I have a hankering to play WW2-era ship on ship action, preferably in a first/third person view like Distant Guns.
Does such a game exist? The only thing that immediately comes to mind is Destroyer Command, and even that isn't quite what I'm looking for.
You looking for really old games?
Not sure if computers can handle them.
Fighting Steel comes into mind.
http://yhst-12000246778232.stores.yahoo.net/fightingsteel.html
PT Boats. Something more modern but smaller scale.
http://www.battlefront.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=234&Itemid=369
NWS has done a lot of work updating Fighting Steel. You may still be able to get both the game and the upgrades from them.
Also, there is the Pacific Storm series (http://store.steampowered.com/app/11250/?snr=1_7_15__13), available on Steam.
I'm looking for something bigger than PT boats- more destroyer size on up.
Can you believe I actually had Fighting Steel back in the day and actually threw it in the garbage before a big move...along with all of my Great Naval Battles collection?! ::)
Damn. I had the big I through V GNB collection, with V being the WW1 version. I still have a few but they will not run, even under DosBox. Fighting Steel might be easier since it was newer. You can get it quite cheap sometimes.
Have you considered Warship Combat: Navies at War from NWS? The interface left me wanting and I found it difficult to remember all the new map symbology, but you might like it. IIRC, it was solidly functional.
I looked at that, but it appears to be turn-based and not first person/ third person perspective, which is what I really want.
Something like modern Fighting Steel sounds about right.
Pacific Storm looks a little too ambitious, although skirmish mode, if there is one, might be ok.
Yes, WC:NAW is turn-based.
Quote from: Staggerwing on July 18, 2013, 08:39:11 PM
NWS has done a lot of work updating Fighting Steel. You may still be able to get both the game and the upgrades from them.
Some people swear it still runs fine, but the last time I tried Fighting Steel and it's mod a few years ago, I got some nasty artifacting in the gfx (which don't look terribly good these days either).
Maybe others will have better luck than me. There's not anything of wargame/sim quality in 3D these days, for WWII (surprisingly) so you're probably stuck with a small selection of 2D titles.
I've been doing some searching on my own and it sure seems that Distant Guns/Jutland are it.
Hmmm. Well, I guess I'll just hope this phase passes quickly. >:(
Quote from: Toonces on July 18, 2013, 11:01:37 PM
I've been doing some searching on my own and it sure seems that Distant Guns/Jutland are it.
If you are considering DG, why not consider Steam and Iron? They are WWI, but so is DG.
Quote from: Herman Hum on July 18, 2013, 11:30:12 PM
Quote from: Toonces on July 18, 2013, 11:01:37 PM
I've been doing some searching on my own and it sure seems that Distant Guns/Jutland are it.
If you are considering DG, why not consider Steam and Iron? They are WWI, but so is DG.
Sounds like he specifically wants 3D, and DG or Jutland are pretty much it for anything close to a modern one.
I intend to pick up DG sometime, too (already have Jutland). Maybe during their next sale, because I probably missed the one they had a week or two ago.
While you still have to install their StormPowered client to d/l the game, you don't have to connect to the internet all the time any longer (IIRC) so it's DRM is pretty much like most Steam games these days.
What about Silent Hunter 2 ? Wasnt there an option to play as a Destroyer as well? Perhaps couplet with another game?
Destroyer Command? My memory is failing me.
Distant Guns is set in the Russo Japanese War.
Maybe try Shells of Fury, Toonces...you can get it pretty inexpensively and it got reasonable reviews.
Quote from: Yskonyn on July 19, 2013, 01:20:38 AM
What about Silent Hunter 2 ? Wasnt there an option to play as a Destroyer as well? Perhaps couplet with another game?
Destroyer Command? My memory is failing me.
I resort to board games for good WWII big ship battles. I play Command at Sea in a modified hex board form. Works well.
The best WWII ship game ever (as I remember it) was TaskForce 42. But a quick game of Command at Sea still is better than that.
I may get a blog going some day about how to have fun with Command at Sea on a flying colors map.
Sadly Naval games are a dead gene in PC/computer gaming. Funny, considering Computer Bismark was the first Computer War game. With all the success Matrix Games has had with WITP/WITP AE/Harpoon it's surprising they haven't funded development of a good WWII naval game or help bring back old games like TaskForce 1942, SSI's Great Naval Battles Series and/or Warships. Maybe World of Warships will help spark more interest in the gene.
SH 4 Had mods that allowed you to play in command of surface ships including BB's, CA's, and destroyers, with the U-Boat add-on, German & Brit ships too. I never tried it as it required several mods to be installed and I never heard anything very positive about it. By now there should be at least 1 good WWII 3-D game out there. A new Fighting Steel maybe.
