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World War 2 naval action with Evil Twin's 2014 release For a long time, many of us have been tied up at our home ports, fretting at our virtual quaysides with varying degrees of impatience; waiting for the launch of a decent simulation of naval surface action in World War 2. Sure, we still have the Silent Hunter series for submarine operations and other titles for surface action in earlier and later eras. And we have games like Navy Field and World of Warships, plus older stuff like Battlestations Midway/Pacific. But what we don't have is a proper surface combat simulation, a truly worthy successor to classics like SSI's Fighting Steel and Destroyer Command - notwithstanding some Silent Hunter mods which provide a limited measure of surface ship action. Destroyer Command did what it did (the clue here, being in the title) reasonably well, despite the gaping ommission of ship-laid smokescreens (other than a purely visual mod, whose screens offered no actual cover). This meant you couldn't use the classic destroyer tactic of launching torpedoes while making smoke, then putting about and disappearing into your ready-made smokescreen. Still, as a sim of operating US destroyers, it wasn't bad and the graphics were better than the earlier SSI sim, Fighting Steel. Despite very basic graphics, no land, subs or planes, Fighting Steel, especially with the FSP mod, was - and IMHO still is - the classic WW2 ship sim. We get a good range of adequately-modelled warships (and transports) from the German, British, US and Japanese navies and the ability to re-fight most of the classic WW2 surface ship actions, many added by the mod community. The FS command interface was extremely well designed, giving alternative 2d (map) and 3d views and the ability to command individual ships or divisions - which you do by issuing orders for speed, course, target and weapon selection via a neat set of icons. Whether you found this intuitive or not, the thing that struck me was that it looked like the designers' aim was to put the player the role of the ship's captain (or commander of a division of ships), letting AI-run systems take care of the rest. They didn't fall into the trap of giving you some kind of gamey, simplified, crosshaired gunsight to aim your weapons, or worse a floating reticle in the 3-d world. I didn't miss FS's lack of land, even for the Gaudalcanal actions; likewise, the lack of planes or subs. Night battles became much more interesting when the FSP mod added tracers and AI was quite good, with ships making good use of smoke screens. Gun and torpedo action was what FS did and it did both very well indeed. Which I relished, having been brought up in the post-WW2 era and soaked up TV documentaries like The Valiant Years and films like Sink the Bismarck! and Battle of the River Plate. I made many a 1/600 Airfix warship kit, back in the days before multi-lingual instruction sheets no longer told you that part 21 was actually the starboard main armament fire director. And I really loved the 1/1200 Eagle kits, released in themed sets based on famous Royal Navy actions. Each kit had a little potted history of the relevant battle in its box. Marvellous stuff. Nothing I've tried since Fighting Steel has come close to providing a convincing PC simulation of classic WW2 surface actions, being either too 'gamey' or too limited in scope - usually both. And unfortunately, FS's graphics engine won't run on modern PCs. Still, it was a classic, worth playing if you have an old enough system somewhere to hand (Win 98 to XP inclusive, IIRC). And so to the to the present day...last week, in fact. While I'm on holiday, I usually visit local video game shops or departments, on the lookout for bargains - typically, games I might not try, at full price. Wargame: European Escalation was a recent example, and a good one, too, bought on Spain's Costa del Sol earlier this year and impressing me so much that I later bought a follow-on title, Wargame: Airland Battle. True to form, last week in a Game store on the Costa Blanca, I browsed the few shelves these days left over to PC games. With my head canted over to scan the end titles on the racked DVD cases of the non-top 10 games, I spotted one called Victory at Sea. Despite keeping a weather eye open for the Messiah of WW2 surface combat sims, I was intrigued that I'd never heard of that one. Worth a look, I thought, if only to confirm it was either an arcade 'ship shooter' or a tedious shipyard stategy game. At nearly twenty Euros, Victory at Sea wasn't coming at a knock-down price, and therefore wasn't something I was inclined to pick up, on the off chance that I might like it. I was offline and unlikely to return to the store from the resort, so I'd have to decide there and then, without checking out online reviews. Decisions, decisions! Disregarding the flashy cover artwork of what looked like a KGV battleship and a Gato-class sub being bombed by Japanese Army fighters, I had a look at the back, studying the little screenshots and applying my very limited Spanish to the 'blurb'. This actually looked promising - WW2 naval combat in the Atlantic, the Med or the Pacific, with campaigns in the British, German, Japanese and US navies; quick battles which added French, Dutch and Italians; subs and aircraft as well as surface action; over a hundred types (classes?) of ship; and real-time 3-d world action, not just some overly map-based navy-building strategy game. Victory at Sea appeared to be firmly single player and firmly historical, not some kind of Multi-Player, third person 'battleship shooter'. The cover boasted a TIGA award by for 'Best action adventure from small studio', which also sounded promising. OK, decision made! I'd give this a go. Maybe this would finally be the one, something that at long last came close to filling the seaboots vacated by Fighting Steel. Having picked up the DVD from the shop's desk, I noticed I also got a mini-manual and browsing this soon after exiting the premises, my heart sank. Apart from brief installation instructions (via Steam) and a tabular listing of about 30 hotkey commands, the mini-manual consisted of several pages depicting the game's 'classes of ship'. First problem, the ship images, evidently featuring game models, were rather basic - more detailed that Fighting Steel's ships, but rather crude, with some inaccuracies and simplifications. And a quick count showed under thirty distinct ship classes, leaving major gaps - for example, Germany had no battlecruisers or heavy cruisers. Were they counting every named ship in each class, to reach the claim of '100 tipos de barcos' in the blurb? But I needn't have worried - many more classes of ships are included. Any WW2 naval afficionado will understand how important this is - a WW2 surface combat sim which doesn't provide famous and important ships like (sticking with the Kriegsmarine example) the Deutschland class 'pocket battleships', the battlecruisers Scharnhorst or Gneisenau or a Hipper class heavy cruiser, just isn't cutting the mustard. There were few enough real WW2 surface actions and a Battle of the North Cape for example really must have Scharnhorst, as well as a KGV (for Duke of York) and sundry British cruisers. Even if you're just going to fight your own semi-historical campaign, you need to have a representative selection of the ships your chosen navy had, in that theatre and during that period. But they're all there and more besides, in Victory at Sea; they're just not all listed in the mini-manual. Phew! So, back home and unpacked, it was time to blow the cobwebs off the PC, fire her up and then load up my latest sim. This review is the result. So is Victory at Sea a shell-swept triumph on, above and below the seas, or a soggy defeat, best consigned to Davy Jones's locker? Time to find out what this simmer thought of her, anyway! ...to be continued!

