Sea Power - MicroProse Launches a new Flagship | Episode 88 - Single Malt Strategy

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the Single Malt Strategy podcast.
It's episode number eighty eight. I'm your host, the Historical Gamer,
but you can call me Matt, and today we're going
to be discussing a game that I think all of
my co hosts certainly I have been looking forward to
for three years, four years. It's been a while, and

(00:23):
it is slated to come out in to early access
in just a couple of weeks. By the time you're
listening to this, it'll probably be much closer. But it's
coming out on November twelfth, I believe it is. That
game is, of course, Seapower, being made by Terassic Games
and published by Micropros. To talk a little bit about
Seapower tonight, I am joined by my trustee co hosts.

(00:47):
First off, will start off with Tortuga Power. How are
you doing tonight, Tortuca.

Speaker 2 (00:50):
I that's the first time I think you've revealed the
I mean that was like a minute long. We are
just all waiting here, like, when is he going to
bring us in? I thought you might just do the
whole podcast saying hello.

Speaker 1 (01:01):
Monologues are great, right, I'm fine with just talking to
myself for an hour I do it every night anyway. So,
but we've also got wolf Pack. Oh I can speak now,
wolf Pack. How you doing?

Speaker 3 (01:12):
I am doing? I'm doing quite well. Excited to talk
about Seapower. Last but says I have been having a
no go ahead, how rude, did not mean to cut
you off?

Speaker 2 (01:22):
Good sir, don't talk TSGs.

Speaker 3 (01:24):
I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 (01:25):
Goh gosh, this is my podcast.

Speaker 3 (01:27):
Okay, please don't hurt me against kidding.

Speaker 1 (01:30):
And last, but not least certainly, our fourth member of
our panel here today, our trustee co host finished Jegor,
how are you doing, finish?

Speaker 3 (01:38):
I'm doing good.

Speaker 4 (01:39):
Thanks for asking, Matt.

Speaker 1 (01:40):
Awesome, I mean, I guess you know we've already the
cats out of the bag. Right, I've already talked enough
and we've already said we're talking about Seapower. Maybe someone
should give a brief rundown on what seapower is. How
about you wolf You want to give that? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (01:52):
Sure. Seapower is a real time strategy games very similar.

Speaker 2 (01:57):
To About Space, Right.

Speaker 3 (01:58):
It is about space? You know the name completely deceptive?

Speaker 2 (02:02):
Yeah, sandtraps or something.

Speaker 3 (02:04):
Yeah, yeah, but no, it's a it's a Cold War
gone hot and naval sim similar to like Jane's Fleet
Command or Command modern operations with actual pretty good three
D graphics, i'd say, And it is not just set
around the US and USSR. There are plenty of other factions,
plenty of other assets, a ton of scenarios you could
make in it. But they have aircraft, submarine, surface ships,

(02:29):
all that good stuff. You pretty much just control a
fleet instead of a single unit like in Cold Waters.
I wouldn't say it's scenario based, right because like right
now the game that we have access to anyway only
has scenario but it will have It's supposed to have
a dynamic campaign at some point, right right, So at
the moment it is scenario based. I think there will

(02:49):
be a dynamic campaign. They said Q two of twenty
twenty five, a little bit later than what was initially said.
Initially they were thinking there'd be a dynamic camp paying
preview at this point, but it is. It's just not ready,
I think. Said. There is quite a bit of content
with the scenarios you can make, and there's a rather
robust mission editor, and they are still actually adding features

(03:11):
to that mission editor, even in the early build that
the four of us currently have.

Speaker 1 (03:16):
Yeah, and the mission editor is pretty neat, Like I
scrolled around in it and it just kind of felt
like I was zooming in and out of a big map,
and obviously they had a lot of options finish. I
know you've been making some scenarios for us even thank
you for that. Anything you want to talk about there.

Speaker 4 (03:30):
I think the Mission Editor is going to be kind
of the bread and butter of this game and make
it the longevity of this game. I think the Mission
Editor is really good in its current state. I've been
using it a lot, and I think you can see
that there's so much potential in it. So I'm looking
forward to what they add to the Mission Editor. Some
things can be a little bit more user friendly, other

(03:50):
features can be added, But like as a whole, I
have no worries about the direction of the Mission Editor
and just the game as a whole. But yeah, I've
been playing. I've been doing a lot of different scenarios.
I did the Oscar scenario, just something that was quick
and simple, just kind of show off the Oscar class submarine.
And then I've been doing a Cuban missile crisis scenario

(04:13):
and then kind of two scenarios. I want to do
two kind of mini campaigns. One would be a Curl
Islands and a just a Soviet Far East area, and
then I wanted to do like a Soviet invasion of
Finland with kind of like naval and air combat in
the Baltic So those are two scenarios I want to
work on, and the scenario editor needs some more features
to make some of that stuff possible, but I think

(04:34):
we will get there soon.

Speaker 2 (04:35):
I just wanted to pump brakes on the scenario editor
time because we haven't really talked about the game yet,
and I think like a scenario editor is only as
good as the game. It's editing scenarios.

Speaker 4 (04:43):
Four, take this section and cut it and edit and
into the at the end of the episode.

Speaker 3 (04:49):
Don't do that. Okay, maybe maybe I don't know to
tack onto the mission editor thing. Though the entire world
is in the game, so you can place assets pretty
much anywhere, from the Black Sea to you know, the
Sea of Japan. Like Fenn was saying, yes or whatnot,
I mean, the possibilities are kind of endless in that regard.

Speaker 1 (05:10):
And that's kind of similar to how to like command
modern naval operations works in the sense that, like you
have a globe you can scroll around the globe, import
assets wherever you want, place units wherever you want for
the sake of a scenario, right. I like the fidelity
personally of the Seapower Editor a little bit more than
the Command Editor, just because Command felt like you're looking

(05:32):
at a Google map, but you don't get too close
to the ground. It's kind of like, you know, you know,
you're You're much more zoomed out. And I think the
texture and the fidelity, at least of what you see
on the map anyway, seems a little bit a little
bit nicer to me. I haven't played around with it
a whole lot, so I'm not sure how user friendly
it is well.

Speaker 3 (05:49):
And like all these different parts of the world have
different biomes and land textures associated with them, different types
of cities, different assets that go into that. So pretty
much the game is one huge you know, nineteen eighty
five I think is a good year. I mean, there's
ships from the sixties to the late eighties.

Speaker 1 (06:07):
Maybe seven is a better year, but whatever.

Speaker 3 (06:09):
I and it is just one a big open sandbox
to utilize all these different ships, all these different weapons
and various assets, and with this very robust scenario editor
make all sorts of scenarios, and eventually when a dynamic
can campaign comes out to do stuff of that, it's
a big sandbox. I think that's probably a good way

(06:31):
to describe the game at this point.

Speaker 2 (06:33):
I'd also like to think about the lineage of it.
I think it's also agree important to say that this is,
as you mentioned, a Ada Wolf, it's a successor like
a child of Cold Waters, and also a child kind
of been directly maybe a cousin or something, some kind
of diagonal shift of war on the sea. Yeah, I
feel like you can really see that. I don't know

(06:54):
the two how they're related. I don't know the assets
or something about it. When I play one, I can
think at the other.

Speaker 3 (07:00):
Well, so well just a briefly go for it teaching.

Speaker 1 (07:04):
Well, I was just going to say, just be clear,
I don't think they share any assets between the two,
at least not like graphical assets. I don't know what's
under the hood.

Speaker 2 (07:13):
Well, they're different timeframes are probably not, but I don't know.
Like the field of the game.

Speaker 1 (07:17):
Well, they're completely different teas. So, like to your point,
one hundred percent, lineage is Cold Waters, right, Killerfish Games
made Cold Waters, and you know that was a Cold
War gone hot game that was just a sub sim right,
You commanded one ship. You didn't command a task force.
I know, there's a bunch of mobs that like make changes.
But added the base game of Cold Water, you command

(07:38):
one sub and it has sort of this quasi I
mean it's dynamic, but it you know, kind of sandboxy
dynamic campaign where your goal is to accomplish different missions
that you're given and try to stem the tide. You know,
you only played as the Americans in that game, but
in the base game anyway, and you fight through World
War three as an American sub and try when the

(08:01):
war if you will. After Cold Waters came out, Killerfish Games,
which I believe at the time, had two sort of
core members split so one of the individuals kept the
Killerfish brand and the name and made War on the Sea.
And then the other individual who was I believe the
lead correct me if I'm wrong, Will Pack the lead

(08:22):
designer of Cold Waters.

