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. ))

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.

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.

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:

UBOAT CTD
 

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.

review
 

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)

@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.

UBOAT Critical Review
 

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

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.

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: