Hello admirals,

You can now play the first playable version of the upcoming major update v1.7. This new update finalizes the available guns for all nations and will also offer some new hulls. There are also important game optimizations. You can read in the changelog what is available now.

Players who are accustomed with previous beta stages, will find familiar the procedures.

This is how you switch to the beta:
https://steamproxy.net/app/1069660/discussions/3/3191362449922656706/


You need to know the following BEFORE you switch to the beta:
- Old campaign saves and all ship saves will become unavailable. DO NOT switch to beta if you are unsure if you want to start a new game on the new major update and lose any previous saved designs of the older game version.
- The shared designs will have issues with tonnage or will have different models of guns, which will make the designs invalid. It is up to you to repair them manually or delete them. It is advised to NOT USE them for the campaign until you are sure they are functional. You can select the campaign setting to not use shared designs. Please DO NOT report bugs, if you know that you use old shared designs.
- The campaign setting "Slow" is temporarily the only available option to start the campaign, until the new pre-made initial ships become available.


*14x NEW HULLS*

• New USA “Dreadnought IV” (Shifting the naming of previous Dreadnought hulls accordingly) based on the USS Arizona Battleship, which can be recreated with sufficient accuracy. It has a base displacement between 27,500 and 35,500 tons and is available during 1914-1927.
  
• New USA “Dreadnought VI” (Shifting the naming of previous Dreadnought hulls accordingly) with a base displacement between 31,500 and 42,500 tons, available during 1916-1927.
  
• New British “Compact N3 class” which can recreate the HMS Nelson. It has a base displacement between 32,000 and 39,500 tons. available from 1919.
  
• New British “Experimental Large Cruiser” with a base displacement between 27,500 and 32,500 tons, available from 1923.
  
• New Chinese/Spanish “Assault Battleship” with a base displacement between 45,000 and 59,500 tons, available from 1929.
  
• New Austro-Hungarian “Small Assault Battleship” with a base displacement between 36,000 and 45,500 tons, available from 1929.
  
• New Russian “Assault Battlecruiser” with a base displacement between 70,500 and 87,500 tons, available from 1929.
  
• New Chinese/Spanish “Ironclad I” which can recreate the HMS Inflexible ironclad. It has a base displacement between 9,770 and 12,900 tons, available from 1890 to1899.
  
• New Chinese/Spanish “Ironclad II” with a base displacement between 10,900 and 13,900 tons, available from 1891 to1899.
  
• New Chinese “Experimental Ironclad I” with a base displacement between 9,600 and 11,200 tons, available from 1890 to1895.
  
• New Chinese “Experimental Ironclad II” with a base displacement between 9,750 and 12,250 tons, available from 1890 to1895.
  
• New Chinese “Experimental Ironclad III” with a base displacement between 9,850 and 12,550 tons, available from 1890 to1895.
  
• New Chinese armored cruiser “Ironclad Cruiser” with a base displacement between 3,000 and 11,500 tons, available from 1890 to 1905.
  
• New Chinese light cruiser “Small Ironclad” with a base displacement between 3,000 and 6,500 tons, available from 1890 to 1902.
  
• Various new ship parts.

*NEW GUNS*

• New quad guns for almost all calibers and for all nations.
  
• New USA 17 to 20-inch guns for Mark-2 tech, 7 to 18-inch guns for Mark-3 tech, 12 to 18-inch guns for Mark-4 tech.
  
• New USA 4-inch guns for Mark-4/5 techs.
  
• New USA 2 to 3-inch guns for Mark-2/3 techs.
  
• New British 15 to 20-inch guns for Mark 1/2/3 techs.
  
• New British 6 to 8-inch guns for Mark 3/4/5 techs.
  
• New German 17 to 20-inch guns for Mark-2 tech, 15 to 16-inch guns for Mark-2/3 techs.
  
• Various fixes and improvements for several guns.

*OTHER*

• Ship parts weights are reduced and costs have been adjusted accordingly. Armor and engine weights slightly adjusted. The result is more available tonnage for ship design, as much as was needed for allowing to recreate historical designs more easily, with adequate protection.
  
• Triple guns and quad guns are now available sooner in the technology tree.
  
• Optimizations in ship design calculations affecting positively the loading times and all the processes when you design ships.
  
• Custom battle's maximum year is now 1960.
  
• Battle AI became further improved.
  
• Auto-design is further improved.
  
