Some Gameplay Questions

[cdbeck]

Hi all! I never had the chance to play the original CAW, but I am a big fan of SSG and their DB series, and maritime warfare of any period fascinates me. I am thinking about giving this a shot, but I wanted to get a sense of how the game plays. I have Uncommon Valor, and I recognize that, graphically, the updated engine borrows a lot from UV.

So how does the game actually play? I know that it is an IGOUGO, does it work in the same way as UV (where you plan movement, planes missions, etc. and then it does it all simultaneously) or does it work more like DB, where the action is carried out instantly on your turn? Also, I like the principal of UV, but the logistics aspect was always way more advanced than I could handle (still learning). Is logistics a big part of CAW, or is it more about the warfare? Lastly, I know the tile is CARRIERS at war, but are their other types of units that can be controlled (i.e. Cruisers, subs, or land units)?

Is there any place to read a Beta test "AAR" to get a better view of the gameplay?

Thanks for all your help, can't wait to see this one release!

Son of Montfort

[David Sandberg]

Since no one else has responded to you yet, let me rely upon my imperfect memory to try to tell you what the original CAW was in this regard. (If I make any errors, I trust someone will correct me.)

The original CAW's time structure was similar to but not the same as UV. The main difference is that CAW turns are far shorter (like five minutes), so that you give instructions that invariably take many turns to carry out, and then the game can run almost in a continuous manner until either something of interest occurs or else you pause the game to give more orders.

There were few if any logistics in CAW, to my recollection (beyond aircraft range being affected by the type of muniitions being carried, and such other things). For example, I don't recall any possibility of using up the stores of any type of munitions for aircraft or ships, no matter how many of them you use. (What I mean is: while planes will only drop the munitions they carry one time on a mission, they can always go back and rearm for as many additional strikes as they want ... the launching carrier or base will never run out). Nor do fleets ever run low on fuel. I think this is pretty reasonable, given that the average CAW scenario only lasts a couple of days or so.

You controlled fleets of different types of surface ships in the original CAW, not just carriers. However, my recollection is that subs were completely automated and not under the player's control at all.

I don't know about the existence of any beta AARs.

[undercovergeek]

sorry, i had not responded because ive never played it, i like you am waiting

[alexs]

What David says is mostly correct - with the exception that fuel is modelled in the game. Most scenarios last between 3-7 days, so squad munitions arent modelled.
The multiplayer game is by direct connection, and is wego. Like David says, the time is essentually 'continuous pausable' where you can run the clock at various speeds until either the run type you chose (ie run 5 mins, run 1 hour, run till dawn etc etc) is completed, or a breakpoint is hit. Breakpoints can be set to occur on most game events such as submarine attacks, incoming strike warnings, surface combat etc etc.

Alex

[David Sandberg]

ORIGINAL: alexs
What David says is mostly correct - with the exception that fuel is modelled in the game.

Thanks for clarifying that. I didn't know that fuel was going to be modeled - might I ask in what aspects it will be modeled, beyond just limiting the maximum range of airstrikes? Do ships have their range limited by fuel, requiring tanker refueling to avoid having a TF dead in the water? Can a carrier or airbase run out of aircraft fuel, grounding any planes that land there? I don't remember either of these types of fuel modeling from the original CAW (but then again, my memory could be faulty).

[Gregor_SSG]

ORIGINAL: David Sandberg

ORIGINAL: alexs
What David says is mostly correct - with the exception that fuel is modelled in the game.

Thanks for clarifying that. I didn't know that fuel was going to be modeled - might I ask in what aspects it will be modeled, beyond just limiting the maximum range of airstrikes? Do ships have their range limited by fuel, requiring tanker refueling to avoid having a TF dead in the water? Can a carrier or airbase run out of aircraft fuel, grounding any planes that land there? I don't remember either of these types of fuel modeling from the original CAW (but then again, my memory could be faulty).