Speaker 3 (08:25):
Yeah, he was the lead designer. The guy who is
still working at Killerfish and made One to See was
the lead programmer. The lead art you know, designer and
lead designer of Cold Waters split off and created Durastic Games,
along with a few other members of the team. If
I am remembering correctly, and I.

Speaker 1 (08:43):
Would get so, like from a corporate lineage hundred percent
to two goes back to Cold Waters, I would imagine
if in that scenario you're not bringing Code with you.

Speaker 3 (08:52):
To the Code Is. As far as I know, the
Code Is shares pretty much nothing in common with Cold
Waters stylistically. I agree that they feel similar in many ways,
but obviously one being World War two, that being war
on the Sea, and then Seapower here being a cold
war gone hot game.

Speaker 1 (09:11):
But I mean that's that's the line. Sorry, if you
wanted to say anything else to.

Speaker 3 (09:15):
Do, I mean the art style is going to be similar,
because I mean the lead what's the lead artist, the
lead art I don't know, designer. I don't know what
the appropriate name for this title.

Speaker 2 (09:25):
I got you though, Wolf. Yeah, if it's the same
art director, then.

Speaker 3 (09:29):
Yeah, but he has that same style. Yeah, he has
the same style. He knows he has a vision, which
I'm sure he was trying to act on a bit
in Cold Waters, and I don't know brought that over
to Sea Power, And like, to go off your point,
I think I think the Ships and Cold Waters look
really good. They look, i must say, brought better than

(09:49):
the Ships and War on the Sea, which is the
follow up game to that. Yeah, and then these models
in Sea Power look even better than that, So.

Speaker 2 (10:00):
That's even one of the highlights of the game for
me so far as just how impressive the graphics are.
You mentioned that this game is similar to Command Modern Operations,
and it is, I mean, in some ways, maybe even
Command on Modern Operations. I don't think this is like
a straight replacement because CMO has probably the ability for
you to control more units at the same time. Maybe
I'm just not experienced enough with c Power to be

(10:24):
able to control that many units. But always I felt
it was a little easier to do bigger missions in CMO.
But the graphical fidelity in this game is so impressive,
and you almost don't want to control that many units
because it's so much eye candy. It's a shame to
miss a single missile launch.

Speaker 4 (10:40):
Yeah, it's true.

Speaker 3 (10:41):
Now I completely agree.

Speaker 1 (10:42):
I agree with you Tour two. I mean, to me,
CMO is a more zoomed out view, which is why
I think it's fine that, like it doesn't have three
D graphics, and I think, you know, most of the
time you'd be playing so zoomed out because of how
big some of those scenarios can be. I think the
scale and the focus is a little bit different. I would.
I think the comparison to Fleet Command Jans Fleet Command

(11:03):
is a good one. Like to me, this is very
much a spiritual successor to Jans Fleet Command or a
CMO is very much a spiritual successor to Harpoon. And
while there's definitely similarities between them and Crossover, I think
from what they're trying to represent, there are some differences there.

Speaker 2 (11:19):
Yeah, that's that's actually really good to call this one
Jane's and CMO is more Harpoon. That's a very good analogy.
I mean, I guess that that's not even I don't
know if that's an analogy. It's just that's true.

Speaker 4 (11:31):
Well, it's like everything needs to be some spiritual successor
it can just stand on its own as Seapower naval
combat in the missile age, and I.

Speaker 3 (11:38):
Think in a lot of ways, I'm gonna say, I
think in a lot of ways, Seapower does stand on
its own compared to a lot of these other games,
Like Okay, Fleet Command a little more and similar. But
I think it's doing a pretty good job at being
its own thing.

Speaker 1 (11:52):
Well, I mean, Jane's came out what thirty years ago?
I mean most well exactly as part of it. Most
people who are playing this game, probably many people who
are playing this game probably never played Janes, or they
think of it as some old BLOCKI three D naval
combat game that was which it is, abandon wear or something, right, Yeah,
facts like they don't think of it as a game

(12:15):
they experienced.

Speaker 4 (12:16):
I didn't realize they had computers thirty years ago.

Speaker 2 (12:20):
Or people.

Speaker 4 (12:21):
Yeah, yeah, people. Did they invent color yet?

Speaker 3 (12:24):
Yeah the game? You played the game in black and white.

Speaker 1 (12:26):
That's funny.

Speaker 2 (12:27):
Let me just clarify. To bring up the references for
previous games. I would like to use that more as
a way of familiarizing the game to other people who
don't know it yet. To the audience, right, yeah, exactly.
I would say that this game is going to be
the Janes we talked about in twenty years. Probably people
will be comparing things in twenty years to oh it
is like a new sea power, because I understand we'll see.

(12:50):
I mean it does have some development to go, Yeah,
quite a lot. I would think, but it has. What
I've been struck by so far is it's been a
long development cycle. We have the way years for this,
but what they delivered with the quality of the assets,
the graphics, I mean you've already mentioned, I think, but
like even like the rolling up of the hangar and
the sliding out of the helicopter, like this is obviously

(13:13):
the development is long, not because they're like puttson around.
They're making it so valuable. You can feel the love
that every little touch, every asset gets. It makes sense
to me that this has taken a long time, and
I imagine, although I don't know that the dynamic campaign
is taking a long time because they want to bring
that same quality to it.

Speaker 1 (13:31):
Completely agree, and I would say, like to your point, Tortuga,
you know when you order a missile launch and a
lot of games maybe maybe gamers don't really accept this anymore,
but certainly in the past games like this, if you
order a missile launch, a lot of times it's just
kind of be a stock asset. You'll see the missile
kind of come out of the sub but like you
won't necessarily see anything happen. It'll just be like, Okay,

(13:55):
the missile's there and it's flying now. In this game,
like in the oscar scenario that you created, finish when
you order the missiles to launch out of the oscar,
the sort of the skirt if you will, or whatever
it's called above the missile the missiles, the silos opens up. First,
you see that open, You see the gears move on it.

Speaker 4 (14:13):
You have the sound effects of the hatches open too.

Speaker 1 (14:16):
Yep, and not just you don't just get like the oh,
the silo pieces opening. Then you also see the lid
on the individual missile portion open up, and again you
get the sound and everything with that. Then you clearly
see the compressed air fire and the missile jet out,
and then you know you've got the whole, you know,
when it's out of the water. Then the engine ignites,
you see part of the missile fall away that was

(14:36):
sort of the part to get it out of the tube,
and then you see the rest of the missile take flight.
So like, I think folks who are in the simulation
games might take that kind of stuff for granted, because
we live in very much a rivet counting kind of
simulation world with games like DCS. But like for strategy
simulation style games that is not that's not typical. And

(14:57):
I don't think you see that level of fidelity in
the isn't meant as a shot or anything, but I
don't think you see that level of fidelity even in
something like War on the Sea because most of the
time teams that are making these kind of games, it
tends to fit in a smaller niche and so you
don't really see you don't have the resources necessarily to
do all that. And I think you know this, this
is very much a game that'll stand on its own.

(15:17):
I think that Jane's comparisons are fair because it's primarily
scenario based at the moment. Jane's never I don't recall
it having a much of a mission editor, but like
the scenarios that the game had anyway where it was
all scenario based, but there was no campaign. I think,
what's gonna make this game like true? And I don't
get me wrong, I love what we have so far.
I'm enjoying it. But I think what's gonna make this

(15:38):
game sink or swim is like, you know, the game
you're talking about thirty years from now, Tortuga is the campaign,
you know. I think that's the piece that will be
the standout piece for this game. And I think that
makes sense to your point. Why why it's not till
middle of next year that it's coming out because they
want to get that right.

Speaker 2 (15:55):
I like that sink or swim comment.

Speaker 3 (15:57):
That's funny, I will say. I mean, the amount of
detail is stunning, Like even like missile it hatches, torpedo
tubes opening up, radars, turning illuminators, turning into track missiles
and stuff. When this game's contemporaries like War on the Sea,
like the radars don't move, games like you Boat, the
torpedo tube doors open incorrectly. You know. So it's like

(16:21):
a lot of a lot of these little details that
even some of its contemporaries try to do. This game
does better.

Speaker 1 (16:27):
What do you guys think about the UI? Like, how
approachable is this Tortuga? You've been playing it a bit?
What's your experience playing the game?

Speaker 2 (16:33):
Oh? I mean from an approachability standpoint, sure or whatever?
You want to say, Give me a second to collect
my thoughts. Somebody else go.

Speaker 4 (16:40):
Well, I guess I want to say. You know, the
visuals are obviously amazing and the attention to detail is
obviously amazing, and we can see then they've spent valuable
development time making the games combat system the mechanics. The
combat mechanic equally as impressive. I think we can talk
about that too, because it feels guess what you think
of naval combat.

