SES Jutland is out

[Bullethead]

Originally Posted by CaptHawkeye

"Guide on" only makes ships follow eachother single file. It astounds me that the developers didn't set it to mean "maintain distance and direction from X ship". I guess they figured you needed to have a "Form New Division" command twice.

A valid point. I wanted this as a feature myself back when we were hashing out design parameters. Didn't make it in due to the need for other stuff. And when you come right down to it, it's really not that difficult to give orders to each division individually.

You do NOT have to use "Form New Division" at all in any of this, and I really can't imagine why you'd want to. That's not what that command is for.

You might want to check out this fleetwork tutorial I recently posted over at our official forum. In this, you learn how to turn a BB squadron in the proper direction while simultaneously shifting its nearby DDs from their starting ASW screen positions to their surface action positions.
http://forums.gamesquad.com/download...o=file&id=1993

Something to keep in mind about Jutland....

These are HUGE battles. In real life, there were about a dozen admirals present on each side, due to the complexity of maneuvering such fleets. But in the game, there's only 1 of you in single player. Thus, you can pause whenever you want to be each of these admirals. Or you can do these battles (or those you create yourself) in MP to divide the workload.

[CaptHawkeye]

In all honesty "Pause the game to issue hugely complex orders to multiple squadrons." Just doesn't work. I want to play a naval sim here, not a turn based jRPG. I've also been told to "use the map" but again, what year is it? 2009 or 1999? I'm trying to play a 3D naval sim here not Task Force 1942.

I think Jutland is an excellently detailed game with astounding workmanship. The problem to me is, the controls are just awful. Huge fleet formations are nearly absurd to control. The justification that "real admirals had huge workloads too" needs a bit of thought. Real Admirals didn't give precise direction changes to every formation lead in the fleet.

For some reason, I found the controls in DG to just be better. They didn't lag at all, and gave a satisfying sound chime to clearly indicate a command had been accepted.

On the brightside, recent patches have largely fixed the gunnery issues. Opening salvo by enemy ship used to hit like 50% of the time. From then on accuracy would just get worse and worse. You'd have one straddle after another, and then for some reason you'd get a bunch of salvos that are nowhere near the target even when it was unobscured and unchanging in direction/speed.

[Bullethead]

Originally Posted by CaptHawkeye

In all honesty "Pause the game to issue hugely complex orders to multiple squadrons." Just doesn't work. I want to play a naval sim here, not a turn based jRPG. I've also been told to "use the map" but again, what year is it? 2009 or 1999? I'm trying to play a 3D naval sim here not Task Force 1942.

The game can't read your mind. It doesn't now and can't ever be made to anticipate your desires. No game can do that. Thus, you will ALWAYS have to give orders to your subordinate formations, at least initially.

So what's the difference, really, between telling a division to move to a certain distance and bearing from a given other ship, and giving the division course and speed orders to move to the same place? Zero. You still have to take the time to give the order to all your divisions either way. So up to this point, what you're suggesting and what the game already has is a wash.

The difference would come in only where you want the subordinate division to maintain a relative range and bearing to some other ship, regardless of that ship's subsequent maneuvers. In your suggestion, that would be automatic but in the game at present, you have to turn the subordinates yourself. Looks like you win on the 1st look here. However, it's not so simple....

To do this sort of thing, the AI has to plot a course and speed to regain its position after the reference ship turns. It might have a number of options of courses and speeds to choose from. It will have to pick on, and it can't read your mind. Thus, odds are the one it chooses won't be t your tastes, and you'll have to give it orders manually to conform to your overall plan. And this is if the move it has to make is even possible.

Problem is, there are MANY potential turns by the reference ship that would make it very difficult, if not impossible, for the subordinates ever to regain their station. The subordinates might not be fast enough, or there might be other ships in the way. And then there's the enemy, whose presence of course can trigger other AI behaviors.

What's the poor maneuvering AI supposed to do in these sorts of situations? It would have to fall back on some default behavior. But what would that be? It can't read your mind, remember. So should it go to the rear, the disengaged side, the front, or just follow along as best it can, perhaps fouling the range for the ships you really care about? Or perhaps just sail off into the blue? In all likelihood, no matter what the AI did, you wouldn't like it, so you'd have to give it new orders. Which is the same as giving it new orders yourself anyway, without the AI trying anything.

Believe me, I argued for the same sort of thing a couple of years ago in early development. But Norm explained to me the above, and so the only autopilot thing we have is the unambiguous case of following directly behind another division.

Jutland most definitely ain't TF1942. Instead of being a naval FPS, with fleet command a very distant 2nd place, it's a game about fleet command. You're the top brass. Your job is to maneuver your forces advantageously. You don't aim the guns and such things. So if you handed over control of maneuver to the AI, you wouldn't have much impact on the course of events, would you?

BTw, in the campaign or in battles you make in the editor, you can simplify the process considerably by rearranging your task forces into formations that don't require any deployment at the start of a battle.

[RedChico]

Quick Q.
Are you going to provide the full 1914-18 "campaign"?

[Sonarman]

Originally Posted by CaptHawkeye

I've also been told to "use the map" but again, what year is it? 2009 or 1999? I'm trying to play a 3D naval sim here not Task Force 1942.

I actually prefer to use the 2d map and don't like giving orders in the 3d view (that's the way they did it in real life remember) I was very glad to see that this feature was added to Jutland .

However I would say that the 2D map in TF1942 & indeed Fighting Steel is a lot better than the very simple 2d map in Jutland. I'd like to see the Jutland map full screen when maximised rather than a square in the middle of the screen, with text labels added to identify vessels/groups etc. Also it would be good if SES could eliminate the annoying pause & accompanying loading bar every time the map is zoomed in /zoomed out, also standard "windows-looking" UI features like this tend to pull the player out of the atmosphere of the game.

