So yes, it´s finally released as EA (Steam)...
UBOAT EA Steam Store



Ahoy!

I'm not sure about this one. I've played every SH game since the beginning but I'm not exactly sure what this is.

I have yet to watch any game-play at length but looking through reviews I see things like 'too much micromanagement' and 'Sims in a uBoat'. I am guessing then that it is not like the SH series?

Wolfpack has been a disappointment (but then again,that game is not aimed at me as I play SP mainly) so I'm hoping that this won't turn out getting removed from my wish list.

If anyone has it by all means let me know what you think of it

Still on the fence for now on this one while it´s still on sale. Iam not really looking for another SH, so Iam not sure yet, but as Cold Waters is not another Sub Command/688i, this is not another SH as I see it. I really love subs so my feelings might be a bit bias if I do get my hands on it. Although Cold Waters is not SC, I still enjoy it, so it might be the same with this one, don´t know yet.

I do wish they did a better (up-to-date) version of Dangerous Waters, or finally put out that "new" Sonalyst game engine that rumours were talking about two years ago.

Being early access there's no hurry to climb aboard. Seems there are some immediate problems some folks have even getting it to start. If done right though, the EA period will help these developers get the feedback that hopefully they need and will listen to to make it right. I think it looks very interesting but as Chucky was saying, I don't think its designed to strictly be a Silent Hunter game. However it seems to have those elements once combat happens. It does seem to be unique in its management aspect and I think its trying to model a kind of life in general aboard a WW2 uboat. I still remember seeing some video where they sent sailors out on a raft for something and another video of a diver in a diving suit going out for repairs or something.

I could be wrong but it seems like an interesting sim where you keep your crew healthy and happy and not killing each other while operating a sub and its systems and then engaging in combat and other interesting missions.

Browsing the Steam forums (I know) the devs seem keen to address some of the negative reviews.

I always find it odd that people buy an early access game and then give a negative review because of bugs or missing features

Purchased it 2 days ago, it had been on my Wish List for ages.Taking the plunge was a natural, no matter how much I have always hated the Sims and such.
UBoat will never convert me to the Sims and all the micromanagement, but a Type VII did make it easier on me, instantly.

Did the tutorial, successfully, with all objectives completed.
It was quite entertaining, and followed tutorial instructions. For instance, TDC was automated will all calculations done by the AI crew. Point and fire. There are apparently ways to go much more hardcore, I haven't tried.

Performance-wise, I was nicely surprised.
Ran real smooth with most maxed on my mid-range 4 yrs old system. I disabled depth of field / bloom / motion blur / light aberration (or whatever). I'm no fan of those anyway.

Uboat has the potential to become a classic WW2 sub sim, alongside my heavily modded SH3 / SH5, and the recent Wolfpack.
Never had that much choice in years.

I flew away on a bizz trip with a smile yesterday.
Can't say much more at this time.

Cheers,
Slug

I just bought it while it still has 15% off. I won't get around to putting any time into it until the Snooker World Championship is over this coming Monday.

Has anyone spent some real time with it? Is it pretty immersive? Does it have variable weathers and sea states?

Not yet Coot but hopefully at the weekend.

Same here, no time, hopefully this weekend.

Cheers,
Slug

Okay, no problem. I'm also curious about performance too. Some videos I see look butter smooth and then I see others playing a pretty choppy game.

This game has my curiosity piqued for sure

Had a go at Uboat last night. The game has already been patched twice since the tutorial I did a week or so back. Some game-breaking bugs have been squashed apparently, but I wouldn't know which exactly since I had not played beyond the tutorial !
Anyway, I did 2 missions and both were highly enjoyable.

To my surprise the micro management is generally meaningful. This was my major concern and I had doubts.
It is all about keeping your crew operative, limiting unnecessary stress whenever possible and getting your uboat to run at optimum performance. Quite a bit of clicking in terms of crew management; the fatigue simulation is off with officers getting exhausted after 2 or 3 hrs of in-game time. If this doesn’t get adjusted by the devs, it has potential to irritate me very quickly and spoil the whole thing.
Running all the sub systems is immersive. Ventilation, turning gyro on or off, compressed air, bilge pump and much more, all is there.
SH series and Wolfpack do help tons to know what to do when, and what not to do when !

I still managed to get myself into trouble.
Sank 1 cargo ship, surfaced to finish off an isolated ship with my 88 and got jumped by a Sunderland. Depth charges knocked a few systems off, killed 2 sailors on bridge, and repairs were urgently needed. Small repairs are automated while others will require first person view to tackle. Nicely done i thought.
Attacks are intense, all systems can be damaged or even destroyed. Pipes will burst, water levels will raise -- up to waist deep in one instance -- and she will sink. Oh yes she will...
She was saved hitting sea bottom at 62m, and I then spent some 2 in-game-hours to nurse her back to minimum buoyancy.

