View Full Version : What's Next?
So Jutland is done! :lier:
What is the next game to be done? My hope is Ironclads-covering the American Civil War along with hypothetical European Intervention as well as possible conflict between Chile and I think it was Peru. The old Ironclads Expansion by Yaquinto covered these cases. The DATA cards for the ships were excellantly done and would present a wealth of knowledge for the developers. The Civil War records of both the Union and Confederacy are fairly complete. Just thinking of the 3-D ship models of the ironclads.:vsign:
I can hear the purist's complaints now.:stirthepot: The turret speed of the Monitor is wrong or the video of 68lb solid shot skipping across the waves before striking a vessel is not relistic enough. :laugh:
I am not sure if there is a camapign game in there though. Closing the Mississippi is the only one that comes to mind. I don't think the Union Blockade would work.:nuts:
Cry Havoc and .....:horse:
Let's wait and see, we don't even know what's in Jutland yet! There maybe interest in expanding the theatre, other navies and campaign beyond 1916!
WW2 campaigns are possible too.
Especially Pacific one can be really interesting.
But engine must be expanded to modell land operations, or atleast troop/supply convoys.
Bullethead
02 Jun 08, 13:42
The old Ironclads Expansion by Yaquinto covered these cases. The DATA cards for the ships were excellantly done and would present a wealth of knowledge for the developers.
I believe I own the very last copy of the Ironclads Expansion that was ever available. Yaquinto had gone out of the game business some time before (but were still in business printing stuff) but at the time I happened to live down the road from them. So one day on a whim I paid them a visit and they rooted around in their back rooms and found me their very last copy. I got it for like 1/2 price, too. Same thing for their WW1 airplane game. Such things were possible in the days before the internet and Ebay. Nowadays, they'd have wanted a lot more for them ;).
Do you have the 2nd expansion / rewrite called "Shot & Shell", by World Wide Wargames? Basically, they bought the rights to the game and reissued it with some additional rules and units for some of the larger battles. But you could still use everything under the original rules.
But anyway, you can tell I was a big fan of this game back in the day. So naturally, I tried to make my own data cards for ships that weren't in any of the games. This meant trying to crack the code for things like determining armor values, using things like Conway's to see how the real values corresponded to game values. And that's when I found that the game values ain't that good.
There's not much consistency between ships with essentially the same real-life armor--in the game, they have an apparently arbitrary range of values. Also, the game often has armor where there wasn't any in real life. So basically, I came to the conclusion that they'd tweaked a lot of the ships for play balance in specific scenarios that feature them, without much concern for the overall system. Still, it's a fun game. Just don't take it as the Bible.
Every considered politics, Bullethead? All this text and nowhere even a hint of an answer to the original question :) Quite brilliant!
Admiral Nelson
02 Jun 08, 14:39
I'd like this: :)
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v106/NelsonAndBronte/Ships/Dewey.jpg
Bloodstar
02 Jun 08, 14:46
So Jutland is done! :lier:
What is the next game to be done? My hope is Ironclads-covering the American Civil War along with hypothetical European Intervention as well as possible conflict between Chile and I think it was Peru. The old Ironclads Expansion by Yaquinto covered these cases. The DATA cards for the ships were excellantly done and would present a wealth of knowledge for the developers. The Civil War records of both the Union and Confederacy are fairly complete. Just thinking of the 3-D ship models of the ironclads.:vsign:
I can hear the purist's complaints now.:stirthepot: The turret speed of the Monitor is wrong or the video of 68lb solid shot skipping across the waves before striking a vessel is not relistic enough. :laugh:
I am not sure if there is a camapign game in there though. Closing the Mississippi is the only one that comes to mind. I don't think the Union Blockade would work.:nuts:
Cry Havoc and .....:horse:
No more ships please.
I would like to see Norm get's back to one thing he best does - Operational War Simulations.
:D
Mario
Firestorm
02 Jun 08, 15:11
Well if it isn't in Jutland. I'd like a second campaign that covers late 1914 into early 1915. In the last two months of 1914 the gap in numbers was very narrow between the High Seas Fleet and the Grand Fleet. Especially after the loss of the HMS Audacious and the withdrawal of 3 Battlecruisers to hunt Spee.
On the naval side, I very much like the idea of doing ironclads. I would also like to see the Spanish American War, as well as an expansion for Distant Guns to cover the 1894 Sino-Japanese War. On the land side, how about a campaign to link into the naval one in Distant Guns. To rgreat, a Pacific theater WWII game will more importantly require an very detailed air operations model, which would probably require an entirely new game engine.
That's the reason I'd like to see a Distant Guns: War Plan Orange, set in the 1922-34 timeframe with several different campaigns. Oh, all those ships scrapped for "those treaties" or never built or converted (sigh) to carriers...
(I am an enthusiast for big gunned ships, even though I realise that the carrier faction was ultimately right.)
Also, since aircraft still had a fairly low performance, their impact on strategy and tactics would be nowhere near as dominant as in a WWII scenario, giving developers the chance to gradually introduce airplanes into the DG engine (only a score or so of planes, not hundreds at the same time/place/battle, only hundreds on the campaign map, not near to a hundred thousand). Amphibous operations would need to be included, but also not to as extravagant a scale as in a WWII game. Anybody who owns a copy of matrixgames War Plan Orange knows what kind of scenarios I envision.
