From: jorgand@sumax.seattleu.edu (Dave Jorgan)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games
Subject: Re: Great naval battles: any comments?
Keywords: SSI Great naval battles
Date: 21 Dec 92 12:16:16 GMT
Article-I.D.: sumax.1h64qgINN9vv
Organization: Seattle University
NNTP-Posting-Host: sumax.seattleu.edu

In article <hrpdko.43@pnv.palm.cri.nz> news@massey.ac.nz (USENET News System) writes:
>
>Hi there,
>
>I'm considering buying great naval battles by SSI. Anyone know anything 
>about it?
>
>Dale Ogilvie



	It is OK, but not as realistic as I would have liked. It takes up
an enormous amount of disk space, yet a large part of it is for an
introductory animation which appears to be created with one of those
commercial presentation/animation packages. What is worse, the animation
is totally separate from the program i.e it has NOTHING to do with the
program itself. You can in fact run the game separately without the animation.
Why am I complaining about it? Because it takes up several megabytes of
disk space, and there is no option to delete or not install the introduction,
though it is separate from the program proper. And, the docs do not tell you
which files are related to the animation, so you can delete them. You could
experiment, but.....


	On with the game. I played it extensively as the German, I did not
play as the British save for some individual stand-alone scenarios. The
campaign I played as the German. The graphics are good and the sound effects
nice, but you have to have a certain memory configuration to have sound. This
meant in my case I have to use a special boot disk with the proper memory
manager settings. At any rate, since I did not have the patience to sit
through the ship duels in real-time, I did not worry about the sound effects.
There is no sound when you activate the time acceleration feature to speed
up the battles.

	Each ship is individually modeled and controlled, and the control
scheme is good. The weaknesses in realism are as follows:

	* Germans can literally destroy the British Navy. That's what I did,
I sank every battleship and two of the British carriers, and most of these
were sunk BEFORE I got the Bismarck and Tirpitz! The secret is force
concentration. By combining my ships in large groups (no less than three
capital ships in each group) I just went around attacking convoys, guarded
by just one British BB, and annhilated it, then ran back to port. The British
response to my incursions was less than overwhelming. You can usually
disengage from a superior British intercepting force, and once you sink
three or four battleships the large British interception forces cease to
exist, and you are rarely intercepted by more than one BB. I sank four
old British dreadnoughts, then caught the Nelson all alone and sank it. I
caught the Hood and Ark Royal alone, and sank both. (Yes, I sank the Ark
Royal with gunfire, the dream of every German WWII naval commander) and later
on got the Illustrious and the Victorious as well in gun battles. Basically
you detail two of you three capital ships to hammer the escorting BB while the
3rd fires and chases the carrier. 

	As the British commissioned new King George V class ships, they
were destroyed piecemeal, one by one. Whether you think German 11 in gunned
battlecruisers and pocket battleships can sink full blown 14-16 in gunned
British BB's is up to debate, but in this game you can. When the Bismarck
put to sea, rather than the all out pursuit of naval legend all I got was a
tepid response of one British intercepting BB which was quickly destroyed.
In fact, you'd think the British would send everything they had against
some of the raiding groups I sent out, which comprised 2/3 of the German
Navy, but they acted as though nothing unusual was going on. Eventually
I smashed so many English ships many of the convoys were unescorted.

	Against the Germans, if a ship is damaged and you put it into drydock,
chances are it will be damaged further by air attack. I put the Bismarck into
Kiel for repairs slated to take 50 days, and Allied air attacks hammered it
until it took *950* days to repair. Personally, I find that rather extreme, 
especially in light of history, when the Germans repaired the Tirpitz out in
the wilderness of a Norwegian fjord after massive air and sub attack in a 
fraction of the time, but whatever. So you can see, the game has some 
realism flaws, but it is a good way to pass a lot of hours (the campaign from
1939-1945 is played in near real time, with an acceleration option, but it can
last for days.)

	One other bug or flaw- the gunnery of the Bismarck-class BB's is 
really horrible. Playing the Bismarck vs. Prince of Wales scenario, the
Bismarck could hardly hit the target wheras the Prince of Wales repeatedly
struck the Bismarck. This lack of accuracy carries over to all the scenarios
and the campaign. Yet, the other German ships hit quite well, and my
Scharnhorst-class BC's and the pocket battleships did most of the damage to
the British (I hardly missed the Bismarck when she was laid up for 900+ days.)
Launching seaplanes, going to full automatic, nothing seemed to improve
the accuracy (save for going to close range.) This really bothered me.



Dave Jorgan
jorgand@sumax.seattleu.edu