Brrrrr Cold Waters

Designed and programmed by one guy. Respect.

2 guys but yeah, much respect indeed. I find it amazing how lean their designs are. No fat or unneccesary embellishments. These guys know their stuff, and know it well.

Wow, I had no idea Killfish was such a small studio. I didn’t like the pacing of Atlantic Fleet much, which is why I am waiting, futilely, tomorrow before buying Cold Waters, but I really liked the game otherwise (it might be silly, but the dynamic sinking system they put in that game was a constant source of cheers and wonder for the lil boy still living in me).

I love the game but I think there might be something going on with the AI that needs to be looked at. As of now on normal difficulty the AI has the uncanny ability to dispatch air units to my location at the start of a tactical battle. On the strategic map I’ll creep at 5 knots ahead of an incoming sub or surface fleet, go to battletstions. And almost without fail I can hear a Bear flying directly overhead. First it drops a sonobuoy and circles around to drop a torpedo. I saw some grumbling on the Steam forums about this issue too.

It also seems that regardless of a task force being subs or surface vessels there’s always a Bear in the vicinity. Could the soviets field enough Bears for each dispatched force in 1984? I have no idea but they are ruining sullying my enjoyment of the campaign so far.

On the bright side the sonar modeling seems well done. The game takes into account the aspect of your boat with regards to how well the enemy can hear you. Going head on presents the quietest people as the machinery and reactor and prop is masked by the bow of your sub. Conversely you open yourself up to returning an active ping and your exposing your noisy bits if you’re presenting your broadsides.

It’s also important to pay attention to the numbers on the sonar page. The higher your numbers the better your able to keep contact and provide your crew with data to get a good firing solution. Likewise if the numbers for the enemy unit rises they’re more likely to discover you. All of this means it’s crucial to correctly identify your contacts so you know what it’s sensor suite consists of. I guess we learn the capability of their suites through spying?

Yeah. I have played he earlier campaign several times. I am borderline sure its not tuned right. I mean I get HAMMERED every time. I will try the later campaign tonight the smart torps will presumably help.

Yeah, I read the discussion about AI air cover. I tend to side with the “too soon, too accurate” crowd. It would be nice if it was toned down a touch.

huh. havent had much of a problem beyond the reasonable. But im not playing at ugltra-mega-hardcore-hurtmeplenty mode. I just want to look at the pretty boats go boom.

I hope they give us the ability to save during tactical battles. Maybe they purposely left it out so players could just reload if things went south but as the game stands you can’t just play it for a quickie before heading out the door. Without being able to save your stuck in tactical and the only way out to is to abandon ship and quit.

Ah shoo. This was brought up during Tom’s stream yesterday/today, and I didn’t hear the answer.
This is a shame: the game is fascinating but having to plan an hour straight of gaming before committing is a pretty high demand.

For those of you who are (like me) struggling, I found this guy’s YT let’s play pretty informative. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZ5qDn0KM8E He’s an actual former submariner (or a very convincing imposter), and he does a pretty great job of narrating his strategies and decisions. I learned a whole lot from him about torpedo evasion and picking up / recognizing sonar contacts as well as such interesting submarine esoteria as “clearing baffles.” I was encouraged too that, for all his savvy, even he has trouble with sheered torpedo wires and wrecked periscopes. My main takeaway is that I’d been playing all wrong, relying too much on my overly aggressive old SH3 and SH4 strategies, which not surprisingly got me and my poor crew murdered almost every time. I do agree with many of you that the current difficulty level feels a little too severe. But I’m wondering if (maybe for me) it’s just a case of learning to play the game according to its own terms, being patient and relying more on the available technology and less on sub ace derring-do.

I learned this from RSR.

After losing my entire hour+ mission yesterday, and therefore the entire frickin’ campaign, to whatever bug wouldn’t let me leave battle, I’m done with this thing for now. I have no desire to spend so much time in a game that might lapse into an unrecoverable error.

It’s official. Cold Waters: rage uninstalled.

-Tom

Tom there are several threads on the Steam forum addressing this very issue. The hope is that they will eventually add mid-mission saves at some point.

Hmm. Good developers, but obviously Glorious PC Battlestation neophytes. The mobile “just turn it off” to save mentality doesn’t work here.

From the wondrous Steam forums:

We’re working on patch right now. It will probably be a few more days, maybe the weekend (no promises) and we’ll upload it to the beta branch.

When they do (and only then) I’ll buy the game.

you do that, and ill keep betatesting it for you :)

I wanted to like this, but I’ve run into some infuriating problems. Tom was saying in the stream that there should be more warning when there’s a torpedo in the water. That might not seem like a big deal until a helicopter drops two of them right on top of you and you’ve got seconds to respond. And what really makes me mad is when I forget that I have planes down 5 degrees and I turn on time compression. It says in tiny letters in the bottom corner of the screen “passing 1000 feet”, “passing 1100 feet”, and if you don’t notice that and correct it within seconds, you’re dead. How hard would it be for them to stop time compression and give you an alarm noise and a big flashing warning when you pass below 1000 feet?

There seems to be some serious gameplay issues too. After I torpedoed one ship, a helicopter went after me. It makes sense that he would know what bearing the torpedo came from and search that way. But by the time he gets there, I’m in silent running at 900 feet, and somehow he still detects me. If he’s using passive sonar, it shouldn’t be good enough to pick me up, and if he’s using active sonar, I should hear it.

I would love a submarine game halfway between Red Storm Rising and Dangerous Waters, but this isn’t working out for me right now. It’s not fun like RSR because I keep getting killed by the UI, and it’s not historically accurate like DW. I hope they fix it because they’re so close to having a great game.

From browsing the forum, there is an acknowledged problem with MAD being dead accurate, almost a water wallhack. Since all the ships share their info on the Russian side, you practically can’t hide from surface platforms, it appears. You can tweak or turn the system off with some editing, to eleviate that kind of frustration until it is more consistently fixed.
Yeah, I am spending my life on the Cold Waters Steam forum, trying to convince myself to not jump for it before the game is fixed!