• Balances in the ship damage model, mainly affecting the durability of ship parts, armor endurance and how flooding is affected due to structural damage. The overall experience should be an even more realistic and expected feeling of how ships damage each other according to their displacement and protection schemes.
  
• Optimization and improvement in the Division Screen/Scout logic. This will positively affect the Opponent Battle AI and the player’s divisions set to “Screen” or “Scout”.
  
• Fixed a minor UI issue which caused a wrong calculation indication for cost of shipyard development.
  
• Fixed a potential bug that could cause a ship of a design to be wrongly deleted, when its design was deleted.
  
• Reduced aggression of minors to try to take their own home lands.
  
• Fine tuning of Game's difficulty settings in Easy/Normal/Hard settings.

*==============================*

You can use the special Steam forum to offer your feedback about the upcoming new version:
https://steamproxy.net/app/1069660/discussions/3/


We hope you will like the new changes, as we plan to stop offering new major updates, and keep the game version stable for playing without any need for any more save resets.

Beta Update 2
- Improvement of USA destroyer gun models for mark 4/5 techs. Changed the 3D models.
- Weight changes for small caliber guns to reflect their actual shielded model (allowing them to be armored more).
- DD engine weight changes to follow latest base weight changes of ships.
- Pitch/Roll factors balanced to follow the latest weight changes.
- Various fixes and improvements for auto-design
You must restart Steam to get this update fast - The 3d model and weight changes may cause errors to your beta designs, please note.

Beta Update 3
- New USA “Dreadnought IV” (Shifting the naming of previous Dreadnought hulls accordingly) based on the USS Arizona Battleship, which can be recreated with sufficient accuracy. It has a base displacement between 27,500 and 35,500 tons and is available during 1914-1927.
- New USA “Dreadnought VI” (Shifting the naming of previous Dreadnought hulls accordingly) with a base displacement between 31,500 and 42,500 tons and is available during 1916-1927.
- Fixed bug of barrel elongation for some of the new guns. If you notice again a problem in any gun, please report.
- Various fixes and improvements for auto-design.
You must restart Steam to get this update fast - The 3d model and weight changes may cause errors to your beta designs, please note.

Beta Update 4
- New British “Compact N3 class” which can recreate the HMS Nelson. It has a base displacement between 32,000 and 39,500 tons and is available from 1919.
- Various new ship parts.
- USA 2-inch/3-inch quad guns of Mark 5 reverted to their previous model.
- New Chinese 7 to 20-inch guns for Mark 3/4/5 techs.
- Further auto-design optimizations.
You must restart Steam to get this update fast - The 3d model and weight changes may cause errors to your beta designs, please note.

Beta Update 5
- New Barbette parts and fixes on barbette logic which could result in inconsistent allowance of calibers.
- Changes in German gun models for cruisers for Mark 4/5 4-inch and 5-inch calibers.
- Gun ammo increased, especially for small and medium calibers (This change affected weight, so it had to be delayed for a next major patch).
- Ship weights optimizations.
- Further auto-design and part placement logic optimizations.
You must restart Steam to get this update fast - The saves had to be reset due to the many changes that would affect all designs.

Beta Update 6 Hotfix
- Balances in the ship damage model, mainly affecting the durability of ship parts, armor endurance and how flooding is affected due to structural damage. The overall experience should be an even more realistic and expected feeling of how ships damage each other according to their displacement and protection schemes.
- New Chinese/Spanish “Ironclad I” which can recreate the HMS Inflexible ironclad. It has a base displacement between 9,770 and 12,900 tons, available from 1890 to1899.
- New Chinese/Spanish “Ironclad II” with a base displacement between 10,900 and 13,900 tons, available from 1891 to1899.
- New Chinese “Experimental Ironclad I” with a base displacement between 9,600 and 11,200 tons, available from 1890 to1895.
- New Chinese “Experimental Ironclad II” with a base displacement between 9,750 and 12,250 tons, available from 1890 to1895.
- New Chinese “Experimental Ironclad III” with a base displacement between 9,850 and 12,550 tons, available from 1890 to1895.
- New Chinese armored cruiser “Ironclad Cruiser” with a base displacement between 3,000 and 11,500 tons, available from 1890 to 1905.
- New Chinese light cruiser “Small Ironclad” with a base displacement between 3,000 and 6,500 tons, available from 1890 to 1902.
You must restart Steam to get this update fast.

