Sorry to be lagged.
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Originally Posted by mike_espo
I own Distant guns, but have not played it in years. I liked it, but I noticed some things: Pre dreadnought ships sank too easily.
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What sank ships in the original RJW game was mostly fires rather than massive structural damage. However, there was a fair amount of criticism that the fires got too big too fast. So in 1.5, they've been toned down and it's rather harder to sink ships so quickly.
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Reading the reviews, I was just wondering how much different Jutland is than Distant Guns? What if any changes have been made especially in gameplay and I mean the AI. The reviews Ive seen so far seem very positive.
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Bear in mind that now that DG 1.5 is out, most of the game engine improvements from Jutland are now in DG, too, so I'm going to compare Jutland to the original RJW game which apparently is what you've got.
To start with, of course, the Jutland fleets are MUCH bigger than the RJW fleets and effective weapon ranges (both guns and torps) are way longer. But to exploit the longer ranges, you need fairly stable tactical conditions. This all requires very different tactics, with less emphasis short-term manuevering and more on big picture, "grand tactical" positioning.
Also, of course, Jutland has subs and zeps (not in the RJW even now), and mines are both much more effective and can be laid anywhere on the map, not just in ports.
Jutland uses 25km map "hexes" instead of 100km, and the battle space is 200km x 200km instead of 50km. We couldn't do this in DG 1.5 without totally redoing a bunch of stuff, so that game still has the original system. Anyway, the changes in Jutland largely preclude repeat encounters after you've outmanuevered and gotten past the enemy (although this can still happen, mostly at night), and allows you to bring multiple task forces into a battle in a more coherent and realistic manner.
You can do shore bombardments in Jutland, both sides can capture merchants, and there are alternative ways of winning the campaign. You can try to tip the naval balance of power in your direction (WW1 goes on, but you're now in a better position so that counts as a campaign win), or you can try to win WW1 itself as the Germans by trying to make the French surrender at Verdun. This is only available in the 1st 1/2 of 1916, however, after which the campaign can only be decided on the naval balance at the end.
Jutland has a scenario editor, which is also now in DG 1.5. Multiplayer has also been improved, although it's still not perfect. Still, folks have been doing huge fleet actions with 4-5 guys on a side, including the whole historical Jutland battle.