Speaker 3 (17:00):
Yeah. I think the game is surprisingly approachable. That Bank said,
I do. I'm like familiar with a lot of this
stuff to begin with, so I mean that makes it
kind of hard to say, like I for the record,
none of us have played a tutorial. There are no
tutorials in the game. What the build we have, I
do believe that is supposed to come by the time

(17:21):
this game rolls out into early access.

Speaker 1 (17:23):
There's a there's a menu option for tutorials, so I
would expect it. I wouldn't think they'd put that there
if it's not coming.

Speaker 3 (17:30):
I know they are planned, but just to say, we
haven't done that, and I think generally we're doing I
hopped in and was able to do quite well figure
out the UI. The UI is relatively intuitive. You see speed,
you click on speed, you change your speed. It's all
on one bottom bar that is pretty legible. In my opinion.
The UI is pretty clean and it gets the job done.

(17:53):
It's not convoluted like some other like command modern operations
where you have menus inside of menus for example.

Speaker 4 (18:00):
Yeah, the UI really puts the focus on the game,
the ships, the models, the combat. Yep, the UI is
not distracting you from that.

Speaker 1 (18:09):
It did take me a moment or two to realize, like, oh,
if I want to change the speed, I guess I
click down here. You can issue certain commands by right
clicking on the model of the ship right, and then
it gives you pop up menu like tooltip options.

Speaker 3 (18:23):
You can It's very similar to Dangerous Waters. Actually, where
you write click, you can write click on assets and
be like engage with you know, two mark forty eight
torpedoes or whatever, which is quite nice as well.

Speaker 1 (18:34):
Is there a reason why sometimes when I order a
salvo of four missiles or eight missiles, the AI decides
or not the AI, but the ship only fires two
and it won't fire more until the first two have
been shot down.

Speaker 3 (18:47):
Is it like you're using a cruiser and they fire
two surface to air missiles?

Speaker 1 (18:52):
No, so, like I was playing.

Speaker 3 (18:54):
Because some ships have a limited amount of illuminators that
can track targets, so you can't.

Speaker 1 (18:59):
Just yeah, I was wondering if it might be that,
but I was playing. There was a Kerch scenario where
I was commanding the Kerch, a Soviet cruiser, and I
spotted some American ships, and I wanted to try and
overwhelm their missile defense as Soviet I believe Soviet doctrine.
That was a big piece of it, right, like saturation strikes.

(19:20):
So I wanted to order it to fire. Because I
only had eight anti ship missiles, so I wanted to
in two quad launchers, and I wanted to fire all eight.
So I write click. I looked at the weapon I
wanted to use, I write clicked on it. It gave
me an option fire single, two, four or eight missile salvo.
So I chose the eight option. Because there were only
a handful of targets. I figured I'd take out the

(19:40):
most valuable one, make sure it gets through, and the
missile the ship. You know, you saw the turts with
the missiles turn raised up, tubes opened up, two missiles fired,
nothing else happened.

Speaker 3 (19:52):
Some weapons, like some tubes, you can write click and
fire a salvo of eight whenever you only have two
missiles or two torpedoes loaded in the tubes. For example,
that right click salvo option was just added actually, and
a couple of patches ago at this point too with
what we have, so I'm sure it will be refined
and some things like that change. But for example, I

(20:14):
was using an Oscar class submarine. They have two kit
torpedoes loaded in their six hundred and fifty millimeters tubes,
and I had to fire those two torpedoes even though
I clicked salvo of four, and then they commenced reloading,
which took ten minutes, so as possible, there's reloading going
on in the background or something like that. I'm not
sure exactly what missiles you were firing, guss N three

(20:35):
or something.

Speaker 1 (20:35):
I'm not sure. It automatically fired a new one as
soon as the first cat shutdown. But I was like,
this is silly. I'm going onesie twosies, and the Oscar
mission that finish created. I kept hitting eight because that's
the most you could do, and I had like twenty
in the tubes and it would it did everything. It
was just like, all right, we're gonna keep going here.
So that one worked great, but I was just I

(20:55):
was just curious. I mean, obviously, this is a game
that isn't very much in early access. Bugs and things
like that are going to get squashed. I would I
would like to see a little bit more feedback about
stuff like what my you know, if I try and
issue in order and it can't do it, why it
can't do it? If I you know, if I try
to if something happens, like sometimes it's very easy to

(21:15):
miss and there's a lot of stuff going on, So
I think the feedback like there's it feels like there's
a minimalist approach to the UI, which I don't have
a problem with, Like it keeps the focus as finished
that earlier on the game, on the visuals of what's
going on, But there are times where I wish that
it gave me just a little bit more options for feedback. Yeah,

(21:37):
if I click something and it doesn't happen, why doesn't
it happen.

Speaker 3 (21:39):
Or or whatever that might be.

Speaker 1 (21:42):
Is there a countdown like when your when your ship
is doing something that you like, tell you when it's
going to be done, because that also kind of seems minimized.
I know you've talked about it, so I know it's
there somewhere.

Speaker 3 (21:51):
So you can hover over your weapons systems on the
bottom bar and then I'll tell you they are reloading, rearming, whatnot,
things like that. I do agree there is a need
for more feedback like a sorry captain, you know, reloading
or whatever. Then again, I'm sure that is something that
will be changed because I do show like missiles are

(22:12):
tracking a target from this ship's radar, Like you do
get that sort of information in the game. But it
seems like a niche, niche topic for folks who maybe
are listening though and haven't played the game.

Speaker 2 (22:25):
Yeah, if I haven't played the fair maybe we should
bring up is that there there are two ways you
can play the game. You can play it in the
tactical mode or on the map.

Speaker 1 (22:35):
Right.

Speaker 2 (22:35):
I found that there's some missions I use one entirely
and some missions I use the other entirely, So that
means that that's a good sign they're both effective.

Speaker 3 (22:42):
Yeah, you could command everything from the map if you
want it. This can be a completely two date two
D game.

Speaker 1 (22:47):
Basically, it's like a C C N C or CIC map, right,
Like You've got little squares and half circles and you
know whatnot that represent the different units on the map,
and you can issue all the orders you need to
from that screen and select the units and whatnot. You
can you can maximize that that map so that it
takes up the full screen, or you can leave it
as kind of like a little a window in the

(23:09):
lower left hand corner as well. Right.

Speaker 4 (23:12):
Indeed, Yeah, I'm looking forward to them hopefully adding a
system where you have the map and then you can
have the ship in a smaller window.

Speaker 3 (23:20):
Yeah, so Dangerous Waters and Fleet Command kind of had
that sort of thing. I do. I do agree, because
that would be nice.

Speaker 2 (23:26):
I was actually expecting that, so I was surprised to
see it wasn't in there. But it also wasn't a
deal breaker for me because I don't know. I just
you can tab and then tab as the hotkey to
go between, and you just tab back and forth.

Speaker 3 (23:36):
That's kind of that's what I've been doing.

Speaker 2 (23:38):
I like the fact that you had a good experience
so far. Wolf. I had some difficulties with I mean,
this is not really approachability but probably just more early
access bug type stuff. But I had some issues with formations.
I was setting up some complicated formations and stuff, and
then next thing I knew. I assume it's a bug,
but maybe it's something about the you know you, I
don't that I don't fully understand. There's a formation editor, sorry,

(24:02):
a formation editor, yes, but I'm there's actually also a
formation manager where you see all the formations and those
can expand or collapse to expand to show all the
ships that are in the formation. And I don't know
what double clicking the ships in that is supposed to do.
I was using that as a way of just moving
to the ship, but at some point when I was
clicking on them, they were leaving the formation they were in.
Is that just a bug or is that supposed to happen?

Speaker 3 (24:24):
I'm not sure. I actually haven't messed with that new
formation manager as much. Again, another feature that was added.
They are adding features. Well, there's multiple ways you can
flip back and forth through ships. They made it pretty easy.
You can number them for example, so you can use one, two, three,
and four on your keyboard to flip through ships. And
the mouse buttons for example, if you have sided mouse buttons,

(24:46):
they will flip back and forth between ships or aircraft
and a formation. I'm not sure about the formation manager.
I know that's a very work in progress feature.