I just had a first try-out with a Victory at Sea mod, namely Alane's Japan Ship Mod. This adds many additional IJN warships, although the inability, for now, to add new 3d models means each must use an existing VaS one. Somewhat confusingly, in-game, ship names appear as Japanese characters! Below are some pics from a fairly mad Custom Battle, set up to pit a heavily-escorted Japanese carrier group at close range against a smaller US task force, without carriers. Playing the IJN side, I just let the AI slug it out under 'attack' orders, and a real old slug fest it was. The fight started with the IJN carriers launching air strikes, with the planes flying s shuttle service, returning quickly to land on, rearm and take off again. These animations are rather basic and I saw no sign that carriers were turning into wind to launch and recover planes, but it was certainly fun to watch. Having left my ships under AI control, I zoomed across the intervening ocean to watch the incoming enemy for a while. The USN task force is closing the range, with a North Carolina class BB, perhaps the 'Showboat' herself, in the centre of the formation: Our airstrikes have begun to arrive, with the US battleships singled out for attention: As the range winds down, the destroyers accompanying our force join the action, sending fans of Long Lance torpedoes towards the Americans. These reach their targets just as one of the BBs is turning across their path and is unable to evade in time (they DO need to enable us to toggle off those torpedo labels, though!): With my view re-set on my own force, I watch as my airstrikes come and go, while my battleships, cruisers and destroyers run down the enemy at 28 Knots: At the heart of my force is one of the mighty Yamato class Battleships: By the time my leading BBs have come into range and started shooting, some of the US ships have already been hit hard by airstrikes or torpedoes: My BBs turn to open their A arcs and soon the air between the two sides is filled with salvos of heavy shells: One of the US cruisers is soon in fairly serious trouble: But the enemy seem to be concentrating on my flagship, which is also taking hits. The range is soon close enough that secondary armaments on my battlewagons have begun to engage, and even my carriers have started shooting, as we try to cross the enemy's 'T': Still the battle rages on: The Americans have turned broadside too, but before long, superior Japanese numbers tell, and one by one the USN ships go under, one of the last this South Dakota class battleship, dead in the water and burning: Very simplified as it may be in various respects, I'm definitely still enjoying this one!

Hear, hear!

A few suggestions: Imperial War museum, Lambeth, London http://www.iwm.org.uk/visits/iwm-london HMS Belfast, London http://www.iwm.org.uk/visits/hms-belfast ...and if you don't mind going a little further afield: HMS Victory, Portsmouth http://www.hms-victory.com/ ...and a little further (car hire?): Royal Armoured Corps Tank Museum, Bovington, Dorset http://www.tankmuseum.org/home

Thanks Stephen and please keep 'em coming! I'll seek out the new Caudron now! Gotta go - something's brewing, in our patrol area...

