Hello! Another patch release! Gameplay:

• Hopefully, add support for PS5 controller icons. I don't own one of these gamepads, so please let me know!
• Torpedoes are substantially lighter; the first ship designer tutorial now only requires reducing the ship's armor to 4" thick.
• Add a new type of system, Torpedo Homing, which adds homing capability to all torpedo weapons.
• With Homing II (or Torpedo Homing III+), weapons no longer require target locks to fire.
• Add text to the pause screen to provide tech/treasure collection status.
• The "PT Boat (Gatling Torpedo)" enemy has a significantly reduced fire rate.
• Improve the behavior of homing weapons if the player has no target locked. They will now home in on the "soft locked" target, and will not change targets if the player looks at a different enemy.
• Fix an exploit in the ship designer that allows placing large guns (with tall belowdecks requirements) on ships with shallow drafts. Sorry to all the size-mismatch fans out there!
• Tweak the stats of the Oerlikon AA guns to better fit in-between the Pom-Poms and Bofors.
• The Porter aft bridge gets 1 system slot, not 2; however, tier-4 aft destroyer aft bridges get 2 slots.
• The "Decoy Hologram" special now follows the player around instead of being fixed in place.
• The "Decoy Hologram" special now recharges 5 seconds faster.
• The B97 Vent has better stats.
• The miniature ammo displays now also indicate reload status, so you know when to switch back to torpedoes.
• "Reward" the player if they act in a particularly unwise fashion in "Eitri's Forge".
• In the ship designer, the "part selection mode" button changes color to indicate when it's active.
• Slightly tweak appearance of parts in the ship designer.

• Improve the messaging when unlocking the treasure in "Merlion's Pride". This does mean that the treasure will need to be re-acquired for perfect savefiles. The actual treasure will still be unlocked, but not the dummy part used for the mission.
• Fix the "Poking the Tiger" treasure not unlocking properly; fix the Overdrive II part being impossible to find legitimately.
• Fix a bug causing guns to be invalid after returning to the ship designer from the test range.
• Fix point-defense weapons not shooting at enemy missiles/rockets.
• Fix RAM launcher, Railgun, Dual Platform, Plasma Gatling, Plasma Repulsor, most non-VLS missile launchers being unable to go on superstructure.
• Fix Nelson vent not being valid superstructure.
• Fix bug allowing superstructure to sometimes be able to be moved out from under parts that are built on top of it.
• Guide arrows are hidden when in the binoculars view.
• Fix playership firing immediately on leaving dialog if the player clicks through dialog using the Fire input.
• Fix Kongo vent lacking smoke/flames.
• Fix buggy supply delivery in "Ragnarok".
• Change flavor text on The World's Biggest Laser to clue the player in a bit.
• Fix a bug causing the decoy hologram to never despawn.
• Fix a bug causing the game to get stuck in grayscale and slow motion if the player manages to heal and then get damaged again in the middle of a low-health warning.
• Fix rolloff torpedoes interacting poorly with homing systems; in general weapons that accelerate to a cruise speed should now do so even when homing in.

This is another patch release. Please keep your feedback coming, and thanks for playing Waves of Steel! Gameplay:

• The Akizuki vent's capacity has been increased from 6 to 10 to reflect its large size.
• 8" guns have less expansive underdecks. Some larger guns have larger underdecks.
• Large guns have louder firing sounds. The 5" and 6" guns have had their firing sounds swapped.
• The "Unlock all techs" assist can be turned off without reloading your save.
• Added a note to the description of the Heat Ray weapon to indicate that it multihits.
• The Plasma Gatling weapon deals 5x its prior damage.
• Changed the guaranteed tech drops from "Poking the Tiger" so that you always get Overdrive II.
• The Bun Laser has been added to the drop pool for "Lighting a Candle".
• The Super Nagato's armor is a bit lighter.
• Guide arrows have been added at the ends of "Running Out the Clock" and "Through Fire and Flames".
• "Taking Flight" is now better about moving the game along if you kill everything quickly.
• You can use the bottom half of the ship designer to place flag strand endpoints. The endpoint will always be on the centerline of the ship, but does not have to attach to the ship otherwise.

• Fix a bug causing autofiring ASW to be less accurate than manually-fired ASW; this should resolve issues with hitting the shield emitter in "Satsuma".
• Fix the resolution menu falsely claiming that it can change the display refresh rate.
• Hopefully fix a rare bug causing missions to unlock out of order.
• Fix bonus missions unlocking when other bonus missions are completed.
• Fix the game reporting you had not found techs that are in fact impossible to find; you should now be able to get a "perfect" save (all techs found) on the savefile menu.
• Tweaked the in-combat weapon config UI slightly, and fixed a text overlap issue.
• Fix being unable to zoom out in the ship designer, after zooming in on the Novgorod.
• The Tone vent can no longer collide with belowdecks parts.
• Fix the player getting stuck in underdeck selection mode after deleting all parts from the ship.
• Fix part spam if the Shift key is held down.
• Fix a bug causing asymmetric parts when picking up mirrored superstructure.
• Fix the racing bonus mission timers running off of clock time rather than mission time (i.e. they respect the "game speed" option).
• Fix a bug causing paradropped ships to become stuck if they are killed before they land.
• Fix some block superstructures preventing parts from being placed on top of them.
• Fix a bug allowing ships to have negative aux space values by placing parts inside of other parts.
• Fix the mouse cursor not being visible after cancelling out of photo mode.
• Fix flag strands not being rendered in the ship thumbnail.
• Fix an issue causing ships to load with invalid parts, if those parts were built underneath overhangs in superstructure.
• Fix flavor text claiming that the Bazel hull is a catamaran.

This fixes a bug that prevents the player from being able to complete the "make a new ship" ship designer tutorial.

It's been a busy few days! Thank you everyone who has played the game, sent in feedback, and especially those of you that have written reviews! You're really helping out. This build fixes a bunch of minor but annoying issues that y'all revealed. I apologize if an issue affecting you has not been fixed in this build. I am only one person, and I am very tired. Changes in this build: Gameplay:

• All torpedo launchers reload twice as quickly.
• The "Time Bubble" special's cooldown has been halved.
• All hats have a wider range of motion, to fit on tall structures more easily.
• The engines tutorial has been updated to make it clear that your previous ship has not been lost.
• Mouse sensitivity can be set even lower, to accommodate players with very twitchy mouse settings. The default mouse sensitivity is now slightly lower.
• Added an option to invert the X movement of the camera.
• Added a note to the mid-combat weapon config menu to explain how to make changes permanently.
• Add a dialog to explain why you can't make a new ship, if you haven't finished the mission "Wolfpack" yet.

• Fix the 8" 4-barreled main gun not behaving properly.
• Fix the "This is a drill" achievement not unlocking.
• Fix a hang in the ship designer if you delete your last ship.
• The Iowa-class battleship can fit ammo depots.
• The Town vent can no longer be stacked inside of itself.
• The special camera in the mission "Howl of the Wolf" is better-behaved.
• Fix a bug allowing the player to die in the middle of a cinematic in "Howl of the Wolf".
• Fix a bugged cinematic in the mission "Vahana".
• Fix crates behaving strangely if they spawn during a cutscene.
• Photo mode now respects the player's mouse sensitivity settings.
• The Laser Shotgun weapon now properly tracks targets.
• Shield emitters in the mission "Merlion's Pride" are easier to hit.
• The shield emitter in "Satsuma" can be hit by hedgehogs.
• Fix the player getting stuck in slow motion if they get a low-hitpoint warning that leads directly into a cinematic.
• Fix the combat menu's layout being odd on widescreen displays.
• Fix hats blocking weapon firing angles.
• Fix hats being unable to be placed on the port side of the ship.
• Fix a bug allowing for negative aux space when the player removes superstructure.
• Fix the Enterprise CVN-65's deck being partially unusable.
• Fix parts sometimes wanting to place on the underside of the Clemson instead of on its deck.
• Fix a bug allowing the player to put guns on top of invalid superstructure, then remove the superstructure, to create floating guns.
• Fix a rare visual glitch when landing from a kickflip.
• Fix the designer softlocking if you unlock all techs and then use the "next tier" buttons to go to tiers above tier 5.
• Fix game failing to load ships if any decal failed to load (e.g. due to very long file/path names).