Beta Update 7
- New British “Experimental Large Cruiser” with a base displacement between 27,500 and 32,500 tons, available from 1923.
- New Chinese/Spanish “Assault Battleship” with a base displacement between 45,000 and 59,500 tons, available from 1929.
- New Austro-Hungarian “Small Assault Battleship” with a base displacement between 36,000 and 45,500 tons, available from 1929.
- New Russian “Assault Battlecruiser” with a base displacement between 70,500 and 87,500 tons, available from 1929.
- Various optimizations.
You must restart Steam to get this update fast. The content has been finalized. The update is ready to release after some testing. It will need some time to finalize the pre-made ships which will allow you to play the fast campaign modes.

Beta Update 8
- Various optimizations on ship auto-design and some of the new parts.
You must restart Steam to get this update fast.

Beta Update 9
- Fixed single submerged torpedo tube on the side of new assault warship hulls.
- Fixed issue of a barbette in the new ironclad cruiser.
You must restart Steam to get this update fast.

Beta Update 10
- Optimization and improvement in the Division Screen/Scout logic. This will positively affect the Opponent Battle AI and the player’s divisions set to “Screen” or “Scout”.
You must restart Steam to get this update fast.

Beta RC
- Enabled back all options for campaign Generation (Mixed, Fast, Slow).
- Fixed a minor UI issue which caused a wrong calculation indication for cost of shipyard development.
- Fixed a potential bug that could cause a ship of a design to be wrongly deleted, when its design was deleted.
- Reduced aggression of minors to try to take their own home lands.
- Fine tuning of Game's difficulty settings in Easy/Normal/Hard settings.
- Further Auto-Design Optimizations.
- Fixed problem of scale for new 16-inch Chinese guns.
You must restart Steam to get this update fast. The full release is scheduled for 27/12. This is a release candidate.

Hello Admirals,

There is ongoing work for the next major update, but we decided to offer an intermediate, very important update, which optimizes the stability and fps performance of the game. Please read:

*v1.6.1.5*

• Fixed memory leak issue which could cause severe fps drop, usually in campaign battles. This problem could happen when players were starting a battle and did not start the battle immediately but waited for some time in the preview window or made an alt+tab and moved their mouse, something very natural during long play sessions. Progressively memory consumption could reach unmanageable levels and cause huge fps drop.
  
• Fixed a bug causing allied minor nations to attack their allies to gain back their lands.
  
• Fixed a rare code exception which could cause a campaign’s turn to freeze, while moving vessels.
  
• Part collider optimizations, affecting also positively the auto-design part placement logic.
  
• Overall auto-design optimizations, resulting in even more effective ships made by the AI.
  
• Auto-resolve fine tuning, fixing a case where the winner could be wrongly overwhelming too much the opponent, with no losses.
  
• Other minor fixes.

Uploaded optimized build including:
- Further optimizations in fps performance.
- Further optimizations in auto-design.
- Optimization in Battle AI logic.
- Fixed issue which could cause a sold ship to a minor nation to not be fully transferred, so it would appear in player's fleet instead.
You must restart Steam to get the update fast.

Uploaded optimized build x2 including:
- When a minor nation attacks you, the special mission that creates a naval invasion is now happening immediately, without the need to previously have fleets in the area, as before. The government will ask you if you agree to attack and if you agree, you will need to send ships in the mission to invade the province that the minor nation uses as base of operations.
- Ships that previously were sent to be repaired randomly to other ports, when their supply port became unavailable, will now be sent to the next nearest port, in a more efficient route.
- Other fixes/optimizations.
You must restart Steam to get the update fast.

Uploaded optimized build x3 including:
- Minor nations will attack with less frequency when they want to take back their own lands. It should be more manageable now, but we need further feedback.
- Fixed border issues in territories near Canada which could create bugs in the land army distribution (e.g. too small army to defend. etc.).
- Fixed potential minor issue creating an empty AI task force for some turns (e.g. when all ships of the task forces got destroyed or were sent for repairs, they might have caused such a problem).
- Fixes in temporary issues of auto-design, which now should be much faster and effective.
- Fine tuning in ship flooding mechanics with the aim to sink faster ships with high structural damage.
You must restart Steam to get the update fast.

Uploaded optimized build x4 including:
- Various auto-design optimizations.
This is the last stable build before v1.7. You must restart Steam to get the update fast.

IMPORTANT NOTE
We added v1.6.1.5 Optx4 in the list of previous stable builds. It is advised to switch to it, if you do not want to miss any saved data before the release of v1.7 major update.