From: jeremy@cheetah.inmos.co.uk (Jeremy Thorp)
Subject: Re: Great Naval Battles comments
Organization: INMOS Limited, Bristol, UK
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 1993 13:06:25 GMT

In article <1992Dec23.100808.1@ntuvax.ntu.ac.sg>, sa6904623@ntuvax.ntu.ac.sg writes:
|> 
|> 	The Great Naval Battles game is pretty good, but has plenty of flaws in
|> the realism.  It requires 700k EMS and 600k base memory, with great sound
|> effects if you have a Sound Blaster Pro II.

My copy of GNB arrived last week. It's very good and I'm hooked.

|> 
|> 	There are a few irratating things about the sound.  For a start, the
|> background humm cannot be disabled... which can drive anyone nuts playing the
|> game.  The firing of the secondary guns also sound twice as loud as the primary
|> guns (pretty odd, I'd think).

Don't know. I've turned the sound off as the noise from ANY of my computer games greatly
irritates my partner

|> 
|> 	The game time is NOT real time.  On my machine, 1 second game time is
|> about 2.1 seconds real time.  Every time you fire your main guns on 'spotting
|> fire', you'd have to wait 59 seconds game time till impact, 5 seconds to adjust
|> the guns before firing the next volley, which works out to one shot every 2.5
|> minutes wall clock time.  I frequently snooze/fall off to sleep just waiting
|> for guns to be ready.

Two points. On my PC (a 486/33), a second games time is less than a real second (between .5
and 1 I think). There is an option to change the speed (Alt-G), to run at *2, *4, *6, and *8
normal. This certainly helps in slogging matches.

|> 
|> 	The computer gunnery stinks - I beat the computer at all scenarios
|> (except one, where a critical hit blew up my magazine after 2 minutes).  No
|> matter which side you take, the computer only places the guns on 'spotting
|> fire' mode (even on your own ships in automatic).  Once you get a pretty good
|> straddle with spotting fire, just switch to narrow-straddle and you will score
|> a lot of hits!

The computer puts the guns of spot to start with, and then switches to full after a few(ish)
salvoes.

The problem I have noticed is that the computer, when given a choice of ships to shoot at,
shoots at the wrong (in my opinion) one. E.g. shooting at destroyers rather than battleships.
I have played the convoy scenario from both sides, and won easily both times.

|> 
|> 	In the scenario of the engagement of the Garf Spee, it took 5 minutes
|> game time for the British to sink the raider, with guns from all 3 cruisers on
|> narrow-fire, and hitting.  Playing the same scenario as Germans, it took a lot
|> longer, some 2 hours?, but I still managed to sink all 3 cruisers with minimal
|> damage taken in.  (I was out of ammo, but managed to get the last ship, the
|> Ajax to a crawl, put 6 torpedos into her, and was almost ready to ram her when
|> she sank!)

When I played this one, as the Germans, I lost pretty quickly. I must need more practice :-).

I have run out of ammo a few times, it's very frustrating!!

|> 
|> 	There also appears to be some blind spots which disallow the firing of
|> guns...
|> 
|> 	Apart from the flaws, it is a great game!

Agreed!!

I have yet to try the campaigns, where, for example to try to stop the Bismark escaping into
the Atlantic.

-- 
Jeremy Thorp, INMOS Ltd, 	|	jeremy@inmos.com
1000 Aztec West, Almondsbury, 	|	jeremy@inmos.co.uk
Bristol, BS12 4SQ, UK.		|	
Tel.  +44 454 616616    Fax. +44 454 617910
The above is the personal opinion of the author,
and does not necessarily reflect INMOS policy.