After nearly four long years, we're finally here! When I started working on Waves of Steel back in 2019, it was just meant to be a relaxing project for down-time between jobs. Needless to say, things got a little out of control! But the important thing is that the game is complete.
Which isn't to say that I'm done working on it! I'd love to add more game modes, translate the game into Japanese, and add DLC. I know many of you would love to have playable aircraft carriers and submarines, with their own campaigns. Whether I can afford to make all these improvements, though, now depends on you. So please, play the game! Tell your friends! Leave a review! But most importantly, have fun and be kind. The complete changelist for Waves of Steel 1.0 is at the bottom of this post. But in brief: The campaign is complete, with seven final missions. Take the battle against Jrmungandr to its triumphant conclusion! Two more bonus missions have been added. 8 more ship hulls and over 60 more parts can now be unlocked.
Gameplay:

• Add the final campaign missions and two more bonus missions!
• Add several new achievements.
• Add VLS variants of anti-ship missile weapons.
• Add Drifter II special.
• Add destroyer-sized variant of the Sawblade weapon.
• Update the Sawblade model.
• Melee weapons constantly animate.
• Add support for Twitch Crowd Control. This is very much in beta!
• The ship designer's lighting and colors have been improved.
• Main guns have had their damage values rebalanced. Guns below 14" deal more damage, while guns above 14" deal less. This should make the early game a bit easier, and fix the late game being a bit rocket tag-ish.
• The supercavitating drive now slightly reduces the ship's drag.
• The "orbital laser" and "grapple ships" chaos effects are mutually exclusive.
• The Hood-class battleship has a more generous belowdecks.
• The Cln-class cruiser has reduced drag, to compensate for its small size.
• The Ballistic Laser is 200 tons lighter.
• 21-inch guns have much larger belowdecks areas.
• Added a friendly face to the first mission of the game.
• Scavenger systems now give a flat bonus to HP instead of a percentage. This should make the Scavenger I more useful to destroyers.
• Rocket boosters deal half as much damage in AI hands. They were a little too lethal...
• The combat camera's Y sensitivity has been greatly reduced.
• Missions "The Cat's Away" and "Paralysis" now have larger maps.
• The ship designer remembers the systems you installed, and will attempt to restore them when you add bridges/superstructure.
• Made health crate drops massively more likely if your ship is about to sink.
• Changed the names of unique specials (e.g. "EMP I" -> "EMP" since there's no EMP II)
• Improved autofiring behavior when the player has selected autofiring weapons. They still fire on their own, but you can manually designate targets for them to shoot at.
• Custom decals and flags can be added while the game is still running; no need to restart.
• Changed the messaging when the player steps outside of the map boundaries.
• Added visible walls that indicate the absolute limits of the map.
• The torpedo turret in "Quetzalcoatl" has a slightly smaller arc of fire.
• Tethered mines follow their parent ship more closely.
• Added a few guaranteed health drops to "Scylla and Charibdis".

• Fix missing name in the credits
• Foghorns and train whistles are no longer considered to be valid anti-submarine weapons.
• Fix bug in "Storm Descendent" causing certain enemies to fail to spawn.
• Fix bug causing shielded ships to be completely immune to damage; in particular, this makes it possible to get the treasure in "Lighting a Candle".
• Fix "zombie plane" bug triggered if planes are attached to a ship when it is destroyed.
• Fix flag strands being visible in the binoculars view.
• Fix flag picker being broken.
• Fix bug causing superstructure parts to have a height of 0.
• Fix player being able to click on background menu elements while loading mods.
• Bow Drill weapons are now properly locked to their ship categories.
• Fix paint being applied to the "underwater" materials, preventing ships/parts from rendering their water shadows.
• If the player cancels out of the "start next mission" ship selector, they're put on the main menu, not the mission select menu.
• Fix freeplay mode unlocking story missions.
• Fix a bug causing gameplay to hang if dialog is skipped on the frame it is displayed.
• Fix the "invisible ships" chaos effect causing green copies of ship hulls to appear when it ends.
• Fix the "inverted controls" chaos effect not ending when it says it does.
• Fix excessive lag if "giant ships" chaos effect is triggered in a mission that has both submarines and terrain.
• The MLRS turrets in Winter use the correct model.
• Fix 3 superstructure parts not being available unless the "Unlock all techs" assist is used.
• Fix a bug causing some superstructure parts to not be able to be moved once placed.
• The menu name for the Truly Excessive Flamethrower is now better matched to its full name.
• The old Depth Charge Rack weapon has been dummied out.
• Certain secret ship hulls are no longer displayed in the hulls menu unless you've actually unlocked them.
• Many minor dialog tweaks.
• Fix a bug causing ships to fail to sink properly, leaving "zombie ship" remnants.
• The Bogue is now pointed the right way around.
• Fix Captain Quinn pretending to be a lookout in "The Tendency of Power"
• Fix a bug preventing dialog from being sped up by the Select button
• Change the impact warning color in missions using the "dawn 2" lighting conditions (e.g. "Chrysalis")
• Fix bug causing allied ships to have the incorrect flag. They now properly get the same flag the player uses.
• Fix a bug causing a certain ship in "Storm Descendent" to be un-targetable by the player.
• Fix the ship designer being too aggressive when removing invalid parts, potentially rendering the Denali unusable.
• Fix the undo/redo system allowing parts to be actually used when in invalid positions.
• Fix the Farragut's belowdecks being oddly-shaped.
• Fix being unable to place guns on the Bazel's nacelles.
• Fix bug with the 8" gun models causing them to have inconsistent behavior near the edges of the ship's deck.
• The top prizes in the Score Attack and racing missions are now flagged as treasures.
• Fix some decals not showing up in the decal picker.
• The "no flag" and "bgo" flags are not shown as decal options.
• Fix the ship name not drawing in the designer when a ship is first loaded.
• The intro cinematic in "Vahana" is now quieter.
• Fix a bug causing extremely tall ships to get stuck in "Vahana"
• Fix the spacebar behaving badly when the player is using the on-screen keyboard but starts typing.
• Fix bug causing "Winter" to be failed if the player completes it without performing the first objective.
• Fix bug causing the flag picker to be visible when first loading into the ship designer.
• Minefields no longer spawn mines inside of terrain.
• Fix a bug when loading ships that have no thumbnail.
• Fix the designer weapons tutorial giving inaccurate instructions for setting weapon groups/autofire.
• Fix the display of certain secret ships in the stats panel.
• Fix a certain secret ship not being propely usable.
• The game no longer pretends that there are playable submarines when there aren't, actually.
• Fix Boss-class ships not having any usable bridges.
• Fix the Invisible Pink PT Boat chaos effect's plasma lance not despawning when its owner does.
• Fix the chaos effects overlay being active outside of combat.
• Fix the "enemy rain" chaos effect continuing to run during photo mode.

• Parts and ships now list their mod of origin in the stats panel.

After nearly four years of development, we're almost there! Just seven more days and Waves of Steel will finally ship. Ahem.

You can help!

• Tell your friends. Word of mouth is critical! We can't afford the kind of advertising budget that the big companies have, so this is the best way for new people to be informed that the game exists.
• Wishlist the game. Steam tracks every wishlist, and is more likely to show games to new people on its store pages if they're popular.
• Buy the game. This goes without saying! Game purchases, especially in the first week after launch are super critical.
• Leave a review. Steam also tracks reviews! You don't have to say a lot. A sentence or even just a word is fine.

This is a patch release to fix the broken select-mission menu. Sorry about that! Gameplay:

• Add two more achievements.
• Missions and mods load even if the game does not have focus.
• The combat HUD looks a bit nicer.
• The ship designer looks a bit nicer.
• Various minor tweaks to mission dialog throughout.
• The "half your ammo explodes" chaos effect does not hurt you.
• The orbital laser chaos effect cannot be combined with the broken-engine effect or the can't-go-forwards effect.
• New chaos effect: enemy ship is given superpowers.

• Fix bug causing the select-mission menu to be broken if the player has not unlocked at least 7 missions.
• Fix ammo displays being blacked out if the player switches weapon groups rapidly.
• Fix bug causing projectiles that explode on impact to do so without making any noise.

One last build for 2022! The big news in this one is the addition of Chaos Mode, which can be enabled via the "Custom" difficulty setting. Chaos Mode triggers various random events during combat, such as inverting your controls, changing the size of enemy ships, and much much more! Some folks may recognize it as a variant of the "crowd control" plugin for Twitch streamers...rest assured, proper Crowd Control support is coming! Gameplay:

• Add an extra-special treasure to the "Stress Test" mission. You'll have to be quick if you want to get it!
• New weapons: VLS anti-ship and anti-sub missiles
• Add some new loading screen tips
• You can cycle through loading screen tips
• The special icons in the HUD now visually indicate remaining duration
• Ship paint jobs can be loaded from an existing ship, so if you have a paint job you like you can easily re-use it across multiple ships
• "Stress Test" startup should be smoother now
• The Railgun weapon weighs more than 1 ton
• Add an indicator to the mission select menu if all techs (including the treasure) have been found for a mission

• Fix a bug causing "Scylla & Charibdis" from not completing if the player skips cutscenes
• Ships with active shields are now properly immune to area-of-effect damage
• ASROC weapons should more consistently hit submarines
• Fix the flavor text on large naval cannons redundantly referencing fire control and autoloaders
• Fix some mesh issues with the Nagato and Super Nagato hull models
• Fix a layout issue with the tutorial dialog in the ship designer
• Fix bad decal positioning for decals that aren't on the ship's hull
• The "Midway Raceway" bonus mission should be better about enforcing sequence
• Fix a minor issue if aircraft carriers get cut in half while they're busy launching planes
• Fix player retaining target lock on targets that have been disabled
• The command center cutscene in "Shadowy Waters" does not play if it has already been destroyed
• Doing "Shadowy Waters" backwards no longer leaves you with a bunch of un-removable guide arrows
• "Ratatosk" and "Denali" are consistently italicized throughout the game's text
• Fix excessive screenshake if the player takes unusually large amounts of damage
• Laser Torpedoes are now under the "Laser" subdirectory instead of "Energy"; this fixes erroneous help text showing up when the directory is highlighted
• Reduce excessive pop-in for guns on AI-controlled ships
• Fix some issues with energy shield specials being oddly-scaled for some ships
• Fix option sliders behaving oddly if the player uses both keyboard and mouse to control them

• Fix a bug causing the game to load every resource if any mod is enabled; this should substantially improve loading times
• Add a loading dialog to the intermission screen to show loading progress when loading mod models
• Add a new projectile collision type, SPHERECAST, which can be used for certain chunky projectiles. Performance is slightly worse than the default RAYCAST though, so don't use it for everything.
• Mods rewrite their metadata.json file based on their current directory names; this should prevent mods from uploading to the wrong location.
• New field "damageIsPercentile", which causes the weapon to deal damage in fractions of the target's total HP (e.g. a value of .1 means it does 10% damage per hit)
• New particle effect "rocketWithSmoke" which can be used for modded projectiles

Waves of Steel 1.0 will launch on February 6th, 2023! Thank you, everyone, for sticking with us during Early Access! We're nearly there! Please help spread the word! Word of mouth is critical for small indies like us. And please remember to leave a review! It's been a long road, and a lot has changed. Check out these before-and-after screenshots of what the game looked like when it entered Early Access vs. what it looks like now:

I'm super proud of what we've accomplished. I look forward to seeing you in the new year!