Bullethead
02 Jun 08, 17:45
Every considered politics, Bullethead? All this text and nowhere even a hint of an answer to the original question :) Quite brilliant!
Thanks. I spent 3 years as a Marine lance corporal, with all the responsibility but none of the true power of an NCO. Surviving that, and accomplishing my assigned missions, without having a successful blanket party carried out against me, is IMHO pretty good training in politics, at least in terms of dealing with certain demographics :D.
But honestly, I have no idea what we're doing next. I don't have a need to know.
Oh man BH, now you went and did it, you brought up Yaquinto games. I think that of all the old 70's-80's board game companies, that one had the biggest impact on me.
I LOVED Ironclads (especially the scenarios that had the dual turret monitors) but i did notice that either by sheer chance or some flaw in the damage tables, that regardless of how many ships were locked in battle, at the end of day a full half of them would have their rudders jammed to Starboard!
I think I must own just about every Yaquinto game that was ever in print (well looking at Wiki there are a FEW I don't have, but not many) but my absolute hands down, favorite one was Marine: 2002. This depicted a, at the time, future war set on the Moon between the US and Soviet Union. What I Think I loved most the game most was the cool artwork on the gamebox cover. Of course Yaquinto games were known for their nice counters and game maps but there was something about that cover (Showing a US Marine and "gunship" engaging targets close to the surface of the moon) that just amazed me. I ended up buying multiple copies of that game and designed my own massive campaigns. I even have one copy still new in the box with not a single counter punched out. I know, its a collectors item to only me, but I still really love that game. I think the game was worth the price just for the interesting editors notes at the end of the rules manual which went into detail on the realities (and limitations) of infantry combat in space and the type of weapons most likely to be used (high energy yield charged particle weapons).
Another cool Yaquinto game was Shooting Stars, again it was a fictionalized US vs. USSR in space type game but what was novel about it was that it tried to realistically model *air* combat in the frictionless environment of space where movement and maneuvering was done with vectorized jets.
Anyway, when someone mentions Yaquinto games i get a little misty eyed. To me, they were cutting edge with their game designs and map/counter presentation.
Anyone remember Close Assault? I believe that was the game with the charging Japanese officer on the cover. I seem recall that it had really cool counters as well, and went for realistic top down images imprinted on the counters (for vehicles), instead of the plain symbolic designs which had been common up until that point. Maybe i am wrong, but vehicles were over-sized counters with separate smaller counters depicting the physical turrets. I thought that was cool and neat innovation. I just hope I am attributing this to then correct game.
Anyway, as you can see, I have been a gamer for a LONG time!
;-)
You guys want to really see me get all misty, bring up the Microgames/MetaGame/Steve Jackson games! Ogre, Melee, Car Wars, Truck Stop, Sunday Drivers, G.E.V., WarpWar, Death Test, Wizard, Rivets... I could go on and on. One of my prized gaming collection items is a signed copy of the first issue of Autoduel Quarterly. Lets see one of you top that!
Madmatt
The Spanish-American war is interesting from an USN point of view but I doubt it would be much fun from the view of the Spaniards.
Bullethead
02 Jun 08, 21:17
Oh man BH, now you went and did it, you brought up Yaquinto games. I think that of all the old 70's-80's board game companies, that one had the biggest impact on me.
They never made a bad game, did they? I even play "Beastlord" once in a while still ;).
I was very glad the company itself didn't go out of business when they quit making wargames. They just got out of that business. But still, they had a great line-up, and it was very sad to see them go beyond my sphere of interest.
Some Yaquinto games reminded me a lot of AH games, and vice versa. Ironclads was like Tobruk on the water, Yaquinto's WW1 airplane game was like a more detailed version of AH's Air Force / Dauntless series, etc. I'm pretty sure some of the same folks were involved in both.
You guys want to really see me get all misty, bring up the Microgames/MetaGame/Steve Jackson games! Ogre, Melee, Car Wars, Truck Stop, Sunday Drivers, G.E.V., WarpWar, Death Test, Wizard, Rivets... I could go on and on. One of my prized gaming collection items is a signed copy of the first issue of Autoduel Quarterly. Lets see one of you top that!
When I was at Texas A&M in the early 80s, Steve Jackson was was coming to our WarCon, in a van that he'd put a fake turret on to promote the then-new Car Wars. He got pulled over in Huntsville, Texas, home of the big state pen, on suspicion of being a psycho. Even though the cops eventually saw it was a fake, he still had to get the con organizers to vouch for him. I answered the phone, but just handed it off to somebody higher up the chain :D.
I remember back when SJG was called "Metagaming", and you could only get them from ads in Science News magazine. That's where I got my original versions of Warp War, Melee, Wizard, and Ogre from.
BTW, when I get good and toasted, I work on my sci-fi novel. I use the GURPS vehicle designer program from SJG to keep my spaceships internally consistent with each other, and I use the GURPS Space 4E rules to set up the solar systems :).
