UBOAT Test Patrol

Lima inspired me to go see how UBOAT is coming along in early access. So loading up, I set off with Kaleun Karl Spieler commanding. We were instructed to patrol in the region to the north of Ireland and made hydrophone contact with a single ship on the evening of March 1st of 1941. We radioed it in but as we were sailing to intercept, it was actually sunk by another U Boat in the same area.

As the night rolled into the 2nd, however, we were able to detect a larger convoy though the hydrophone and adjusted course to follow and intercept. After capturing just a glimpse of our prize at long distance, the weather soured and we spent the rest of the second and into the wee hours of the third of March sailing in and out of the convoy both above and below the waves, trying to find any opportunity to fire. At times, the ships were so close we could hear the thrashing of the propellers through our hull un-amplified. Our soundman, Horst, told me that we were completely surrounded by vessels, some within two hundred meters or so, but I could not confirm any targets through the scope in the heavy fog, which seemed to me to be nothing more than a continuation of the sea up into the sky!

At last, the dawn came and the weather cleared as I once more submerged myself in the path of the convoy. I ignored a large American ship to focus on a British vessel that would pass near my bow. After entering the information into our targeting computer, we just had to wait until the proper moment. When it came, we sent two eels on their way and then dove for the back of the convoy, not even waiting to witness the nearly immediate explosions. They were close! After moving east a bit, we came back to periscope depth and let loose on another ship in the pack, sinking it as well! Not wanting to push my luck, we headed out the back of the convoy as the escorts searched for us further west. Hopefully, we can circle back around later and make another run! For now, I am happy with our initial success!

Here's a video of the highlights:



It took a couple of play sessions as I would set up attack after attack only to be stymied by the weather. I am quite pleases with the progress of UBOAT so far and the only mod I am running is the TDC mod. Please keep in mind that as I am playing on my laptop, everything is set to low visually. Still looks pretty good, I think!

looks good so far

carrick! Good to see you! Hope to run into you in 2021 in the new WOFF! (Well, not literally run into you!)

Hi, Rick!

I am also thinking of grabbing this now that it is on sale on Steam. From my understanding, the graphics are very good, but the AI is pretty dumb and there are still some bugs to be ironed out. Hopefully, once the modders get hold of it, it may eventually rival SH3!

Hey, BuckeyeBob! That seems to sum up most of the sentiment that I have heard, although the general idea is that the AI is currently too extreme; too hard in some spots and too easy in others, more so than that it is dumb, exactly... There are already numerous mods and it is not out of early access yet. Based on the ease of modability, the general consensus is that it will eventually eclipse the silent hunter series and maintain more flexibility for more styles of play.

For example, you can already "be the boat" like you can see in my video or you can limit yourself to do everything in 1st person more like SH5 or go back and forth between the two. And that's in just the native game. There are also map mods that get rid of some of the more game-y "God's eye view" information that you currently have, although you can rightly argue that with your crew helping you, you would have a more complete idea of where things were than other sims might lead you to believe. The TDC mod is probably the crowning jewel so far and works great. Most of the bugs that seem to be around now are probably due to not starting a new career with a new update so you have old data crashing into new data.

There is definitely more to be done like more ship and aircraft types and a more fleshed out feel to the campaign as well as an update to the native targeting tools, but everything is perfectly playable now. They've even added a shift system to help with crew management, which makes it more like SH3, I believe. So if you are interested in the genre, I think it's a good investment that will be fun for a long time. I've been casually sub simming forever, going back to Silent Service II and Aces of the Deep. While I don't know enough to talk about all the realism in or not in the game, there are some simmers who are pretty serious about that and have got it working to their satisfaction already. I got it so I could run it on my laptop when I wasn't in a desktop mood and it seems to run fine on lower settings. (My laptop is a lightweight as far as gaming laptops go...)

Considering that there are more assets to be added, I would say that my only real complaint at this point is that because of the way it switches between "open ocean" and a "world bubble" when you get close to a ship, it can be a bit weird trying to shadow a convoy at extreme visual range like you could in SH. I expect that to be worked on further down the road...