Another release candidate for you all! This one includes some balance tweaks based on feedback I've received from playtesters. Please let me know if you feel anything is over- or under-powered! I want every weapon and ship to feel good to play. Gameplay:

• The tutorials can all be skipped.
• The OST has received several new short tracks, which are used in some of the game's cinematics.
• Added two new achievements.
• Torpedo launchers now take twice as long to reload, to compensate for the massive damage boost they received in a previous patch. AI ships use torpedoes a bit less frequently.
• Character portraits in "The Center Cannot Hold" are a bit more varied.
• New flavor text for the larger naval main guns.
• The Flight Unit part is 100 tons lighter, and has a note in its flavor text that you may need multiple to achieve flight.
• Gunflashes and aircraft smoke trails are more transparent.
• Submarine icons in long-range radar look a bit nicer.
• The Light AA Laser weapon deals 25% of its previous damage. Perfect-accuracy, fast-firing weapons can't also deal lots of damage!
• Bow drills deal 60% of the damage they previously dealt (still good, no longer "touch a ship and it dies" territory).
• Bow drills and sawblades don't make constant noise during combat.
• The "DEAD ANGLE" text popup looks slightly nicer.
• The engine overdrive special looks a bit nicer when the player turns.
• The short-range radar looks very slightly nicer.

• Fix aircraft behaving weirdly when trying to land on moving targets
• Fix the dialog typewriter effect not taking non-visible characters into account properly.
• Fix "DEV_ONLY" weapon category showing up in builds.
• Fix some ships being able to achieve a radar/sonar range of 0.
• Fix lag when taking extremely large ships into "The Cat's Away"
• Fix performance issues on missions that have shield emitter beams
• Fix the "spinDegPerSec" property for projectiles being ignored
• The Apotamkin's guns now fire at the end of its phase-2 cinematic.
• The Ammo Depot part no longer unlocks supercavitating drives.
• Fix missing textures on container ships in "The Fallen"
• Fix timer not being visible in "The Pillars of Heracles"
• Fix the ship picker UI looking bad on especially widescale displays
• Fix final fleets not spawning in a timely fashion in "Chrysalis"
• Fix damage from ships being on fire counting towards the combo counter.
• Fix fire damage causing a lot of audible SFX
• Fix the escape sequence at the end of "Winter" having some minor visual issues
• Fix SFX from the end of "Winter" continuing to play into the mission summary
• Fix the new-decal menu in the designer failing to slide all the way offscreen.

• Fix the "unlockedByOtherTech" property. Modded parts can now be unlocked by the player unlocking vanilla parts.

Another day, another patch! Gameplay:

• Added music to one of the cinematics in "Hunter, Hunted" and "Storm Descendent"
• A couple of bonus missions have been flagged as beta-only (i.e. inaccessible in the public build). Sorry!
• Added a new tech to "Hammer and Anvil"

• Fix ship designer tutorials being completely broken.
• Fix paint jobs being applied to flag strands in the ship designer.
• Fix a bug causing autofire weapons to shoot at an invalid target in "Hunter, Hunted"
• Fix a small hole in the front of the Sumner hull model.

• Added a "heightChangesScale" property. Set it to FALSE to have parts that move up and down without stretching.

This is another patch release! Nothing but patch releases from here until launch, as things get steadily more and more polished. NOTE: this build includes a change to how the game handles parts built on top of superstructure. This should make the game better at detecting whether a piece of superstructure is actually supporting other parts. However, as a side-effect, all existing ships in your save files will not track that information any more. The only consequence of this is that you'll be able to pick up your superstructure and move it out from under the parts it supports. That's not a bug! It's just a lack of backwards compatibility. Patch notes for Waves of Steel v0.55RC3: Gameplay:

• Add 9 more achievements (some of which rely on not-yet-public content).
• The "Notched Circle" cruiser superstructure is shaped slightly differently.
• Improved behavior when picking up small parts (e.g. Oerlikon AA guns) off of other parts.
• The part stats panel now includes a line to indicate if a part's height can be adjusted.
• Display mission and tech progress when selecting save files.
• Nicer-looking arrow icon on the intermission screen when the player needs to go to the ship designer to progress the story.
• Collecting crates with extremely large ships should be somewhat less unreasonable now.

• More robust method for detecting whether superstructure parts are supporting other parts.
• The ship selection UI has received more attention, and should be more nicely laid-out now.
• Fix scaled superstructure parts resetting to base height when picked up.
• Fix gun belowdecks colliders being inconsistent. They now always terminate at a consistent altitude.
• Fix visual glitch where firing angles were semi-visible during foggy weather even when they were supposed to be inactive.
• Fix missing terrain info on a bonus mission.
• Fix bridges not displaying properly in the ship designer stats panel after returning from the ship testing range.
• Fix being unable to build guns on the Akizuki bridge.
• Fix Super Typhoons being visible before they've spawned in.
• Fix newly-created saves inheriting tech unlocks from the current active save.
• Fix the target center for the Apotamkin being below the surface of the ocean.
• Fix certain mission timers running in realtime, instead of in game time.
• Fix a bug causing the Dora Volante fight to get "stuck".
• Weapon fire effects now scale with the scaleFactor of the ship the weapon is on.
• Fix mods menu responding to mouse events when it's in the background.

• Added an "unlockedByOtherTech" field to both ships and ship parts. This allows you to make your modded parts unlock when other parts are unlocked.

This is a patch release to fix the most important issues discovered in the previ ous build. Gameplay:

• Most guns now have 6 smaller increments of height, instead of 3 large increments.
• The ship selector's layout has been tweaked a bit. More tweaks are likely in future builds.
• Changed the default volume level for ambient SFX from 0.5 to 0.3
• Rocket PT boats have worse aim

• Fix being able to place guns entirely off of the ship's deck
• Fix being able to take illegally-placed parts into the testing range
• Fix the tier-5 battleship hull menu being broken
• Fix the to-do list being confused if you fail the testing range "mission" by leaving the arena
• Fix the ship designer tutorials allowing the player to put parts in illegal locations
• Fix stretched superstructure not drawing properly in combat
• Fix a visual issue with the intro cinematic to "Storm Descendent"
• Fix most issues with the combat weapons display glitching out if changed rapidly
• Fix visual glitch in "Escalation" preventing projectiles from being drawn
• Fix camera getting stuck at the end of some missions
• Fix issue causing the "shield dropped" sound effect from playing repeatedly
• Fix visual glitch causing shields to not render properly when weapon impact w arnings are nearby

• Added targetLeadTimeMultiplier to parts.json, which controls how good a job t he weapon does of leading the target. Default is 1, value of 0 means "shoot at t he player's current position".

Today's a big day: we're releasing Release Candidate 1 of Waves of Steel! This marks the end of "normal" development. But it's not the final release before launch! I'm sure you all will find more things that need to be fixed or improved, and I'll have my hands full. But nonetheless, this is a huge milestone. After three and a half years of hard work, the end is in sight! Patch notes for Waves of Steel v0.54RC1: Gameplay:

• Improved the appearance of most objects in the game. Better shadows, lighting, and colors.
• Most weapons can now be placed on superstructure.
• Parts may now be placed in invalid positions. Invalid parts will be removed when the ship is saved.
• Most superstructure can now be stretched vertically, giving more aux space.
• Most superstructure can now be rotated in 90-degree increments
• Add some new parts, including an ammo depot
• Bow drills are now available from the start of the game
• On Hard difficulty, the player takes even more damage.
• Rocket PT boats have a worse rate of fire.
• Several niche weapons are lighter
• The Sawblade weapon has a larger hitbox
• The Sawblade and Bow Drill weapons deal 5x and 10x more damage, respectively
• Add "Melee" and "Plasma" weapon categories
• Tweaked the appearance of the dialog panel slightly
• A dock in "The Tendency of Power" has been moved, to keep the player from getting stuck if they play that mission with a large ship
• The Plasma Lance weapons are better-able to hit nearby enemies
• The "Iowa Bridge (Refit)" part has been renamed to "M-Tech Bridge"
• The ship picker layout has been improved; ship specials are now shown in the picker
• Add some extra dialog to mission "Escalation" if the player does objectives out-of-order
• Added two PT boats to the ship test range