I was lucky in that I had a local gaming store (called Wanna Play) that had incredible stock of the early games back when they came in small ziplock bags and had photocopied maps and counters.
Those early Meta Games were originally called Microgames and came in small packs for about 5 bucks each. An amazing value compared to prices these days for games.
Anyone remember an early rival to D&D called T&T (Tunnels and Trolls)? Yup I have that as well as first edition copies of the D&D Players Guide, DM Guide, Monster Manual and DM Game Shield. This was all before term DM (Dungeon Master) became GM (Game Master).
I was a member of, at the time, huge gaming group known as "Buzkrieger", named for the founder Buzz. While Buzkrieger was primarily a historical miniatures gaming group (microarmor WWII battles!) I recall a few fond games of the original Jutland too. Luckily we had an empty auditorium to play in!
Madmatt
Crazy people. ;)
...but i'm not better... played with chemicals and explosives in my youth. :D
oz_boater
03 Jun 08, 06:13
I was lucky in that I had a local gaming store (called Wanna Play) that had incredible stock of the early games back when they came in small ziplock bags and had photocopied maps and counters.
Those early Meta Games were originally called Microgames and came in small packs for about 5 bucks each. An amazing value compared to prices these days for games.
Madmatt
Yes, I do remember them. I especially loved OGRE and would play it at school at lunch time.
Looking through my collection now (after moving countries several times, getting married and divorced) all I have left of the really old games are the maps the SPIs "War in the Pacific", "Ironclads" + the Expansion and SPI's "Dreadnought".
Its amazing how close you can come to getting the "feel" of an even with counters and some straight forward rules. Sometimes I feel the computer has hurt us. That its so easy for a designer to get sucked into the detail of mechanics that its easy to loose the cohesion a good game needs.
More detail does not always make for a better game.
Firestorm
03 Jun 08, 10:50
The Spanish-American war is interesting from an USN point of view but I doubt it would be much fun from the view of the Spaniards.
Yeah my thoughts too. A modern battlefleet of modern Pre-Drednoughts against a couple of cruisers and other obsolete ships. Seems like it would be a severly unbalanced game to me. Of course then again it was a one sided war to begin with too.
Admiral Nelson
03 Jun 08, 10:53
Avalanche games made a decent Spanish American war board game; victory conditions were what provided the balance to the Spanish player. You might lose your fleet, but sinking x number of US ships is still a moral victory, etc. Other options include sending the Spanish fleet that got stuck in Suez actually to Manila, German intervention (they certainly made a nuisance of themselves) and so on.
Bullethead
03 Jun 08, 12:57
Sometimes I feel the computer has hurt us. That its so easy for a designer to get sucked into the detail of mechanics that its easy to loose the cohesion a good game needs.
I dunno. Computer games are so much more convenient. No more spending 1/2 your available playing time setting up the map, sorting counters, unpacking miniatures, etc. No more taking 4 real hours to play out 1 turn that represents 1 minute or so of game time. No more having to leaving all the stacks of counters sitting there at the mercy of any passing pet or small child until you can play the next turn on some other day. And best of all, no more rules lawyering--computers are the best impartial umpires and if the interface won't let you do it, you can't do it :).
Bullethead
03 Jun 08, 13:00
Anyone remember an early rival to D&D called T&T (Tunnels and Trolls)?
Don't forget that game's evil twin: Monsters Monsters. That was my favorite, playing as an ogre or something ravaging a village :D.
oz_boater
03 Jun 08, 19:00
I dunno. Computer games are so much more convenient. No more spending 1/2 your available playing time setting up the map, sorting counters, unpacking miniatures, etc. No more taking 4 real hours to play out 1 turn that represents 1 minute or so of game time. No more having to leaving all the stacks of counters sitting there at the mercy of any passing pet or small child until you can play the next turn on some other day. And best of all, no more rules lawyering--computers are the best impartial umpires and if the interface won't let you do it, you can't do it :).
Got me there.
Not exactly OGRE's problem though, or Ironclads, or even Dreadnought. The obsession with detail is not restricted to computer games and when it is pursued in paper games it is death.
After all I never did play SPI's "War in the Pacific" past early 1942 but it would certainly be possible to play Matrix's PC game "War in the Pacific" to completion.
That said, I do think that detail can be a trap and one that is very easy to fall into with modern computers. They can do so much, but focusing on the detail is often at the expense of the experience of playing and the ability to produce historic outcomes using historic tactics (and the ability to experiment with a-historic tactics and see what they achieve).
Detail matters, but picking on the wrong detail can produce silly results. For example in "Fighting Steel" (the original) all firing was essentially director controlled salvo fire but as it is a fact that when the range falls sufficently for tragectories to be flat and flight times minimal it is much more effective to fire over open sights (as pre-dreadnoughts did). This was not modelled and so it was an effective tactic to run down American ships and repeatedly ram them as enemy fire never got over a few percent hits - even at point blank range. This problem in the mechanism happened because while they modelled each shell, they failed to model how targetting changes with range. A more abstract combat model would have not had this problem. In this case MORE detail (but only in certain parts) caused a failure of the simulation.
