Any recommendations for WW2 computer naval games?

[CaptianT]

I have finished reading some books on WW2 naval battles and am interested in seeing what others are playing. (I do play SH3 and SH4, but would like to play something a little larger in scope and strategy.) Are there any low to mid level complexity WW2 naval computer strategy games that you can recommend?

Any input or recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

Best regards.

[difool2]

Can't quite recommend it because it isn't out just yet and I'm not a beta-tester, but Supremacy at Sea (http://forums.navalwarfare.net/showthread.php?t=4) is a title which I've been waiting for for over a year now, and which should be out before Christmas. Operational/strategic level wargame with optional command levels.

[CaptianT]

Difool2,

Thanks for the recommendation. I had never heard of this game or of NWS. The description of Supremacy at Sea looks interesting, although it may be a little too complicated or bigger in scope than what I was looking for. I'll still continue to keep track with new interest of how the development of this game is progressing.

On the other hand, the NWS Warship Combat: Navies at War game looks really interesting. This looks like it allows actual naval battles to be fought and recreated, (which is more of my current interest). Have you played this particular game? If so, does it allow carrier battles to be played or recreated? Is this a game that you or others would recommend?

[Raptor1]

Don't think any good games came out lately (Please tell me I'm wrong!), but there some great older games I can recommend. Try out SSI's Great Naval Battles series and Microprose's Task Force 1942 (There are more, but I can't think of any right now)

[Tachyon]

Great Naval battles is a good game but kinda hard. As for a submarine simulator, Command : Aces of the Deep is as best as it gets.

[CaptHawkeye]

Of course nobody mentioned the one problem with GNB. IE: It's ancient. :) Oh well, it's pretty sad that sheer drought of good sim games has been so long and hard we're forced to look back on wild sims from the 90s like they're new or original. I blame modern business models really. Who wants to make a game with any actual challenge when it's clear the masses just want Quake/Zerg-em-ups?

[Overkill]

Most of their target market consists of 12 year olds that think "head shots" and the "F Word" are the greatest things man has ever invented. Because of this they have to dumb down most of the software being made today.

They don't make 'em like they use to. I was play'n Silent Service when I was 12. :D


It would be really nice if Ubisoft used the SHIV engine to make a WWII surface combat game.

[CaptHawkeye]

Most gamers are around 20 years of age. To be honest, most of the market is people who simply don't want to play different or detailed games. They've got a set idea of what a video game should be, and anything not conforming to it is shunned. Why else did WiC get pounced on by every RTS nerdling fanboy? Just because it didn't have base building?

The other problem is just sheer laziness. No one wants to play a game that requires of bit of work put into it because they believe their is no payoff. There is...they just don't want to wait for it. They want satisfaction NOW.

[Hellcat]

Fighting Steel is pretty good with the NWS patches. Carriers at War is pretty good for a few weeks. I really liked the Carrier Battles in 1942: Pacific Air War... and well as the others have stated it's been a few years since anything great came along.

[kiwi_2005]

Enigma Rising Tide, more on the arcade side but good game all the same, command naval ships or subs. More a sim than a stradegty.

[difool2]

Difool2,

Thanks for the recommendation. I had never heard of this game or of NWS. The description of Supremacy at Sea looks interesting, although it may be a little too complicated or bigger in scope than what I was looking for. I'll still continue to keep track with new interest of how the development of this game is progressing.
Expanding on my OP-the game gives you optional command levels. You can let the AI control anything you don't want to dirty your hands with (I at least will let it run ground combat). Read thru some of the docs some more-the designer has attempted to make it playable while not skimping on realism-we shall see if he will deliver.

On the other hand, the NWS Warship Combat: Navies at War game looks really interesting. This looks like it allows actual naval battles to be fought and recreated, (which is more of my current interest). Have you played this particular game? If so, does it allow carrier battles to be played or recreated? Is this a game that you or others would recommend?
It also isn't out yet, but the designers of both sims have indicated that you can fight the actual sea battles in SaS in NaW, and export the results back into the former!

[Winston]

Not a world war two title however it will have ships slugging it out with each other. I'm not sure how you feel about world war one Tim but Jutland might go some way to satisfy you're need for some surface action. It's not out quite yet but check out this link for more infomation about it...

http://stormeaglestudios.com/public/Downloads/Jutland_Resources/Jutland%20Info%20Brochure/Jutland%20Info%20Page%2001.html (http://stormeaglestudios.com/public/Downloads/Jutland_Resources/Jutland%20Info%20Brochure/Jutland%20Info%20Page%2001.html)

[Overkill]

If Jutland does well for Storm Eagle Studios I wonder if their next title will be a WWII Naval game? :hmm:

[moose1am]

Fighting Steel is pretty good with the NWS patches. Carriers at War is pretty good for a few weeks. I really liked the Carrier Battles in 1942: Pacific Air War... and well as the others have stated it's been a few years since anything great came along.



