Very OT: Cold Waters game

[Jorge_Stanbury]

Has anybody tried a new game, "Cold Waters"?
supposedly the spiritual successor to 80s classic Red Storm Rising

http://www.subsim.com/ssr/cold_waters/r ... waters.php

I am interested, but would like to get some feedback about it

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: Jorge_Stanbury

Has anybody tried a new game, "Cold Waters"?
supposedly the spiritual successor to 80s classic Red Storm Rising

http://www.subsim.com/ssr/cold_waters/r ... waters.php

I am interested, but would like to get some feedback about it

I looked at the link as well as part of a YouTube. It looks like it's still is active development. IOW, not finished. And they took out TMA and added in actively driving the boat. The CO (you) does the former,, and doesn't do the latter.

The graphics are nice.

[JocMeister]

Played it when it was released. It was pretty fun but got boring very fast.

Basically its a arcade sub game.

[Jorge_Stanbury]

I bought/ played it

Very similar to Red Storm Rising which is why I bought it. Easy to play, almost completely keyboard based.

The same idea of you, alone, vs the entire Soviet navy; a bit arcadish, but I would not call it arcade, under the most realistic conditions, you will need to play stealthy and wait for good solution to shoot. This particularly important if you choose 1968's campaign, which starts without missiles, only torpedoes (mk16 unguided and mk37 homing)

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: Jorge_Stanbury

I bought/ played it

Very similar to Red Storm Rising which is why I bought it. Easy to play, almost completely keyboard based.

The same idea of you, alone, vs the entire Soviet navy; a bit arcadish, but I would not call it arcade, under the most realistic conditions, you will need to play stealthy and wait for good solution to shoot. This particularly important if you choose 1968's campaign, which starts without missiles, only torpedoes (mk16 unguided and mk37 homing)

I read that part. Should be Mk 14. And I think the devs said the Mk 37s were very slow. They weren't. They were the big brothers of the Mk 48.

[Alpha77]

Have noted this game too and watched some vids (play through) at youtube, seems pretty good. Might be not complex enough for some

[Jorge_Stanbury]

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

ORIGINAL: Jorge_Stanbury

I bought/ played it

Very similar to Red Storm Rising which is why I bought it. Easy to play, almost completely keyboard based.

The same idea of you, alone, vs the entire Soviet navy; a bit arcadish, but I would not call it arcade, under the most realistic conditions, you will need to play stealthy and wait for good solution to shoot. This particularly important if you choose 1968's campaign, which starts without missiles, only torpedoes (mk16 unguided and mk37 homing)

I read that part. Should be Mk 14. And I think the devs said the Mk 37s were very slow. They weren't. They were the big brothers of the Mk 48.

In game they are definitively slow, and in the 68 campaign Mk48 is not yet available

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_37_torpedo
Wikipedia kind of supports them being slow: "The efficiency of Mk37 torpedoes was high for targets with speed lower than 20 knots (37 km/h) and depth less than 1,000 ft (300 m). As submarines with higher speeds and operating depths appeared, new torpedoes were developed"

and Mk16 is the only unguided torpedo in the 68 campaign (there is no mk14 in the game, although probably in RL it was still available in high numbers, as wikipedia also implies:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_16_torpedo
The Mark 16 torpedo was a redesign of the United States Navy standard Mark 14 torpedo to incorporate war-tested improvements for use in unmodified United States fleet submarines. The torpedo was considered the United States standard anti-shipping torpedo for twenty years;[2] although significant numbers of Mark 14 wartime production remained in inventory.

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: Jorge_Stanbury

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

ORIGINAL: Jorge_Stanbury

I bought/ played it

Very similar to Red Storm Rising which is why I bought it. Easy to play, almost completely keyboard based.

The same idea of you, alone, vs the entire Soviet navy; a bit arcadish, but I would not call it arcade, under the most realistic conditions, you will need to play stealthy and wait for good solution to shoot. This particularly important if you choose 1968's campaign, which starts without missiles, only torpedoes (mk16 unguided and mk37 homing)

I read that part. Should be Mk 14. And I think the devs said the Mk 37s were very slow. They weren't. They were the big brothers of the Mk 48.

In game they are definitively slow, and in the 68 campaign Mk48 is not yet available

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_37_torpedo
Wikipedia kind of supports them being slow: "The efficiency of Mk37 torpedoes was high for targets with speed lower than 20 knots (37 km/h) and depth less than 1,000 ft (300 m). As submarines with higher speeds and operating depths appeared, new torpedoes were developed"

and Mk16 is the only unguided torpedo in the 68 campaign (there is no mk14 in the game, although probably in RL it was still available in high numbers, as wikipedia also implies:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_16_torpedo
The Mark 16 torpedo was a redesign of the United States Navy standard Mark 14 torpedo to incorporate war-tested improvements for use in unmodified United States fleet submarines. The torpedo was considered the United States standard anti-shipping torpedo for twenty years;[2] although significant numbers of Mark 14 wartime production remained in inventory.