Phew! Hope that helps somewhat...

Rick, I think we have similar computer game interests and history! I also started with Silent Service and Red Baron 3D and went on from there. I didn't play Aces of the Deep, however, although I hear it was a lot of fun.

Based on your recommendation and since it was on sale, I went ahead and purchased Uboat. I am also back to playing Silent Hunter III, so it looks like I will be spending a lot of my time "underwater" for the foreseeable future--at least until WOFF: 2021 is released!

Heh, indeed! Since I last posted, I returned to port where there was a nice patrol summary and have returned to sea. I have noticed that some of the more specialized mission types may need some attention yet. I took the attack Scappa Flow mission and as I approached the harbor, everything just kind of spawned in on top of me, but I was under 5x time compression. I reloaded a save and went in slower and it worked better. So make sure to save frequently in a new slot each time and you should be ok! There are also some nice videos on YouTube that help, like one I watched on setting up crew schedules.

Rick, are you still enjoying Uboat? I haven't had a chance to play it yet, as I also bought Hearts of Iron 4 and am still trying to get my head around it. I may have to consider a strategy game that is more my speed, such as Strategic Command or Unity of Command instead. I am trying to find the sweet spot between Panzer General and Gary Grigsby's War in the East--yikes! Do you have any experience with any of these games?

Post any more screenshots or videos you may have on Uboat. I have watched several videos from Litely_Salted and Wolfpack on Youtube, although I think they both rely a bit too much on the overhead "God's eye view" map to my liking, probably because they like to live-stream their games.

Looking at your video again, I have to say that the overall graphics are very impressive and the amount of detail they have put into the interior of the U-boat is incredible!

I could do without the guy constantly sweeping the floor, however!

I've played a lot of War in the East. I have a long AAR here about one of my grand campaigns (as German). If there's anything you want to discuss feel free. Not good form to do it in this thread, so start a new thread in the Historical Strategy forum down the list and I'll keep an eye out for it.

All the skippers say I have the cleanest floors! Been doing a lot of Falcon BMS lately and work has been busy so I haven't gotten back under the waves, but they should be speeding up the updates and moving on to completing the campaign mode in the coming months so there should be good things ahead!

Thanks, DBond. I have seen your War in the East AAR's, as well as several others, so I appreciate your offer. I don't know if I currently have the time to devote to WitE, but I will definitely keep you in mind when I do decide to dive in.

Sorry about interrupting your thread, Rick!

Not much was happening on it, so no harm, no foul...

Yeah, it's my fault too, apologies Rick.

You're right Bob, you do need to devote time to it. There are smaller scenarios that can be played a in a day or two. But if you want to tackle the grand campaign it is a very serious commitment in time and attention. It's such a massive undertaking. But I really enjoyed it. Well, if you ever give it a go I'll chime in if you post about it.

Having some free time the other night, I decided that the adventures of Karl Spieler should continue. After resting and refitting at Wilhelmshaven we set off on our second patrol in mid-March, sailing up around Britannia proper to settle into our assigned zone where we began to make a series of dives to search for nearby vessels.

We eventually picked up a single merchant eastward-bound and set off in pursuit. Keeping out several kilometers from him, I originally intended to lay in wait and send eels his way, but as he was nearly at the edge of our patrol zone and appeared to be unarmed and un-escorted, a quick attack with the deck gun seemed to be the most renown-generating option. This served to show how overpowered the deck gun can be at this point in development as I blew big chunks out of his stern with just a few shots, which sort of made up for the lame sight that is currently used.

Heading off, I detected multiple single targets and eventually ended up shadowing an Empire freighter, running alongside him at a distance to get a feel for his speed and course. I finally settled in for a proper torpedo attack with the TDC mod as can be seen in the film at 11.