Similarly you normally see in "modern" land combat games an obsession with the technical details of vehicles, gun capabilities, armour thicknesses, etc. But that tanks have a horrible time hiding, can't see and can't hear is ignored (its a soft factor) yet these limitations explain why infantry (which do not have these limitations) are still critical elements on real battlefields and the failure to account for them means that infantry are normally just 'crunchies' in computer games.
I am a detail freak, as are most programmers (its an occupational hazard). I do however believe that its the big picture (experience / outcomes) that is more important than the getting so sucked into the detail - especially as it is SO easy to model non critical detail (and fail to model critical detail). Its the nature of modern computers and programming techniques - because they demand huge effort and incredible precision - that make this very hard to do.
The successor to "Fighting Steel" is going to have much MORE detail but I wonder if it will produce a more interesting game or better outcomes that SPI's old board game "Dreadnoughts" or the contemporary minatures rules "General Quarters III / Fleet Action Imminent"
Detail, or lack of it, History vs playability, are the big issues in wargame design no matter what the medium. The lack of historical detail in HPS naval campaigns makes them just as awful as the over detailed examples you note. The 45 knot at all ranges virtually nuclear tipped torpedos. The gunnery system that basically vaporizes all Light Cruisers and Destroyers on contact.
The only saving feature of their Jutland was that it was so simple it allowed a handful of players to actually fight the whole battle. Yet so warped that at the end of the day there was hardly a DD or TB or CL afloat while the BB's were largely untouched except for those that blew up due to magazine explosions, or torpedo hits.
On the other hand small battles were no fun at all for me in that system. I bought their Guadalcanal before I realized just how bad it was for light ships and have left it on my shelf hardly touched in years.
Which brings me to my wish list for whats next. The most intense, equal, and closely fought naval gun actions of World War Two are at Guadalcanel. Yet no one that I know of has produced a really first class computer simulation of them. It seems to me that with the system SES already has in place it could produce excellent Guadalcanel scneairo's without much trouble. That at any rate is what I'd like to see.
Regards ANav
I dunno. Computer games are so much more convenient. No more spending 1/2 your available playing time setting up the map, sorting counters, unpacking miniatures, etc. No more taking 4 real hours to play out 1 turn that represents 1 minute or so of game time. No more having to leaving all the stacks of counters sitting there at the mercy of any passing pet or small child until you can play the next turn on some other day. And best of all, no more rules lawyering--computers are the best impartial umpires and if the interface won't let you do it, you can't do it :).
here here. It's why I dropped out of board gaming-I have atleast two sets of all the old ASL games. But all of the above got me. That is also why I am not fond of house rules. Can you imagine ASLsers making their own house rules?:nuts: The term 'BUILDING Control' vice 'building control' still gives me the :mad::nuts::cry::upset::censored::headbang::hurt:
My 5 year old son (now 32) earned the sobriquet 'chaotic evil' at my local gaming store. He could just reach the top of the tables with his hands and always wanted to see the top.:upset: Talk bout turning a game upside down.:smoke:
Detail, or lack of it, History vs playability, are the big issues in wargame design no matter what the medium. The lack of historical detail in HPS naval campaigns makes them just as awful as the over detailed examples you note. The 45 knot at all ranges virtually nuclear tipped torpedos. The gunnery system that basically vaporizes all Light Cruisers and Destroyers on contact.
The only saving feature of their Jutland was that it was so simple it allowed a handful of players to actually fight the whole battle. Yet so warped that at the end of the day there was hardly a DD or TB or CL afloat while the BB's were largely untouched except for those that blew up due to magazine explosions, or torpedo hits.
On the other hand small battles were no fun at all for me in that system. I bought their Guadalcanal before I realized just how bad it was for light ships and have left it on my shelf hardly touched in years.
Which brings me to my wish list for whats next. The most intense, equal, and closely fought naval gun actions of World War Two are at Guadalcanel. Yet no one that I know of has produced a really first class computer simulation of them. It seems to me that with the system SES already has in place it could produce excellent Guadalcanel scneairo's without much trouble. That at any rate is what I'd like to see.
Regards ANav
You need to be careful saying 'Yet no one that I know of has produced a really first class computer simulation of them.' Uncommon Valor is pretty good game as War in the Pacific but they are operational games vice tactical RT simulations. I think it was Microprose's Task Force one of the few tactical 3d games.
Bullethead
05 Jun 08, 13:32
Which brings me to my wish list for whats next. The most intense, equal, and closely fought naval gun actions of World War Two are at Guadalcanel. Yet no one that I know of has produced a really first class computer simulation of them.
I guess you never played that old Microprose game "Task Force 1942", which was out around 1990-2 IIRC. That was a great game. It had the whole campaign, which revolved around both sides making repeated supply runs to their ground forces, bombarding the other side's ground forces, and trying to stop the other side from doing the same. Victory occurred when 1 side's ground forces or the other took over the island.
Airplanes and subs were handled somewhat abstractly. You could set up patrol areas for scout planes and attack known enemy units with bombers, but the attacks all happened on the campaign map, not the 3D world. The whole focus was on gun battles. It was one of those games where you had to man the key guns yourself to be competitive because the AI on your side couldn't shoot as well as the AI on the other side, but since that was the whole point of the game, you didn't mind.