Looking forward to the new update Ojcar, that SPAD XI from Stephen sort of snuck in under the radar, not surprising as there was none :) FWIW I think the ghost trees and ground objects are a trivial matter. Nor does it bother me, that the AI knows with certainty when a target has been shot enough. It's remarkable in fact how well a jetsim has adapted to WW1, though it took a patch or two. I absolutely find and believe that the air-to-air and dogfigthing experience in FE/FE2 is the best of any of the current WW1 sims, thanks to a good combination of convincing air-to-air AI, mostly very good flight and damage models, an excellent view system, very effective visual and audible stall effects; decent Archie target indication, and an under-rated but very capable campaign system with convincing air activity including an adequate 2-seater presence..the campaign aspect enhanced of course by your very own work (and of course Stephen's great freeware planes). Now all we really could ask for for the Western Front is a Dorand AR, a 'Big Ack' and a 1918 German 2-seater (hint!). I have over 200 aircraft and variants active, all flyable, and that's just my Western Front install. Super stuff. I mean, where else would you find all the usual planes, plus the likes of these - and many more besides? Roland D.II and D.IIa: Other sims have had an Albatros D.II, but FE has a D.I, as well: Likewise, we have not just a Fokker DII, but also the twin-gun, twin row rotary D.III: Lots of 2-seaters, also, like the LVG C.II... ...a Farman F40... ...and a Caudron G IV: There's even a Sopwith Tabloid: And a BE2e, rather than the 2c having to soldier on, till the RE8 is available: And it's Armchair Aces that intregates all these great planes into the FE/FE2campaign system!

Bon Dieu de mille Bons Dieux! Now, that would be nice to see, both in Atlantic Fleet and Victory at Sea. The latter has a Richelieu rather than a Dunkerque; as with many VaS ships, it's quite recognisable, but takes considerable liberties with the relative positions of many of the ship's main features, things which it would have surely been as easy to get right. The cruiser la Galissonniere looks a lot more accurate, complete with what I expect are Vichy-style air recognition colours on her turrets:

First and foremost, the air lanes there ought to have been closed. To say only MANPADS had been used before, is no excuse. We all know how that goes...you fly higher to avoid them, so the other side gets better missiles. The airspace should have been closed. And if/when it wasn't, the airlines hould have stopped using it. The idiocy or greed of those who kept the airspace open was the first link in the immediate chain of events that brought down all those poor people. The idiocy or greed of the airlines who kept flying through that airspace anyway, was the second. If they want to bring somebody to justice, they know where they can make a start, right now.

+1 to both the above. I really, really hope any 'gameplay adjustments' include enabling real-time play, preferably with a pause button, to replace turn-based. It may be what PC wargamers are used to and possibly quite ok for ground combat; but for naval warfare, I find it incredibly irritating, comical if it wasn't so frustrating. I hope they also add the ability to designate targets for each level of armament, rather than as it appears now, having to take every shot yourself. VaS suffers from this too, but the AI control option helps. The manual fire control option in AF looks quite clever in its way, but it should be like playing as gunner in a tanksim, the action goes on. Some such tweaks for the PC release would indeed take AF to a higher level altogether, sort of Destroyer Command meets Fighting Steel meets Victory at Sea, a nirvana of serious WW2 naval combat gaming. Then, we could all happily sail into the sunset, in our chosen battlewagon.

Atlantic Fleet actually seems reasonably sophisticated, not to mention having the sort of ship models VaS should have (plus the ability to see them closer up). A large selection of historical battles, too, which is what I prefer to a campaign; happily not restricted to Atlantic actions eg Barents Sea, Sydney -vs- Kormoran. I really don't like the turn-based approach (rather than being able either to play in real time or as in VaS, choose to pause the action) and the fact that when you're between turns, the ships stand still but the sea animation continues. The whole stop-go-stop-go, stacatto sequence looks really naff - beyond awful. Maybe ok for ground combat, where in modern times, troops tended to move in tactical bounds in between halts at fire positions or pauses for new orders; but it looks terrible, in a simulated sea battle. Still, I hope AF makes it to PC, it looks like a another potential must-have, for WW2 naval gamers. In the meantime, there's Victory at Sea, which also has the advantage of the Pacific Theatre and associated warships. Below are some pics from a 'Port Attack' custom battle. I had two small divisions of Japanese ships, each comprising a battleship, a cruiser and a couple of destroyers up against a US battleship, a couple of cruisers and some destroyers. The objective of this kind of mission, as I didn't realise but discovered, is to clear a way through to the port, for a formation of friendly landing ships or craft. It's a night battle, but not very dark, and you don't have starshells or searchlights. Battleship Kongo is burning aft from a fuel fire, slugging it out with intercepting US warships, which are also taking damage: Kongo is soon heavily damaged, but is still trading rounds with a Dakota Class BB: My second battleship, Nagato, is also heavily engaged (the little while numbers appear when you group ships into a formation, and are one of those features that should toggle off with ship labels, but don't): And here are some of my landing craft, running in towards the enemy port. One has already been hit hard, with US cruisers had destroyers closing in. By now, I've realised that, in deploying my ships in two widely-spaced columns purely for the surface action I had expected, I'm badly placed to defend my landing force: It's getting up close and personal, as I order my cruisers to run down the US warships. Below, a heavily-damaged Kako, top right and under AI control, crosses the 'T' of a US cruiser, which has also been hit hard. Heavy landing craft losses meant the mission was a failure, though I was able to play on, to the point where we had revenged ourselves by sinking the last of the outnumbered defenders. All in a day's work, in Victory at Sea!