I really enjoyed the carrier battles in Pacific Air Wars 1942. I like the way we could jump right into the action and fly the Zero or Hellcat. Now that's an idea I have not seen in any games since PAW 1942.

I wish that a publisher would reproduce the PAW 1943 game so that it would run on Windows XP and be able to use the new hardware like my MS Sidewinder FFB Pro Joystick.

I read that there is a program that allows dos games to be played on the Windows XP platform but they are too hard for me to use. I want a cookie cutter way to play the game and don't want to have to fool around with the computer to get a game to work.

[Raptor1]

Task Force 1942 (Another game by MicroProse) has a similar campaign engine to PAW (Or so I heard, haven't personally played PAW), but lets you command a ship/task group directly in a battle, as opposed to PAW which is a flight sim

[Overkill]

TF1942 and PAW1942 were awesome back in the day! I miss the big carrier battles from PAW. A buddy of mine would always land his Dauntless on the Japanese carriers, drop the bomb and then fly off to watch it burn! :lol:

Maybe a bunch of us should get together and form a company that makes quality simulation, strategic and tactical games like MicroProse did back in the day. Their games were always open and random so replay was very high. I played several of their games for years where most games this day in age you can completely play out in 4 - 5 hours. :shifty:

I should mention that I personally don't know anything about program'n but I've got some great ideas for some WWII games. :D

[CaptHawkeye]

If Jutland does well for Storm Eagle Studios I wonder if their next title will be a WWII Naval game? :hmm:

In a perfect world, their next title would be "Midway" or some such and would be a WW2 first person/grand strategy simulation allowing for everything from individually controlled battleships and carriers to controlling warship construction and technical development with basic customization. IE: Everything Pacific Storm should have been. :)

[TinCanWolf]

I don't understand the idea of making games like Silent Hunter 4, which I love, and not following it up with a surface simulator where you can command all those pretty ships we got to sink.

[moose1am]

I spent the last week at my other house where I have an older Packard Bell 386SX 20 MHz computer with a old PB vga monitor. The PB's mother board has 512 Kbytes of onboard video ram in the onboard video controller. There is a Dos Extended Video Driver that came on a 3.5" floppy but my monitor can't use that extended controllers features at this time

I know I can disable the onboard video controller with a jumper on pin 15 but I am not sure if I can add a video card to this computer. I think it's an ISA type socket for the sound cards and modem cards but I am not sure. Since PB web site has nothing about this older PB computer I can't figure out much. The manal is not clear on the type of video card socket it has or what type of video card could be used.

I did manage to get PAW 1942 loaded into my hard drive and running on this computer. Although the frame rates are very slow... bad... choppy. And when I try to change views with the Function keys it takes forever to redraw the screen. At min two or three seconds. Unacceptable to me. :(

But the carrier battle part of PAW plays just fine as long as I don't try to jump into an airplane and fly it. I enjoy the carrier battles and that's what I remembered best about this game. So that's why I went to the trouble to configure my old PB computer so that I could load up PAW 1942 and play it again this last week.

But I want to see if I can get better frame rates on the older Packard Bell Computer. However the cpu on the PB is slow, only 20 MHz in turbo mode and 8 MHz in non turbo mode.

I tried once or twice to configure another computer running windows 95 but with no luck. I could not figure out how to make that HP Pavilion Pentium III system run in DOS mode properely. Since PAW requires expanded memory of at least 2 MB and the game requires at least 588 KB of ram in Dos mode before it will even install on my HP Pavilion.

So how do I configure my PB system with new hard ware to speed it up and or how to I configure my HP Pavilion Computer to start up in MS DOS Mode and let me install the game on that computer?

One thing that limis me on the Packard Bell System in the Monitor which won't display at 800 x 600 using the extended onboard video controller. I thought I might take a HP monitor and hook it up to see if that would work. But I know that if it works the frame rates won't be faster and will most likely be even slower. Running at 800 x 600 x 256 colors is going to need a lot more video ram than 512 kb. Right now it's running at what appears to be 640 x 480 and god only knows if it's 256 colors or 16 colors.

These two computers are located in two different homes approx 30 minutes drive from each other. And I have little room at each home to put two computers in the area. So I am forced to take equipment from one house to the other to get this game to work.

Right now I think I will be putting the HP System back online and trying to figure out how to boot up in DOS mode with 588 Kb of memory. So I am going to have to get the Windows 95 Book out and read up on configuring the system using config.sys and autoexec.bat files again. It's been years since I did that and I did it on the PB computer which has much differnt hardware. The sound cards are different on these two computers so one's autoexec.bat file may not work on the other computer. But perhaps I can figure it out.