Well, Wikipedia is Wikipedia.

The Mk 14 had a huge production run (13,000 in WWII alone), and was modified after the war to take inputs from digital FC systems. This was the Mk 14 Mod 5 model, not the Mk 16. It is still used by a few navies, which is incredible considering the design is approaching 100 years old (1931.) My boat, commissioned in 1964, was designed to carry the Mk 14, and did on many patrols in the 1960s.

The Mk 16 was a late-war/post-war modification of the Mk 14. Its dimensions were the same, and it could be launched from the same tube. But the production run was small: 1700. None was ever used in combat. To say, as the game in question seems to, that the main submarine weapon in 1968 was the Mk 16 is simply false. There weren't enough of them to begin with. How they were allocated I don't know. I do know my dad was in USS Orion from about 1967 to 1970 and she supported both Squadron 8 (USS Scorpion's squadron, and yes, that was a bad week in our house) as well as a squadron of DEs that included true Guppies as well as 1950s DE models. They might have gotten the Mk 16s, while the SSNs got Mk 37s. Not sure. I'm pretty sure even the SSNs got a few Mk 16/14s in that era. They were fine for sinking merchants.

Similarly, you have to be careful when talking about the "MK 37". There were three Mk 37s. The first two were electric and yes, pretty slow. Fielded in the early 1950s when Soviet subs were all DEs. They were good enough to attack a snorkeling DE or one on batteries. When the Soviet navy began moving to SSNs they weren't fast enough. The USN, very quickly, fielded a conversion kit to make the Mk 37 Mod C, really a new torpedo. They pulled all of the propulsion guts out and installed a whole new after-body, an Otto-fuel internal combustion engine very similar to the later Mk 48's. It increased speed about 40% and doubled range. They also pulled the electronics package and installed a much better set of brains that searched better, on more freqs, and had far better re-attack logic. The conversions were done in the very early 1970s over a couple of years.

My boat carried a mix of Mk 37s, Mk 48s (pre-ADCAP), and MOSS on my first patrol in 1982. The Mk 37 was still a fairly front-line weapon. On my second patrol we had converted to Trident missiles, were seen as far more valuable than the Poseidon boats, and we never had Mk 37s again.

But the game should use the Mk 37 Mod C specs in any campaign in the 1980s. And it was a good fish.

[Jorge_Stanbury]

The game is definitively not at the WITPAE standards in term of weapons modeled

So in the game it is only Mk37 (no version at all) and only available in the 68 campaign. The 84 campaign starts with: Mk48, MOSS decoy, UGM-84, TASM and TLAM. No Mk37 by then
68 campaign with Mk16 (should had been mk14) and Mk37

The Mk37 modeled has a range of 23K yards at 17 knots, max speed of 26 knots and seeker range of 950 yards
while Mk48 has a range of 35K yards at 50 knots, max speed 60 knots, seeker range of 4,000 yards
the Soviet 67 equivalent (SET-65) has a range of 17,5K yards at 40knots, max speed of 40 knots and seeker range of 880 yards

This means that in the 68 campaign you need to really get close, either to get a good solution and use straight running torpedoes or to put a Mk37 in the path of a faster ship

[Fallschirmjager]

I am really enjoying the game. It is a good mixture of enough realism and enough ease of play to be fun and engaging. I remember Dangerous Waters from many years back and while that simulation was modeled down to the rivets I could never get into it because it was so overwhelming in its detail that to do even the most basic of functions required pages of manual reading.

This game requires learning and the tutorials and also some hours of playing. But is approachable.
And this same company also did the excellent Atlantic fleet and I see them as an up and coming developer for naval games.

[Jorge_Stanbury]

A few questions for Bullwinkle58 or anyone with knowledge about post war 1960s submarine warfare.. as I am debating some topics at subsim forum

1) At what range would you need to launch a Mk14 spread? would it still needs to be at 1,000 to 2,000 yards as it was in WW2?

2) Why was there no US homing torpedo for surface targets until much later on (nothing until 70s Mk48) ? was it a matter of lack of targets (submarines focus instead in sub-vs-sub, as the other navy assets could easily deal with a significantly less capable Soviet surface fleet), or was it that Mk14 was still considered adequate? Question is related to 1) because would it be expected for a submarine to get in 2,000 yards range of a modern, 1960s sonar technology escorts?

