War on the Sea coming soon! (from Killerfish Games)

[MengJiao]

Now I want to re-enact the actions of HMCS Oakville.

   Marvelous!  I watched the whole thing!

[Gusington]

'Sinking you, but politely' HAHA

[rustyshackleford]

****EDIT**** This game has some MAJOR issues, and I will not be playing until they are fixed or modders can get at the game.


I cannot in good faith recommend this game after having a few more hours under my belt. Below are some of my gripes:

1. AI Autonomy - the AI is stupid AF in this game. You have to micromanage EVERYTHING. If you have a convoy of 12 ships and want them to attack, there is no general "Target Enemy" state that you can assign to the group and have them automatically engage. Instead, you have to manually select EACH ship, press "T" to put it into target mode, and then click the enemy ship you want it to fire at. You do this for every. Single. Ship. Individually. It's a major pain in the ass

2. Carrier tactics are non-existent that have come to light while I was playing the campaign. Not realistic at all, I can't send out a screen to search for enemy fleets. I had a squadron of Wildcats fly RIGHT over some Kates on their way to bomb my Carrier....like, passed 500 foot directly above them. The Wildcats did jack shit and continued on their merry way, dumb fat and happy. I had to again select each individual Wildcat, press T, choose one of the Kates, and THEN click a button called "Attack" before it finally peeled away from formation. By the time I did this for each Wildcat, the Kates had already had their way with my carrier.

3. My expectations for the Campaign were seriously wrong - I was hoping that I could choose to be a single sub (a la Cold Waters), or Carrier, or Destroyer and take control of it in a Dynamic Campaign while the war raged on around me. This is not the case. While you CAN operate individual ships in the Campaign, you have to do everything - from purchasing units to creating fleets, assigning them waypoints and orders and targets to attack and locations to patrol, etc. Too much micromanagement.




Bought it and the game is awesome, but take that with a grain of salt because I LOVED their previous Cold Waters/Atlantic/Pacific Fleet games. It's a little rough and has some recycled effects, but it's basically Cold Waters in WW2 Pacific. I think I'm in 

The UI is a bit wonky and as another poster said, feels like a mix-up of a bunch of different games. But if you're a fan of the Pacific, I can definitely see you getting your money's worth out of it.

[Toonces]

Yeah, Jarhead, same here. 

What I really, really liked in that first twitch video was how he set up that torpedo plane attack.  I read through a bunch of the game's FAQ on Steam and it seems you can control the airgroups individually and set up things like anvil attacks and such. 

There is a part of me that is tempted to pick it up for that aspect alone.  I wasn't completely sold on what campaign play I saw; I'm not a fan at all of games where you buy units based on earning "points" (or gold, or money, or renown, or whatever).  The FAQ described the gameplay as sort-of Total War-like, and I can see that.  You have a certain number of "slots" for units that you can buy and move on the campaign map (10 for ships I think) and so you're not going to get those monster fleet actions...at least in campaign.  Same with air unit "slots."  I'm not sure about single mission limitations.

There seems to be a lot to like, but it's very much a game from what I can tell.  That's not a bad thing necessarily, but I had hoped for a more historically matched campaign.

I'm holding off at the moment, but this seems like something I'll get sooner rather than later.  Controlling those airstrikes looks pretty damn tasty.

[Toonces]

Historical Gamer's live stream from earlier.  His voice isn't ear-destroying and he works through quite a few of the gameplay mechanics.  I just bounced through it.

[Toonces]

Alright, I went ahead and bought it.  I'm a big fan of Cold Waters so I figure it's worth $40 to support the devs. 

[IICptMillerII]

I was a little hesitant about this game. Pretty sure I've made one or two posts about that hesitance here actually.

But after watching a bit of gameplay from the release build, I've essentially done a 180. I'm now very intrigued. The gameplay looks realistic and interesting, there are a ton of units to choose from, and the campaign looks like it has a lot of replay value to it. Plus, it would appear from looking through the game menus that they are in fact planning on expanding the game in the future with more content, which I sincerely hope for.

My only real concern (besides if/when they will add more content, P-40 pls) is how micro intensive it ends up being. At first glance it looks like you can give formations basic orders and the ai will take care of things for you. But I am worried that in order to get the best out of your units, you might have to give all of them very specific orders. In a large battle spanning naval and air forces that could very quickly become tedious and overwhelming. Just an impression though, I have not seen nearly enough gameplay to think this could be a real concern yet.