Thanks for posting this new video Rick. I think I'm soon going to give in to temptation and pick this up, tho I doubt it will be as good as SH3. Things I don't care for at present are:

- the U-boat appears too shiny, especially the wooden decking areas (realise they get wet but it's still too shiny);
- the boat bobs up and down too much, like a cork, even when just leaving port; a slower bob, and restricted to when a decent swell is running, would be more convincing;
- the forward rake/slope of the lines of the rear of the tower (below & behind the wintergarten) and at the rear of the bridge look excessive, should be nearer the vertical methinks;
- what's with multiple officers wearing the commander's white cap?
- from the external view, the interior appears too spacious, or maybe the figures are a bit small, or a bit of both (so I'd be inclined to use the internal view as much as feasible);
- are there really c.45 people on the boat? It seems a bit sparsely populated.
- as in SH3, the hydroplane operators should be using the buttons, not the emergency back-up handwheels.

I really do like the detail visible in the boat interiors. I'd hope they have (or will have) at least Types VII and IX playables and represent the main changes (extra AA guns, removal of deck gun) and not give you the same version all the way through. The featured VIIC is about the most suitable choice if there has to be just one version.

Nice video, Rick! The force is very strong with this deck gun!

I agree with all of your observations, 33lima. A few points:


There is a 1st person, 3rd person option. The external view of the interior is probably to make it easier to find and select the various valves, switches, and items inside the sub.


Another game play concession, I'm sure. Can you imagine using your mouse to maneuver around the actual crew of an entire u-boat!


Given the amount of interior modeled, I doubt anything other than the VIIC will be modeled, at least in the first official release. Other types are likely to come as DLC's.

At present, the game appears a bit "arcady," more like a 3rd person shooter than a realistic sub-sim. Perhaps the devs are intentionally trying to avoid being compared to a modded SH3 in terms of realism? Fortunately, the devs have promised the game to be easily moddable, so hopefully users such as ourselves will be able to mold several aspects of the game more to our liking.

Hey guys!

lima: The idea was to limit the number of rendered figures so they don't show the whole complement, although I think that there are mods that address this, at least to some extent. And there are actually a ton of mods already, such as removing map contacts. As for people's outfits, you can change the appearance of all the officers and I think every single sailor from a bunch of selectable clothing options. (Don't quote me on the every sailor bit, haven't tried it...). I just haven't had time to set up my crew as I was just running a test patrol to see where the game was at. Additionally, each sailor has a rating and may crack under pressure or prove to be a "sea wolf" so by dismissing or recruiting new men at port, you build up a more experienced crew over time. Officers also gain more skill and become more proficient at tasks.

I've noticed the bobbing too. I'm not sure if it has something to do with the way they handle time compression, which I think outside of attacks is never quite 1x1, but I am not sure about this as I didn't follow that thread too closely. This may be worked on more or be adjustable. The devs are pretty active on the steam boards so if you get over there you could have some impact on the project going forward!

Regardless of what happens, there looks to be a heavy modding community presence going forward so most people should be a flavor they like...

*Also keep in mind that I am playing on a budget gaming laptop on low settings, so reflectivity and whatnot may be different on higher settings...

Well it's on sale on Steam, 50% off, and a Wolfpack video shows less bobbing at least in calm waters, and a 2-tier wintergarten in 1944 (albeit only two 2cm guns), so I've taken the plunge and am now waiting for the Steam download to finish!

Well it's up and running - defaulted to 'extreme' video settings which was stutter city on my 1.5 Gig card, but seems ok if dialled back a bit. Decided to drop straight into a patrol with U-96 of Das Boot fame but had to settle for exploring my boat after I couldn't find out how to get things moving along - I think half my crew were running around the quayside!

So far it looks quite impressive, tho I hope there's a way to toggle off/on all the on-screen icons and stuff, and forbid crew members other than myself from wearing any form of white-topped cap.

I interact with, or try to, a senior officer and his staff officer on the quayside. I'd prefer it if I could just get aboard and order the crew to sailing stations.



