Although the stiff throttles annoyed, and the mooring tutorial tied itself in knots after I accidentally skipped a stage, the time I spent with the Professional Ship Simulator demo yesterday passed pleasantly enough.
Previously known as Nautic XP (a moniker that was bound to lead to confusion) SWE Systems’ upcoming sim boasts some impressive fully clickable bridges and a nice rendition of a German island – Rügen – that some bedroom boatswains will already know well.
In addition to interactive instruction the trial includes three scenarios, two of which involve large, unwieldy vessels. Getting the Northstar out of port and the Sea Spray into port without crumpling steel or scoring the seabed requires prodigious patience and deft use of bow and stern thrusters.
Inspired by Rule the Waves, free hobby project Naval Estimates launched a few days ago. Designer Elouda intends to “go deeper” than Naval Warfare Simulations in areas such as weapon and turret design. He also hopes to convey “a deeper sense of institutional and industrial inertia”.
Right now the combat and the strategic layer aren’t included in the browser build. You’re restricted to designing Royal Navy brine displacers and their armaments.
I like the little I’ve seen of Early Access Battleship Command so far. While the absence of an Oskar-equivalent, and the fact that you can’t get blown overboard or grievously scorched while taking screenshots like this ^ is mildly disappointing, in all other respects Bracer’s battleship sim is ticking all the right sea chests.
Damage control should arrive in the next update. Slightly further off are a patrol mode and torpedo launchers (the Scharnhorst was betubed in 1941).
Sea Power players are uncommonly jaunty at present. Introduced in early July, Task Force mode seems to be the main cause of the jaunt. It allows players to tackle scenario sequences using customisable persistent fleets. Ship and aircraft losses, weapon expenditure, damage, repairs, resupply, commander progression, and awards… they all carry forward through campaigns.
If plausibility isn’t a high a priority, there’s even the option to cherry-pick vessels from navies that have no business operating in the area or era of the campaign.
Involving over a hundred ships and over six hundred aircraft, ‘Kantai Kessen’, Task Force Admiral’s next scenario, sounds like it’s going to be a spectacular affair. Five-man Drydock Dreams Games is also working hard on audio enrichment, GUI improvement, and optimisation at present.
By the sound of it, firm decisions about campaign approach have yet to be made. Impressed by Sea Power’s Task Force mode, the studio may provide something similar before embarking on a more ambitious SOPAC campaign with Guadalcanal at its heart.
Ships at Sea’s latest tub is a veritable Swiss Navy Knife. An offshore wind farm service ship, the tug-like Class 4 Service Operation Vessel (IMT 9604) is chock-a-block with snazzy gizmos. These include a Dynamic Positioning system, deployable daughter craft, and a telescopic cherry-picker for daintily transferring personnel to wind turbine towers.
It’s a good time to be a fan of naval combat strategy games!
Sea Power has been a delightful diversion of late, and the first campaign (not the newer task force one) makes the difference between American and Soviet strategy very clear– off angle attacks with Harpoons from sneaky aircraft vs. saturation attacks with increasingly elaborate cruise missiles. There’s not much to do when an attack is almost home except to watch the fireworks in the 3D view. Sadly I think my screenshots of Soviet missiles finding targets in an American task force as Standard Missiles rise on pillars of fire and smoke to meet them, and streams of CIWS tracers look for any leakers, are on my home PC, and I’m traveling at present.