NAVAL ACTION calling for modern BB experts.

[Destraex]

The naval action guys seem to be playing around with another title. A Battleship title. They are calling for knowledgeable people it seems.

"This is a topic for work in progress shots and stories about the game we have been tinkering with for the last 3-4 months

These are very very early WIP on the images that are generated for the ship recognition books from the 3d ship designer, that will give players full control over the ship design and visualize it all in 3d.

Player will be able to place main turrets, secondary turrets, casemate turrets, superstructures, masts, funnels, and decide on the shape of the hull, armor, barbette placement... All having historical constraints naturally limiting the players from creating strange and impossible monsters. All affecting ship performance in combat and movement.

If we are able to achieve even 50% of what we want this will be a revolution in battleship games.

Hope you enjoy it. Sorry for lower quality of the recognition book drafts but we can't show the rest. "



http://forum.game-labs.net/forum/94-general-discussions/

[besilarius]

Well, as the USN showed, it all comes down to radar and stable elements.

http://www.combinedfleet.com/baddest.htm

[MengJiao]

The naval action guys seem to be playing around with another title. A Battleship title. They are calling for knowledgeable people it seems.

   Well it would be nice if they made a game that used their beautiful oceans and nice ships in some interesting way.  I hope I don't have to trade and craft my way up from a trawler to a dreadnought.

   Relatively early battleships would be pretty interesting to simulate.  Lots of poorly understood system interactions (for example, flooding via electrical cable glands and whatnot.  Casemates that channel ammunition explosions.  Fires all over the place.  Hits on one end of the ship jarring things out of place at the other.  And rangefinding -- oh boy -- there's a whole heap of possible crafting efforts.  Radio and radar would be cool too.  As would AA and evading Zepplins by turning faster (with a steam ship at 30 knots) than they can (up in the air at 40 knots, but not turning as fast as a ship at least into the wind).

    It could be a lot of fun, but really naval action could have been fun too -- with much less effort than they are wasting on a persitant  world of crafting and piracy.  The fishing is fun of course.  Don't get me wrong.  The early trawler game in Dreadnought Wonder may be the best part of the game.

[MengJiao]

These are very very early WIP on the images that are generated for the ship recognition books from the 3d ship designer, that will give players full control over the ship design and visualize it all in 3d.

Player will be able to place main turrets, secondary turrets, casemate turrets, superstructures, masts, funnels, and decide on the shape of the hull, armor, barbette placement... All having historical constraints naturally limiting the players from creating strange and impossible monsters. All affecting ship performance in combat and movement.

Oh oh oh oh...Wait a second.  Why not go back to say 1860 and do the whole evolution of armored steamships?  Technical innovations could come into the game as costly early on and slowly get cheaper and cheaper.  So you'd put turbines in your torpedo boats in 1888 and small tube boilers into ships gradually from say 1895. Compact boilers would be surprisingly late...geared turbines by 1907 etc. etc.

With guns, the coarse powder revolution would be potentially murderous since suddenly muzzle velocities would jump and shells would get smaller and much deadlier...even before the non gunpowder propellants arrived.  Boom!

[MengJiao]

Hope you enjoy it. Sorry for lower quality of the recognition book drafts but we can't show the rest. "

  They give the time frame as 1880 to 1939, so it would be reasonable to start all the guns with some kind of slow-burning powder, though replacing muzzle-loading guns and lengthening guns out to 25-30 calibers could still be optional improvements.
  We know how fantastically ineffective naval firepower was in that period, so that gives good baseline (the bombardment of Alexandria in 1882) BUT ships could rely on their steampower and sailing rigs were fast disappearing from ships that were not designed for
distant stations.  Compound armor and breech-loaders were becoming the norm and there were torpedos and machine guns and the proto-turret via the barbette arrangement.  So 1880 makes a lot of sense as a starting point.

  I have four or five books that haven't shown up in the BB discussions: Oscar Parkes: British Battleships (1956 -- covers 1860 to 1950)
And David K. Brown's two books (Warrior to Dreadnought (1860-1906) and the Grand Fleet (1906-1920))
Also one on the French fast battleships (Dunkerque, Strassbourg, Jean Bart and Richelieu)
  And one on Jackie Fisher.

[Destraex]

I am pretty excited. Would stop playing world of warships if they did a good job.

[Phantom]

Would be nice if they'd do a single player version & some historic scenarios or backdrops, I suspect this would engage war gamers a great deal more. Seems a shame to have such good graphics & accurate sailing engine wasted on hypothetical multiplayer "start with a rowing boat" shoot ups.

[MengJiao]

Would be nice if they'd do a single player version & some historic scenarios or backdrops, I suspect this would engage war gamers a great deal more. Seems a shame to have such good graphics & accurate sailing engine wasted on hypothetical multiplayer "start with a rowing boat" shoot ups.

   I totally agree.  Naval Action could have been a fantastic game if they had just let it be about sailing and fighting.  Why on earth they grafted on an archaic mass of tediioius, role-playing, "You just have to join a guild" stuff is beyond me.  So much work for nothing but massive tedium so that you have to join a guild as if we were all entranced and petrified by the MORPGs of two decades ago.

[Slick Wilhelm]

So they are thinking of doing something that "Rule the Waves" has already done better? Good luck with that.

[DennisS]

So they are thinking of doing something that "Rule the Waves" has already done better? Good luck with that.

Agreed. The shipbuilding alone makes Rule the Waves a very, very special game.

[MengJiao]

So they are thinking of doing something that "Rule the Waves" has already done better? Good luck with that.

Agreed. The shipbuilding alone makes Rule the Waves a very, very special game.

  It's funny how I just know I should just forget about the whole naval-action as a pre-dreadnought post-ironclad thing that might be interesting.  It's getting so that when people announce they are going to make something interesting all I can really think is "I can't look" because of course its going to be something awful with pirates or zombies or vampires or assassins or giant robots or crafting or guilds or something.  Somehow the idea of just making a game where you can blow things up (such as pre-dreadnoughts) is just too simple -- ARMAIII or GRAVITEAM or airplane simulations are about the only computer games I can face these days.

[Cyrano]

Well, for heaven's sake, they screwed up both "Man o' War" and "Battlefleet Gothic" because they didn't trust the source material and that had griffons, orks, and space marines.

What fate do you think awaits dreadnoughts?

[MengJiao]

What fate do you think awaits dreadnoughts?

   I will probably never know.  I'll have to join a virtual guild, virtually learn to virtually craft virtual steel plates, get virtual smart talk (TM?) online and ask a virtual giant robot to find out.  I virtually can't even start down that virtual route.

[Nefaro]

Ummm....


Are they ever going to finish Naval Action?

???

[Cyrano]

^ this was my first reaction.

At the moment it remains a promising pile of pieces, parts, and cat hair.