U-96 at la Pallice, complete with the swordfish emblem - nice!



One of my jolly matelots is mopping the floor in the zentrale, while the helmsman is at the station in the conning tower.



Closer view of the tower with the attack periscope nicely modelled on the left.



Down in the forward torpedo room, there's some serious synchronised reading going on.



Up on the bridge, that's me with my back to the camera. To the right is one of the boys who I need to stop from wearing that white-topped cap, even if it's not a peaked one like mine. The RDF loop looks like it was made from bent scaffolding and should be a lot slimmer. I also hope it can be retracted into its slot, not sit like that the whole time. And the bridge watch shouldn't be watching their arcs till at least we've left port.



In the diesel room, looking forward.



Another machinist is taking a leaf out of Johann's book in Das Boot and listening to whatever it is the diesels are telling him.



In the e-motor/aft torpedo room - most impressive.



The soup or stew in the petty officer's quarters looks quite appetising.



The helmsman's position in the zentrale is on the left, with the hydroplane controls on the right. I wish I could get tooltips which told me what everything did, which is a feature of another upcoming U-boat sim.



Looking aft in the zentrale. The shaft of the sky/navigation periscope is very dark, to the point of looking untextured, methinks.




All I need to do now is get out of port! Maybe I should have swallowed my pride, and accepted those training missions!

Well I managed to put to sea for my first patrol, so we'll see how this goes!

Hey, nice! Did you go with any mods or just vanilla for now? As I mentioned, when you get a chance, you should pop into the steam forums and hop in a dev thread to get your critiques in, the guy who is the developer liaison is on quite frequently!

Will do Rick!

No mods in use here at the minute; I could only find one site with them and it just had a handful.

At the moment it's Frustration City. I've tried setting up watches with 10 sailors apiece, matching the 'officers' rosters with the watches, one to each shift, assigning each a couple of sailors (!) to support each officer, moving the moveable crew figures around, and I can't get the watches to cover their duties right. For example the radio room is regularly left unattended even after I manually order someone to move in there. And the bridge watch seems to consist of only two people (plus one on a fag break), not the required four (including the officer of the watch) and nothing I do seems able to change that.

It took me a while to appreciate that the wargame layer in Steel Armour Blaze of War added more than just a more complicated interface to the underlying tanksim, but at the moment I'm finding the extra crew management in U Boat gets in the way of running the boat rather than helping with that or adding an interesting additional layer. And there are few hotkeys! If I want to do a crash dive I have to turn the interface on (I usually play with on-screen aids toggled off till needed, in all sims), then click the depth gauge icon, then click the 'dive deep' icon. As if, in a emergency, having to use 2-3 mouseclicks instead of hitting a hotkey isn't bad enough, the boat takes forever to get off the surface!!!

On the plus side, while the resurfacing animation looks a bit weird (the boat seems to surface in a horizontal attitude) I'm not conscious of excessive bobbing and most of the visuals are good, walking through the boat being a great experience.

Haven't got far enough to comment on gameplay beyond cruising to my patrol area and trying some practice dives, but the following is my current list of bugs and realism issues, which I posted on the Steam 'Feedback' discussion for U Boat:

1. In patrol, I want to assign 4 specific sailors (kitted with grey leathers, so-called NCO fore & aft caps and binos) to a new 24 hour shift with observation their only task, so they mount a permanent, realistic 4-man bridge watch (which I will reduce to 3 if I find one of the officers/petty officers is permanently on bridge watch). But after creating the new shift, the management dialogue is broken, displaying only the crew tab.

2. UZO pedestal should be central not offset to one side (exceptions on other classes of boat notwithstanding).

3. Flag and mast should either be player-removeable, or removed permanently, as there were taken down when on patrol.

4. RDF loop is too thick and should either be player-retractable into its slot, or permanently retracted as it was only extended when in use.