The other feature I think Jutland is most missing is the ability to pan the cam by holding a mouse button (usually middle) and dragging left/ right this is standard in most sims/FPS etc. Its very annoying to constantly have to move the mouse to the extremes of the screen just to perform a simple pan of the camera.

[Bullethead]

Originally Posted by RedChico

Are you going to provide the full 1914-18 "campaign"?

I'm afraid not. It's just too big to be done within the time, budget, and manpower available.

WW1 in the North Sea can be thought of as having 3 distinct eras: 1914-1915, 1916, and 1917-1918. In the beginning, there were a lot of predreads and old cruisers still around, very few ships had advanced fire control, and torpedoes had relatively low performance. In the middle, what Jutland covers, most of the old ships were gone, most capital ships had advanced fire control, and torps had medium performance. In the end, nearly all ships had some form of advanced fire control, a lot of new ships had come into service, most existing ships had been modified more or less extensively, torps had relatively high performance, and gun elevations were increased.

When looked at from the POV of game development, each of these eras represents about the same amount of work, at least in terms of making models and amassing ship and weapon data. In fact, while we only have to built the game engine from scratch once, there were enough technological, doctrinal, and tactical changes between these eras to warrant some rather large tweaks to it for each timeframe. IOW, making a full-year campaign would have taken nearly 3 times as long as it took to make just 1916.

Thus, we concentrated on 1916, for the Jutland timeframe. We hopefully will release expansion packs in the future that will have new ships, as well early- and late-war versions of existing ships. We don't know if we'll make campaigns including these ships yet or not, but they will at least be useable along with the existing ships in the scenario editor. Time and money permitting, we might also go to different theaters or time periods.

[Bullethead]

[quote=Sonarman]

Originally Posted by CaptHawkeye

The other feature I think Jutland is most missing is the ability to pan the cam by holding a mouse button (usually middle) and dragging left/ right this is standard in most sims/FPS etc. Its very annoying to constantly have to move the mouse to the extremes of the screen just to perform a simple pan of the camera.

Well, you can at present pan the view, as well as strafe, using the numpad. I do pretty much all my POV moves with the numpad, only using the mouse to select ships or jump the POV across the battlefield.

[Lempereur1]

There are 5 different camera modes in the game to choose from.

Here is the link to download the Full Game/Trial version.
http://www.stormeaglestudios.com/pro...land_setup.exe

You can play 2 of the scenarios for free and unlimited time.

These will also function via Multiplayer.

In the trial version, the rest of the scenarios can be previewed for 10/20 mins so that you can see the large Battles, models, etc.

The F1 key will bring up the command menu.

One thing to remember, Jutland is not a ship simulator, ala Silent Hunter. Silent Hunter puts 5 or 6 ships in the frame, at very high detail, while you have total control of the U Boat.

It is a "Fleet Simulator". We have stuck a balance between Micromanagement of each ship and managing the entire Fleet.

Jutland puts 80-90 ships into frame, with very high detail, and manages a real time, true ballistics game environment that tracks every single shell fired in the game, in real time all the way to impact. No "consult the combat tabgles to see how much damage you caused". Instead, each and every shell is tracked to see if it impacys on the hull, deck, etc of the polygon on the ship model. At that point, it trys to penetrate the armored at that polygon (where each polygon has an armor thickness) with a realistic, true physics ballistics model (did I mention that Norm Koger, Lead Programmer for SES, has a Master's Degree in Physics from Texas A&M?).


If you have not tried Jutland, you may be missing what most of the users that have bought the game say, may be the best Naval Simulation ever produced!

http://www.stormeaglestudios.com/pro...land_setup.exe

Here is the Jutland Page link and the Jutland Info Brochure link.

Jutland Page
http://stormeaglestudios.com/public/...utland_v2.html

Jutland Info Brochure
http://stormeaglestudios.com/public/...utland%20Info%

If you have Vista, you need to run the game as Administrator.

Jim Rose

[magick]

Hello guys, I have a question, is this great game only avaible on download or is there also a CD or DVD box version? Greetings, magick1971.

[Bullethead]

Originally Posted by magick

Hello guys, I have a question, is this great game only avaible on download or is there also a CD or DVD box version? Greetings, magick1971.

It's download-only. It's just not cost-effective for us to make a boxed version at present.

BTW, welcome aboard!

[MoToM]

Just have to voice my continuing support for this game,
The camera feels like a larger scale version of the Total War camera so no problems, I find it easy to use especially in conjunction with the following camera.

Bullethead has stated on the other forum that playing without saving is the true experience and I agree, I also feel that pausing is an exploit.

I never pause, in battles or the map and I don't feel too rushed. Admittedly I rarely accelerate except towards the end of battles or during prolonged long-range engagements, all the while issuing commands within the 3D view.

I realise camera and command styles are different for everyone but I feel that Jutlands system gets a disproportionate slating.

Just my two cents.

[magick]

Originally Posted by Bullethead

It's download-only. It's just not cost-effective for us to make a boxed version at present.

BTW, welcome aboard!

ok, downloaded the demo version and my first impressions of the game are very good nice work!

[Lempereur1]

Originally Posted by magick

ok, downloaded the demo version and my first impressions of the game are very good nice work!

Enjoy!

The link to the manual is in the Start-Program Group for Storm Eagle.

HIt the F1 key to bring up the Hot Ket list.

THere are also 5 different Sets of Camera Controls that you can test to see which one you like.

Enjoy!

Jim Rose

[Bis71]

What amazes me is how each battle plays out differently each time. I play "The Duel" when I have a limited amount of time. Every time, regardless of time, the AI uses different approaches. Sometimes aggressive, sometimes it turns tail immediately.