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.

Bugfixes:

• 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.

Bugfixes:

• 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 Jörmungandr 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 Cöln-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".

Bugfixes:

• 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.

Modding:

• 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.

Small indies like us need all the help we can get from fans and followers. Here's some things you can do that will really make a difference:

• 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.

With your help, I know we can make Waves of Steel a success! Thank you for your support!

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.

Bugfixes:

• 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

Bugfixes:

• 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

Modding:

• 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.

Bugfixes:

• 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.

Modding:

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