• Fix weapons being placed into the wrong weapon groups
• Fix firing angles not updating when the designer camera is moved
• Fix muted sound effects in mission summary
• Fix bugged fadeout when leaving combat
• Fix the 100cm gun not getting proper firing angles
• The CIWS model is correctly scaled (i.e. slightly smaller)
• Matte materials (such as those used for weapon glows) are not covered by ship paint jobs
• The "ship sailing" cutscene type has better framing
• Fix portrait flicker if two characters use the same portrait slot in a single conversation
• Fix continuous-fire weapons sometimes having their effects play in the wrong direction
• Fix the flag on the Bismarck bridge being badly-oriented
• Fix the smoke on the King George V vent spawning in an odd position
• The Ratatosk now has a "water shadow" like other ships do
• Fix the Town and Tone cruisers having poorly-placed engine overdrive shockwave visuals
• It should be much harder, if not impossible, to get stuck on terrain now, due to decreased friction
• Fix various "in-universe" UI elements, like guide arrows, being drawn in post-mission screenshots
• Fix certain weapons firing backwards if mounted at a 90-degree angle
• The mission "Chrysalis" has a larger arena
• Fix modded flags/decals being shown in the ship designer UI even when those mods are disabled
• Fix missing treasure in "Taking Flight"
• Fix a bug causing autofire weapons to be unable to fire on buildings in certain circumstances
• Some weapons have more realistic stats (e.g. railguns no longer have 100k ammo)
• Fix bug causing ships to become unstable when maneuvering at high speeds
• When saving ships in the designer, the ship's name updates immediately instead of waiting until the save dialog is dismissed
• Fix a bug causing parts to be duplicated when using the Undo button
• Fix a bug causing guns to not target the true center of the target in rare circumstances
• Fix the inset target display for the Dora Volante being a cube
• Fix the flag strand placement UI being broken for gamepad users
• Fix flag strands drawing in strange locations during combat
• Fix a rare bug causing music to not change when told to by the mission script
• Fix visual bug if a ship is cut in half while it has an active shield

• Add projectileParticleEffect, projectileParticleOffset, projectileParticleSc ale so modded projectiles can have particle effects.

This is a patch release to fix critical bugs in the previous release. Here's hoping this one's more stable! Bugfixes:

• Fix some missions (e.g. "The Tendency of Power") not being able to progress past the introductory cutscene.
• Fix those same missions having a noticeable pause at the start of combat if the player skips the introductory cutscene.
• Fix a bug allowing the wrong ship to be deleted when deleting ships.

This is a patch release, to fix important issues reported after the last release. Thank you to everyone who sent in feedback! Gameplay:

• The arrow keys (gamepad: right analog stick) can be used to move the camera in the ship designer. This can also be used to move the camera off of the centerline of the ship.
• The Bazel's armor mass has been reduced from 250t/inch to 180t/inch.
• Mission "Lost Sheep" has a larger arena, to reduce likelihood player will wander outside of it during combat.
• PT Boat (Rocket) and Landing Ship (Rocket) have weaker weapons. An earlier change to improve rocket aiming made them too powerful.

• Fix game resolution resetting to 640x480, again.
• Fix options claiming the player was playing on Easy even if they weren't.
• Fix issue causing missions to claim the player had failed if they don't immediately go to debriefing on completing all objectives.
• Fix "Juno's Wrath" being uncompletable.
• Fix various bugs preventing the ship designer tutorials from working.
• Fix bug causing unsaved ships in the designer being discarded if you click the "cancel" button when prompted to discard the ship.
• Fix single-tube torpedo launchers not working properly in the ship designer.
• Fix bug causing certain visuals in "Eitri's Forge" to look wrong.
• Fix bug causing parts to sometimes display more liberal firing angles than they actually had.

Whoops! It's been two months since the last build. My apologies for the delay: I've been head-down focused on wrapping up the campaign. The good news is that the campaign's gameplay is now completed! The bad news is that I can't release the new missions yet. I need a good-sized package of New Content to show off when launch time comes, in early 2023, and the remaining campaign missions are that content. Believe me, I'd like nothing more than to let you all see what I've been working on. Keeping everything under wraps, not just here but on Twitter, has been killing me. But it's all part of making sure that the game's launch is a success. What I do have for you in this release is a fairly major polishing pass. Expect more of these in the coming weeks. Now that the content grind is over, I'm able to focus on fixing all those issues you've been telling me about. My to-do list is gigantic, but hopefully from here on it's only going to get smaller! With luck, I'll also find some time to create a couple of extra bonus missions. I want to do another racing mission at least, and maybe another Halloween or other holiday-themed mission. We'll see what the future brings! In the meantime, thank you for supporting Waves of Steel! Gameplay:

• Add a treasure to "Eitri's Forge"
• 21" torpedoes deal twice as much damage.
• Rocket weapons should properly lead targets
• Added new extra-weak sound effects if the player is struck for trivial damage.
• The 9" MLRS has reduced spread
• The railgun's damage output has been tripled.
• Missions can be restarted from the combat menu; restarting or aborting a mission now prompts for confirmation
• The Flying Battleship now tilts into turns
• Enemy aircraft have longer attack runs when using cannons/torpedoes
• Aircraft that drop bombs have better aim.
• Enemy aircraft carriers should be harder to run out of aircraft
• Aircraft HP have been halved
• Most AA weapons have better range, muzzle velocity, and tracking speed
• The UI for loading a saved ship has been updated
• The options UI has been updated
• The default flag for each hull depends on that hull's nationality
• The Ratatosk in mission "Chrysalis" has double defense
• Tweaked some dialog in mission "Chrysalis"
• The player cannot sink while they are reeling in a health crate
• Overhaul main gun sound effects
• The Drifter special is now accessible from the start of the game
• "The Tendency of Power" has fewer aircraft
• The ship designer should have better control when placing parts near the centerline
• Activating the engine overdrive special now automatically sets the ship to full throttle
• If the player grabs tech crates after finishing a mission, a message pops up to tell them that this isn't necessary
• Improved performance of ship designer by making most AA guns always get their full range of motion
• "Stress Test" has more aircraft
• The "Super Foghorn" starts out unlocked
• The "Time Bubble" special has been changed so that the player's projectiles still behave normally.
• The game should take more automatic photos of the player during missions
• Anti-aircraft missiles have a slower fire rate
• "The Tendency of Power" has some extra dialog if the player does objectives out of order
• Slightly reduce drag for the "Bazel" ship
• Tweak layout of the playership picker

• Fix bug causing most AA guns to benefit from fire control
• Fix rapid "wobbling" of the ocean when the camera moves
• Fix AI ship wakes visibly toggling on/off when the camera moves
• Fix various issues causing sound effects to not play or get cut off
• Fix certain in-universe UI elements (like impact warnings, guide arrows, and waypoint halos) drawing in photo mode or when the HUD is disabled
• Fix weird motion of ships that are sailing in formation if they're close to but not on top of their desired position
• Fix the Mysterious Ship not being able to fit engines/drives.
• Fix the model for the Squid ASW mortar
• Toggling the mass limit in the ship designer now immediately updates the mass stats in the sidebar
• Parts that increase a ship's max mass allotment can now be placed even if they'd put the ship over its previous max mass
• Fix a graphical issue with the hologram special
• Enforce a 64-character limit on ship names, to avoid UI issues
• Fix bad ship thumbnail images
• The Super Omega (AI-only ship) is no longer shown in the ship designer
• AA gun sound effects should be quieter
• AA gun projectiles now despawn when they hit their max range
• The ship designer tutorials should allow more leeway in exactly where you need to place parts
• In ship designer tutorials, the expected part placement position should be more clear
• Fix issue causing ship designer tutorials to break if played more than once
• Fix weapon configuration being inaccessible after going through a ship designer tutorial
• The lower half of the ship designer view only dims if you try to place a part using that view
• Fix an issue with the mission summary screen on displays with non-16:9 aspect ratio displays
• Improve performance of a certain hazard in mission "Escalation", as well as of paradropped ships
• Fix issue causing magenta flamethrowers in "The Dead Travel Fast"
• Fix missing texture on the Frightening Gun
• Fix some buildings catching on fire that logically shouldn't be able to
• Fix bug causing bogus targets to be shown near the center of the map
• Fix ship color bug in mission "Juno's Wrath"
• Fix boss in "Juno's Wrath" not being able to target some locations
• Fix a broken cinematic in "Hunter, Hunted"
• Fix bad rendering of the "damage critical" overlay on non-16:9 aspect ratio displays
• Fix rendering bug with shields on buildings
• Fix aircraft flying through buildings and ships
• Fix rare bug causing aircraft to gain altitude indefinitely
• Tweak impact warning overlay colors to be more visible in certain weather conditions
• Fix the BB Iowa layout (used by the AI) having some mis-placed parts
• Fix the invisible DoesNotDisplay material getting painted by camouflage
• Fix a bug when exiting the recent-items menu in the designer
• The Flying Battleship in "Between Scylla & Charibdis" cannot be destroyed
• Fix "Enemies die in 1 hit" assist allowing the player to destroy un-targetable objects
• Fix a trigger in "Winter" not being triggered if the player uses a flying ship
• It should be easier to trigger waypoints (large green halos) with flying ships
• The "shield down" sound effect is louder
• Fix poorly-framed rendering of the inset "current target" display
• Tweak appearance of the inversion bubble created by the "Time Bubble" special
• Fix error in description of Defense Command systems
• Fix bug causing text scrolls (such as at the end of "Chrysalis") being very slow if the game is in slow motion when they are triggered
• Fix the "12x29 block" superstructure not being able to be placed on top of other superstructure
• Fix flying ships not kickflipping properly
• Fix kickflips not reliably causing the ship to jump
• Fix shield and hologram specials not extending the duration if they are stacked
• Fix lack of visible objectives in "Lost Sheep"
• Fix a model bug with the Myoko Aft Bridge part
• Fix double fade-in after some cinematics
• Fix issues where the resolution gets reset when changing scenes
• Fix the "windowed/fullscreen" toggle not initializing properly

• GRAPPLE-type weapons have configurable grapple strength, using the `targetPushMultiplier` field

This is a very minor patch release. Bugfixes:

• Fix the flag strands button in the ship designer instead being assigned the "remove mass limit" operation.
• If mass limits have been disabled, the max mass display shows infinity.
• Fix a display bug with flag strands in the ship designer.

