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Originally Posted by mike_espo
What about a Red Storm rising campaign? Soviet subs trying to cut off the lifeline to Europe? Sounds pretty interesting  |
It is! But the DW database lacks the ship classes to really do the scenario justice.
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Originally Posted by mike_espo
I would like to see retro stuff. For one thing, Would the Soviets be able to get close enough in 1962 with the Hotels to launch a nuclear strike?
I ve been thinking of getting Harpoon 3 for just this reason, but it is crud compared to DW  |
I don't think Harpoon is crude at all. In fact, in many ways it's much more sophisticated. Really, though, it's a whole different game intended to simulate very different things. It's actually more "realistic" in the sense that the interface is very similar to that in an actual AEGIS warship. If you've never been on a real warship, get a big flat-screen monitor, stick it up on your wall, and play Harpoon 3. That's as close as most civilians can get to being in the CIC of a real CG or DDG.
In Harpoon, while you can command a single warship, it's very abstract feeling (much like a real CIC, it's a dark room with a bunch of radar and computer screens all over the place). You can't do things like do your own TMA, or blaze away with your 0.50 cals at small boats. It's assumed that all that is handled by subordinates. Your job is to manage the battle. You can't stand out on the bridge wing and look through your binoculars in Harpoon. You can't stare at grams in the sonar shack. DW is much better in this respect. Harpoon is purely about scouting and fighting in the CIC, from the perspective of a commanding officer. Another thing I wish Harpoon could do is accomidate changing political and diplomatic situations better. DW does that very nicely with scripts and triggers. I also haven't figured out how to do a suicide boat in Harpoon. DW has that built in.
Where DW is not very good is the interesting part of Harpoon. That's when you want to command fleets of warships and look at how the whole air-sea battle interacts. The bulk of Harpoon games involves employing sensors on a multitude of different platforms to search for and identify targets. Then, directing a multitude of different platforms, each performing different missions, to destroy those targets, meanwhile defending your fleet from an enemy attempting to do the same to you. Harpoon's database accomidates an amazing variety of platforms. Commanding fleets of warships is, in a lot of ways, much more instructive about the nature of naval warfare because these days ships almost always act in conjuction with other assets. Something like a Ticonderoga CG is not just an asset from the perspective of the person in charge of the two ship SAG it's tasked to, but to the entire theatre, because it's radar has such enormous range, and it's ability to bring a ton of ordinance where ever it goes. Harpoon lets one think beyond just the one engagement and at a much bigger picture.
In DW it's like you're a crew member of a single warship. In Harpoon, you're at least a senior officer.