Sea Power : Naval Combat in the Missile Age

AIRCRAFT AI HAS BEEN FUNDAMENTALLY BROKEN AND UNPLAYABLE SINCE EARLY ACCESS AND DEVS ARE NOW PUBLICLY SUPPRESSING CRITICISM OF THIS FACT ON REDDIT. PERFORMANCE (EVEN ON AN RTX 4070 SUPER) REMAINS A SERIOUS ISSUE. BUYER BEWARE! The game is fundamentally broken and not playable as anything other than a pretty tech demo. The pace of development has been glacial, and the developer has started cracking down on people calling them out for it in the online spaces that they control (i.e. Reddit). This game purports to be a fleet-level modern naval combat simulator, however, modern naval combat is actually more about air assets than it is about ship-to-ship combat and the aircraft AI and user interface is absolutely ATROCIOUS and has been this way since the game came out into early access nearly two years ago. 1. Aircraft disobey orders and spiral up into outer space 2. Aircraft will often go nose down into the ground during air to air engagements (devs removed terrain collision as a lazy hack to prevent players from getting too frustrated) 3. If you let your aircraft go weapons free, instead of automatically engaging the group of migs bearing down on them 40 km out, they will beeline towards some random aircraft that has been detected 100nm away. 4. When a missile is fired towards your aircraft, it will not begin evasive maneuvers until it is way too late. This happens even with radar guided missiles where the pilot would know a missile is coming the second it is launched. 5. Aircraft AI will often disengage and fly off in a straight line once the engagement goes from BVR to dogfighting. 6. Aircraft AI does not coordinate engagement of enemy aircraft so your flight will often send multiple missiles to the same target, instead of shooting at all opposing fighters to force them into evasive maneuvers. So what does this mean? It means that in order to get intelligent behaviour out of your aircraft, you need to pause the game, fight with the horrid user interface, issue specific orders to each aircraft individually, then unpause and run the simulation for a few seconds, and then pause again, and update EVERY SINGLE PLANE's ORDERS, and then repeat this tedious process until the air engagement is over. If you're playing a large mission, you might have 2 or 3 air engagements happening simultaneously involving dozens of aircraft. So the amount of micromanagement can quickly spiral out of control, making the entire scenario unplayable. Ship-to-ship AI is in a better state, but that mainly comes down to how simply ship-to-ship combat is modelled in this game. Here's your typical ship-to-ship combat gameplay loop: 1. Use airborne radars to find the enemy surface group 2. Wait until the surface group gets in range 3. Alpha-strike it 4. Win Another serious issue is that performance, even on high-end specs, has been a serious issue that has gone largely unresolved. As you play a scenario, performance will degrade over time to the point of unplayability. The only way to fix this is to save, restart the game, and re-load the scenario. However, even the save feature is bugged as saving doesn't perfectly save the state of the game. So you'll reload the scenario to find things have changed slightly. Finally, another concerning development is that the studio is starting to use its control of online discussion spaces to steer the discussion of this game away from these fully justified criticisms. Recently a user on their subreddit was publicly threatened with a ban for being critical of the slow pace of development on fixing the broken AI. Bottom line: this game is a wait-and-see. DEFINITELY don't buy into the early access. I regret my purchase.

First of all, this game is absolutely beautiful. The graphics are stunning, and I love having the ability to switch POV to any unit or element in the battlespace. I have never used the F12 button so much. That being said, there are some opportunities for improvement. - The game needs to offer the player the ability to create patrol areas on the tactical display and assign units to them. - Also need to offer more Harpoon missile controls. Even basic SWG-1A features (e.g. waypoints, ability to select pop-up vs sea skim, etc.). It is frustrating that you cannot create a "simultaneous time on top" (STOT) attack, which is really what makes the Harpoon so effective. - Proper tactical brevity phraseology. Nobody says "Roger, go to altitude three zero zero zero" - they say "Roger, go to angels three". Hearing "Bingo", "Feet wet", and other common prowords would definitely enhance the experience. - Units need to report when they are being fired upon. IRL, somebody would be screaming over the comms if they had inbound fire. In the game, you only get a report if they've been hit. - Need the ability to light up a target with FC radar without firing at them. The is a critical tool that is not reflected in the game. The player should be able to "assign" a target to birds vs. "engage" a target with birds. - The Formation Editor is clunky and hard to work with. It would be nice if it were more intuitive. Overall, the game is a lot of fun. Even though a TAO's entire watch is spent looking at a tactical display, it's still nice to be able to run up to the bridgewing and look at the other ships in the formation, see the helo being launched from the flightdeck, or even just watch the magnificent sunset. The game definitely captures that feeling.

The game has some awesome tactical aspects to it but i lost interest due to the fact i couldnt play it against my friends. I would love to see some either co-op multiplayer or just multiplayer in general.

This game fills a space that has been empty since ~2000s. The Devs obviously care a lot about the game and have put a lot of effort in to it and have communicated early and often with the community about their intentions. On top of that they enable the modding community to fulfil any desire you might have. Yes it is still a young game with bugs but it is already so fulfilling and can only go up from here.

Look. There's bugs, And glitches. Of course there is. But if you're looking for a game where you can pit the USS Enterprise CVN-65 against the Hiryu? Here you are. If you wanna simulate a WPact breakout through the GIUK gap and the RN? Perfect for you. This game is kickass, even with the bugs.

The AI has been at an unplayable state since the introduction of this game. Enemy ship AI doesn't even effectively do very basic calculations such as what range they should stay at against one of your ships, I have had multiple instances of merchants pushing beyond to my ships without their escorts, enemy ships continuing the linear movement at mission start and getting in range of my missiles even though they know exactly where I am, enemy ships having the ability to run away from me and not doing so even though engaging me would mean certain destruction for them. Plane AI? Don't even make me start there is enough talk about that already. The only reason this game sits at 90% reviews is because of the hype and the cool factors in controlling a bunch of ships accessibly (last example of it was the game fleet command, more than 20 years ago). The game is and has been in this ♥♥♥♥♥♥ state since its release and all we have been hearing is that they have been working on it. It's really rough

This game has an initial learning curve but is extremely fun once you get the hang of it. I've played other naval sims like cold waters but this game gives you so much control over a wide variety of ships. The devs have also been continuously releasing improvements with new persistent campaigns, user interface improvements, and better unit functions.

"Don't waste your time on this game!"!!!!! This game is absolutely terrible! This is just not how ASW (Anti-Submarine Warfare) is supposed to work! Are you kidding me? The enemy sub stays completely silent the entire time and still manages to hit speeds over 10 knots? ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥! Then my helicopter flies 20 nautical miles out, drops a sonobuoy, and just quietly loiters nearby. Suddenly, the system warns "Enemy torpedo launched," but my sonar shows absolutely nothing! I dropped three active sonobuoys: standard depth, above the thermocline, and below the thermocline. Active sonar picks up ZERO contacts! Is my sonar operator deaf?! I had a whole task group: two frigates and one destroyer, deployed in a triangle formation. The lead ship was at standard speed with all sensors active, while the other two were 3 nautical miles back, cruising at one-third speed on passive sonar. An enemy torpedo enters the water, and I still can't locate the sub?! Even worse, the ASW aircraft are completely useless in this game! I had one dropping passive sonobuoys at 1-nautical-mile intervals at low altitude, and it found absolutely nothing. Bottom line: the CIWS is practically useless too! If you want a real recommendation, play Command: Modern Operations. It is WAY better than SEA POWER!

the AI suck but there's noting else like this game and every update makes this game better

Good