This is a patch release; no new content has been added. Gameplay:

• The ship selection UI has been updated, to make finding ships in big save files easier.
• The treasure for "Poking the Tiger" has been changed to a new special ability. The previous treasure has been added to the drop list for "Hunter, Hunted"
• Added a treasure to "Chrysalis"
• The visuals for main gun projectiles have been changed
• Fire/smoke clouds emitted by main guns now keep moving with the ship
• The fading effect applied to shells based on their proximity to the player now has a larger radius
• Minelayer weapons (aside from the tether mine) have greatly increased fire rates and max ammo counts, to make up for the difficulty of using them.
• The "Miscellaneous" parts section (three dots blue button in the designer) has been subdivided into different categories.
• The ship designer now has a "recent items" menu (clock icon), which allows easy access to parts that have recently been worked with.
• The ship designer now has a button for accessing weapon config, which has been removed from the main menu.
• Added two new sizes of Bow Drill weapon.
• If the player has found all techs in a mission, tech crates are no longer converted to health crates, to avoid effects on difficulty when replaying missions.
• The M-tech bridges now give some bonus max displacement.
• Guidance arrows (red arrows that hover near the ship) now change size dependi ng on the size of the player's ship.

• Fix a bug causing ships to become untargetable zombies if they are destroyed immediately after getting out of their submarines.
• Fix bug causing the player to not die properly.
• Fix the amount of ventilation provided by bridges that have built-in vent stacks.
• The ocean ambiance sound effect has been restored.
• Fix a certain boss leaving active colliders around after it dies.
• Fix the Battle Platform superstructure not being able to be placed on other superstructure.
• Fix a bug preventing designer tutorials from being rerun.
• Fix bow splashes remaining visible on ships when they are jumping or otherwise ballistic.
• The nonfunctional "gunpod" weapon has been dummied out.
• Fix the County cruiser not having red paint.

• Added a `maxMassBonus` property, which increases the max displacement of the ship when the part is placed on the ship. Note that increasing the ship's overall mass causes engines to be less effective.
• Added a `whooshSound` property, which is the name of the sound to play if the weapon triggers wooshing when passing close to the player.

This is a patch release, to fix issues discovered after last weeks release. My apologies that this did not go out sooner; I was quite literally in the middle of making this build on Friday when my hard drive died. As part of recovering from this process, the version of Unity the game uses has been updated. I've gone over everything I could think of and things seem to bew orking correctly, but it's always possible that this has introduced bugs that I' ve failed to notice. Please let me know if you encounter anything odd. My thanks to everyone who sent in feedback! Detailed release notes: Gameplay:

• Add an indicator on the intermission screen if the player needs to go to the ship designer
• The ASROC anti-sub weapon deals 4 times as much damage per shot
• Buildings sometimes catch on fire when destroyed
• "Winter" should be easier to complete with unusually large ships
• Made the sunset time-of-day lighting a bit brighter
• Firing angle indicators now change color depending on time of day
• New appearance for the underdeck selection mode's crosshair in the ship designer

• "Eitri's Forge" and "Lighting a Candle" can now be completed.
• The treasure in "Vahana" can now be found.
• Fix bugged energy shield specials on certain missions
• The ASROC anti-sub weapon should be more reliable
• Fix display of buildable superstructure areas on the B97 aft bridge and Battle bridge
• The game should now be playable even if Steam cannot be contacted
• Fix buried buildings in "Escalation"
• The Enterprise aircraft carrier's name has been corrected
• Fix the foghorn sound effect being pre-empted by other weapon effects, leading to glitchy audio
• Fix some issues with assists not carrying over between missions
• The "53x21 diamond" superstructure has the correct material
• Fix aircraft carriers running out of planes too early if there's a lot of planes already active

Waves of Steel v0.48 is out, and with it comes a ton of new content! Four new missions, a racing minigame bonus mission (complete with unlockable rocket boosters for your ships!), a boss fight, and over 50 new parts to unlock! It's been a very busy few months here. The end of the campaign is still a little ways away, but it's in sight, and I'm working hard to get the game to the finish line.
Thanks to everyone who has sent in feedback about their experience while playing the game! You all are making a big difference by telling me what's not working, whether that be bugs or bad gameplay experiences. I'm trying to fit in bugfixing / quality-of-life improvements around my work on the campaign, but rest assured that there will be a lot of dedicated polishing work done before the game hits 1.0.
The complete release notes for v0.48 are below: Gameplay:

• Add four new playable missions and one new bonus mission, with 53 associated techs to find.
• Additional accessibility option to adjust display contrast, for people whose eyes were getting tired.
• Mission "Chrysalis" automatically advances to the next wave if you destroy everything in the current wave.
• The code that suggests targets to lock onto is better about prioritizing targets near the center of the view.
• Combat at night has improved visibility making it brighter and easier to see.
• Anti-aircraft guns now use a more visible projectile
• Improve the guidance for placing parts during ship designer tutorial.
• PD Command systems grant considerably more command.
• Ocean visuals improved with better wave motion
• Tweaked the appearance of weapon reticles for weapons that are unable to lock onto the current target
• Can use left/right in parts menu to switch between adjacent submenus (e.g. going from 4" guns to 5" guns, or from Main Guns to Point Defense Weapons)
• Anti-Aircraft Missile VLS has a new model
• You can now restart the ship designer tutorials when you're in the middle of them
• Superstructure parts have slightly different colors in the ship designer, to better differentiate between placed guns and low-lying superstructure
• Tethered mines have longer tethers, and should be easier to use
• Takao cruiser underdeck is more generous, making it easier to fit drives/powerplants
• Homing systems require considerably more aux space to install
• The rolloff torpedo launcher is easier to place
• The Flying Dutchman is significantly less terrifying

• Fix numerous issues with weapon groups and weapon UI when changing weapon config mid-combat
• Fix some ships spawning already on fire.
• Fix planes flying sideways.
• Ballistic laser moved to "Energy" weapons category
• Fix guns not targeting center-of-mass for some ships
• Fix dialog covering important UI elements in ship designer tutorial.
• Fix possibility of softlocking during ship designer tutorial, when adding engines to ship.
• Fix hovering cranes in mission "The Tendency of Power"
• Fix clipping issues with ship designer cameras for exceptionally large ships
• Fix weapon reticle flickering as weapons constantly lose/regain target lock
• Fix Akizuki Bridge colliding with belowdecks parts
• Fix a render issue with projectiles that have particle trails
• Fix some in-universe "UI elements" (such as impact warning indicators) not disappearing when in photo mode
• Fix some issues with ships having inaccurate colliders
• Fix some pop-in when drawing unusually large guns
• Fix Sakura underdeck being beneath the bottom of the ship
• Fix collision being slightly off for player "go here" markers (big green rotating halos)
• Fix a bug causing the strand part of flag strands to draw in an incorrect location
• Fix mission "Stress test" being unlocked from the start of the game for new saves
• Fix the options UI not being able to load immediately after creating a new save
• Fix player being allowed to try (unsuccessfully) to delete the "new save" option
• Fix inconsistent text sizes in the ship designer menus
• Fix player being able to bring up the Systems UI in the ship designer when their ship has no bridge
• Battleship Knig now properly has umlauts in its name
• Some boss equipment that is not really functional for player use is no longer displayed in the ship designer, if the "unlock all techs" assist is used
• Character portraits should be more visible on top of the tactical map display during mission briefings
• Fix the Vulcan not firing once its armor has been removed
• Fix the world map display for the mission "Winter" being broken
• Fix cruiser Cln and battleship Bayern lacking red paint on their undersides
• Several visuals have been tweaked to be easier on the eyes
• Fix certain types of weapons continuing to be able to damage the player even after their owner has been destroyed
• Fix allies being suggested as targets in preference to certain enemies
• Fix long playership names causing UI issues in the mission selection screen
• Fix "terraced" terrain in mission "The Fallen"
• Fix bad lock-on points for certain ships
• Fix melee weapons being broken
• Fix melee weapons firing hitscan bullets
• The Bow Drill weapon should be easier to place on ships
• Fix certain parts requiring a target lock to be able to fire when this does not make sense
• Better transitions between non-combat and combat music tracks
• Fix a building being buried in terrain in mission "The Tendency of Power"
• Fix the player sometimes being put into the simplified ruleset for the ship designer. This ruleset has now been completely removed
• Fix being unable to place parts on the Yugumo bridge's gun platforms
• Fix certain weapons not drawing in the inset target display