Speaker 2 (24:54):
Yeah, I'm assuming it's just a little bug. I mean, yeah,
so that it would be nice because that's basically the
it's like the paradox outliner where you see your ships.
I like having that. I mean, if they wanted to
make it a little bit less intrusive, because it's like
a pop up box right now, they might actually want
to do something like an outliner where it's like white
text and transparent background instead of being like a blocky

(25:17):
box that you you know, actually open. That's minor. I'm
sure that with Nill's skills that we don't need to
fear something improve will come. But the formation editor itself
as well, Like one thing I was very surprised to
see is it's very cool that they show the direction
they're going, and you can edit the formation to be
relative or not, which means that you know, if your

(25:38):
ship is if you're moving it north above the lead ship,
it'll either just that's based on let's say I'm traveling west.
Then if we were to turn right and then we
would come north, that would be that would shift from
north to east, so it'll just say relative. But one
thing that I didn't like was the fact that there's
no way to like orient my ships with the lead

(26:02):
like relative to north. I don't know how to explain
this well unfortunately, but if let's.

Speaker 3 (26:06):
I thought you could use trubearing and edit your ships
in that formation editor.

Speaker 2 (26:10):
But so what I'm saying is, if your formation is
moving northwest, then you have to orient everybody according to
a northwest line. And if it's at some weird angle,
let's say like three fifty, you have to They give
you the circles, and they give you every thirty degree
lines for every thirty degrees. And if my ship was
going dead north, then yeah, I could put one at

(26:31):
thirty and one at negative thirty. But if my ship's
going two fifty, I don't know where twenty and negative
fifty is. You know what I mean?

Speaker 3 (26:40):
I get what you mean, but this is a very
tortuga problem.

Speaker 4 (26:43):
I don't follow any of this.

Speaker 2 (26:45):
Okay, Yeah, I wanted to be exact with my damn formation.
I want this guy to come one point four. Yeah,
But you know the cool thing is this game offers
that I should be first, you know, extolling the game
for allowing me to my manage my formations.

Speaker 3 (27:01):
Yeah, you can. You can make your own formations. It's
not just like a click button line ahead or you know,
echelon or whatever. You you can do whatever the heck
you want. I do think it would be nice to
have a drop down with those options, like echelon formation,
have my ships automatically get into an echelon or whatever.
But the fact that I can just you just open

(27:22):
up this panel and you drag little dots around and
your ships will automatically move into these formations, it's pretty
good and it's a it's a pretty darn cool feature.

Speaker 1 (27:31):
I can't help but wonder if the feature was in
part built because of some of the experiences that folks
had around War on the Sea. I know they're not
affiliated games, but I remember formation at it like going
into the missions where your formation was initially it was
always it always felt weird and like it could be
improved upon.

Speaker 3 (27:50):
To add to that, the AI is quite smart. And
there are quite a few complaints with the AI and
uh and see power, I think we just will watching
YouTube videos gives you a false impression of the AI
in the game. I do think the AI is overall
pretty darn good all things considered, and I am comparing

(28:10):
this to its contemporaries. That being said, I mean Collision avoidance.
They automatically defend popchaff. You order a ship to fire
at a target, they will conduct a maneuver so their
missiles can engage that target. I don't know, They've done
a lot to make the AI comply with your orders
so you don't have to micromanage it as much. If

(28:31):
a ship's evading, they'll automatically turn to evade and you know,
try to defeat a missile. Things like that. So there's
a lot in that AI department. And again, watching a
video of an Oscar class submarine, for example, in a
perfect position striking a American carrier group and then complaining
that the AI is bad, I mean, what was the

(28:53):
AI supposed to do in that scenario, for example.

Speaker 4 (28:56):
I'm glad you made that point. I think that's a
very important point to make. That the viewers of like
your videos, for sure, they don't have the full picture
of playing the game just yet.

Speaker 3 (29:05):
Right, and like just watching YouTube videos can lead to
a false impression. I mean, and then also like you
mess up in this in this game, And I mean,
people are watching these videos, they're very excited for the game,
they're very passionate, and they're like I would have done
x y Z, you're trash at the game, which, okay,
that's you know, that's true. Sure, I'll take that, but
it's like, just wait till you get the hands your

(29:27):
hands on the game for yourself to judge ther AI,
because initially, and I don't know if this was with
you guys as well, but I was quite impressed by
what the AI could do. Again judging it purely based
on the game's contemporary games.

Speaker 4 (29:40):
Yeah, I'll say with the mission editor. You know, I'm
creating these missions and I know where I place the units,
and then I test the missions, and I'm still surprised
at things that happen, like a unit makes a move
that I don't expect, or go somewhere else, or fire
some torpedoes or whatever. And I'm like, I'm impressed because
I think I know what's gonna happen in this mission
I've created, and then throws me off guard.

Speaker 1 (30:01):
Previous comment was a Tortuga comment. This one that's very
much a wolfback comment.

Speaker 3 (30:05):
Which one the stop whining in the YouTube comment section.

Speaker 1 (30:10):
Shut up your whiny commenters, get GOODSNY.

Speaker 3 (30:15):
Okay, I'm just saying it's like just watching watching people
play the game can lead to a false impression of
what the well, it's true, no, So I agree.

Speaker 1 (30:25):
Yeah, okay, just being a dick, I would also say
that in my experience, and maybe this kind of goes
back to I know we're kind of bouncing all over here,
but Tortuga had a good comment earlier of like, how.

Speaker 3 (30:36):
Do you play the game?

Speaker 1 (30:37):
Well, Like, I think one thing if I was gonna say,
what do you need to do to be good at
this game? And I don't know that this is the
most important thing, but what I would say is, if
you're not versed in naval combat and you're going into
this game, you might think, turn on the radars. It'll
let just see where the bad guys are. Well, it

(30:57):
also lets them see where you are, right, So, like,
one of the things I think the game does a
very good job of is modeling sensors and how you
can use those effectively or how you can use those
to your own detriment. And what I would say with
regarding the AI is like, yeah, I was playing a
scenario the other day, turned on the radar in a
scenario where I probably shouldn't have gave away my position,

(31:20):
and within a minute or two I had like forty
harpoons inbound and my fleet was getting obliterated. So like,
it punishes mistakes if you're stupid, and you know that's
that's the mark of at least a competent AI. I think,
I'm sure there are gonna be a lot of exploits
or things that you can you know, you can find
holes in. Again, it's an early access game and it's

(31:41):
a very complicated game, but you know, without trying to
break the game anyway, my impression so far is that
the AI does a competent job and it punishes stupidity,
which I think is at least a good starting point
for a game like this, where you know, you obviously
want the AI to be to pose a challenge, and
if it's taking advantage of your mistakes, it's doing just that.

Speaker 3 (32:02):
Yeah, I mean to bounce off. The AI isn't perfect though,
just a I mean, I don't want to be you know,
glazing the game or anything too hard over here. I
really like the game, but the AI is very much
work in progress with some things like carrier operations and
anti submarine warfare operations. For example, P three's won't just

(32:22):
blanket Sono booies all over the place at the moment.
That is something that is again work in progress. But
if you you know, they won't actively drop sono booies
and search for subs. They will launch helicopters and stuff,
but there's some things in there that could be more robust.

Speaker 1 (32:39):
I was going to ask what your experience, or anybody's
experience has been with using carriers, because I think jans
Fleet caman era operations always felt very small. It's like, oh,
you're gonna launch a Onesie two zie strike or whatever like.
It never really felt like, oh, this is a supercarrier
with a meaningful air wing. It felt like it was
I guess the equivalent would be like playing Age of
Empires and be like I clicked five dudes, and I

(33:01):
guess that's a legion. Like what's what's your impression of
air operations?

Speaker 3 (33:06):
I can let anyone go. I feel like I'm talking
a lot.

Speaker 4 (33:09):
I have not done much carrier ops yet. I've been
using aircraft just in in missions.

Speaker 2 (33:13):
But I liked using the Tarawa until it was blown up,
But that was pretty fun. In the Horror Moves Straight
mission where you get to launch a whole bunch of
a eight's and a whole bunch of c cobras. I
get so distracted just watching the elevators go up and
down and all the aircraft rolling out that I'm probably
to blame for my own losses. I just I don't care.
It's too much eye candy. It's one of those things

(33:35):
where I need someone to like, I need the AI
to just do itself, like conductive mission for me, so
I can just watch.

Speaker 3 (33:41):
Air ops are again really cool. Like you said, the
elevators go down, you can see into the hangar. Additionally,
all the aircraft on the carriers have the correct liveries,
which is pretty darn cool. Again, that's a sort of
attention to detail we're seeing in Seapower here. And you
can launch like you have of what twenty Tomcats on

(34:02):
animis Someone's gonna correct me, However, many Tomcats on a
carrier and you can launch all of them. You can
launch every single aircraft on your carrier in real time
in the game while other stuff is going on. You
do have to recover these aircraft. They have limited fuel.
I will say the That's the one time where I
was like this is a little overwhelming, was with you

(34:24):
know that many aircraft in the sky, Because I did
Launch agreed a bunch of aircraft to try to handle
a threat, and it's like, man, this is a lot
of points to manage. And I do think the devs
are aware that that is a particular point where this
game has difficulty, is managing that many aircraft. That being said,
I don't think there's any games in those genre which

(34:46):
do not have that problem. I think when you're managing
that many aircraft and commanded modern operations, it is an issue.
It can get overwhelming, and it's something that a lot
of these games kind of struggle with. So I am
curious to see how the Seapower devs handle it. I
think the formation editor is a step in the right
direction in Command.