'Convoy defence' is another option for a Custom Battle and as with all battles in Victory at Sea, you can either let the AI run the show or yourself, take manual control of either one, or all, of the vessels on your side. I would like a bit more control over the parameters for Custom Battles and the ability to save a battle you have previously set up would be really good - the 'Load' option seems to work only for campaign games. But it is simplicity itself to create a Custom Battle from scratch. A few clicks generated the one below, seen before launching this 'Convoy Defence' action. You can't control the size of the convoy but I decided to provide this small one with a strong escort: six destroyers - including a powerful 'Tribal' class - and a couple of corvettes and to position them around our charges. Under AI control, the single attacking Type IX U-Boat got off some torpedoes, but he didn't last long, before the also-AI controlled escorts were onto him. I had chosen to take control of the 'Tribal' class destroyer - the one with the two funnels - by the time the screenshot below was taken, but the others nailed the U-Boat before I could complete my own depth charge run. Other games I have tried in the hope of fighting some decent WW2 surface actions include Battlestations Midway and Pacific Storm - Allies. But nice though the ship models are, the arcade-style, super close range surface combat element of these different games is not in the same league as VaS. Though clearly not a ship simulator, Victory at Sea is I think the best simulation of WW2 naval combat since Fighting Steel, compensating for its more simplified simulation with its greater scope. Just the ticket!

Yes at first I thought 'What the...' but then I thought, well, it looks like many a pic I've seen of a whale at shallow depth, taken from the air, from about the height of the camera view. A bit like this: All that's missing is a wake for a periscope. Not appropriate for all seas, sea states and lighting conditions no doubt, but not a bad convention, for a wargame-style WW2 naval combat simulation that has no pretensions of being a ship simulator.

Thanks, Dave! I just tried a quick Custom Battle with a submarine, to get an idea of how that worked. It may be no co-indicence that Victory at Sea's joint publishers are Mongoose, who also published an identically-named and branded set of wargame rules. For the PC game in some respects has a wargame feel; and its simple point-and-click game mechanics are somewhat reminiscent of those of Wargame: European Escalation and sequels. I set up a USN Gato Class sub for a 'Regular' battle and as opponents, selected an IJN fleet carrier with two destroyers and a cruiser. After ordering the sub - I got USS Pargo - to go for the carrier, I turned my boat over to AI control, to see how that would pan out. As usual, we started just outside gun range and for some reason, Pargo surfaced, possibly as the enemy group was not on a closing course and a submerged approach at low underwater speed would have been pointless. We were quickly spotted, though - serves us right, for attacking in broad daylight! The enemy made smoke and turned away from us. At the same time, I noticed that the carrier had launched some planes, which were speeding our way at low level. My sub evidently detected them and crash dived. Subs in VaS seem to operate at two depths, 'periscope' and 'deep'. When deep, your sub is invisible in the Combat (3d) View, unless you have the labels turned on (or the sub's turning, in which case you see the turn marker appear at the bow). When at shallow depth, you get a sort of dark, shadow-like view of the sub, as seen here, being bombed by the Japanese carrier aircraft. We survived the attack, but I was then surprised to find myself on the receiving end of a couple of fans of torpedoes. These also missed. They may or may not have been launched by the enemy destroyer or destroyers at extreme range, before I crash dived. By about this point in time, one of the two Japenese destroyers was headed straight for us... ...but the other enemies were wisely making off at high speed, the carrier being sheperded away by the second destroyer and the cruiser, which tactics I thought quite convincing... All the while under AI control, our sub went deep for a time, then came back to periscope depth and tried to get the destroyer with a shot from one of her stern tubes. But to no avail... The depth charge attacks which quickly followed were pretty accurate... ...and soon fatal! Silent Hunter it certainly isn't, but submarine and aero-naval operations appear to be a potentially useful and entertaining addition to Victory at Sea's mainstream gun and torpedo action!