PT Boats is dedicated to a small group of little known but perhaps some of the most daring naval combatants of World War II: the torpedo boat crews. These ships are small, fast and agile, and extremely dangerous due to the on-board torpedo launchers. But they are also the most vulnerable of all military vessels. More than once in the history of WWII, a handful of those little deadly boats helped decide the course of an entire battle and executed seemingly impossible missions.

They were called the "mosquito fleet" because of their unique combat tactics. Using speed and agility, dodging enemy fire, PT boats approached seemingly giant enemy ships in a fight of David against Goliath, stung them with well aimed torpedo volleys - and immediately withdrew!

The casualties were immense, but the results often worth these lives and sacrifices. These small heroes of the great war made an unforgettable contribution to the Allied victory.

„PT Boats: Knights of the Sea“ is a full-blown naval simulation, and more: combining key elements of a strategic, tactical and action simulator, the game allows the player to control each crew member separately - or command whole groups of ships in a strategic layer!

Developer Diary #3 Repair Management

The game’s repair model clearly emphasizes that the crew of a ship is a very valuable resource. On the open sea, the ship is repaired by its crew members - simply because there is no one else around to do the job. When a battle alarm is raised, those crew members not busy with guns and steering the ship form repair teams whose task it is to ensure the ship’s survivability and fix any combat damage done to the boat.

The damage model in "PT Boats: Knights of the Sea" assumes that a number of independent parts of the ship can be damaged (hull, engines, fuel system, steering control and communication systems); also, fire can break out in various compartments of a ship or a PT boat. The player will have the opportunity to focus the efforts of the repair teams in a way to ensure that the most severe damage be repaired first.

There are two ways for a player to increase the number of crew members tasked with repairing the ship, thus speeding up the repairing process.

First, you can order everyone to go under deck. The gun crews will descent to the engine department, and the speed of the repairing process will increase significantly. Naturally, the boat will be unable to fire its machine guns and cannons while repair is in progress, but on the other hand the crew members will be protected from enemy fire. After the most severe damage is fixed, you can order your men to man the guns once again, and the speed of the repairing process will be reduced to normal.

Secondly, as we had mentioned before, there is the opportunity to manually assign priorities for the repair teams. This is implemented as described below. The unit status bar shows the separate sections of the hull, engines (this section also includes the fuel system, screw propellers and the steering control), and also the fire indicator.
Above these indicators the status of various parts of the ship is shown graphically, reflecting the general state of the unit.

As the ship takes damage, the indicators change color thus showing that the corresponding part has taken damage. When the player sees a particular indicator turning from green to yellow, or from yellow to red, he can order all repair teams to attempt stopping leaks or fix a failing engine or repair a stuck rudder - this is done via hotkeys. It is especially important to extinguish fires in a timely manner, since fire causes considerable damage to the ship over time until it is fully extinguished - the ship can still be lost to a fire even if it was not seriously damaged otherwise. Also, fire increases the chance of an internal detonation.

Damage to the communication systems is a different story. The player loses control of the ship and is not be able to regain it until the crew fixes the damage by itself. This part of the repairing process cannot be controlled by the player due to obvious reasons (orders can not be issued); also, the radio station is a more complex piece of equipment compared to other systems of the ship, so usually only few crew members can fix it relatively quickly.

Another important thing to remember: the on-the-fly repairs in "PT Boats: Knights of the Sea" are field repairs, when important parts are not substituted and the mechanisms being repaired usually continue operating. Therefore it is be impossible to fix your PT boat to a “brand-new” state. The best the crew can do is preventing your vessel from sinking.

Also, various systems of the ship have their damage thresholds tracked separately and have to be repaired separately, and also at different rates. This is quite logical, since it can be relatively simple to patch up some bullet holes and pump out the water, but it is absolutely impossible in the field to repair the cylinders of an engine smashed by a direct shell impact.

„PT Boats: Knights of the Sea“ is currently in localization stage. The english language version will be available in North America and Europe only from via direct download or as a hardcopy with fully printed manual and DVD box by mail for $45 (plus S&H if applicable). A free demo will be available around the time of release as well.