Fighting Steel features big ships behaving badly. No wimpy cruise missiles here, just 16" guns and rolling thunder.

• Use your destroyers to race in and deliver torpedo attacks against the capital ships of your adversary.
• To throw off the aim of your enemy, turn away and generate smoke. This will obscure the range he needs to target you.

Q: I don’t see many shell splashes. Where are they?

A: A shell splash animation only occurs when the salvo "straddles" the target. If the salvo does not straddle, then there is no chance of a shell hit, and the animation does not occur. Straddling the target with a salvo does not necessarily mean you have scored a hit. Each shell in the salvo that misses causes a splash, so if you fired a salvo of six guns and see six splashes, you straddled the target but did not hit it. If you straddled the target and there are five splashes, then one shell hit.

Q: I can’t seem to go my maximum posted speed. What could be the problem?

A: You might be encountering heavy seas; check environmental conditions in the Briefing Screen (F6) and check the Sea State. A higher Sea State will reduce your speed significantly. Also, ships may only accelerate at half rate while performing a maneuver. If you have order a speed increase and your ships aren’t increasing their speed, they’re probably currently locked into a turn. Finally, check your Single ship status panels for damage to your propulsion system.

Fighting Steel in the North Atlantic

Fighting Steel in the North Atlantic (FSNA) is a strategic campaign for Fighting Steel. Similar to the campaign mode of GNBNA, it will allow to control task forces in the North Atlantic to either attack allied convoys or to prevent the German task forces to do so. It is a separate program that will generate a scenario file for Fighting Steel when two task forces engage for a battle and launch Fighting Steel to play the battle. When the battle has ended and Fighting Steel has been left, FSNA will continue the campaign.

CLICK HERE FOR FSNA

TIPS

• If Fighting Steel crashes repeatedly, don't despair, you're not alone. To their credit, SSI/DBZ issued a patch to address this within days. This patch is essential.

  Go to the PATCHES & MISSIONS section to DOWNLOAD the latest patches for this sim.

• Many players note that after they updated their sound/video drivers, performance improves and crashing ceases. Don't you wish a PC could automatically check the required websites for new drivers, download them and install them, all behind the scenes while you read your e-mail? Alas. Check to make sure your sound and video drivers are DirectX6 certified and up-to-date.

• The Win 95/98 taskbar causes some conflicts while running the game. Go into the properties menu for your task bar in either Windows 95 or 98. Make sure the box next to the words "Always on top" is unchecked. Exit the properties menu. Now try the game.

• Many players report trouble launching FS, until they enable the Direct 3D acceleration. Be sure to check yours.

• Update your video and sound drivers (since Direct X 6.1 only came out a few months ago, if you have drivers that are more than 1-2 months old you will very likely experience problems).

• You can download the latest drivers for your sound card from www.creaf.com.

• Disable any screen savers and be sure no other programs are running in the background that aren't absolutely necessary.

Assuming the internet connections were up and running OK (sounds like they were).
Some tips that hopefully will help are:

1) Make sure you both are running the exact same version, with respect to patches. The very first version won't connect with the 1.1 patch, and some intermediate patches might not work with other patched versions.


2) Make sure directplay is set up correctly. I've enclosed the file  "duel.zip"  which contains the file "duel.exe", which is an example program that comes with the DirectPlay SDK. Unzip it and run it on both machines and see if you can connect and play. If you can, the problem isn't with the directplay library.


3) If the problem isn't with the direct play library, we'd need more information such as: What kind of connection does your friend have? Cable modem also? What kind of latency is there between your computers on the net? Does the other session appear in the list of sessions at all? With any markings next to it? Any firewalls or other weirdness on the way to the net on either side?

Hope this helps. I bet it's #1 but anything is possible :)

Q: The bottom panel suddenly stopped responding to mouse clicks! The camera and map controls are working, but I can’t give orders to my ships. Help!

A: You’ve probably left a pop-up window open in one of the panels and it’s still waiting for an input. There are pop-ups in the Navigation panel (N key), Torpedoes panel (T key), Single-Ship Main Guns panel (W key), Single-Ship Secondary Guns (Y key), and Single-Ship Illumination panel (L key). Change the panels by pressing those hot keys until you find the open pop-up, then click on a selection to close the pop-up. We will fix this in a future patch so that the pop-up closes if you leave the panel without making a selection.

Q: I had an enemy ship that didn’t sink, even though all of its flotation boxes were dark blue, indicating complete flotation damage. Why didn’t it sink?

A: Each flotation box represents 5% of the ship’s flotation damage, but each box is triggered to turn dark blue when flotation damage reaches 1% above the previous damage level. Thus, the last box turns dark blue when flotation damage reaches 96% (1% above 95%). The ship in question probably had damage between 96-99%, but not 100%. To avoid any confusion, we will change this in a patch so that the last flotation box does not fill with dark blue until the ship suffers 100% flotation damage.

Q: I’m not seeing the Bombardment circles at start of scenario. What is the problem?

A: Please select a different zoom level for the 2D map view (try Max out first, then work your way down to a higher zoom level.) Q: I’m experiencing sluggish mouse control and the camera is moving slowing throughout the game.

A: Please remember to review the basic system requirements for Fighting Steel. If you have a low end system, you might need to reduce certain 3D effects. Try turning off Ocean textures, Sky textures, Smokestacks, Sea swells, Smoke screens, and Rolling ships. You might also try minimizing the use of Smokescreens in game play. The game engine will automatically detect a lower than normal frame rate and attempt to adjust the 3D modeling to present a smaller polygon count. You might notice slight changes to the models during slow periods of game play (less detail in models, no flags above the models, etc.) Finally, you may open the dbzlib.ini file (found in the \INI folder in the game directory) and change the last line in the file to read:

GRAPHICS = 1

This will cause a reduction in the detail of the 3D models at closer range, giving a user a smoother playing game.

Q: I cannot select a target in either the Division gun Orders panel or the Single ship Orders panel. What could be wrong?

A: If you experience any of the above symptoms, please check the 2D map view and make sure that your guns are even in range (see page 27 in the game manual). Visibility is an issue here as well. Be sure that an obstacle (friendly or enemy ship, smoke screen, etc.) isn’t 1000 yards or closer to you or the target you are firing at or your targeting may be obstructed. Also, Green and Fatigued crews are slower to react than elite and rested crews. Even though guns are in range and you have spotted the enemy, it might take a minute for the crew to completely react and target weapons. Please remember, Standard Mode games show all presently known enemy contacts, even for your division that aren't within visual contact range. Users should keep this in mind when they find that for some reason they cannot target a certain enemy ship (the enemy probably has not been spotted yet or simply isn’t currently in weapon range for this one division)

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