Ships can definitely run out of fuel, though I've never managed to do that. Usually the decisive air battles have happened and the scenario has been effectively decided well before ships start to have endurance problems. You can have refuel missions in a scenario, but these are specified by the scenario designer, you can't just call one up like a taxi cab.

Carriers and airbases are assumed to have enough fuel and ordnance for all air missions run from them. Damage to carriers can prevent air missions as can damage to land bases, but the land bases are much more resilient, since its much easier to repair runways etc than a carrier at sea.

Gregor

[Ophion]

Yeah if you really wanted to you could run your task group at 31kts for all 8 days of a scenario, and you may just run them out of fuel, assuming you hadn't been blown away first....

[cdbeck]

Sounds fun! I saw one screen in the collection that looked different than the others. While the others have TF looking like shadow outlines of ships, this one had a top-down perspective and showed fly-over details of ships. Is this a ship-ship or air-ship battle screen? It still had controls on it, so are battles a bit player controlled, or is it more the random roll system like UV?

Sorry to be a bother, just anxiously awaiting release and the AAR on SSG website quits before any combat!

Son of Montfort

[David Sandberg]

ORIGINAL: Son_of_Montfort
I saw one screen in the collection that looked different than the others. While the others have TF looking like shadow outlines of ships, this one had a top-down perspective and showed fly-over details of ships.

I'm under the impression that is how airstrikes are shown. If so, it will be one MAJOR difference from the original CAW (where each ship was shown in profile by itself as it was attacked, more like UV). If it turns out to be as cool as I am hoping, that feature by itself may push me into buying the new CAW even if those few items that annoyed me in the original CAW have gone unchanged.

[cdbeck]

Looking again at the top of the screenshot, it says "Surface Combat" (The screenshot I am talking about is the first one from the Matrix screenshot page). On the bottom it has nice little pics of guns and chevrons. I'm guessing this is all the animated combat screen (don't see any specific control mechanisms). The 7th screenshot shows little planes flying and is titled "strike," so I am guessing this is the airstrike animation that you are referring to David. Looks like it has all the boats and a little profile of individual ships!

I'm getting impatient though, so I may pick up Battlefront tonight to tide me over. It's a damn good marketing strategy making us wait like this! [8D]

Son of Montfort

[FAdmiral]

I played CAW (original & redone) many moons ago. I am now playing a 015
game of WITP. The one thing I remember most about the difference
between these 2 games is in WITP, I can't pick my naval targets. I'm fairly
sure in CAW I could. I seem to remember much more individual control in
CAW vs. WITP....

JIM

[David Sandberg]

ORIGINAL: Son_of_Montfort
Looking again at the top of the screenshot, it says "Surface Combat" (The screenshot I am talking about is the first one from the Matrix screenshot page). On the bottom it has nice little pics of guns and chevrons. I'm guessing this is all the animated combat screen (don't see any specific control mechanisms). The 7th screenshot shows little planes flying and is titled "strike," so I am guessing this is the airstrike animation that you are referring to David. Looks like it has all the boats and a little profile of individual ships!

You're right, it was the 7th screenshot that I was thinking of. The 1st screenshot that you were referring to is definitely the surface combat screen, and I had taken little notice of it because it doesn't look markedly different in functionality from the same screen in the original CAW. Given that the mechanics of surface combat apparently haven't been altered significantly, that screen in the original CAW was a relatively static one in which ships advanced through different "ranks" (essentially the range to the enemy) from one combat round to the next, and the layout of the ships on the screen was not really a "formation" as such, but merely an indicator of which ships are closing, holding, or opening the range. (As has been said elsewhere in the forum, CAW surface combat is a relatively abstract affair, as it is not intended to be the focal point of the game.) I'm all but certain the round chevron buttons are the orders for various ships to close range, hold range, open range, or withdraw (in that order), while the square buttons represent the available gun batteries for each ship - the latter MAY be used to enable or disable firing of various weapons, but I don't recall how much control the original CAW provided for that.