What the bottom line is.... I want to play PAW 1942 again and see it run smoothly on a fast computer. So all I have to do is figure out a way to get the Windows 95A system to run this Dos 5.0 game. Ahhhhhgggh.

PS: I have a third Computer at my house that runs Windows XP home right now. It's a INTEL 1 Gig CPU with 756 MB of Ram and a nice 19" video screen.

But how does one run old 1994 - 1996 DOS 5.0 games on a Windows XP operating system.


If I ever figure this out I still have to figure out how to get the game to run on a Sidewinder Force Feedback Pro Joystick as my CH Fight Stick Pro joystick is at the other house right now. Along with my CH Pedals .

A few years ago I was able to get two 3.5" floppy disks from Microprose and they have updated files for the PAW 1942 game. There are 6 floppy's (3.5" 1.2 mb) files that hold the original game. Then there are two floppies that hold the updated files ver 1.4 update files. I also found a update file at the old MicroProse Web site back in 1996 and downloaded a zipped file called PAW v 1.1.

I was totally surprise when I manage to load all these files onto the old Packard Bell Computer and get the game to load up and run.. albut very slow in flight sim mode.

Wish me good luck in loading up this game on my HP Pavilion System. I forgot what type of video card I have running on the HP Pavilion right now. I think it's one of the older Geforce 256 video cards. I'll have to look and see what installed on that computer. I have updated those video cards a few times since I got that computer back in 1996/97.

Man it's not easy to get this game to run on anything that I own right now.

LH and emm386 Dos commands here I come.

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TF1942 and PAW1942 were awesome back in the day! I miss the big carrier battles from PAW. A buddy of mine would always land his Dauntless on the Japanese carriers, drop the bomb and then fly off to watch it burn! :lol:

Maybe a bunch of us should get together and form a company that makes quality simulation, strategic and tactical games like MicroProse did back in the day. Their games were always open and random so replay was very high. I played several of their games for years where most games this day in age you can completely play out in 4 - 5 hours. :shifty:

I should mention that I personally don't know anything about program'n but I've got some great ideas for some WWII games. :D

[nikimcbee]

Enigma Rising Tide, more on the arcade side but good game all the same, command naval ships or subs. More a sim than a stradegty.

I think that game has gone belly up. But you are correct, it is more arcade than sim. Playing the corvette is fun but the subs blow chunks.

[peter_912]

I have just bought 'Battlestations Pacific'. Loaded it, tried it, binned it. The user interface is just awful, the frame rates jaggy, and the controls and interface not intuitive or user friendly at all.

The best naval strategy games bar none in my view are still the Microprose ones of the early 1990's - TF 1942 and 1942 the Pacific Air War. The only thing these games lacked was a multiplayer facility. The user interface and graphics were outstanding and the PAW carrier battles unmatched by anything since. Will Microprose or its successor PLEASE bring these titles back so we can play them again on Windows 95/XP and Vista platforms? :wah:

[Raptor1]

What...when...how...why the hell does this thread get back up here all the time?!?!?

An exorcism must be performed!

Anyway, Microprose doesn't exist anymore (Even though there was something about a new Microprose last year or so, but haven't heard anything about that since), but you can still play those games with DosBox

[Egan]

I have finished reading some books on WW2 naval battles and am interested in seeing what others are playing. (I do play SH3 and SH4, but would like to play something a little larger in scope and strategy.) Are there any low to mid level complexity WW2 naval computer strategy games that you can recommend?

Any input or recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

Best regards.

I know you said 'Low to mid' and it probably isn't what you are looking for but you could probably check out War in the Pacific (http://www.matrixgames.com/products/351/details/War.in.the.Pacific.-.Admiral%27s.Edition%3Cbr%20/%3E) by Matrix games. As you might expect, the naval aspect is pretty important.

Of course, it's a proper war game rather than a sim, but it's depth is quite scary. i reckon you could finish a campaign in just a little longer than the real Pacific war lasted...:DL

It's a very good game though but like I said, maybe not what you are wanting.

[CaptHawkeye]

Woah what, Battlestations Pacific has a steep learning curve? You're kidding me right? :lol:

It's really surreal for me to hear people say how BSP has "unintuitive" controls. Especially when they follow it up with "TF1942 had really good controls".

[JALU3]

If you still have an SNES, or an emulator of the aforementioned, may I recommend to you PTO II by KOEI. Best Console game for what you are looking for, IMHO.

[Sonarman]

Got to agree about TF1942 that was and still is a great game despite its age. Would'nt it be fantastic if the Distant Guns guys could do an adaptation/bolt-on sim aspect to their engine to produce a TF1942 style game for us?

[CaptHawkeye]

That's been brought up to Bullethead on plenty of occasions. His responce every time is pretty much that he'd rather do a naval RTS than a naval FPS.