The AI was very good at tactics, too. Sometimes annoyingly so, but still very good for all that. For instance, sometimes you were absolutely sure all the enemy was in 1 direction from you and wanted all your ships there. But one of your DDs would insist on staying far off on the other flank as a screen, just in case. Or another time, you'd have an immobilized cruiser left behind as the rest of your force was running for its life from a superior enemy. You might want everybody to run away and leave you to inflict as much damage as possible with the cripple before the inevitable end. But sometimes some DDs would decide to encircle your cripple with smoke instead of running away, and you couldn't make them stop. Thus, the DDs would die, too, and the crippled cruiser wouldn't be able to shoot due to the smoke. But you know, I still liked it when these things happened, because they were believable, historical, and realistic in the sense that in real battles, you can't control all your troops all the time.
BH,
wasn`t there once a game from Microprose which derivated from the campaign in TF 1942? IIRC it was a RTS game without direct control over guns.
Z.
Bullethead
05 Jun 08, 13:50
My 5 year old son (now 32) earned the sobriquet 'chaotic evil' at my local gaming store. He could just reach the top of the tables with his hands and always wanted to see the top.:upset: Talk bout turning a game upside down.:smoke:
A friend of mine had a dog that loved the taste of Tamiya paint and GHQ lead. If you left a miniatures game set up where he could get it, he'd jump up on the table, grab a tank, carry it back to his bed, and lick all the paint off it. He'd even chew it up some to make sure he'd gotten it all. Sometimes he'd swallow them. Then he'd go back and get another. He would do this all day if you let him.
So, a few days later, you'd come back to continue the game and the table would be a wreck, little houses and trees knocked all over and most of the units missing. You could follow a trail of tank turrets back to the dog's bed (the turrets weren't glued on so you could traverse them), where you'd find a company's worth of hulls all reduced to bare, chewed metal.
Since it wasn't my dog, I couldn't kick it, but neither did my friend. So I hoped the damn dog would die of lead poisoning and just quit leaving my own vehicles exposed between game sessions. My friend thought it was too much work marking all the unit positions so left his out and tried to remember to shut the door to the war room. Only he was usually too drunk to remember, so his units kept getting eaten. And he would sometimes go so far as to pick through the dog droppings in the back yard looking for missing AT guns and such. :nuts:
The Great Naval Battles Series from SSI was a good one, there were several covering both the North Atlantic and Pacific theater, in the campaign you had to ship troops and supplies to forward bases.
Still I don't think anything matched Action Stations for close quarter WWII naval action.
Funny I never like sub sims, except for SSI's Torpedo Alley were you could operate either subs or the escorts.
I don't know how well the DG engine would work with WWII naval combat, much more ship control would be needed.
Firestorm
05 Jun 08, 15:18
I guess you never played that old Microprose game "Task Force 1942", which was out around 1990-2 IIRC. That was a great game. It had the whole campaign, which revolved around both sides making repeated supply runs to their ground forces, bombarding the other side's ground forces, and trying to stop the other side from doing the same. Victory occurred when 1 side's ground forces or the other took over the island.
Airplanes and subs were handled somewhat abstractly. You could set up patrol areas for scout planes and attack known enemy units with bombers, but the attacks all happened on the campaign map, not the 3D world. The whole focus was on gun battles. It was one of those games where you had to man the key guns yourself to be competitive because the AI on your side couldn't shoot as well as the AI on the other side, but since that was the whole point of the game, you didn't mind.
The AI was very good at tactics, too. Sometimes annoyingly so, but still very good for all that. For instance, sometimes you were absolutely sure all the enemy was in 1 direction from you and wanted all your ships there. But one of your DDs would insist on staying far off on the other flank as a screen, just in case. Or another time, you'd have an immobilized cruiser left behind as the rest of your force was running for its life from a superior enemy. You might want everybody to run away and leave you to inflict as much damage as possible with the cripple before the inevitable end. But sometimes some DDs would decide to encircle your cripple with smoke instead of running away, and you couldn't make them stop. Thus, the DDs would die, too, and the crippled cruiser wouldn't be able to shoot due to the smoke. But you know, I still liked it when these things happened, because they were believable, historical, and realistic in the sense that in real battles, you can't control all your troops all the time.
I still have the floppy disks for this game. I though it was a great game. I always hated it during night battles when the AI would make nasty torpedo runs with their DD's. I'd always end up losing one or two ships. Here's some screen shots from that game.
Bullethead
05 Jun 08, 16:50
I still have the floppy disks for this game. I though it was a great game. I always hated it during night battles when the AI would make nasty torpedo runs with their DD's. I'd always end up losing one or two ships. Here's some screen shots from that game.
Ah, the memories. I spent MANY hours playing that game, dating from a computer that only had the old 4-color (white, black, cyan, magenta) display. I remember how great I thought the graphics were when I finally bought a 256-color machine ;).
