Atlantic Fleet, a Battle of the Atlantic wargame recently ported from mobile, and the subject of at least two fawning segments in The Flare Path, hits Steam today for $10.
This week hit me hard on Steam, mostly because of the Slitherine Sale but also because of Atlantic Fleet hitting, weekly sales and new DLC for other games. I got Atlantic Fleet, Pike and Shot: Campaigns, all of the Battle Academy 1 DLC AND Battle Academy 2, Advanced Tactics Gold AND the new DLC for Making History: The Great War.
I need a game buying break now of at LEAST a month or six.
JoshL
2663
Because he’s never made a game that was any good.
vyshka
2664
Weren’t you supposed to be taking it easy this year?? ;)
Here’s the thing, I’d barely purchased anything for WEEKS. Like, a little bundle here or there but nothing substantial, then BOOM. I have a bender.
I feel like it’s a stumbling block that’s normal in this kind of process. It’s annoying, but you can’t learn how to stay up if you don’t fall every so often.
vyshka
2666
Tigers on the Hunt also released this week from Matrix. My understanding is that it started as a project by the developer to make a computer version of ASL, and from what I’ve seen on youtube it looks like kept the same turn phases (not sure how much it still resembles ASL other than that).
If you’re interested, definitely view the videos and read the forum. I remember, fairly fondly, both SL and ASL, from my distant past. For years, I wanted a computer version. But those days are long gone. This game looks very much like a labor of love, with all that implies. It is pretty much a near-verbatim translation of the ASL rules, minus some of the esoterica I guess, and there are even ready-made mods already to mod in the actual ASL counters and look. But the UI is, to be generous, well behind the times, some of the game systems are well and truly rooted in the 1980s (like, um, ASL), and the technical execution of the game (resolutions, display settings, unit selection, etc.) seems, to be kind, utilitarian at best.
I mean, there’s a part of me that really wants to try something like this, but, no. Not for fifty clams, for a game where the patch on day one requires you to manually unzip stuff into the right folders, where there are no zoom levels, and where from what I can tell the game doesn’t handle large monitors/high resolutions seamlessly, among other things. And the interface is one only a grognard frozen in time since 1985 could love. OTOH, it sure does let you play ASL, pretty much.
Now, I’d kill for a mondernized, hi-res, technically up to date Steel Panthers, perhaps…
vyshka
2668
But the UI is, to be generous, well behind the times, some of the game systems are well and truly rooted in the 1980s (like, um, ASL), and the technical execution of the game (resolutions, display settings, unit selection, etc.) seems, to be kind, utilitarian at best.
So a typical grog title? :) Wow, they don’t have the matrix patch update bits for it. I’m somewhat interested in it, but not enough to shell out the money right now. Especially when I still have other grog games that I haven’t spent enough time with. If I’m going to shell out that money now, it is probably going to be for the Master of Orion early access, or Polaris Sector when Matrix releases it next month.
Grigsby supposedly has a new steel panthers game on his to-do list.
Mind you, if I didn’t have a bajillion unplayed games on my PC already, I’d consider Tigers on the Hunt simply for its curiosity value, though the price is pretty high for that sort of casual buying. But it does definitely look like a game for those who really pine for their ASL collection (sold mine years ago).
I still have nice memories of playing (particularly) the original John Hill Squad Leader. Elegant, simple, but with deep gameplay. The subsequent expansions and of course the reinvention with ASL added tons of chrome, but I think took away from the distilled essence of combat sim that the original was.
But man, I enjoyed sorting all those ASL counters into little trays I bought. Never, um, got many chances to actually play the game with anyone, but, well, that’s how wargaming was back then.
HRose
2670
I’d settle for a computer manual with ALL the fucking rules in it. But eh, myths.
Canuck
2671
That was quite a little sale by Slitherine. In fact, other than perhaps last year’s Christmas sale where there were a ton more games on sale, I think this one may have been the best yet. I managed to hold off except for buying the complete edition of Pandora. I was tempted by Advanced Tactics Gold but I bought the orginal AT when it came out and bounced off of it hard. I think the whole Decisive Campaigns series is one of those series that I want to like but just ends up feeling like work to me.
I really wanted to get Order of Battle but 25% off wasn’t quite enough to tempt me.
By the by, does anyone know what’s going on with SSG? I just read Operation Mincemeat (Britain’s dead body decoy in the Mediterranean) and the talk of Sicily campaign reminded me how much I enjoyed their Battles in Italy game. I really enjoyed playing their Operation Husky scenario. It was probably the one time I’ve successfully “got” a grognard game.
As far as I know, the company is essentially defunct, with the death of Ian Trout in 2011 or so I guess; the website hasn’t really been updated in like five or six years. Which is a pity in many ways, not the least of which is that their games, while intriguing and with some very innovative mechanics, are nearly unplayable (to me at least) on modern hardware. You CAN get them to run, but the max resolution is so low that on modern widescreen monitors it becomes extremely difficulty to read stuff, or it just looks horrid. If they had only coded these things like Tiller did, with full hardware independence built in, the games would have been ageless. But I guess the graphics they used didn’t lend themselves to that, or something. Battles in Italy was really good, as were the Kharkov/Korsun stuff.