I haven't picked up the game yet but I certainly plan on it!

[Destraex]

I'm in two minds with Task Force Admiral on the horizon.

[Grim.Reaper]

After reviewing some of the impressions of the game,  implies a ton of micromanagement of individual units and that's something that easily overwhelms me so going to pass for now.  Mentions can give some basic orders but ai just follows the order without really reacting.  Others implied even when engaging with aircraft you control them all and what they target, which becomes a pause fest.

Whether all that is accurate or not, I guess we'll see as more impressions come in but the micromanagement alone will keep me away although I know others might like it.

[MengJiao]

Bought it and the game is awesome, but take that with a grain of salt because I LOVED their previous Cold Waters/Atlantic/Pacific Fleet games. It's a little rough and has some recycled effects, but it's basically Cold Waters in WW2 Pacific. I think I'm in 

The UI is a bit wonky and as another poster said, feels like a mix-up of a bunch of different games. But if you're a fan of the Pacific, I can definitely see you getting your money's worth out of it.

   I agree.  There are some odd things about this game, but Cold Waters is great so I'm pretty sure this one will have its good moments.  And the problem with the fleet games was they were pretty limited and you had to micromanage even more than in War in the Sea.  In War on the Sea you set your targets and Ammo type (AP, SAP or star shells for example).  Your secondaries can hit a different target and so on.  And the maps are promising.  I haven't gone submarining to see how the depths are mapped, but that might be pretty neato too.

[The_Admiral]

I'm in two minds with Task Force Admiral on the horizon.

There's good visibility today Des, so whatever you see on the horizon might not be that close, so better not wait for us  :arr:
Buy it, try it - if you like it keep it, if you don't refund it - but at least if it's a winner for you it will keep your properly entertained until we finally look a bit closer   

Cheers!

[Jarhead0331]

Is it true that aircraft carriers don't actually carry any aircraft? I've seen some reviews, which are fairy mixed overall, mention this issue. If true, very bizarre.

[The_Admiral]

They don't. You have to "buy" them at sea.
Can't use search patterns either. In that regard as in others, it is a big regression compared to, say, the strategic map in Task Force 1942 which had all that. I was personally very enthusiastic about WotS because I expected a remake of that part, even 1:1 wouldn't have bothered me. But it wasn't to be  :-\

[Jarhead0331]

They don't. You have to "buy" them at sea.
Can't use search patterns either. In that regard as in others, it is a big regression compared to, say, the strategic map in Task Force 1942 which had all that. I was personally very enthusiastic about WotS because I expected a remake of that part, even 1:1 wouldn't have bothered me. But it wasn't to be  :-\

Ouch. What a peculiar design decision.

[Tripoli]

There are a couple of gameplay videos on Twitch.  It looks like a blend of all of Killerfish's older games.  Not exactly what I'm looking for, but there seems to be a lot of potential.

https://www.twitch.tv/noname117spore/video/898601644

https://www.twitch.tv/thefannon/video/898562618

As always, you kinda have to tune out the guys narrating the gameplay.

I haven't purchased WoS, but some of the elements in these twitch videos is giving me some pause.  For instance, in  https://www.twitch.tv/noname117spore/video/898601644 at 01:22:10 the Kate TBs make an unsupported (ie, no divebombers or TB from a different angle) torpedo drop on the starboard side of a US cruiser, which then proceeds to blithely continue to sail in a line ahead formation, without taking any evasive action that I can see.  Consequentially, 4 out of 4 torpedoes hit, which is an very high hit percentage.  Similarly, the US force doesn't seem to react to having its "T" crossed during the daytime surface engagement.   This behavior causes me to question how robust the AI is.  Given it is a single person game, IMHO the possible weak AI is an important shortcoming.  While visually attractive,  for a $40 price tag, I need to see more before I personally would buy it.  To be fair, it may be that the person who posted the Twitch stream may have set the AI on a low level, so possibly it can be improved via the player settings.  The game is visually attractive,  and certainly a easy "shoot em up" can be fun and relaxing.  Additionally, the damage control model with individual compartments receiving damage is nice addition, and an important one that is (IMHO) too infrequently included in naval wargames.  Consequentially, I may still purchase it, but for now I'm taking a "Wait and see" approach..