried to hunt ships completely submerged using it, but I find you have to be quite close (about as close as you have to be for ships to show up on the tactical screen) before the sonar detects them. Maybe it's just me not understanding the operational ranges, so any info is useful.

cheers.

Looks a bit like dwarf fortress.

Sails out and dives. Crash into the sea floor. Surfaces again. Use the sonar. The sonar is on fire. Put out sonar fire. Read radio message. Look at map. Notice a fire in the torpedo room, send crew. All of torpedo room and crew on fire.

Hard as dwarf fortress also :)

Yeah, but that's why we love it! Where else could you deal with simultaneous hull breach, flooding and a fire as well as an overheating reactor and just when you thought it was getting a bit dull the fire extinguisher system in the generator room malfunctions and threatens to suffocate your crew? Nothing like a relaxing bit of gameplay to while away the afternoon!:rock:

Information about the range of modern military sonar is very hard to find, as I'm sure you can imagine! And from what I have found, the range of sonar is hugely variable anyway, depending on sea conditions, the material on the bottom of the ocean etc. At the moment the passive sonar on your submarine will start detecting faint signals at around 16 nautical miles (each square on the map is 13.3 nautical miles). So if you're moving fairly slowly, it should be possible to identify ships slightly outside visual range. I'll probably tweak this to extend the maximum range a bit next version, maybe to 20 nautical miles. From what I've read, the detection range of modern sonar can vary from about 5NM to more than 100NM depending on the skill of the operator and the weather conditions - so until I get around to coding a more realistic sonar model, I think around 20NM in all conditions is a reasonable value.

Someone should really talk to the guys at the shipyard who keep building these terrible accident-prone submarines :)

Hi Geoff,

another bug to be squashed:

Out making a nuisance of myself round Rostock, I allowed myself to be spotted by a small warship. He knocked some holes in me, started a couple of small fires which were easy to deal with (O2 level at 18% :03:) and caused some flooding. I sat the sub on the sea bed and turned on all required bilge pumps and went to work with the welding. Suddenly, my guys start turning blue and falling over. WTF?? It seems the bilge pumps are so efficient they suck all the air out of the boat as well!! Surely this will leave a large mass of bubbles on the surface for any enterprising warship to spot?

Hmm, interesting. Thanks for pointing it out, I'll take a look!

It's been a while since I posted but I just have to commend you on the fantastic game your making. I especially like the random failures as it makes commanding a nuke far more interesting. Also I noticed a little bug in the game that will display 2 radio messages overlapping each other as if you were to write two sentences on the same line of paper. However small bugs aside I believe that this game has huge potential as even in this early state of development it is quite playable and is already one of my favorite games. Forgive the length of this post but I just wanted to throw in my two cents and let you know how good of a job your doing, keep up the good work.:up:

Thank you! Comments like that are very encouraging. I'm glad you're enjoying it - and thanks for pointing out that radio message bug.

The game got featured on Rock Paper Shotgun!

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014...%2C+Shotgun%29

Greetings had to register to say thanks for the great game. The community Here started a thread on your game and we are loving it, If you get a chance feel free to come say hi and read through the fun times people are having with it. Keep up the great work!