Speaker 1 (35:04):
I'm almost one hundred percent sure it wasn't available at launch.
I know well after it came out, they added like
a mission planer functionality, which I think was supposed to
help with that. I haven't played it a lot since then.
I agree like and when you've got.

Speaker 3 (35:18):
It's not an easy task to you. You were put
in charge of managing this task force and then this
task force air wing, and then you know all of
these aircraft split up in the different squadrons, potentially engaging
different threats with different types of missiles at different times.

Speaker 1 (35:32):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (35:32):
Yeah, it can. It can get overwhelming, and I guess
it does suffer from that issue a little bit, especially
if you launch an entire air wing like I did.

Speaker 1 (35:41):
All while you're also trying to still manage your fleet,
right like you stick out other things going on the game.
Does it is pausible use the pause button? I know,
like it's tempting to just I'm always the kind of
person who's like a real time game. I want a
plate in real time. I'm not going to pause a lot,
but I find myself pausing a lot in this I
can string together my orders. I also like that it

(36:03):
has a time compression functionality. I wish the time compression
was a little bit smarter where like I agree, the
enemy shooting missiles at me, maybe pause it for me,
like you know, like Silent Hunter does. It should drop down,
It should drop down to ten. It might drop down
to ten, but ten is still real fast when you've
got a missile going MAK one.

Speaker 2 (36:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (36:23):
You can also do point five times time compression two,
so you can slow mo.

Speaker 3 (36:28):
Baby. I will say, I see a lot of other
folks playing the game or whatnot using a lot of
time compression. I barely play with the time compression, but
maybe I'm just like some freak.

Speaker 1 (36:38):
I think it depends on the mission, sure, you know,
and it depends what you're doing, right, So that is
it Dong Hoy the North Vietnam Shore Bombardment Eastern Offensive
mission in the sixties or sorry, seventy two. That mission,
like the enemy starts on top of you. So if
you're gonna compress, you're already gonna be basically destroyed before

(36:58):
you have a chance to to do anything. Whereas I
think the mission, I think it's valuable cargo or whatever,
where you've gotta sink some NATO ships and you're playing
as the Soviets. You basically have to put a helicopter
up in the air and then fly at a good
twenty minutes ish for it to get like close enough
so it can start iding some of the contacts. Yeah,

(37:19):
so I think it depends on the mission, right, Like
I think, But where I went back to, like, it
would be nice if the time corushion slowed down. You know,
I might not want to watch a helicopter fly for
ten fifteen minutes, but if I hit the time compression,
and all of a sudden, the surface dear a missile
like it might be dead before I have a chance
to hit pause or slow down or anything like that.
So it'd be nice if if the computer did a

(37:40):
little bit more of of, you know, saving you.

Speaker 4 (37:42):
From your own just get good.

Speaker 1 (37:44):
Yeah, I mean that's fair. I'm bad, but.

Speaker 3 (37:49):
Exactly that's why I'm asking for help. You gotta lock in,
You gotta sit there and watch that helicopter for twenty minutes. Thg.
Come on, buddy, what are you doing. That's your chance
to interact with chat, which you know, right, I've heard
you don't do very often.

Speaker 1 (38:04):
No, I just ignore tortuga damn. So fair. But you know,
if it's if it's an issue of skill, then it's
just give me a pop up and say your helicopter
is gonna die. There's nothing you can do about it.
Now watch it as we kill it in half speed,
so you get to experience the oh my.

Speaker 2 (38:19):
Gosh, the pity party.

Speaker 1 (38:22):
True.

Speaker 3 (38:24):
I agree. I think something similar to some hunter it
would be good where it automatically locks you a certain
time compressions. It kind of already does that, but if
tends too high for you, then I can see how
that would be problematic.

Speaker 2 (38:37):
I think it is for the exact scenario you pointed out.
I've had a helicopter. I was going probably I was
probably going ten x, so I didn't actually realize that
the time compression slowed down at all. A missile fired
at my helicopter and I was like, damn, you know,
I probably was going to lose it anyway. But it
would have been nice to have the time compression go
down to one x when you have like a new event.

(38:58):
So it's nice. It's nice that does down to ten x,
but maybe they can either make that adjustable or I
honestly think that you don't have that much time to
react in these situations.

Speaker 3 (39:07):
It's good to bounce off that a lot of Cold
Waters motors who worked on like dot mod and stuff
are working on this game, and they do want Seapower
to be modible, very similar to Cold Waters. I think
a lot of that could be easily changed to you know,
personal taste or whatever. I am excited that the game

(39:28):
is Yeah, that's fine, potentially quite moudible. I am looking
forward to that. I heard about the dot mod guy
working moment, Yeah, it's dot And then a few other
guys who actually worked on that mod.

Speaker 2 (39:40):
But haven't we talked about with this game yet. I
think we've nailed the fact that this has amazing graphics.
It's got a great quaest. Oh. I wanted to go
back to the gameplay a little bit because I wanted
to really echo this point. I think it's very valuable
to reinforce that this the combat in this game is
it's just so good. I feel like it could be
used as a simulator for real militaries because I was

(40:02):
kind of the same way I was using I was
trying to be a little bit conservative about using radar,
but I noticed that, you know, hey, when I use radar,
I get people launching at me, and it's like such
a good lesson teacher. It just teaches you, okay, and
then the next scenario, okay, you messed up this time,
and you get better and I don't know, and then
I don't know if air search radar, okay, I'm I

(40:24):
leave that on, but I don't put on my surface radar. Yeah,
these little things that just make the game feel so real,
and I love that side of it. It just feels
very it feels very like another word for real, like believable.

Speaker 3 (40:36):
Yeah, I mean these games are focused around stealth, yes,
knowing when to switch off or try use your sensors
or I mean, and that's it's all these games. Likely
command and command operations is the same way, Like you
just blast your sensors all the time, and it's like you're
just lighting a big beacon towards you. Managing when to
use this when it's best for me to utilize. This

(40:59):
is a big aspect of gameplay actually finished.

Speaker 2 (41:02):
And I have talked about this before in like strategy
games which are like operational level, I feel like a
game which is based around stealth, and this is kind
of stealth based. It's not like we're sneaking around in
like Thief or something like that. But this is really
one of those where when you have this I'm not
sure what's going on and this limited information and the
game doesn't give you that all the full information, which

(41:23):
I have to say, like Cold Waters was very guilty
of doing. It gave you way too much information, But
this you don't have that information, and that has always
been such a compelling game experience, like that not knowing
and the fact that they really penalize you for trying
to know, so you really have to weigh that. It's
to me, it's a little bit like War in the
Pacific esque, but obviously at a completely different scale where

(41:44):
you have to kind of just flick on your sensors
for a moment or just get very brief. You have
to infer a lot of things, and getting that wrong
is what time what often leads to really fun situations.
I mean normally not in the best way, but they're
those the ones you talk about your friends next day, like, oh,
you won't believe it. I thought he was over here,
but I couldn't, you know, find out with my radar.

(42:05):
Then they would nail me and then turns out he
was over there. You know, I don't know. This is
that's what makes this game great.

Speaker 3 (42:10):
This game does fog of war quite well. Like you
pick up radar emissions and you get a band on
the map showing this contact could be anywhere within this band.
You don't get an exact position on it. You can
narrow it down. There's things you can do to triangulate
that radar contact or that radar signal. Excuse me, but
it just doesn't automatically give it to you, which is
nice and figuring out where that is, and firing at

(42:33):
them first is essential generally because I mean it's someone
commented on a video and it's like this game just
seems like a bunch of whoever fires first wins, and
it's like, well, yeah, that's that's the whole point. You
need to find who is actually hostile and fire at
them first before they realize you're hostile. And it's the

(42:53):
same and like dangerous. This game reminds me a lot
of Dangerous Waters. But it's just like in Dangerous Waters. Yeah,
you fight, you figure out who's hostile, and you fire
at them first before they even know you're there. That's
the ideal scenario.

