Drydock Dreams Games has decided to give away four digital copies of uncommonly photogenic Task Force Admiral to four talented screengrabbers, and, as it was an email from Yours truly that prompted this act of beneficence, I’ve been invited to choose one of the prize winners.
This time next week, myself and the three other members of the ‘hanging committee’ (producer Amiral Crapaud, artist Julien, and tester Reis) will each choose our favourite screenshot from this Steam forum thread.
The shutterbugs responsible for the images selected by me, Julien, and Reis, will get a standard digital edition pre-order as a reward, while the pic picked by Monsieur Crapaud will earn its creator a deluxe digital edition pre-order.
Obviously, you’ll need to have the TFA demo installed in order to take part in the competition. I can’t tell you what my fellow committee members will be looking for when they peruse submissions, but the image I end up choosing will probably tick at least two of the following boxes:
- dramatic □
- novel □
- memorable □
- haunting □
- evocative □
- creatively captioned □
Although I promise to be completely impartial, I’m rather hoping at least one of the prizes goes to a habitué of THC, so best of luck, Cornerites!
Stuff to bear in mind before you start snapping and uploading:
- The image submission deadline is 12.00 Eastern Time, March 19.
- Images must not include the GUI (Toggle it off with the Tab key before dabbing your Steam screenshot key)
- TFA comes with a pretty flexible camera.
- While you’re welcome to use the various filters available in the demo, post-processing outside of the sim is not permitted.
- No more than two screenshots per person. Submitting two images? Both should be embedded in a single post.
- All pics should be captioned. Captions can’t be longer than twelve words.
- Don’t send your images to THC. They need to be posted in this forum thread (To do this, upload them to Steam using the share button, then embed them using the web address found in the screenshots section of your Steam profile).
Well now I really need to dive into the demo
Well, my first crack at Coral Sea was not an unqualified success, or even a qualified one according to the game end screen.
On day 1, I doubled back to the northwest, found the Japanese carriers first, got 60 strike planes in the air, and watched almost all of them whiff. I think I had one bomb hit on each carrier. Zeroes absolutely shredded my CAP and escorts on both ends, though, and the Japanese counterstrike put a torpedo into Lexington, which left her out of action for the rest of the scenario. (At one point, a second wave found her while her steering was jammed, but she managed to circle her way precisely between a well-executed anvil attack.) She seemed to get back under control, but I might have caused her to sink around midnight by ordering a high-speed retreat—I’m not sure if the flooding models are that advanced, or if the damage was worse than the DC screen suggested.
On day 2, after watching the last Japanese strike miss to the north, I flipped around to head south, found the Japanese carriers first, got off an unescorted strike of 40 planes (all I could muster; with Lexington), and watched almost all of them whiff: one bomb hit on each carrier.
With limited resources and, I think, some compounding bugs in the save file—TF17 was listed as having 51 dive bombers in current strength, even though I only counted 37 on Yorktown (maybe the remainder were still attached to Lexington?), and Yorktown stuck in ‘recovering’ from about 2pm to the end of the scenario—I decided to call it quits, for a tactical and strategic defeat.
A challenging one, but it absolutely scratches the carrier war itch.