I see the pic at the top of the right column shows the absolute blizzard of starshells you usually saw in that game. That was my main complaint. Instead of having 1 or 2 guns of your 2ndary battery continually pumping out starshells, you had to check fire periocially to shoot full broadsides of starshells with your main battery. When you had a line of several 12- or 15-gun CLs, that became a LOT of starshells :).
BTW, those US CLs were friggin' DEADLY. Lots of 6" guns with high ROF due to using cased propellant, and a bunch of 5"/38s thrown in as langiappe. Once you found the range, which didn't take long due to fire control radar, anything less than a BB was a wreck in a couple of minutes. It made me wonder why the IJN regunned the Mogamis with 8", when their original form inspired the US CLs that proved so effective. OTOH, the IJN and Brit 6" guns were BL, so didn't have the ROF of the US guns. Still, the Brit CLs did pretty well, too.
TF1942 torps.... As with the guns, so with the torps. If you weren't there taking control, your friendly AI couldn't hit squat. Problem was, even when I was at the tubes, I still couldn't hit squat, due to the interface providing zero help for them, although hitting with guns was pretty easy. So I just let the AI do its best with the torps and concentrated on the guns.
You had to have a real rhythm in battles in that game. Every 4-5 salvos, fire a salvo of starshells. Every 8-10 salvos, change course by the most that kept all guns bearing to avoid the inevitable enemy torp barrage. If you did that, you could rule as the USN, given a few CLs :). You never ran out of light on the targets and you hardly ever got hit by torps. And in 8-10 salvos, you could obliterate almost anything the IJN brought to the fight, so you'd change targets during the turn. Fortunately, when playing as the IJN, the US AI wasn't so scared of torps, so even the unassisted AI could do some damage with them :).
"Uncommon Valor" is excellent, but on a different scale. Also I stand corrected. I'd forgotten all about "Task Force 1942" which I owned and enjoyed once upon a time. But that was very long ago and even with that game (if memory serves) a player still had one foot in naval warfare and one in an arcade shooting gallery.
In fact my fear (happily unfounded) with regards to DG was that I'd once again be obliged to run to the bridge and give an order, then run to the guns, aim and shoot them, then run to the engine room etc etc.
Regards ANav
Firestorm
05 Jun 08, 19:35
Ah, the memories. I spent MANY hours playing that game, dating from a computer that only had the old 4-color (white, black, cyan, magenta) display. I remember how great I thought the graphics were when I finally bought a 256-color machine ;).
I see the pic at the top of the right column shows the absolute blizzard of starshells you usually saw in that game. That was my main complaint. Instead of having 1 or 2 guns of your 2ndary battery continually pumping out starshells, you had to check fire periocially to shoot full broadsides of starshells with your main battery. When you had a line of several 12- or 15-gun CLs, that became a LOT of starshells :).
BTW, those US CLs were friggin' DEADLY. Lots of 6" guns with high ROF due to using cased propellant, and a bunch of 5"/38s thrown in as langiappe. Once you found the range, which didn't take long due to fire control radar, anything less than a BB was a wreck in a couple of minutes. It made me wonder why the IJN regunned the Mogamis with 8", when their original form inspired the US CLs that proved so effective. OTOH, the IJN and Brit 6" guns were BL, so didn't have the ROF of the US guns. Still, the Brit CLs did pretty well, too.
TF1942 torps.... As with the guns, so with the torps. If you weren't there taking control, your friendly AI couldn't hit squat. Problem was, even when I was at the tubes, I still couldn't hit squat, due to the interface providing zero help for them, although hitting with guns was pretty easy. So I just let the AI do its best with the torps and concentrated on the guns.
You had to have a real rhythm in battles in that game. Every 4-5 salvos, fire a salvo of starshells. Every 8-10 salvos, change course by the most that kept all guns bearing to avoid the inevitable enemy torp barrage. If you did that, you could rule as the USN, given a few CLs :). You never ran out of light on the targets and you hardly ever got hit by torps. And in 8-10 salvos, you could obliterate almost anything the IJN brought to the fight, so you'd change targets during the turn. Fortunately, when playing as the IJN, the US AI wasn't so scared of torps, so even the unassisted AI could do some damage with them :).
No kidding the US CL's were deadly in TF 1942. I remember one time I had two Brooklyn class cruisers Helena and Honolulu along with the Atlanta class cruiser Juneau and a couple of DD's. The IJN had one of the Kongos, a couple of CA's and alot of DD's. I though my force was going to get wiped out since I was outnumbered and outgunned but by the end of the battle my CL's had put out so many salvos so quickly that several of the IJN DD's were sunk, a CA was sunk, and the Kongo class was burning and was later sunk by aircraft as she limped back to Rabaul. Those CL's fired so quickly I think I had 6 salvos in the air at one time from one cruiser. :nuts:
I loved that old game. Too bad I can't get it working on these new computers. The last great surface naval campaign was the Solomons and TF 1942 did a good job for the time. I'm guessing this will be the final stop for the DG engine with maybe a go at Leyte? The only problem with Leyte is it proved how effective aircraft were once and for all. The only gun engagements being the Japanese main force getting to the Taffy group and Oldendorf's old battleships shooting at the torpedo riddled old Fuso and Yamashiro.