5. Biscay Cross RWR antenna should come down when diving.

6. Bridge watch should default to 1 watch officer + 3 ratings, the player should not need to arrange this, it is SOP.

7. Bridge watch should be stood on the bridge, not on the flak platform, with minimum of moving about.

8. Radio room should be permanently manned by default, the player should not need to arrange this. In fact each watch/shift should have sufficient crew auto-assigned to all necessary stations before undocking, with the player only having to intervene by exception and able to revert. The ability to intervene is one thing; now we have unrealistic micromanagement.

9. Slope to rear of tower, below+behind flak platform/wintergarten, is too raked, should nearer the vertical; ditto rear walls of bridge.

10. For missions from about mid-1943 and certainly by 1944, boats should not have a deck gun but should have a two-tier flak platform, with two twin 2 cm on upper platform and either one 3.7 cm or one quad 2 cm on lower platform. Most should also have prominent rectangular bulge to LH rear of bridge, housing retractable Hohentweil radar antenna.

11. Caps - no-one except the commander should have any sort of cap with a white top. And the fore-and-aft cap is not an NCOs cap. NCOs should have the option of a peaked, blue-topped cap, similar to that worn by (real) officers but with no braid on the peak.

12. Grey leather jacket (and trousers) should be available in a mid-grey colour (the present grey is too dark).

13. There should be hotkeys for important actions including ordering a crash dive, surface, move to periscope depth. toggle silent running (as per Silent Hunter 3). Even two mouse clicks is a poor substitute.

14. Boats should dive and surface with a pronounced bow up/down angle, not as now, near horizontally.

15. Diving time should be reduced, at least for a crash dive, at present it takes too long to get off the surface.

It's hard not to like the good things in this sim despite the number of issues that could do with attention.

Excellent list, I hope they take it to heart or at least some one mods it. Have you tried to change uniforms on the crew yet? There are many mods in the steam workshop that you just subscribe to and they are installed automatically.

Thanks Rick, will check out that steam workshop thingie for mods, I hadn't noticed it! I did find a pair of vids on crew management, which is where I got the idea to set up a permanent bridge watch by creating a 24 hour shift and assigning 4 individual sailors to it, each dressed for the part:



This dodge depends on the fact that fatigue is monitored for 'officers' (real officers and CPOs/POs) but not for sailors. It would be better if the devs just implemented a proper watch system with each watch allocating the right number of people to the right task. 'Crew Roster Simulator' is not something that interests me much

Yeah, I saw your post over there and it looks like it is already getting some good discussion. You and McDewgle are on a level beyond me so I feel like the game is in good hands. Have you noticed that if you click on menu and then crew management you can click on any individual sailor and change pretty much everything about them including their dress and even body type?

As for the crew management part, even if the devs don't go in that exact path, I can't imagine that there won't be a mod for that shortly after stable release...

*edit: looking at the picture, I guess you did!

Thanks Rick and keep the reports coming!

Following Mcdewgle's tip about disappearing the flag, I tried again but discovered I wasn't getting close enough to the flagstaff before taking down the flag.

Before (with one of the mods you pointed out to me applied)...





...and after...





The flagstaff should come down too (somebody will hit it with a 2 cm round at some point, otherwise) but I'll settle for taking down the flag.

Did you see the mod that lets you expand the crew up to 27 members? Still, not a full complement, but I imagine navigating inside the boat with that many AI characters might be extremely frustrating!

Another essential mod is the TDC mod.

Off topic, I picked up Steel Fury on sale for $2.99 on Steam. By chance, do you have the STA mod? I hear that mod is necessary to correct some of the outdated graphics, but may have been withdrawn by the modder some time ago.

Yes I got that mod thanks, not applied yet. I might be able to get adequate shifts/watches with the default 5+17 officers/senior ranks+ratings, but might want to make the boat look a bit more crowded, even tho maybe half the crew might be off watch at any point in time.

Re Steel Fury, the major mods don't update the graphics (but see below) they add vastly to the numbers of playable AFVs, missions, seasonal terrains ('scorching summer' is a good substitute default), theatres, troop types etc.