The airstrike screen, on the other hand, appears to have some entirely new features, particularly the top-down view with little planes flying around and ships actually in a sensible formation with the carrier at the center, which looks to potentially be a lot more dynamic and interesting to my eyes. For one thing, it suggests that the determination of which screening vessels can contribute defensive AAA against a given flight of attacking aircraft could depend upon the approach vector of the aircraft, which I think would be very cool if true. (If the original CAW made any such determinations, to my recollection it was completely invisible to the player.)

[David Sandberg]

ORIGINAL: FAdmiral
I played CAW (original & redone) many moons ago. I am now playing a 015
game of WITP. The one thing I remember most about the difference
between these 2 games is in WITP, I can't pick my naval targets. I'm fairly
sure in CAW I could. I seem to remember much more individual control in
CAW vs. WITP....

You did pick an individual sighting report to send your attack groups after in the original CAW, but to my recollection you couldn't know for certain that some of the planes wouldn't accidentally attack a nearby group instead, and you also had no control whatsoever over which individual ships were attacked.

[SireChaos]

ORIGINAL: Ophion

Yeah if you really wanted to you could run your task group at 31kts for all 8 days of a scenario, and you may just run them out of fuel, assuming you hadn't been blown away first....

IIRC task groups had up to 29 or 31 days´ worth of fuel, and running at >30 knots made them use that up at 1 days´ worth per 3 hours. IIRC fuel consumption doubled per each 5 knots (or fraction thereof) above 20 knots, or something like that.

Fuel consumption was really only a factor in the longer scenarios that required TGs to cover lots of ground fast - Coral Sea 1946 for example, or Atlantic Raiders scenarios.

[FAdmiral]

ORIGINAL: David Sandberg

ORIGINAL: FAdmiral
I played CAW (original & redone) many moons ago. I am now playing a 015
game of WITP. The one thing I remember most about the difference
between these 2 games is in WITP, I can't pick my naval targets. I'm fairly
sure in CAW I could. I seem to remember much more individual control in
CAW vs. WITP....

You did pick an individual sighting report to send your attack groups after in the original CAW, but to my recollection you couldn't know for certain that some of the planes wouldn't accidentally attack a nearby group instead, and you also had no control whatsoever over which individual ships were attacked.

Now that I think about it more, I seem to remember flights of attack aircraft being
sent towards a sighted target would bring up a display of any target TF it sighted
and ask you if you wanted to attack it or keep looking !! Thus you could actually
pick your intended target or possibly another one. Of course, if you skipped the
first sighting, there was no guarantee you would sight another one.....

JIM

[David Sandberg]

ORIGINAL: FAdmiral
Now that I think about it more, I seem to remember flights of attack aircraft being
sent towards a sighted target would bring up a display of any target TF it sighted
and ask you if you wanted to attack it or keep looking !! Thus you could actually
pick your intended target or possibly another one. Of course, if you skipped the
first sighting, there was no guarantee you would sight another one.....

You're right, that does sound familiar. Maybe I am confusing UV and CAW myself in this regard. I think I'd better start trusting my memory of original CAW a little less (after all, it has been a LONG time now).

[Admiral DadMan]

UV and WitP allow only setting of missions with no specific targeting of individual naval sightings, but both allow targeting of bases and items in those bases (Port, Airfield, Ground Troops, etc.)

CaW allowed you to target individual naval sightings, and adjust for movment of the sighting.

Carrier Strike you could attempt to re-direct a strike already airborne.

[FAdmiral]

Yes, I seem to recall all of those features in those games. If I remember
correctly, didn't Carrier Strike allow the player to have a top-down look from
his bombers as they made their bombing run over the ships. I remember
looking down as my bombs dropped and watched them hit either the water
close to the ship or if it hit the ship, a small boom and a hissing noise from
something (maybe fires) The ship would then smoke as other bombs fell....

JIM