I loved that old game. Too bad I can't get it working on these new computers. The last great surface naval campaign was the Solomons and TF 1942 did a good job for the time. I'm guessing this will be the final stop for the DG engine with maybe a go at Leyte? The only problem with Leyte is it proved how effective aircraft were once and for all. The only gun engagements being the Japanese main force getting to the Taffy group and Oldendorf's old battleships shooting at the torpedo riddled old Fuso and Yamashiro.
The answer is relatively easy after the fact-keep your old PC and W98 SE for the old ones. I have(much to my wife's dismay) 3 old PCs (p133, p200MMX, and P450) which are great for running the old games. Now my question is how much free time do you guys have to run the new games let alone run the old ones? :clown: Probably same as me-none. :nuts:
Task Force 1942 and many other "old friends" can be run in Windows XP and I think Vista using the freeware Dosbox (http://www.dosbox.com/). If the Dosbox command line frightens you, you can also get a frontend GUI prog to tie in with Dosbox, a good one being D-Fend reloaded (http://dfendreloaded.sourceforge.net/)
Task Force 1942 and many other "old friends" can be run in Windows XP and I think Vista using the freeware Dosbox (http://www.dosbox.com/). If the Dosbox command line frightens you, you can also get a frontend GUI prog to tie in with Dosbox, a good one being D-Fend reloaded (http://dfendreloaded.sourceforge.net/)
I've had great luck with DosBox.
the updates have done a great deal of improvement to FS from NWS
my hope is a game like FS that adds land,subs,aircraft,small craft and Battle Stations Midway is not it
Got me there.
Detail matters, but picking on the wrong detail can produce silly results. For example in "Fighting Steel" (the original) all firing was essentially director controlled salvo fire but as it is a fact that when the range falls sufficently for tragectories to be flat and flight times minimal it is much more effective to fire over open sights (as pre-dreadnoughts did). This was not modelled and so it was an effective tactic to run down American ships and repeatedly ram them as enemy fire never got over a few percent hits - even at point blank range. This problem in the mechanism happened because while they modelled each shell, they failed to model how targetting changes with range. A more abstract combat model would have not had this problem. In this case MORE detail (but only in certain parts) caused a failure of the simulation.
Similarly you normally see in "modern" land combat games an obsession with the technical details of vehicles, gun capabilities, armour thicknesses, etc. But that tanks have a horrible time hiding, can't see and can't hear is ignored (its a soft factor) yet these limitations explain why infantry (which do not have these limitations) are still critical elements on real battlefields and the failure to account for them means that infantry are normally just 'crunchies' in computer games.
I am a detail freak, as are most programmers (its an occupational hazard). I do however believe that its the big picture (experience / outcomes) that is more important than the getting so sucked into the detail - especially as it is SO easy to model non critical detail (and fail to model critical detail). Its the nature of modern computers and programming techniques - because they demand huge effort and incredible precision - that make this very hard to do.
The successor to "Fighting Steel" is going to have much MORE detail but I wonder if it will produce a more interesting game or better outcomes that SPI's old board game "Dreadnoughts" or the contemporary minatures rules "General Quarters III / Fleet Action Imminent"
Bullethead
16 Jun 08, 20:33
my hope is a game like FS that adds land,subs,aircraft,small craft and Battle Stations Midway is not it
No kidding there. Somebody just gave me a copy of BSM and it's just plain silly. The only thing realistic about it is that the units look somewhat like real WW2 units. It's fun if you just want silly carnage, but it's not a wargame of any sort.
Admiral Nelson
19 Jun 08, 22:33
Here is a trailer for a new game called Battlestations Pacific (http://www.battlestations.net/pacific/). Is that PoW firing 14" guns in the AA role? :)
Firestorm
19 Jun 08, 22:44
Here is a trailer for a new game called Battlestations Pacific (http://www.battlestations.net/pacific/). Is that PoW firing 14" guns in the AA role? :)
That's what it looked like to me to. The Main Guns seemed be firing as fast as AA guns do.
I think its actually an illusion. Each gun only fires once in the video, just not all together. The target appeared to be ships that seemed all too close for comfort. I doubt that this game has any real accuracy though. Its action and eye candy. That seems to be pretty much it.
looks to be an add on to BSM possible going past 1945
I saw Baka rocket/plane bombs
a late war japanese pusher prop plane Kyushu J7W1 Shinden(it was flight tested in the last week of the war)
link
http://www.daveswarbirds.com/Nippon/Japanese.htm
manned torpedoes
there where shot gun shell for the 18.1" guns on the Yamato but they did a number on the barrels
since this looks to past 1945 new ammo types might have been invented
you could put a prox fuze in a 5" why not a 14" you just are firing at the target much further away once the planes crossed the danger zone for the 14" into the 5" zone
they might have to approch from a greater height not sure what max alt on a 14"shell would be
Here is a trailer for a new game called Battlestations Pacific (http://www.battlestations.net/pacific/). Is that PoW firing 14" guns in the AA role? :)
I once read in a book (Jochen Brennecke?) that Tirpitz fired her main guns at attacking Lancasters. Don`t have any proof and don`t remember if they had any success though.