Current choices I have (and I play and recommend both) are the Japanese Community Mod which is based on the STA 2.2 mod; Edge translates this page fine and it has all the links and info needed, including IIRC how to set AA compatibility in Nvidia Inspector so AA works without corrupting the graphics:

https://wikiwiki.jp/pzfr/Steel%20Tank%20Add-on

This is freeware. The other major mod is the TIM mod, formerly STA 3.x, requires registration here and a modest one-off donation to be able to see all the subforums, get active lings to the mod, and obtain the passwords for them:

https://2021-itmtank.forumgamers.net/forum

ITM gets regular updates and additions. It's based I believe on a slightly updated engine with slightly better graphics (maybe including inbuilt AA, aka 'smoothing' IIRC) and the AI is maybe a bit less reckless.

There's a Reddit post by (IIRC) Godzilla1985 which has links and info to Mediafire downloads for STA 1.2 but while good, it's been well overtaken by the JCM and the ITM.

With any mod, it's important to enable the items in the order specified (and in the case of the ITM mod because of more frequent updates than JCM, to use the right version of additional elements available like seasonal terrains, which also get updated).

Thank you for the information and links, mate!

Considering how little I had to pay for the game, I shouldn't have any problem with a modest donation to get the TIM mod. Now, it's only a matter of finding time to play the game! I haven't even installed my copy of U-boat yet!

That should have been the ITM mod, sorry about my typo.

Meanwhile, back in the North Atlantic and learning from McDewgle's tutorial videos on crew management, I managed to create a 24-hour bridge watch shift with the sole priority 'observation' and assigned three grey leather-coated sailors and one leather coated watch officer to it. So I'm now getting the desired 4-man bridge watch and I hope it stays that way. Only hitch is that I'm not consistently getting the 4 assigned sailors so some are better dressed for the engine room, which I may be able to fix. Oh and there are sometimes two men watching the same arc and there's still to much wandering around and standing on the flak platform instead of the bridge. But it's better, as I saw for myself when I took the commander up to the bridge to test the UZO.









Some sources say the watch was 1+4 but I'm back with 1+3 as it's less crowded (there always seems to be one bloke on a smoke break) and per no less than Lothar-Gunther Bucheim in 'U Boat War' (not the novel, this later book had around 200 of the photos he took on U-96) says 'each watch is comprised of one officer (the navigator in the case of the third watch), one petty officer and two seamen.' Good enough for me.

I'll see if it's possible to use similar methods to provide sufficient permanent cover in the engine room and radio room at least. The tricky bit may be having two of the bridge crew man the two hydroplane stations when they come off bridge watch for diving stations, plus the helmsman coming down from the conning tower to man the helm next to the hydroplanes. at the very least I'd want some sailors to cover all three of those stations for diving.

The plan would be to have this as a mod which would ensure that as it should be, watches are properly organised before the boat leaves port on its first war patrol.

ROSENCRANTZ: Dark, isn’t it?

GUILDENSTERN: Not for night.

Looks like it's coming along nicely! I went with that tutorial as well but just ended up sticking officers where I needed them when I needed them there as I mostly wanted to see where the rest of the sim was at this point. I think crew management will still be cleaned up at some point. Looking forward to seeing you tackle some of that Allied shipping. I am going to get back to some synchronized reading...

ROSENCRANTZ: Dark, isn’t it?

GUILDENSTERN: Not for night.

Looks like it's coming along nicely! I went with that tutorial as well but just ended up sticking officers where I needed them when I needed them there as I mostly wanted to see where the rest of the sim was at this point. I think crew management will still be cleaned up at some point. Looking forward to seeing you tackle some of that Allied shipping. I am going to get back to some synchronized reading...

Here's another run at the tail end of the same patrol, with the same North Atlantic fogginess that foils my first approach. It's the same build as the last one, so ships still sink too fast. I also have the same tendency of not looking at my target as the torpedo strikes...