Campaign
Jamie Carlson, the Associate Producer and Game Designer is quoted as saying “The campaign is not fully dynamic but will play out in any number of ways. The alliances with other countries can shift because of the player’s actions or sometimes just randomly. The story will change with these shifting alliances and the subsequent mission objectives will vary accordingly.”
“The only thing static about the campaigns is the mission locations, other than that, the player has the choice of multiple platforms and objectives to decide upon before starting a mission. That choice of platform is directly related to the role it plays (i.e. mission objectives) and can strategically change the flow of the campaign. The conflict will evolve and the outcome will vary significantly. The campaigns will be HIGHLY replay-able and dynamic in their repeated play.”
Multiplayer
Full multiplayer review to be done at a later date.
S.C.S. Dangerous Waters allows you to host or join multiplayer games on a local area network or over the Internet.
New in S.C.S. Dangerous Waters is Multi-Station mode. In a multi-station game a team of players are assigned stations on a single platform each taking one or several stations to man as desired. A multi-manned platform can play against the AI (Artificial Intelligence) or against other multi-manned platforms in a multiplayer Multi-Station game.
Sailing Model
Dangerous Waters is a tactical simulation; it is about being a Captain. Your control is in an abstract fashion. You control the speed and direction, but you do not have to worry about the mechanics such as having boilers ready and the likes. This is the way it should be.
After experiencing how the Oliver Hazard Perry FFG platform behaves with regards to the environmental conditions, such as the sea state and wind factor, I feel that the game would have greatly benefited from a more precise sailing model.
I would have liked to see a sailing model that restricted the players’ ability when controlling the Oliver Hazard Perry to sail outside the ships abilities in adverse sea states and wind. As an example, in a sea state of 5 with a 45 knot wind that a player would possibly have a restricted maximum rudder at a certain speed and did not allow the player to do donuts and figure eights at flank speed with full rudder. The vessel did slow down, but the ship did not tilt more than 5-10 degrees. I also proceed at flank speed with the bow doing an impression of a submarine.
The speed in which your Oliver Hazard Perry can travel when damaged has no bearing to where you were hit, just that you were.
As it stands now, I feel that the current sailing model gives the Oliver Hazard Perry an unfair tactical advantage.
The submarines sailing model does not require high-pressure compressed air. When the high-pressure compressed air is at 0% after an emergency blow, you are able to submerge, hover, and surface from any depth without forward movement.
When a submarine collides with another platform, it may spin around like a spinning top. This can result in a 3 knot glancing hit at the front of your submarine resulting in your stern then swinging around and hitting the platform, this can result your bow swinging around and hitting the platform, and so forth.
I feel that acceleration and deceleration of all naval platforms is not accurate.
I was unable to determine if the features such as enable wind, currents and wave riding are working and with this sailing model, would it really matter?
As you would have concluded, the sailing model is basic, in some instances/parts not working or modeled. I would have expected to see this sailing model in an action style war game and not in a simulation.
Dangerous Waters Aircraft Review
Dangerous Waters, unlike Sub Command can actually be called a true multi-genre game. Included with the subs and the Perry Class ships are two platforms, the P-3 Orion and the MH-60R. The P-3 is the long range ASW and surface ship detector for the US Navy while the MH-60 pulls the short range ASW duties.
I was asked to look at the aircraft in use in the game. To be honest I had never flown a simulation of the P-3. I had flown the MH-60’s cousin, the UH-60 Blackhawk in Longbow 2 but I have to admit that had been a while. Using my past history with that simulation as a guide I evaluated the MH-60.
Well, serious flight simmers will be disappointed with the MH-60R if they plan on flying it simply as s realistic helicopter simulation. To be honest the thing flies like an add on helicopter to a naval simulation should. The guys at Battlefront told me not to get too excited about the flight model and, well, I didn’t. Leading edge effects, ground effects on the aircraft, even transitional lift don’t seem to be modeled in the game. It feels a lot like LB2 in easy mode.
