UBOAT - game review

[Onkel Neal]

Full release UBOAT game review by Len "Viking1" Hjalmarson

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Early Access review
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

[AVGWarhawk]

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

[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.



XS

[GoldenRivet]

Originally Posted by Joe S

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!
XS

[GoldenRivet]

Originally Posted by 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!
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:

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"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"

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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, 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!

[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]

Originally Posted by 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.

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.