Speaker 4 (43:07):
Yeah, Turtuoga and I love the cat and mouse kind
of stuff. We've talked about this before, the cat and
mouse of World War two, carrier warfare, searching, finding, sending
out your fleets. I think this game does do that.
Like Wolf says, you're identifying targets, you're trying to figure
out what's out there, what radar emissions are out there.
The fog of war is really good.

Speaker 1 (43:27):
Well, and that's like such a huge thing in naval
combat is the person who shoots first usually wins, right,
Like look at Midway. It all comes down, not all
of it, but a big chunk of Midway comes down
to the side which got their planes on the enemy
carriers first, exactly one decisively, right like that is you know,
and I think it's even more true in the missile

(43:48):
era because I guess if you have your radar on,
this doesn't happen. But it's not how you should fight
because you're giving away your position. The other thing about
this is if you find them before they find you,
and their radars are off and you fire your missile strike,
you've got missiles closing the gap with them before they

(44:08):
have any idea. They can't shoot it down because they
don't even know it's coming until it gets off and
much closer, and the same right back at you, right
like if the enemy's fired missiles at you, you might
be dead and you don't even realize it yet. And
so like that, that just compounds the he who shoots
first wins in this kind of a game and this
kind of warfare, And that's that's built into the doctrine

(44:31):
of naval combat even even to this day. Finding the
enemy without giving away your position is paramount, be it
submarine warfare, or be it surface warfare.

Speaker 4 (44:40):
And I've had the situation where I flip on the
radar and then it picks up missiles inbound and you're like,
oh my god.

Speaker 3 (44:49):
I'm gonna keep this on. I'm gonna keep this radar going.
I've had that same scenario, so it is that is
so cool.

Speaker 4 (44:57):
Yeah, better turn this for my anti aircraft missiles now
because is gonna be needed.

Speaker 1 (45:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (45:03):
But like also the kind of like cat and mouse
thing and the stealth, Like I love just to put
active sonar on for like two pings and figure out
if I hear anything, and then I turn it off.
You know, I feel so cheeky and smart, but it
just seems like, you know, you never want to give
away your.

Speaker 3 (45:18):
Position exactly, like giving them ideas like Okay, this ship
will flip on it's a radar for you know, two cycles,
one cycle, and then this other ship five minutes later,
which is you know, thirty kilometers to the east, I'll
have it flip on its radar so you keep the
enemy guessing.

Speaker 1 (45:35):
I never really fully realized the utility of an a
wax either, right, Like that's the other thing of like
airborne platforms with surface search radars. Right, there's a reason
an aircraft carrier is almost never gonna have its radar
on because it's got other platforms to do that and
defeat it the information it needs without giving away its position. Right,
use your helicopters, right, if you can use your if

(45:57):
you've got a wax, use your a wax for to
give that information to your fleet. It's the reason all
these ships and everything like that are data linked, so
they can share that information. Yeah, so that that you
can you can get the info you need to be
lethal without giving away your position. One thing I think
as relevant as we're talking through this also is, and
I know you mentioned at Tortuga in our group chat,

(46:20):
the if you are coming to this game from cold waters,
it is well two things. One, I think it models
come about a lot better. Like we're talking about how
lethal it is to shoot first. I never really felt
like that in cold waters and cold waters, I felt like,
all right, if there's a torpedo in the water, I
can dodge it. Bring it on, there's six torpedoes in
the waters, I can dodge it. Yeah, I'm gonna fly

(46:42):
this thing like a fucking fighter jet. I'm just gonna
bob and weave at extreme angles where like my whole
crew is probably face down on the deck because no
one can stand you know, they're getting thrown all over.
But I can. I can pull these huge, you know,
banking turns. Because if it's this, this third person view
the game, this game doesn't I don't think has that

(47:04):
level of maybe arcadiness to it. And I think that
goes back to it models combat differently, right, Like I'm
not manually steering my submarine with my wasd keys to dodge.

Speaker 3 (47:16):
And although you can, it is important to say you
can do that if you want, like that gameplay option
is available to the player.

Speaker 1 (47:23):
But well, I remember Tortuga you were talking about, like,
you know, you were getting used to the game's sort
of layer of command being a little bit more removed,
a little bit more abstracted, as opposed to you know,
Cold Waters. Obviously Cold Waters you only command one ship,
so maybe that's a big part of it. But but

(47:44):
I don't know if there's anything there you want to
kind of talk about.

Speaker 2 (47:47):
I mean, I think you're referring to when I first
played the one on one submission, I didn't find it
like as engaging as like a Cold Waters experience. But
I think that's just because this game, I mean, it's
it's still good, by the way, but I feel like
if you're going to do a one on one type situation,
you might as well play like a pure sub simulator,
which this game is not. And it still does that

(48:08):
whole encounter pretty well for not being a dedicade subsimulator.
But yeah, I mean that's in that situation, it's basically
like playing CMO in a one on one event, and
you know that's I don't think that's it's sweet spot,
and I don't know the game has a lot to
I think that there was some issue with submarines. Finish

(48:29):
might have been mentioning not during the podcast, but I
thought I saw you Ryan about that or.

Speaker 4 (48:34):
Yeah, there were a little bit and they've been those
those bugs have been squashed after a couple of days,
so they were on that really quickly.

Speaker 2 (48:41):
Okay, So I'm not sure what the reason for it was,
but yeah, in anyway, anyway, I think that this game
you could probably play it as a as like a
substitute submarine simulator. But my biggest enjoyment is getting some
fleets out there, and I feel like a fleet of
like five ships is like the sweet spot for me.
I really ena those kind of like it's very tactical battles.

(49:03):
A lot of the scenarios is already built to be
exactly that. I think that the games, it knows what
it is and you can get away with We'll see
what goes on with like carrier operations with twenty aircraft
and all that. If they can end up pulling something
like that off. I've seen already they have formation, you
can launch those formations and stuff, and I'm guessing that
you know, they're already trying to get ahead of it, right,

(49:24):
they see that there's a problem, they're trying to fix it.

Speaker 3 (49:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (49:26):
The game sweet spot for me is is this like
tactical fleet. I mean, it's just so many scenarios in
real life are not thirty ships going around together. So
many scenarios in the modern world are like, yeah, there's
like one or two or three or four, you know,
just very few ships that need to deploy, especially as
the United States, you know, they have ships everywhere, so

(49:47):
then they probably like four ships here or whatever. Those
scenarios are really fun for me.

Speaker 1 (49:51):
Yep, I'd agree, how how old is it model? Because
I've had my helicopters shot down, But like, how well
does it model air to air combat? I know there's
one thing in like War on the Sea that was
always kind of silly. It's like you've got these big
looping banking turns, but like it never really felt like
it did air combat particularly well.

Speaker 2 (50:08):
No, War on the Seat was not good and seapower.

Speaker 3 (50:12):
I mean in the missile age, a lot of the
air combat takes place at larger distances than gun range.
You can use guns. I do think things get a
little wonky when you use a gunfight, but a lot
of stuff's over the you know, beyond visual range. I
would not expect Flight Simulator DCS level of fidelity, although
I think in some ways this may be on far
with the DCSAI, but it handles it rather well. Whatever

(50:37):
your aircraft like, they'll launch their you know, air to
air missiles, peel off whatever. There were some scenarios where
my aircraft would launch a radar homing missile like a
sparrow and then turn away and break radar contact, which
obviously not something you would want to do when firing
a sparrow because that missile does not have like fire

(51:02):
and forget capability.

Speaker 1 (51:03):
Given how effective or ineffective they were in Vietnam. Maybe
that's what all the four pilots were.

Speaker 3 (51:07):
I don't know. Maybe it's just like things like that,
you know, some sort of some AI things. Definitely again
the game, I think this is the first time you
know this, many people have played this game. We are
finding issues, of course with the AI and things that
need to be changed. There is a reason this game
is releasing into early access. My initial impression was I'm

(51:30):
surprised this is going in the early access. But the
more I've played it, the more I'm like, Okay, there's
there's some things the devs want to do quite a lot.
They are quite passionate, and I want to refine a
lot of these mechanics.

Speaker 1 (51:41):
Does anybody know I'm curious. One of the big things
in James was like land attack with Tomahawks on land
attack targets. Now this game takes place.

Speaker 2 (51:53):
If there's land attack type missions, I mean you have
troop invasion possibilities. I suppose at least in script to
maybe in some kind of scripted event, because the Tewa,
the you know, the landing are not the airft carrier
what it's called landing l amphibious.

Speaker 4 (52:08):
Whatever amphibious landing dock or something.

Speaker 2 (52:11):
Yeah, whatever they I mean, So those things they have,
they are carrying their chinooks and you can launch them.
So I think you could put marine lodo and launch
them up.

