Battlestations Midway hands-on preview

[Sonarman]

The guys over at Gaming excellence were lucky enough to get a hands-on encounter with Battlestations Midway

http://www.gamingexcellence.com/xbox.../preview.shtml

[ReM]

The trailer at the website looks amazing!

http://www.battlestations.net/home/

[mako88sb]

Looks great but what's with the yellow wing Devastators? The high visibility paint scheme was eliminated at the start of the war.

[Dargo]

They got a new site www.battlestations.net and on the forum I asked a couple questions they replied after 3 day's with:

Originally Posted by Keir

We've got a new trailer, it's going up on battlestations.net soon, but in the mean time you can see it here.

Here are some more answers for you....

1. Are multi player missions Co-op or versus?
Multi player is versus. Currently 4 v 4 is the max number of players.

2. Is there a mission editor to create scenarios?
There isn't a mission editor. We'll reveal more information to the community about all the missions that exist soon.

3. Will there be an ability to control engines (both types) separately (port or starboard)?
You can’t control engines independently. You control the speed of the ship (forward or reverse) with one analog stick and the direction with the other.

4. How does radio communication work between fleets? Like, passing on information or asking for support?
There isn’t radio communication as you control every element of the game.

5. If in the WWII a ship was under attack by a submarine or a ship, they used a kind of "international distress frequency" to call help by Morse code, and the U-boats sometimes caught those signals after attack. Is it possible for the player catch these kind of signals after a ship attack to know the ship requested help?
There are verbal alerts in the game, so if an enemy sub enters an area covered by radar and is detected, an alert will be heard saying “we’ve detected a sub sir... etc”.

6. Is there any consequence for accidentally sinking Neutral, Allied, or Hospital ships, aircraft or subs?
It'll make your mission significantly more difficult to complete!

7. Will it be possible to receive weather forecasts by radio? And are we able to make some repair in neutral or allied port city?
Weather has no direct affect on gameplay. Repairs are done to ships by the crew onboard and is managed by the user.

8. Will there be the ability for us to lay mines? This would be great if we are stalking a port we know has heavy shipping traffic.
Mines aren’t in the game.

9. Is there passive sonar? (If not will the enemy be able to hear the pinging when you get near, because in the videos when you saw a sub you could hear it pinging)
At most depth levels except the deepest, a ship with radar will detect an enemy sub when it’s within range. The pinging noise indicates to the user controlling the sub that they’re being tracked from above i.e. their sub has been detected.

10. What about navigation? How will maps look like? And what information will they include on?
The maps look great and are very detailed. The map serves as a great way to switch between units while in the heat of the battle. I'll get some screenshots up in the coming weeks.

11. Any plans for a PS3 or Wii version? Anyone else think the motion sensor controllers would rock on this game?
Not as far as I know at the moment.

12. Can you manually operate the guns / torpedoes?
Yes you can.
And the dev guys have kindly provided these answers:
13. What is the Dev. Team's view on the issue of Scripted vs. Dynamic campaign?
The challenge with Battlestations: Midway was building the innovative game system in the first place. We weren't completely sure how players would receive it and so we choose the conservative option. We're really open to the community's views, if they'd like to see a more dynamic style game here is the place to let us know.

14. Will 'Punkbuster' be incorporated?
No.

15. How large will the battleground be once the battle begins? What’s the current limitation?
The complete size of a map is 20 by 20 km, included with an additional 2 km "border zone" where the player will be warned to turn back. So the whole battleground is 18 by 18km.
16. Are tides/streams modelled accurately?
No, we don't have tides/streams in the game, because of the scale of the battle it isn't so important.

17. If a ship were sinking, then when it is going to the bottom (completely under the water) could a sub run into it and blow up or would it pass through?
Yes, the sinking ship can collide with a sub and even damage it.

18. Are any of the original Mithis team still working on the game?
Yes


I hope that helps. More soon!