Well, I've got my copy and had a few hours of play. I don't want to turn this into a review just yet, but overall the impression is very good. But there are bugs (LOTS) and game should play perfect even without ONE mod. So I'll make a quick list of what I've found so far:
1. In the tutorial, I only got the box for Time Compression as I was getting near Kiel. Not the hint, but the actual interface group. A newbie would probably delete the game at this time since it would take him 30 or so hours to finish the tutorial.
2. As reported, no crew on the deck during the entire tutorial mission.
3. Buildings don't cast shadows on the water. This ain't a killer (it would kill the framerate in harbors but it's worth reporting).
4. When you start the mission, the observation periscope fully extends.
5. Seagulls fly too fast (or flap too fast).. okokok I know it's silly.
6. When setting up a new waypoint, the navigation officer reports each new one. That wouldn't be a problem (only annoying when you make the Kiel Canal) but what he reports is totally wrong.
7. Most ships can't get past the Kiel entrance, either getting stuck on land or in the pontoons.
8. The "Ship Spotted" animation for the deck crew needs to go away. At 32x TC they're flapping everywhere. I used to rely on them in SH3, now they just can't stop pointing at the waves.
9. On the first Hydrophone, I can't hear the engine. I know that that these couldn't be turned to 180 BUT the interfference from the engine should've been present around that area.
10. Not a bug, but a missing feature. Water rushing past the hydrophones doesn't make noise. The engines do an overall noise but if you stop them at 8 knots, everything goes quiet. Newbies might like it this way but I hope we can mod this.
11. Some commands are clickable even when they're not possible. For example I kept pressing F5 by mistake under water and it dropped the Morale of the Watch Officer even though the deck gun couldn't be manned under water. Fortunately you can still man the deck gun yourself. Their morale however went so low that they almost became blind, not being able to spot ships at 2000m. This really needs to be fixed. The minimum range during perfect weather should be at least 8 km. Even if they're playing cards there and cursing me.
12. The Obs Periscope can't be lowered after you pass a certain depth. It's left meters above the deck. I could only lower it back again after resurfacing.
13. There must be a better way to return to course. The "Double click to return to course" feature should be fixed and applied to all waipoints. Not just the Sub itself.
14. The stadimeter can't be trusted. I have no idea where the mast value actually is (funnel, highest point, top of masts, top of flag). One thing I CAN assure you is that it's impossible to use the stadimeter at night trying to make out a small thin mast. The best option would be to have multiple mast values (top deck, funnel, mast (no flag)).
15. The recognition manual is nice although I would've loved the ability to select the number of masts, cranes and derricks. But the pictures are extremely small on high res.
I got thrown to the desktop a few times (I haven't updated my drivers yet tho). Luckily the game autosaves from time to time so I didn't loose much.
As for design Issues.
- Some familiar orders should be integrated into the Crew dialogs. Even without mods or changes to key commands (actually that IS a mod), any new player should have access to the most important commands. By this I mean all the old commands (reports and options). This is a MUST. I'm not kidding. I actually played the game as it is and I had a hard time doing simple stuff.
- Changing course is a PAIN. The devs must release a patch with a new panel that allows you to change course to a magnetic heading or to a relative bearing. At the moment this is by far the worst issue of the game.
As for pluses:
1. the new interior is a blast, although it take a LOT to get used to it and not press the old Stations buttons
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2. the diving transition has been done well, you personally need to climb down to be able to dive.
3. The crew dissappears when you go though them at a certain distance. Good thinking. No clipping issues so far
4. The FPS camera has a superb dynamic reaction to wave movement. You're not "glued" to the horizon, but not glued to the deck either. Very nice.
5. The new TDC (I mean 100% diff TDC) is great. Sorry to say it, but it's great as it is. You can switch targets fast and it's well suited for convoy attacks. With my ample experience in manual targetting I had no trouble using it. It's WAAAY better than the old bloody notepad. Being able to enter values manually is superb. One thing however is important to say...
We need to be able to input digits for the speed AND see the gyro. If they give us this in a patch, this TDC will be the best Manual Targeting available in Vanilla ever.