Quote from: SgtRock on July 19, 2013, 09:22:33 AM
Sadly Naval games are a dead gene in PC/computer gaming. Funny, considering Computer Bismark was the first Computer War game. With all the success Matrix Games has had with WITP/WITP AE/Harpoon it's surprising they haven't funded development of a good WWII naval game or help bring back old games like TaskForce 1942, SSI's Great Naval Battles Series and/or Warships. Maybe World of Warships will help spark more interest in the gene.
Naval games are a bit problematic. It's hard to know what level of abstraction works. With air games you can model the airplanes fairly well one way or another and all is well. But in naval games you are going to have planes and obviously they are going to be somewhat abstract. And if planes are hard to model as machines, any warship bigger than a PT boat is going to be much harder to model in many ways and so far no way of modelling warships (except for maybe in FOTS where they are strangely convincing) has really been very much fun.
An obvious way to go: take simple ships and work up from there is pretty much precluded by the general need to have the most advanced versions of everything modelled right away...BUT...if the audience could stand it ... you probably could adequately model a limited world of floatplanes, barges and PT boats (with a Patrol boat of some kind as the ultimate weapon). True, it would not resemble the average view of what a naval war might be, but the modelling would work and could be expanded. So part of the problem is that people are happy with dogfights with Airplanes, but any small battles with small boats don't seem to excite much interest.
But I'm beta testing CMANO which will be able to present any kind of naval battle you'd like for the period 1946 to 2020 -- but at a certain level of abstraction of course.
Quote from: SgtRock on July 19, 2013, 09:22:33 AM
Sadly Naval games are a dead gene in PC/computer gaming. Funny, considering Computer Bismark was the first Computer War game. With all the success Matrix Games has had with WITP/WITP AE/Harpoon it's surprising they haven't funded development of a good WWII naval game or help bring back old games like TaskForce 1942, SSI's Great Naval Battles Series and/or Warships. Maybe World of Warships will help spark more interest in the gene.
Nahh.
S&I did better than expected a year or two ago. A lot of people are looking forward to
Command.
They're doing just fine. Sounds like the problem is that there isn't many of them with fancy 3D gfx, but that doesn't bother everyone.
Quote from: Nefaro on July 19, 2013, 11:32:05 AM
Nahh. S&I did better than expected a year or two ago.
I thought SaI did quite well, but not as well as hoped.
Quote from: Nefaro on July 19, 2013, 11:32:05 AM
They're doing just fine. Sounds like the problem is that there isn't many of them with fancy 3D gfx, but that doesn't bother everyone.
Naval War: Arctic Circle included 3D images. (It was the first thing I turned off!) Global Conflict Blue 2 continues to use them (and I think that their lack of 3D model makers is holding them back.) IMO, every hour spent/wasted on 3D images is one less hour spent on making the game better.
I certainly don't need 3D graphics if the game itself is good. I often find jockeying the camera annoying since not many developers can make one that isn't burdening.
The DG/Jutland 3D camera is a good example of having to wrestle with the UI more than we should.
Quote from: Nefaro on July 19, 2013, 02:21:15 PM
The DG/Jutland 3D camera is a good example of having to wrestle with the UI more than we should.
I quite agree. I kept using the tiny 2D tactical map to fight battles in Jutland instead of the much larger 3D map simply because I couldn't be bothered with the camera.
^ not to get too off topic, I just got the histwar game and the camera controls have me feeling the same way. From what I hear alot of people play from the 2d map on that one as well.
Quote from: Skoop on July 20, 2013, 02:29:52 PM
^ not to get too off topic, I just got the histwar game and the camera controls have me feeling the same way. From what I hear alot of people play from the 2d map on that one as well.
Not to get too far off topic, but has histwar improved at all recently?
They just came out with a big patch a couple weeks ago, the graphics actually look great on my new 2560x1440p 27" monitor. They high res really spruces it up. I'm still fumbling around with the UI, they have 2 different UI to choose from, just wish they had went with the standard RTS camera controls instead of the funky ones they have now.
I do love the insane historical detail they used in the uniforms, it's like a 3d osprey book or something. You can choose from 1/10, 1/2, or 1/1 soldier to icon representation. It's crazy to see the 1/1 battlefield, probaly the only game doing that scale. Unfortunately the 1/1 ctd after 5 min of play, so only 1/10 is stable for me. Hopefully that gets ironed out cuz the 1/1 is kind of the main reason to play this.
I just got wargame alb as well so I'm going in 2 different directions at once.
Thanks for the info...too bad he never puts his game on sale, $50+ is still a little high for me to take a chance. Do you know if demo includes the latest updates?
No, The demo is a 2 year old version.
Quote from: Skoop on July 21, 2013, 11:52:54 AM
No, The demo is a 2 year old version.
k, thanks...I also see a version 2 is in the works...I wonder how far away that is....