Speaker 1 (52:20):
Well, what I was gonna ask was, like, the game
takes place from the sixties to the eighties, I believe
now the eighties is kind of I think when the
Tomahawk really starts to become prevalent. What like, is are
is land attack against targets like a big, a big
thing here or is it mostly just attacking other fleets

(52:41):
because obviously the dong Hoi scenario you bombard some stuff
with your guns.

Speaker 3 (52:46):
Well, I mean you can't. I can't speak for the
scenario for the campaign, but you can. You can make
scenarios doing any of that. There are shore batteries assets,
there are there are land based assets which you can
target and potentially destroy. So depending on the scenario you
cook up, then yeah, you can make land attack a
big thing. As for Tea lambs, I'm not sure if

(53:09):
they're actually implemented in the game yet. I have no
doubt in my mind that they absolutely will be. But
I mean there's B fifty two's you can just carpet
bomb stuff, you know, and there are tanks, tank assets, infantry,
all sorts of stuff like that. Actually, maybe not infantry,
don't quote me on that one, but other land based
units like BMPs or whatever.

Speaker 1 (53:30):
Yeah, I saw Bradley's and abrams, and I think like
M one thirteen's.

Speaker 3 (53:34):
Yeah, you know, assisting your land troops and that I
think will be probably a pretty interesting part of the campaign.
And I'm sure a lot of people will cook up
some pretty dark, cool scenarios with land based units going
at it. I mean, there's even like I mean, not surprisingly,
there's land based radar stations and stuff which you can utilize,
which is kind of can add some interesting gameplay things

(53:56):
and sam sites and stuff.

Speaker 1 (53:57):
I need a linebacker to a linebacker campaign, and we'll
call a flight of the intruder exactly.

Speaker 3 (54:02):
Again, it's one big sandbox, and people can make missions
or campaigns or surprisingly large amount of scenarios with the
entire world model and such.

Speaker 4 (54:12):
The scenario editor, I think the earliest date you can
pick is nineteen forty seven, so they need to add
some more assets for that time period and some of
these other time periods of the game covers, but you
will have the ability to go that far.

Speaker 1 (54:25):
At least according to the steam page question mark. They
kind of advertise.

Speaker 4 (54:30):
It, Oh we're reading steam pages again, like our top
top games are upcoming games episode.

Speaker 1 (54:36):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, where's espiocracy? I think it's at sixty
to eighty. But that's awesome that the editor pushes it forward,
especially to your point in earlier Wolf about you know,
wanting folks to be able to mod this thing like that.
Could I assume that would be a big part of mods,
adding new assets and things like that.

Speaker 3 (54:52):
Sure, And like I mean again, the possibilities for expansion
with this game are huge. You could go early, you
could go later. You know. I think the Royal Navy
is something that is currently absent in the game. That
is something they do want to add, and if the
game successful, will be added, right, but that is a

(55:14):
large undertaking to add you know, Royal Navy assets and stuff. Anyway,
a sea power.

Speaker 4 (55:19):
Baby Tortullo, you got one more thing you want to
share with us?

Speaker 2 (55:22):
Oh yeah, dude. I wanted to take a little bit
of a step back and just reflect from the fact
that this is how how who not mentioned this is
being published by Micropros. Do we mention that already? I
don't think we did.

Speaker 1 (55:34):
Initially I did in my in my one minute monologue.

Speaker 4 (55:38):
Yeah, which I paid sorry to.

Speaker 1 (55:43):
I did reference this s biocracy that's headed Horse.

Speaker 2 (55:46):
Yeah, but I wanted to.

Speaker 4 (55:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (55:47):
Actually that reference is what brought this idea to my mind.
So this is I think I would dare to say
this is the first big Micropros game that's been released.
I mean, that's pretty subjective. We had at some points.
I mean they've released several other things, even the Carrier
Command two or whatever that I think was relatively popular.
But to me, this is like the first of the

(56:09):
big Micropos games. And the other one there's only two
in my opinion, is Task Force Admiral in the Near Horizon.

Speaker 3 (56:15):
Yeah. I think that's coming sooner than we think as well. Too.

Speaker 2 (56:19):
That'll be great, This will be a great twenty twenty five. Then,
so what do we think that the impact of this
game being released will be on Micropos? Because this in
a little I don't know, I started to get this
impression like what is Micropos doing? Are they going to
really be like a reincarnation of the previous glory of
the name or are they just kind of kind of
use the name to publish some stuff and then I

(56:41):
don't know, is it going to be something special or not? Basically,
and this is the first and this is the first
time I'm starting I see that. Yeah, okay, they could
be something special if they're going to go with this.
So anyways, thoughts on that.

Speaker 1 (56:53):
Did either of you listen to the Three Moves Ahead
interview that was with David Legetty a couple of weeks back.

Speaker 2 (56:59):
Absolutely, I would never listen to a competitor podcast.

Speaker 1 (57:02):
I have not listened. Apparently he was on it, so
I just he was on it with I think just
Len the main sort of hosts of the show now.
But yeah, so I would agree with you Tortuga that
it's sort of the big well when they when MicroPro
said hey we're back, then they had three games they
announced then, right it was Task Force Admiral.

Speaker 2 (57:21):
Yeah, Second Front did come out, Second.

Speaker 1 (57:24):
Front and this and Second Front came out. But I
feel like that was always gonna be a little bit
more of a lower squad leader.

Speaker 2 (57:31):
It's just it's just not for everybody.

Speaker 1 (57:34):
You just can't, right, That's what I was gonna say
like it was very niche. It was a very niche offering,
and I think it did a good job of what
it was trying to do. I agree, but it's not
it's not a mass market game. And I don't know
if this is or not, but it certainly looks like
a map.

Speaker 2 (57:48):
Oh, this has got Yeah.

Speaker 3 (57:50):
I think I think this game has the potential to
break out of the simulation Niche agreed. I do think
this game has more potential to break out of that
particular knee than anything we've seen since, like Silent Hunter,
you know which. I mean, Yeah, it's pretty it's a
darn thin you know field of games out there. You
got U Boat, I guess, which is broken out in

(58:10):
a in a pretty interesting way. But I mean, other
than that, I do think this game has quite appeal
because of how many different play styles, as we've talked
about in this podcast are available. You can control the
ship with the ways and keys if you wanted you
play from a map, you can only look at them
mem you can never look at the three D graphics
if you really wanted to. Right, and again, one hundred

(58:31):
and fifty ship assets with the whole world available. I
mean there's so much you could do.

Speaker 1 (58:36):
I mean, the only thing I would add to like,
I do think it's worth calling a high Fleet was
a pretty popular game that's also published by Micropros.

Speaker 3 (58:44):
That one was fun.

Speaker 4 (58:45):
Yeah, that was that was a surprise, extremely well developed.

Speaker 1 (58:48):
I think for that one, I think that's been their
most like and I saw folks talking about the game
who are not like hardcore strategy game, you know, niche
folks like that's probably been the most successful I think
game that Micropos has launched. Carrier Deck felt like I
had a minute where folks were sorry. Carrier Command two
had a minute where folks were talking about that, but

(59:11):
that faded pretty quick. I feel like high Fleet would
be probably they're the one that I would think this
would surpass as far as being micropros is like.

Speaker 3 (59:18):
This is a Micropros flagship game for sure.

Speaker 4 (59:22):
Yeah, they need this to succeed. It will, but they
they need to. I think they're like everything else that
they've they've kind of published and before they've been waiting
for this moment. It's been you know, keeping them afloat,
that's another naval pun keeping them afloat to this point,
and now they're like we can. We can put this
out and this will put our name back out there

(59:44):
for kind of these naval historical simulations.

Speaker 1 (59:47):
Again. Yeah, and I don't know that, like I don't
want to. Like, I think they've done some good things,
like Regiments has certainly found a bit of an audience
Combat Tiny Combat Arena, which I don't know how much
there is to that game, but I enjoyed playing that game. Like,
I think they've done some interesting stuff. And there's been
some other stuff like the B seventeen mighty eight re Ducks,
which frankly, I was not very impressed with. It felt

(01:00:07):
like they just kind of grabbed the code and kicked
it back out the door and said it's a remaster.
Like they've they've had a wide variety of quality, I
think on the games that micropros has has done to
this point. Mm hmmm, I would agree that to me,
this feels like the first that they're launching with hopes
of a broader audience that frankly, I don't they can't

(01:00:29):
afford to miss on. Like I would think based on
what we're looking at, they've poured a lot of resources
into helping Mills make this thing, and it's it needs.
It needs to find an audience, and I think it will,
but it needs to find an audience I think for
them to maintain their momentum of gobbling up every former
or micropros ip.