The crew has a tendency to panic easily in early missions (a bug apparently). There is a Reputation / Character / Skills / XP / Promotion system to gradually turn your crew into true Kriegsmarine sailors. My crew is still 100% rookies, it was revealed at the worst time.
I have not yet touched on that aspect of the game — probably not what I am most interested in — i suppose there is no way around this crew customization thing.
There is the Tech and all upgrades to deal with, I look forward to this. Unavailable to my rookies yet.
One of the upgrades is the toilet, so it works properly at depth... I shall start with that one, ha !

So far, running smooth and grabbing.
I haven't encountered a single crash of any kind although I have read that some players were unable to complete objectives following a save. That could be fairly irritating if you get attached to your sub, I won't, not yet anyway.

Uboat hits a sweet spot between SH and Wolfpack, and it looks great too !

Cheers,
Slug

I watched a couple of vids but i'm unsure how much play i would get out of a game like this. There's only a certain amount of times i think i could go through the rigmarole of saving the ship from flooding before i would shelve it. It looks well done but possibly very repetitive.

I'm not enjoying this at all so requested a refund. Well I assume I will get a refund. Although I'm inside 2 hours they state that refunds aren't given on purchases over 2 weeks (bought it 2nd May). This will be my first ever refund so maybe it will go through.

*Update* Yeah,I'm not getting a refund. Worth a try.

If Chucky, doesn't care for this game , I will be Holding off buying it. Maybe pickup a Tank game

Hey, carrick, here's a little video I did on a small convoy attack. This footage is from a laptop, which is why I got the game; to have something to pluck away at while lounging around. It runs fine at a lower resolution, I could probably jack it up some, but I think it looks great as it is... I think there is a lot of fun to be had here already, although crew fatigue times will probably need to be worked on. The video shows manual targeting at the stage it is currently in. I am in the middle of a ship recognition manual bug, which keeps it stuck in a destroyer, but I haven't started a new career in the last two patches, so that may be it. I believe the first torp strike was was a dud, but the rest worked well, as you can see...

Mr Rawlings: Thanks for the heads up.

So here's a video that kind of shows the state of the game right now... which I think is pretty good.

So this started off as sort of a long convoy pursuit like you might do in Silent Hunter V. You can chase convoys it's just not quite exactly the same way; you can't just follow the smoke on the horizon because the smoke doesn't really render on the horizon, instead the game keeps popping you in and out of "instanced ocean space" depending on how close you are to the ships. But the convoys do follow a specific path and if you know that path you can get out in front of them and kind of set up a trap for them.

In this case I'd spotted the convoy and was trying to get out ahead of them so I radioed in the contact through the radio officer and completed my my manual calculations. I was getting ready to attack when all the sudden I noticed that the convoy started to swerve to avoid me! Now I didn't think they'd seen me so I looked over to see the Corvette that was escorting them and sure enough he was firing. I immediately began my dive preparations but then I took another quick look and I realized he wasn't firing me; I followed his the angle of his gun and I saw that off in the distance there was another U-boat; apparently the fact that I radioed in the contact caused another U-boat to come to my assistance! That's a pretty cool feature except for a couple of problems: number 1, It happened way too fast for U-boat to realistically respond unless there happened to be one right there. The other point is that he decided to make his attack on the surface which sent the whole convoy scattering and he was drawing considerable fire from the Corvette. I attempted to make my own attack at one of the freighters that had turned away from me but the Corvette did end up seeing me at that point as it closed quite a bit and I had to make my escape.

I continued following the path of the convoy through the night and was able to come around and catch them in the morning. I calculated a couple more solutions and fired. I had one hit, I think one dud and then the other two ships that I fired on I missed because they were hastily calculated as I was trying to avoid the attention of the Corvette. So having my tubes empty at this point I decided to withdraw and try to another attack.

I continued following them into the night and came around to find them pretty much on the path that I expected. As I was gathering information for the attack, I noticed that the Corvette was no longer with them. Maybe he was still back looking for me where we'd been the previous evening. Because of the darkness they kind of came upon me so I was right in the middle of the formation and I was actually able to use my stern torpedo tubes to fire a couple of shots getting two hits. As the video ends I am just getting ready to surface and finish them off of the deck gun.
So there is really a lot of interesting things to do here and it's actually working pretty well. There's quite a bit of refinement that remains to be done but even at this point you can still conduct a complex attack over several days and follow a convoy and break off and reconnect with them just like you would expect to be able to do. I look forward to seeing where this goes in the future!