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Does anyone know any game where you can control individual ships in the 1900-1945 era ? I was thinking of making a game where you captain cruisers, destroyers, battleships and so on. Basically like Silent Hunter except you control a surface warship instead of a submarine. Having a game or even a mod to work as a reference for what other guys did as well as a feasibility study for this idea would be helpful to me.

There are Battlestations: Midway and Battlestations: Pacific, but those are not really simulators per se. More focused on tactical combat with multiple ships and carrier planes and so forth, although it is certainly possible (and a great deal of fun) to drive around individual destroyers and cruisers.

I would stress that it is not meant to be an accurate simulation. It is balanced for gameplay and the intricate details of ship operations are greatly simplified. For instance, changing course is a matter of WASD for increase/decrease speed and left/right rudder.

But that may serve as some basis or inspiration for you. Those are certainly the only games I know of that are like what you describe.

Do those games come with editors? Perhaps you could unbalance the game so the Bismarck goes down like a bitch as it should

Neither of those games feature the Bismarck.

They focus on the Pacific War. I thought that was kinda obvious from the names

Perhaps you were thinking of the Fuso or Yamato, both of which turn up in the ship challenges in Midway.

Destroyer Command is the only halfway modern surface ship sim that comes to mind. It might be unplayable though, it was buggy as fuck on release and I'm not sure it was ever properly fixed.

There's also the Great Naval Battles series from mid-90s. It was more of a Harpoon-esque fleet combat game, but you could also directly control surface ships at least in the third game.

There’s Navyfield, a “freemium” multiplayer online game that seems to fit what you’re looking for. Each player controls an individual ship within a larger battle, viewed in the third person from above. Combat tends to focus on gun battles, although submarines and carriers are also available.

Eternal_Freedom wrote:Neither of those games feature the Bismarck.

They focus on the Pacific War. I thought that was kinda obvious from the names

Perhaps you were thinking of the Fuso or Yamato, both of which turn up in the ship challenges in Midway.

Yamato tends to go down like a bitch, but the scenario is greatly unbalanced by the fact that Yamato starts close enough to the carriers that it can get into gun range fairly quickly. Under more realistic conditions that would be impossible... but even so, Yamato tends to go down.

Fuso manages a little better... but then, in the Fuso challenge you're only worrying about enemy surface combatants.

aieeegrunt wrote:Do those games come with editors? Perhaps you could unbalance the game so the Bismarck goes down like a bitch as it should

Yeah, whatever dude.

Taskforce 1942 was a cool game in 1995; it lets you switch focus between ships, control squadrons, man guns, etc, and had a strategic layer. Ships don't die; they get sent to San Francisco for repairs!

Simon_Jester wrote:

Eternal_Freedom wrote:Neither of those games feature the Bismarck.

They focus on the Pacific War. I thought that was kinda obvious from the names

Perhaps you were thinking of the Fuso or Yamato, both of which turn up in the ship challenges in Midway.

Yamato tends to go down like a bitch, but the scenario is greatly unbalanced by the fact that Yamato starts close enough to the carriers that it can get into gun range fairly quickly. Under more realistic conditions that would be impossible... but even so, Yamato tends to go down.

Fuso manages a little better... but then, in the Fuso challenge you're only worrying about enemy surface combatants.

If you assemble the right formation for the destroyers and CL, and you are careful with your repairs, you can easily get into gun range and sink both carriers, no sweat, every time.

The first time I made it to gun range I fired off a salvo from the bow turrets, thinking I might get a hit and slow Enterprise down. All six shells hit and the carrier exploded and sank. Hornet soon followed.

Just sayin'

Stark wrote:Taskforce 1942 was a cool game in 1995; it lets you switch focus between ships, control squadrons, man guns, etc, and had a strategic layer. Ships don't die; they get sent to San Francisco for repairs!

The guy who made the game announced he's making a sequel actually. He said the engine is complete but he just needs some help with other aspects of the game.

Besides the Battlestation series, the only game that comes to mind is Enigma: Rising Tide.

It takes place in an alternate history you can read more about on the Wiki. If I remember correctly, it has a seperate surface campaign and underwater campaign for each of the three factions (but don't quote me on that). The surface campaign let's you contol PT Boats, corvettes, and destroyers.

The submarine campaigns are okay. The surface ones are really hampered by the Anti-submarine missions, which basically boil down to luck. You have to set your depth charges to explode at a certain depth, but while you are given the position of the submarine on your sonar, you have no idea what depth he's at. The AI will also tend to crash dive when you launch them, complicating the matter further. More than once in the compaign, I was basically just waiting for the submarine to surface for air and sinking them with my gun. I finally just quit playing the game when I came upon a mission where I was defending another ship from a submarine, and I could never sink the submarine in time.

Other than that, the game was... okay.

There is always Fighting Steel Project from the NWS folks who have also been modding the hell out of the old Jane's Fleet Command