Canuck
2673
That’s what I feared. I think I reinstalled BiI a few years ago, took one look at it and it and thought “I can’t play this”.
What a shame.
tgb123
2674
All of the Victory and Glory tutorials are up.
I haven’t watched them yet, but I’m sure they’ll tell you more about the game than I’m allowed to
Gosh darn it, I sense more of my money going Matrix’s way with Victory and Glory.
I bought Tigers on the Hunt btw. It is as it appears, a very hard to use game which is a labour of love, delivering significant depth, sitting on a quirky technical stack.
It definitely falls in the catgeory of schwerpunkt & NWS games, with a harder to use GUI. Not for those who want a guide but very enjoyable for those who like that challange of discovering how a game plays the hard way.
I am pleased this kind of game continues to be built. They are the true treasures of the hobby.
On that note I am worried that schwerpunkt may have disappeared? Ron’s webpage just redirects now?
http://schwerpunkt.wargamer.com
Glad you are enjoying it. For me, I’m pretty sure I would be frustrated by the technical issues and the clunky UI; from reading the Matrix forums, the stuff that the developers explain about how the game works makes me think that they are more game designers than software engineers, and that the compromises that resulted would be too much for me to enjoy the game at this stage of my wargaming life. That, and I sort of no longer really want my board games translated to the computer; I want computer games that capture the feel of board games, rather than literal translations. That, of course, is a personal preference.
If TotH was resting on a solid technical base, so that there were no technical rough edges that had to be endured, I’d consider getting it for the nostalgia and grog aspects, but as it is, it’s way too expensive for m.
Now, the Victory and Glory will probably get my money.
I think you are making the right decision for your tastes Wombat. I think you would be frustrated with it, heck I think most grogs would be frustrated with it. I am digging it but I definitely have edge case tastes. I think there is going to be a nice amount of content built for TotH , the editior is workable so I am looking forward to seeing more Squad Leader stuff converted over.
That seems likely, given the forum traffic on Matrix. I hope, too, that the underlying engine gets some love, too. Maybe after a big patch or six (or the next big sale) I’ll look into it. Especially if it makes it to Steam.
Atlantic Fleet is in serious contention for my March game of the month. Why?
- It has a good dynamic campaign, at a scale right dead center in the Goldilocks Zone: since it started as a mobile game, it doesn’t have the luxury of dozens of menus and hundreds of sea zones. You have four or five screens total, and about twenty or thirty places to put ships, of which only about ten or fifteen matter on a regular basis. You don’t command the whole Atlantic Fleet, you command 30 ships, and the AI opponent gets the same. You contest a small-scale version of the Atlantic, and it captures the feel of the thing excellently, without getting bogged down in detail.
- The tactical layer is also awesome, highlighting the fiendish difficulty of, say, landing a salvo of depth charges on a submarine, or of shooting at a target 20,000 yards away and across the wind in a North Atlantic gale. It drags a little bit, but that’s mainly because I’ve turned on two difficulty options (battles start with greater distance between ships, and retreating requires a minimum distance to enemies). The choice to make weapons aim/release a player function was inspired—it helps ease the pain of RNG when it’s your fault to begin with, and it’s intensely gratifying landing a salvo you had to aim three ship lengths off because of wind effects.
- Although the dynamic campaign is streamlined and better off for it, the ship database is pretty grognardy; ten or fifteen classes of ship per side, and all of the historical ships listed. Ship physics seem pretty good, too: punch holes in one side of a ship, and it’ll eventually roll over. (Although so far, I’ve generally just continued pounding things until they blow up or sink.)
- There’s a lot of content besides the dynamic campaign, too: a custom battle editor, thirty single missions, and a static campaign for each side, and I can see myself playing most or all of it.
- With its roots in a mobile game, it’ll run on basically any computer. It plays just fine on my Linux laptop, which is 2010 vintage, under wine.
It was the middle of January, 1940. Four British warships (heavy cruiser HMS Suffolk, light cruiser HMS Ajax, and V-class destroyers HMS Valorous and HMS Vanessa) cruised northeast of Scotland, and sighted a warship on the horizon: Scharnhorst, a German battleship, sortieing from Kiel or Wilhelmshaven into the Atlantic. An attack by a flight of Stukas put Suffolk out of action, but the three remaining ships pressed on under cover of smoke. As they neared, a trio of Short Sunderlands, bomb-armed, arrived on scene. The first attack missed altogether. The second scored one hit, which penetrated the roof of Scharnhorst’s Y turret. The third hit home: all six bombs landed along the battleship’s length. One dropped down a funnel and exploded in the boiler room, and Scharnhorst came to a stop; another found a second turret.
Valorous, living up to her name, was the first into torpedo range, and let fly all six of her torpedoes. (Against a high-value target like a stationary battleship, why leave anything to chance?) A few minutes later, the torpedoes hit, and soon, Scharnhorst was on her way to the bottom.
tgb123
2680
Can you save mid-mission?