• Ships can specify a custom collision sound to use instead of the default sound

This is a patch release. No new missions have been added. Gameplay:

• Added Women's Suffrage flag.
• Added Tone cruiser parts; all planned playable ships are now in the game!
• Improved the button bindings to the post-combat screen, and removed the "retry mission" prompt.
• Most point-defense weapons have been flagged as being able to fire on missiles. Existing ships with those weapons installed will need to reconfigure the valid target types for those weapons.
• Torpedoes are generally faster and hit harder. Torpedo launchers get more ammo.
• Added rolloff torpedo launchers, which fire forwards.
• Torpedoes now course-correct after launching, so that the spread between them doesn't increase constantly. This should make them more effective at long range.
• The 56" gatling torpedo is now the 28" gatling torpedo; stats are otherwise unaffected. Existing ships using the old launcher will still show the old name.
• Tier-3 and higher ships are substantially harder to sink.
• The mass and HP bonus for using armor now varies more between different hulls. Armor stats are displayed on the hull stats card.
• Tweak the sound made by heavy gatling weapons
• Added new UI for indicating when a target is unable to be hit due to being too high for ballistic weapons to reach
• The spar torpedo weapon now gets infinite ammo
• Tweaked visuals when player is badly damaged
• Enemy ships that are nearly dead get set on fire
• Planes always go into evasion if they are targeted by a rocket or missile
• Torpedo and bomber planes have less ammo
• Anti-aircraft missiles require PD command to operate
• Tweaked appearance of missile smoke trails
• Tweaked music selection in many missions
• The ocean can now cast shadows
• Tweaked appearance of "ocean froth" at large distances
• Reduce amount of knockback that high-tier ships take when they take damage

• Fix some parts (e.g. sawblade, flight unit) not loading properly on saved ships
• Fix visual issue with player guns on extremely large ships
• Fix being unable to place drives in the Dreadnought and Konig battleships, and the Deutschland cruiser
• Fix planes not generating splashes when they hit the water
• Fix engine overdrive special VFX looking too small on large ships
• Fix a bug allowing more than 3 drives to be added to cruisers
• Fix misleading UI when trying to set autofire on weapons that cannot autofire, like the Energy Knife
• Fix misnamed "Ordinance Test Ship" -> "Ordnance"
• Fix Sakura bridge/aft bridge not providing any PD command or aux space
• Fix Squid weapon not having a turntable to explain how it can pivot
• Improve reliability of ASROC weapon, though it still has issues sometimes
• Fix planes not evading properly when flying in formation
• Fix a bug preventing non-animated weapons (e.g. VLS missile launchers) from being able to autofire
• Fix bug causing planes to fly below the surface of the ocean
• Fix two superstructure blocks not being available by default
• Fix the "ram 20 ships" achievement not working
• Fix bug causing the DD 1936 bridge to throw autotargeting off
• Fix a typo in one of the loading screen tips
• Fix large shadow being visible in the "Quetzalcoatl" cinematics
• Fix bad normals on Coleoptere plane
• Fix laser shotgun running out of VFX if fired rapidly
• Fix drone ships showing up in the ship designer
• Fix overlapping text in the combat HUD between the "survive timer" and "combat message"
• Fix the "invert Y axis" option not working
• Fix bug causing weapons with damage colliders (e.g. rocket jet exhaust, sawblade) to fire during cutscenes

• Added projectileHomingRadius property; if set, weapons that can home will not start homing until they are within that radius of their target.
• Added projectilePID property, which allows customizing how missiles home in on targets, and how mines float.
• Added autofireRetargetChancePerSec, which controls how frequently the weapon will switch its current target when in autofire mode. Basically it allows configuring how much the gun cares about taking out individual targets vs. distributing fire across multiple targets.
• Buildings can have rotating parts; these work like rotating parts on guns

Waves of Steel hit Early Access in July of 2021, with nine missions, featuring only destroyer gameplay, and lacking a lot of polish. After a year of hard work, now theres just about three times as many missions, with playable destroyers, cruisers, and battleships, as well as more weapons and other ship customization options. Combat plays more smoothly, and practically every part of the game has received a graphical refresh. Check out these before and after shots to see how far weve come: Before:
Now:
I am beyond grateful to everyone who played the game during these early days, especially those of you who sent in your thoughts and feedback to assist in improving the experience. Starting on July 15th, 2022, Waves of Steel will cost $20 USD; prices in other currencies will also be updated accordingly around this time. That's not to say that the game is done, but it is well on its way to reaching a state we can proudly call v1.0. I'm still working hard on creating the last missions, bosses, and mini-games in the campaign. But the end is in sight! Thank you for playing Waves of Steel!

This is a minor patch release. Gameplay:

• The world map display before each mission looks much nicer.
• Armor gives 25% more HP for cruisers, and 50% more for battleships. A few ships have heavier/better armor as a differentiator.
• The ASROC anti-sub weapon deals more damage.

• Fix a bug causing the post-mission stats screen to break if the player's ship had any decals
• Fix shield bubbles not reacting to projectiles hitting them
• Fix dialog issue causing portraits to disappear during mission briefings whenever an icon or arrow was drawn on the tactical map
• Fix PT boats and some other ships being unable to fit engines
• Fix smoke appearing in weird locations when the player is badly damaged
• Fix a visual glitch if the player dodges while the game is paused
• Fix parts in the ship designer having the wrong scale when they are being placed on the ship
• Fix crates bobbing up and down rapidly after cutscenes play

• The ships.json file has two new entries: armorHPMultiplier and armorMassMultiplier. Ships that do not specify these values get destroyer-style HP/mass multipliers.
• The "homingPower" field on homing weapons is now half as effective (fixed a bug that caused it to be applied twice). Vanilla weapons have had the value in this field doubled to compensate.
• Added a projectileHomingDelay field for weapons, to determine how long they wait before their homing kicks in.

It's been nearly two months since the last release! I've been working steadily on new mission content...none of which is in this build. Sorry, folks! I need to build up a stock of unreleased content so I can make a big splash in a few months. So this release is mostly bug fixes and secondary updates. Gameplay:

• The game now takes photos of your ship in action during each mission! The end-of-mission screen shows you these photos, along with some basic stats on your ship. Show off your accomplishments!
• Engines and drives have been overhauled. Each ship category (Destroyer/Cruiser/Battleship) now gets a different version of each of the basic engine and drive techs; cruisers and battleships no longer have excessively tiny engines and drives. The "Heavy" drives (e.g. Heavy Geared Drive) have been dummied out -- they'll still work in existing ships, but you can't build them in new ships.
• Planes now fly in formations. Planes should be generally easier to deal with. Enemy airstrips and aircraft carriers can run out of aircraft
• New dialog user interface
• The engine overdrive special is more powerful.
• The engine overdrive, dodge, and drift specials all have new graphics.
• Overhauled weapon displays during combat; ships with lots of weapons should no longer break the HUD unless they have really an absurd number of weapons. Yes, this is a challenge.
• Photo mode now has an adjustable camera speed
• Various performance improvements; in particular, firing angles in the ship designer should be a lot faster.
• The timer in "Taking Flight" is no longer visible (since it does not affect gameplay anyway)
• Various new weapons and other toys, mostly silly
• Tweaked stats for Ballistic Laser weapon
• Updated the main menu and intermission to look nicer
• New visuals for the volcano gun projectiles
• Explosions look slightly different
• Tweaked stats for Portland aft bridge and CA Mtech bridge
• Tweak the Bazel's underdeck space to be a bit more generous
• Tweak stats for gatling torpedo launcher

• Fix airplanes being way too loud
• Fix being unable to lock onto buildings that spawn in the middle of missions (e.g. pressure regulators at Katla)
• Fix PT boats not having useful underdecks
• Fix submarines not being choosable in freeplay mode.
• Fix a bug causing the ship designer to break when backing out of the bridges/vents menus
• Hopefully fix an issue causing enemies to not spawn in properly in "Storm Descendent". Please let me know via F7 reports if you still encounter problems!
• Fix the last ships in the tutorial mission spawning early.
• Fix various issues with being unable to put parts on other parts. Thanks to Loki for pointing many of these out.
• Fix some parts being buried in the floor in the part preview display.
• Fix bug causing ship paint jobs to draw on top of colored spotlight beams
• Typhoon submarines should be harder to collide with.
• Fix a hole in the Ratatosk's hull
• Fix some lag when bringing up the select-mission menu
• Fix ship damage VFX not covering the entire ship
• Fix hitscan point-defense weapons being unable to hit projectiles
• Fix some issues with ship colliders
• Fix some HUD elements overlapping
• Buildings that are on top of other buildings should die when the buildings underneath them die (most notably, the turrets on top of the Panama barrier)
• Fix being unable to hit enemies with the ramming special if you're too close to them
• Fix weapon charge effects not being correctly attached to the gun
• Fix vent smoke not scaling with the ship's scale factor
• Fix game hang if the player uses the Flying Battleship in certain missions
• Fix invisible Ratatosk in a cinematic
• Fix small memory leak
• Fix certain VFX being applied to nearby projectiles
• Fix projectiles being able to hit colliders that deal damage (for example, on rocket boosters)
• Fix Bismarck bridge having two flags
• Fix crates moving when the game is paused or in a cinematic
• Fix bug causing feedback form submissions trying to include multiple copies of the player's save
• Fix bug causing lots of log spam if an unrecognized controller is plugged in
• Fix the Micro Destroyer being unable to fit any drives
• Fix being unable to open the screenshots folder from photo mode
• Fix AI ships going backwards forever
• In Quetzalcoatl, the turrets on top of the barrier do not leave hovering wreckage
• Fix a bug rendering planes impossible to hit with any weapon
• Fix bug causing cutscenes that take control of the player's camera to sometimes take the long way around
• Fix turrets not being destroyed in Poking the Tiger when the command center is destroyed
• Fix Sakura aft bridge not being able to be built upon.
• Split several lines of dialog across two speech bubbles
• Fix some issues with rewinding conversations
• Tweak the new dialog UI visuals
• Move character portraits further apart
• Fix planes behaving oddly when the flight leader is destroyed
• Fix broken wakes in the ship-sail cutscene (e.g. prelude to The Cat's Away)
• Pause most particle systems during dialog
• Fix planes dropped by other planes not working
• Fix projectiles exploding immediately if they spawn inside of a shield
• Fix spread on 7-tube torpedo launcher being uneven