[Lecivius]

ORIGINAL: JocMeister

Played it when it was released. It was pretty fun but got boring very fast.

Basically its a arcade sub game.

Agreed

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: Jorge_Stanbury

A few questions for Bullwinkle58 or anyone with knowledge about post war 1960s submarine warfare.. as I am debating some topics at subsim forum

1) At what range would you need to launch a Mk14 spread? would it still needs to be at 1,000 to 2,000 yards as it was in WW2?

2) Why was there no US homing torpedo for surface targets until much later on (nothing until 70s Mk48) ? was it a matter of lack of targets (submarines focus instead in sub-vs-sub, as the other navy assets could easily deal with a significantly less capable Soviet surface fleet), or was it that Mk14 was still considered adequate? Question is related to 1) because would it be expected for a submarine to get in 2,000 yards range of a modern, 1960s sonar technology escorts?

1. Basically yes, WWII ranges. An "average" WWII range was about 1500 yards. Closer at night in many cases. The issue with a straight-runner is not ASW detection. It's the accuracy of the solution (never perfect), introduced-error from the torpedo's mechanism, especially gyro steers, and the impact of environmental factors, especially sea state. The longer the run the more small errors multiply. The Mk 14 also left a wake on the surface, so more time running in was more chance for a lookout to see it and the target to execute a "combing" maneuver.

The General Belgrano was sunk in 1982 by an SSN firing straight-running torpedoes that were basically the Mk 14. I think the launch range was 800 yards or so. I believe she was escorted, but sea states were very heavy. An SSN can run away fast as well, which a DE can't, but even so, 800 yards.

2. The MK 37 was a dual-purpose torpedo. Don't know about the game, but it was intended they be used against dangerous ASW targets.

However, you have to consider the strategic naval environment of the late 1940s, the 50s, and most of the 60s. There was no enemy power with the ASW assets even the IJN had. No blue water navies in the USSR or China. The USSR was a train-power, not a naval one. The Pact was next door, and the USSR was more secure in strategic minerals and oil than any country in history. They had a merchant marine of course, but didn't depend on it for survival or to fight WWIII. So a NATO sub could use straight-runners against surface targets most of the time with little danger. There was a HUGE coastal ASW presence in the USSR, largely run by the KGB, that was more an ASW-equipped Coast Guard, to stop smuggling and infiltration (and exfiltration of citizens doubting that whole Soviet New Man thing), but out in the blue the Soviets didn't have much. Once Polaris came in during the very late 50s and early 60s they mounted a crash effort to field large numbers of ASW patrol planes, but they were still light on surface ASW until the late-60s and especially the 70s.

But even immediately post-war they had a lot of subs. Mostly at first Whiskey and Foxtrot, which were up-jumped U-boat designs, but they had a lot, and they could get into the Med. We spent a lot of effort countering those. In fact, most of the Guppies, including my dad's boat, USS Bluegill, were re-equipped and then re-designated away from the "SS" in their hull number to "SSK"--hunter-killer submarine. The MK 37 was for that by design.

But all along, if the surface ASW, no matter how lousy, was a threat, the MK 37 could engage well outside MK 14 ranges, and was a homing torpedo. Not fast, but good enough to backstab a lot of corvette-type ASW ships.

[Jorge_Stanbury]

Thanks a lot!

OK then they were right and I was wrong... I didn't know Conqueror shoot from so close. General Belgrano was escorted by two Allen M. Sumner DDs, modernized to FRAM standards and probably more capable than anything the Soviets could show, ASW wise. Still they didn't figure out something was wrong until much later


Shooting straight running torpedoes in game is straight forward (no introduced error) but ships will spot it easily if you launch from long distance and of course it is very challenging to get in that 1.5K yards when there are lots of active sonar pinging corvettes/ destroyers.

To compound the problem, the game is you alone vs the entire Soviet navy; no USN fleet, so carriers, no support, nada. It is you alone fighting fleet after fleet; a total impossibility considering the disparity of forces, but fun gamewise.

[Bullwinkle58]

Haven't read up on the Belgrano in many years, but I believe the sea state was the main issue. It was a wild day at sea. The crews would have been doing little but hanging on and trying not to be pooped by rogue waves. Surface ASW is pretty impossible in seas like they were experiencing. An SSN will roll and pitch some at PD, but nothing like a skimmer. You take an extreme up-angle to get most of the hull below the Bernoulli effects of the waves, trim heavy, and use RPMs to keep the bow near the surface and the scope clear, even with wave slap. I did it many times with a much flatter aft deck than an SSN has.