Speaker 2 (01:00:47):
And Yeah, I think the one thing we can say
about it is I don't know if the Trassic team
would have been given this much leeway on development time
and things have really taken a long time if it
wasn't MicroPro. I don't get the impression that they're really
forcing people to put out a finished product or else,
you know, or just scrap it. So that is where

(01:01:08):
I would say we should give some credit to micropros
that they've let this game develop and in this case,
the developers are not letting them down. So cheers on that.

Speaker 1 (01:01:18):
Yeah. Yeah, I'm definitely excited to see where this goes.

Speaker 3 (01:01:20):
I am. I'm very excited for it. I really really
do like the game. I hope it's successful, and I
hope we get more I don't know, more games like
this in the future, or like just and this game
continues to develop, because I mean, there has been a
naval game drought. I guess like there's been a handful.
You have, like Rule the Waves for your people who

(01:01:42):
like Excel spreadsheets.

Speaker 1 (01:01:43):
Yeah, Tortuga, psh, what the heck are you? What?

Speaker 3 (01:01:50):
You know? It's just like it's been so long since
we've had something like this, Like, I mean, the last
thing that's really like this is Jane Sleet Command with
three D graphics and this, you know level of gameplay,
you know, Cold War Gone Hot or whatever.

Speaker 1 (01:02:04):
Cold Water's kind of. But again, it was a different scale, right,
your one. You're one sub sure.

Speaker 3 (01:02:09):
I mean, there's been a few more subsm so you
got U Boat and you got Cold Water since since
Silent Hunter five. But even that, that's a pretty long
time from twenty eleven to what Cold Waters is twenty seventeen.

Speaker 1 (01:02:20):
We're on the sea, Ultimate Admiral, Dreadnoughts, Ultimate Admirally just sale.

Speaker 3 (01:02:24):
Okay, fine, maybe there's a little more. Maybe there's a
few more than I thought. You're right. The market's oversaturated.
My bad.

Speaker 1 (01:02:32):
Close it on, close down, shut it down, don't launch
it no.

Speaker 4 (01:02:36):
Cancel task Force, Admiral, cancel seapower. That's basically Wolfpac's recommendation here,
and you're gonna get anything from this episode. Wolf Fact
just wants all game development to cease at this moment.

Speaker 3 (01:02:49):
That's THCHG. I'm like, there hasn't been anything like this
in years A tch's ever like there's been.

Speaker 4 (01:02:55):
So much cancel THG.

Speaker 3 (01:02:56):
Instead, I'm just saying I'm very I'm very excited. I'm
I The hypes lived up in my opinion, and this
had been my most anticipated game for three years in
a row.

Speaker 1 (01:03:06):
You're gonna have to find something new. What are you
gonna do?

Speaker 2 (01:03:08):
Yeah, no kidding, you know what he's.

Speaker 1 (01:03:11):
Gonna do next year?

Speaker 3 (01:03:12):
He's Task Force Admiral Baby.

Speaker 1 (01:03:14):
No, no, you know what it's gonna be. It's gonna
be twenty twenty five. He's gonna be like my most
anticipated game of twenty twenty five, Sea Powers Dynamic Campaign
coming in Q two of twenty twenty five.

Speaker 3 (01:03:25):
I fully suspect this dev team will deliver on their promises.
That's that's my opinion as well, which is important for
an early access game.

Speaker 2 (01:03:34):
One last question, do we theyt me know the price
for this game? And is it is the Dynamic Campaign?
I don't. I don't think there's not any plans for
like that to be DLC. Is there?

Speaker 3 (01:03:45):
Uh No, it will be coming an early access. We
don't have an actual price for the game. As of
recording this episode.

Speaker 1 (01:03:51):
The week left in October, so by the time this airs,
there may well be a.

Speaker 3 (01:03:54):
Price available on like, yeah, depending on how fast thged
is this bad Boy.

Speaker 1 (01:03:59):
Oh can I just say one other thing. I know
we're talking about how beautiful it is. I think my
favorite thing to look at in this game is when
you launch a missile strike on a task force, particularly
on an American task force, and you're on the missile view,
You're watching the missile go in, and you know, you
start to see the you know, the the missile defense
weapons come up. It just looks so fucking sweet to watch, like, oh,

(01:04:22):
there's another missile shooting out of a tube. There's another
missile shooting out of a tube. Oh, and there's the
seat and you know, the close end weapons systems. It
looks just the missile eye view coming in. It looks
fucking amazing.

Speaker 3 (01:04:34):
Yeah, and they're like five inch shells desperately trying to
blow the missile out of the sky and stuff. It's like, yeah,
it gets yep, there's a lot going on. Like and
by the way, I've had I have eighty probably over
eighty hours in the game at this point, and I've
had one crash, so I mean that's also something people
may be interested in hearing. The game's pretty stable all

(01:04:56):
thanks considered. There's some performance things here and there when
you have you know, eighty anti ship missiles, which I
have tried, but you know, it's pretty good. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:05:08):
Yeah, so it's pretty stable. Oh and there's no nukes,
so stop asking no nukes mods. Baby, I don't want, like,
I don't need nukes for this kind of game. Frankly,
like it's just a game over button.

Speaker 3 (01:05:20):
I think s I think ssbn's will be an interesting
asset to have because I mean, that's what a lot
of this doctrine focuses around protecting those or destroying those.
But yeah, just like actually launching nukes, it's like, okay,
I mean that's.

Speaker 1 (01:05:34):
I mean, I guess it'd be cool to see a
you know, a tried and like pop out of the
water and light off. But hell yeah, but the actual
like it's not useful in a in a navel engagement
sort of a way other than can you protect it
long enough for it to shoot its missiles.

Speaker 3 (01:05:49):
Yeah, it again be interesting to build scenarios around, but
actually utilizing the weapons not as much.

Speaker 1 (01:05:55):
In my opinion, also makes for sick thumbnails. You know,
the shock face beautiful.

Speaker 3 (01:06:01):
You'll never know what I did to this, you know,
Soviet Task Force, never believe it? Good episode fun. I
could talk about the game for quite a while. Obviously
I do. I do very much enjoy y.

Speaker 1 (01:06:14):
I'm sure I could have organized the discussion a little
bit better, but I think, honestly, it just sort of
shows our excitement that we're jumping from one topic to another,
and we just excitedly want to talk about things. I
think this was, you know, this is a game we're
going to continue to play, continue to talk about, you know,
as the development progresses, as we get you know, next year,

(01:06:35):
hopefully toward the dynamic campaign coming out, excited to see
what everybody else's reaction is to get getting to play this.
This feels to me like this could well be like
the combat Mission Beyond Barbarossa style war game that breaks
out of containment and into the mainstream and also litters
the Internet with thousands of some good and some very

(01:06:56):
poorly made user scenarios. That's what I'm excited for. That
you can you know, that you can download that. I
just remember like that was the internet was so different
back then, but going to websites and there being like
nine hundred combat mission scenarios like this is the kind
of game that you could have something like that Now, well,
I don't know if we will.

Speaker 3 (01:07:14):
Yeah, and the game will have workshop support at release
in the early access, so we will be able to
share our user made missions around and play them no
matter how good.

Speaker 1 (01:07:24):
Or how bad they are. We already shared them, you know. Finished.
They gave you one, and I gave me the same thing,
just slightly different.

Speaker 3 (01:07:32):
Yeah. I'm excited for you all to get the game
and start cranking out missions, enjoying it seeing what is
all about, because I don't think very many of you
will be disappointed.

Speaker 1 (01:07:41):
I hope you guys enjoyed talking about see power things
for coming on.

Speaker 4 (01:07:45):
Thanks for hosting. Matt. You're the only one to be
called by their real name. You're like, you can call
me Matt, and everyone's like, don't call me by my
real name.

Speaker 1 (01:07:52):
Thank you, mister gamer, except for Tortuga, who says Eric.
But then we just ignore it. But but yeah, that's
gonna that's gonna do it. For today's episode of the
Single Malt Strategy Podcast, we will be back hopefully before
too long. I know there's other games coming out in
November as well that i'd like to talk about. Maybe
maybe we'll do something on Armored Brigade. Oh, I'll look

(01:08:12):
go forward to that Armored Brigade too, which will be
coming out soon or at least. I don't know if
it's actually coming out or if they're just dropping the
embargo soon, But in any event, that's gonna do it
for today's episode. Until next time, this is the Historical Gamer.
You can call me Matt for Tortuga Power wolf Pack
and Finish. Thanks for tuning in, and we're out,

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Sea Power - MicroProse Launches a new Flagship | Episode 88

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Sea Power - MicroProse Launches a new Flagship | Episode 88