• Parts can specify `scaleOverride`, which lets you resize them. E.g. [2, .5, 1] scales the part 2x in X, .5 in Y, and 1 in Z.
• Parts can specify `limitShipCategory` which makes the part only usable on a specific ship category, e.g. Destroyer/Cruiser/Battleship
• Parts can specify `additionalUnlocks`, which are additional techs that unlock when the first tech is unlocked. If the base tech is already unlocked in a save file, then the secondary techs will automatically be unlocked when the save is loaded.
• Added `projectileHitSize` which lets you hard-define how big of a collision volume a given projectile gets.
• Added `projectileSpawnOffset` to change where projectiles spawn (distance along the firing vector)

This is a patch release, to fix issues reported in v0.43. Thank you to everyone who sent in feedback! Gameplay:

With this release, Waves of Steel is now officially in the endgame! 2/3rds of the story campaign is now playable. That's 22 out of 33 missions, not counting the bonus missions. Strap in, folks, because the end of this campaign is going places.
Thank you to everyone who has played the game, especially those of you who have written reviews and sent in feedback! It's thanks to all of you that Waves of Steel has improved so much since that first release in July of 2021! I look forward to seeing your reactions as we move towards the final missions. The complete release notes for version 0.43 are below. Gameplay changes:

This release adds two new missions to the main campaign. We're nearly done with chapter 2! Gameplay:

This is a patch release to fix a critical bug found in v0.41. I apologize for th e issue! Bugfixes:

This is primarily a bugfixes release. However, it does add a new bonus mission. This mission is unlocked after completing mission 200 "Chrysalis". If you've already completed that mission, you'll need to clear it again to trigger the unlock; the "Win Mission" assist should be sufficient. Gameplay:

Waves of Steel v0.40 release notes This release adds two new missions. Excitingly, we are now over halfway done with the main campaign! The end's not in sight yet, but this is major progress. This mission adds a new cosmetic option to your ship: flag and light strands! These let you string cables between any two parts of your ship, and then place decorations on the cables. This build replaces the library that Waves of Steel uses to communicate with Steam. ALL MOD MAKERS WILL NEED TO RE-UPLOAD THEIR MODS, AND ALL MOD USERS WILL NEED TO RE-DOWNLOAD THEIR MODS AFTERWARDS. The reason for this is because the game now expects the mod to include a "metadata.json" file with the mod. The game will automatically generate this file when the mod is uploaded. Existing mods that lack this file WILL NOT LOAD. The benefit is that now mods should work even if Steam is in offline mode or is otherwise inaccessible, and the mods menu should load faster. I apologize for the inconvenience. Other changes:

This release adds a new mission, "Eitri's Forge"! The next mission after it is nearly done! Gameplay:

Waves of Steel v0.37 is here, and with it comes support for Steam Workshop! You can subscribe to mods, download them, and activate them in-game, as well as upload your own mods! The workshop's still a little quiet right now, but hopefully we'll have plenty of content up there soon.
Otherwise, this is a patch release, focusing on bugfixes and general polish. No new missions are in this release, but we have one nearly ready for the next release! Happy sailing! Gameplay:

Ghost ships are terrorizing the seas! In this non-story bonus mission, Quinn's crew investigates strange happenings near the Philadelphia Naval Yards, where mysterious, almost-invisible ships are causing trouble for everyone. Shoot down flying witches with your AA guns, battle spooky ghost ships, and grab some new cosmetic treats for your ship-customizing needs! This mission is available after you complete the "Quetzalcoatl" mission. Happy Halloween!

Release notes for Waves of Steel v0.35b This is a patch release. Bugfixes:

• Fix a bug causing the mission "Hunter, Hunted" to softlock during cinematics
• Fix ASW weapons on autofire being unable to target submerged buildings
• The mission "The Cat's Away" is now properly indicated as containing a treasure
• The mission "The Cat's Away" no longer gives you a Farragut-class destroyer hull every time you finish it
• Fix some text display issues in the part stats panel
• The player's position in "Winter" has been changed
• Add a new portrait for Lt. Nichols, used in "Winter"

This release adds two new missions: 230 "Hammer and Anvil", and 240 "Winter". I hope you enjoy them! Gameplay:

This release adds two new missions. The first is a standard story mission and takes place after "Hunter, Hunted". The second is a bonus Halloween mission, and must be unlocked by first beating "Quetzalcoatl". If you've already beaten that mission, you'll need to re-complete it (using the "Win Mission" assist counts). Feedback on both missions is welcome! Gameplay:

Waves of Steel v0.33 release notes This release overhauls the weapon configuration UI. You can now tell weapons to autofire only at specific target types (e.g. PT boats and planes only), and you can reconfigure your weapons in the middle of combat. Please let me know if you encounter any issues with weapon targeting or other weapon behavior! New missions are coming soon! Gameplay:

This update adds a new mission, #210 "Hunter, Hunted"! This marks the start of the cruiser chapter of the game. Gameplay:[olist]

This release adds a new mission: #200, "Chrysalis". This mission closes out the first act of the game, and provides the first official playable cruiser. Gameplay: - Higher-tier AI ships now have a blanket damage reduction, scaling with the tier of the ship. Don't worry, I have absolutely zero plans to turn ships into massive bullet sponges, and I'll be keeping a close eye on the pace of combat. - As a consequence of the above, the ships present in some missions have been reworked. - AI ships are considerably faster - The game now creates backup saves. If it is unable to load the regular save, it will attempt to load the backup save; if both fail, then it will create a new save rather than hang on the main menu. In any case these events will be messaged to the player - During combat, objectives are shown to the player as they become active / are completed - The Deutschland ship and associated models have been updated - New aircraft carrier: the Akagi - The "mast superstructure" part cannot be mirrored, to prevent reversed flags - Weapons in the ship designer now use a different color once placed. This should make them easier to see when placed on top of superstructure - The 5" 4-barreled gun has a slightly different model - Placing parts near the centerline of the ship with the mouse should no longer require irritatingly precise mouse control - The "part selection mode" toggle in the ship designer has been changed from a menu option to a button - Added a "no flag" flag option - Mortars are a bit heavier - Added more building destruction sound effects - Tweaked the behavior of the combat camera - Depth charge projectors and Hedgehogs have longer ranges and should be easier to use - The Flying Battleship has more HP - 4", 5", and 6" guns now track faster Bugfixes: - Added a bunch of logging around paradropped ships. If you encounter a ship getting stuck in midair, please submit a report with F7 - Fix an issue causing anti-submarine weapons to fail to lead their targets adequately - Fix the win-mission cheat occasionally making the game hang - Fix an issue causing portraits to excessively brighten/darken during dialog - Fix the Kongo battleship's underdeck not working properly - Fix the Bayern battleship's upper/lower decks not being visually distinguished enough - Fix an issue causing the red "guidance arrows" in combat to get stuck - Fix an issue causing gun turret barbettes to skew oddly when the ship rolls - Fix paradropped ships failing to move once they successfully land - Fix the ocean looking weird underneath paradropped ships or near dead ships - Fix being unable to cancel out of the "create new ship" menu - Fix the new-ship menu not reliably showing stats on the selected ship - Fix graphical glitches when in the new-ship menu - The F7 feedback form now includes the player's savefile - Hopefully fix an issue where submitting feedback would cause the mouse to become unlocked from the game window - Fix the game hanging sometimes when accessing the cheats menu - Fix some graphical issues with the Oerlikon guns - Fix autofire weapons shooting at allied ships - Fix a bug that prevented parts from being rotated in the ship designer - AI ships should be unable to leave the combat arena, regardless of what their orders say - Fix a hole in the bottom of the County-class cruiser hull

I've officially marked Waves of Steel as supporting Linux, after getting reports from playtesters that the game is working for them. Thank you, and have fun!

OK, let's try that again! Sorry for the confusion, folks. 0.30b is live: - Fix the Linux build not launching properly - Fixed a few issues causing ships to flicker during combat - Fix the engine tutorial not being completeable - Fix undo/redo being accessible during ship designer tutorials - Fix demonstration modded parts being visible in the parts menu

Turns out there were some critical rendering issues that make the game a little hard to play. My apologies for the rollback! If you want to access the new build, you can use the "beta" Steam branch, no password required.