Z.
I believe that the Rodney and Nelson also had relatively high elevation for their main guns and occasionally fired at aircraft, can't remember where I read it though. I also think that some BB fired at torpedo aircraft. They were not trying to hit as much as use the shell splashes as a threat. I am not sure how well that would work.
contact detonation on the water if the plane is close enough might damage the aircraft
it is doing something that might work than doing nothing will work as doing nothing
I believe that the Rodney and Nelson also had relatively high elevation for their main guns and occasionally fired at aircraft, can't remember where I read it though. I also think that some BB fired at torpedo aircraft. They were not trying to hit as much as use the shell splashes as a threat. I am not sure how well that would work.
Firestorm
20 Jun 08, 20:21
I know that the Yamato fired her 18 inch guns in despiration at attacking aircraft during her last sortie. I also heard somewhere that one of the escorting Japanese battleships (or maybe it was a heavy cruiser) fired it's main guns at the dive bombers during the Battle of Midway trying to knock them down with shell splashes. After they had made their dive bombing runs.
By the time Leyte had rolled around the Japanese had developed an anti-aircraft shell for use in the main guns of the heavy cruisers and battleships. I don't know how successful it was though.
Bullethead
21 Jun 08, 20:20
I believe that the Rodney and Nelson also had relatively high elevation for their main guns and occasionally fired at aircraft
On the morning of 1 June 1916, the rising sun revealed a zep off in the distance from the GF. One of the 15" BBs (Revenge IIRC) fired her 15" at it. The horizontal distance was apparently enough for the then-low elevation of the guns. Of course, she had no time fuzes on these shells so it was a pretty pointless exercise.
Anyway, the BB missed. But that 15" salvo kept on going and splashed down MANY miles away, over the horizon, amongst the Brit DDs that were reforming after their travails of the night before. Needless to say, they were rather freaked out by this. "WTF was THAT?!?!?!?!? Where did that come from?!?!?!?" :shock:
Bullethead
21 Jun 08, 20:28
By the time Leyte had rolled around the Japanese had developed an anti-aircraft shell for use in the main guns of the heavy cruisers and battleships. I don't know how successful it was though.
Actually, the IJN developed a special "incendiary shrapnel" AA shell for guns 8" and above well before WW2. This blew out a bunch of small tubes full of thermite that acted as spinning cutting torches. They thought it was a good idea but in WW2 it proved rather ineffective.
It should also be noted that many of the 1st generation of "treaty cruisers", not just IJN, had very high elevation of the 8" guns for AA use. For example, the Brit Kent[i]-class had this feature, as well as the [i]Myoko-class. But everybody quickly decided that the extreme elevation was more trouble and expense than it was worth so later cruisers could only elevate about 45^, which they needed for surface fire anyway. This still allowed some long-range AA fire, but only the IJN seems to have kept on with it throughout the war.
FuurinKazan
20 Jul 08, 13:00
I'd like to see another World War I title, with a Black Sea campaign, and possibly an expanded database of ships to give the player the remaining oddsnends of the war, like coronel and falklands.
Afterwards, I'd like to see a move to WWII, starting in the solomons.
...or the convoys to Russia. One party needs to disrupt them, the other needs to save guard them. And there is plenty of potential for surface action with ships like Tirpitz, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau.
I always assumed Jutland and its successor would share the same relationship as UV does compared to WitP. :D
Too bad that i never came to like WitP because it went way overboard in terms of complexity and scope. What fitted perfectly for a limited campaign that UV offered was simply too much for the whole pacific theatre. But for Jutland 2: The grand war :laugh: that danger shouldn´t exist as long as i can leave management of routine patrols/defensive mining operations and other tedious stuff to the AI.
I always assumed Jutland and its successor would share the same relationship as UV does compared to WitP. :D
Too bad that i never came to like WitP because it went way overboard in terms of complexity and scope. What fitted perfectly for a limited campaign that UV offered was simply too much for the whole pacific theatre. But for Jutland 2: The grand war :laugh: that danger shouldn´t exist as long as i can leave management of routine patrols/defensive mining operations and other tedious stuff to the AI.
I concur, a "Jutland 2: The Great War" (slight paraphrase) would be grand:D, but I'd still prefer a Distant Guns: War Plan Orange with some non-Washington-treaty campaigns set in the 1924-1932 timeframe. Ah, to have the Lady Lex BC slugging it out with the Akagi BC...
-but I repeat myself:D
Hmm, a WPO setting would mean a big leap for the DG engine though. How about foiling the War Plan Orange by throwing the Golds into the carnage? :D But still WPO might be an interesting intermediate step towards the further complexity that comes along with a WW2 setting.
Anyway first i really want the Distant Guns franchise to thoroughly cover the First World War. Since we are already with alternate-history settings, seeing some action in the med with Italy joining the CP would be nice. Anglo-Franco DNs slugging it out with Italy-AH DNs and Goeben while HSF would try to provoke a weakened GF into a battle. :)
So any news on the release date of "Jutland 2: The Great War"? :D:D:D
What about going back in time? The era of sail? The blockade during the American civil war?
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