Another week has passed, and it's time for an update to Waves of Steel! I want to especially say welcome to fans of the Steel Roar games in Japan who have discovered Waves of Steel! I am thrilled that you are enjoying my attempt to continue its legacy. Please join the Discord if you would like to discuss the game with fellow fans, learn about modding, and have the opportunity to give feedback more directly! Release notes for Waves of Steel v0.30: - There are no new missions in this release. I'm working on them! But most of my effort this week has gone into bugfixes and polish. - The appearance of ships has been updated: -- New materials for all ships and ship parts -- Ambient occlusion has been enabled -- Tweaked wake and water effects - This build includes early Linux support. If you have a Linux machine, please let me know if you run into any issues! Ship Designer - A bug in the Ship Designer that caused parts to get out of sync with their collision volumes has hopefully been fixed. This was a weird one! - The Ship Designer now supports undo and redo. This is a new feature and I fully expect there will be some hitches with it. Please let me know if you run into any problems! - Fix a bug where the side-view camera would be out of place after changing the zoom level - When adding a new decal, the decal menu always starts from the topmost level, instead of the same level as the previous decal you added. - If the player tries to add a custom decal that is too big, an error message is displayed - Fix the ship/part preview not showing shadows - Updated Iowa ship, bridge, and vent models - Fix the Landing Ship being unusable by the player, due to missing underdeck - Fix the name of the 6" gun (6" 53-caliber, not 6" 47-caliber) - 6" gun barbettes don't get quite so tall when they need to superfire - Fix a bug causing the System button to not unlock after finishing tutorials - The confirm/cancel buttons in the confirmation dialog (e.g. for saving over an existing ship) can be clicked on - The "Unlock all techs" menu option is available before creating a new ship - Tweaked how the flag picker responds to the mouse Missions - Failing a mission does not unlock the next mission - Fixed a bug causing the mouse cursor to not be locked to the game window when in photo mode - The flamethrower deals twice as much damage. Multi-barreled flamethrowers have more ammunition - Fixed numerous issues with the mission stats panel, especially around displaying unlocked techs - Fixed being unable to click the mouse to continue dialog during the tutorial - Fix several display issues with widescreen displays - During dialog sections, the current speaker should be easier to recognize by their portrait - Button prompts in dialog boxes now update if the player changes which controller they're using - Mission 110 "The Cat's Away" has slightly tweaked tech drops - Moved the net in mission 180 "Quetzalcoatl" - Fixed mission music overriding the "lose" sting if the player dies - Fixed the "win" sting playing at too loud a volume - Derelict ships now always drop something - Added a sound effect when buildings are destroyed - Fixed binoculars not working when the game is paused - Fixed binoculars obscuring parts of the HUD - Added an achievement, with very temporary art :) - Fix a dialog glitch in mission 120 "Paralysis" Mods - Mods can now provide their own ships.json and parts.json files, which will not get overwritten when Steam updates the game

It's been a week since launch! And what a very busy week it's been. Thank you everyone who has played and enjoyed the game, and thank you especially to the folks who have provided feedback, whether through the F7 feedback form in-game, or on Discord! This release is focused on bugfixing and polish. No major content has been added. Waves of Steel v0.29 release notes: Combat: - Dialog boxes can be advanced by using the left mouse button, in addition to by hitting Enter. - Ships now lean to the outside of curves instead of the inside. Our ship physics designer has been properly educated. - Changed the appearance of planes and buildings in long-range radar - Tech crates are less common, so that you aren't pretty well guaranteed to get every single tech on the first playthrough of a mission - "Hedgehog" anti-submarine weapon is much easier to use, and supports autofire - When switching weapons, the icon of the most important weapon in the group is drawn over all targeting reticles - Tweaked death animations for ships slightly - Activating or deactivating an assist does not close the assists menu - Increased volume of torpedo and depth charge firing sound effects - The boss in mission 180 "Quetzalcoatl" has a much larger stock of PT boats to throw at you. - Depth charge projectors have more range and should have an easier time tracking targets - Screenshake power has been globally reduced by half - Fix spelling of "Jrmungandr" - Changed the AI for PT boats in mission 130 "Wolfpack" - The "speed lines" have been removed - Tweak the appearance of the ocean when it's raining Ship Designer: - New decal: googly eyes - The flag picker now has mouse support - Tutorials can be cancelled by leaving the ship designer - Tutorials now include more highlighting of the part the player is expected to interact with - All battleships now have 4 propellers. This leaves them vastly overpowered, but what else is new? - You no longer need to exit the game to turn off the "Unlock all techs" assist. Just returning to the main menu will suffice. - Most superstructure can now build on top of other superstructure - The game will prompt you before saving your ship if it would overwrite an existing ship - Tweak how the PD Command stat is displayed - The mortar weapon can now be accessed once it is unlocked Mod support: - Modded ship parts (including weapons) now function properly - Modded models can include custom materials/textures Free-Play: - The ship picker now has mouse support Intermission and main menu: - Added a mission stats display. This is in a very preliminary state. Suggestions on other stats to display are welcome! - Added the ability to delete saves Bugfixes: - Probably fix a bug causing paradropped ships to hang around in midair instead of correctly falling. - The tutorial combat mission now has correct terrain display in the long-range radar - Fix all weapons in a weapon group showing "out of ammunition" if any of them was out of ammo - Fix ships saving with the wrong names internally, which may have caused some reported issues with lost ship data - Fix menu options on the intermission screen being able to be interacted with when the options UI is up - Fix menu options on the free-play UI being able to be interacted with when the ship picker is up - Fix an issue causing ships to steer backwards briefly if e.g. the ram special is used when going backwards - Fix point-defense weapons getting assigned to the wrong weapon groups - Ship designer tutorials will properly unlock if the "win mission" assist is used - Fix damage smudges drawing on top of energy shields - Fix a bug causing decals to not stay flipped after the ship is loaded (or in combat mode) - Thunder sound effects now obey the volume settings - The bridge background is higher-resolution - The game no longer says "Continue" if there is no existing save - Fix the camera drifting during the lock-on portion of the combat tutorial - The tutorial now requires you to hit maximum speed, rather than hit the Throttle Up/Down buttons a certain number of times (i.e. you can hold the buttons down) - Hopefully fix a bug where AI ships would peace out and attempt to leave the map - Fix a bug where the mouse could get un-captured during combat, making it possible to accidentally click outside the game's window - Fix the radar background looking odd on widescreen displays - Fix specials UI not working on widescreen displays - Fix various UI elements being drawn when in photo mode - Fix subs pinging when the game is paused - Don't show "kill count" progress if there's only 1 target to destroy.

In celebration of Waves of Steel hitting Early Access, we're doing a live stream of the game! Come join us as we fight off hordes of enemy ships, planes, and subs, all in our own custom-built warships!

Cast off! We're fighting off enemy ships, subs, and planes in Waves of Steel, all in our own custom-built warships. This livestream will show off all of the content in the game's demo and more, including extra levels, the build-your-own-mission free-play mode, and building even more powerful cruisers and battleships with high-tech gear!

The Steam Next Fest has given us a ton of great feedback! This release fixes a number of issues that were giving players some trouble. Thank you, everyone! Waves of Steel v0.22 release notes:

• Improved depth charges: they have a doubled rate of fire, and their projectiles are now visible
• Swapped the buttons for "skip" and "previous" in dialog
• Fix some buried buildings in "The Tendency of Power"
• Fix a bug allowing superstructure that is supporting other parts to be deleted
• Fixed a bug preventing the mouse from working with some parts of the decal UI in the ship designer
• Photo mode now allows you to hide the photo mode HUD
• Add an option to invert the camera controls
• Tweaked the shapes of some superstructure parts
• Fix a bug allowing projectiles to time out during dialog

Cast off! We're fighting off enemy ships, subs, and planes in Waves of Steel, all in our own custom-built warships. This livestream will show off all of the content in the game's demo and more, including extra levels, the build-your-own-mission free-play mode, and building even more powerful cruisers and battleships with high-tech gear!

Cast off! We're fighting off enemy ships, subs, and planes in Waves of Steel, all in our own custom-built warships. This livestream will show off all of the content in the game's demo and more, including extra levels, the build-your-own-mission free-play mode, and building even more powerful cruisers and battleships with high-tech gear!

Development keeps trucking along! This release sees two new missions added to the game:

• Galapagos Islands: break through a maze of minefields, turrets, and submarines to take out the enemy command center!
• Panama Canal: fight off the enemy blockade and break through to the Atlantic Ocean!

We're hard at work on getting the game ready for Early Access! v0.14 includes two new missions: one navigating the channels and bays at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, and another that's an old-fashioned brawl on the open ocean. Of course, this release also includes pages of bug fixes and polish, including such items as:

• Changed the graphics for projectile shells so that ones that are far away from the player are dimmed, reducing visual noise
• Fixed a bug causing "zombie" PT boats to sometimes be created when one is destroyed
• Added a clear-time tracker to the mission summary
• New sound effects for several guns
• New flags, and the ability for flags to be of different aspect rations or even non-rectangular
• Add guidance to help players track down the last few ships they need to kill