I'm 132 hours in and still haven't captured Guadalcanal (though I'm on my 2nd attempt and nearly there). I'm just playing the vanilla version, but plan to try out the Tokyo Express mod once I finish my first playthrough.
I haven't experienced any of the things described in the negative reviews I've seen.
I have seen enemy ships react instantly to torpedoes, though this is somewhat realistic as torpedoes are noisy, especially at close range. You absolutely can spot enemy torpedoes at range, there's usually a distortion on the surface that can be spotted. You may have to swap viewpoints to see it. Sometimes the ship at the front of a formation can't see the torps but the tail end can. If your task force gets an encounter and there's no enemy ship/plane icon on the map, it's almost certainly a sub attack. Turn your ships 90 degrees and go top speed until you work out where the sub is. If you hold your course and speed, yes, you will get hit by torpedoes.
Enemy ship formations don't just appear and disappear as one review stated. Try leaving a sub near Rabaul and you can see task forces come and go. The same formation you beat up over near Savo Island will show up a few days later at Rabaul to get repairs. If you don't scout, you won't see.
WotS has become one of my all time favorite singleplayer games. Look through the good points here and consider just how many choices you have to make. This is good game design.
The Good
- Huge variety of ships for both US and Japan, including a few Commonwealth cruisers.
- Ships cost points and points are limited. You can pull out a battleship in your first task force if you want, but you'll have few ships to defend it.
- Ships are limited to just those in the lists. If a ship is sunk, it's lost for the entire campaign.
- Ship models look good.
- Logistics is important but not at all burdensome. You never have to micromanage fuel, but your ships will need to restock after a few engagements.
- The game forces you to make choices in a realistic way. You don't have the resources you need, and you have to choose where to deploy your assets for the best effect.
- Finding the enemy is half the battle. You don't know where enemy forces are unless you send units out to perform recon.
- Combat is challenging, especially early on. Sometimes it's better to withdraw your forces than to press a foolish attack.
- Naval groups are limited to 10 ships, though this isn't necessarily unrealistic for the time, and it forces you to put thought into your group compositions.
- Enemy air attack is legit terrifying at times.
- Damage control has lots of options, like pre-flooding a magazine to prevent an explosion when there's fire on board, or counter-flooding a compartment to correct a list.
- Sea state and weather plays a significant role both at the strategic and tactical level.
- Torpedoes and bombs can be duds. On the torps it's perhaps a little forgiving, as the real MK14 torpedo was notoriously bad due to its Mk6 exploder mechanism.
- Watching Dauntless dive bombing is pretty cool. Those pilots must have been insane.
The OK
- Once you have a lot of aircraft in flight, it can become tricky to manage. Routes can be set to repeat but it would be good if some more automation could be offered for strike aircraft to launch on regular patrols.
- The strategic map can be a bit laggy. There's some kind of performance issue there sometimes, typically after exiting a battle.
- There's no punishment for wasting planes. I can send 2 squadrons into battle and hurl them against an enemy task force, lose most of them, and then just swap my carrier out for another one to get more planes. It would be good if there was some kind of pilot skill attrition when pilots are lost. (This is basically how Japan lost all their skilled pilots in real life WW2.)
- Aircraft carriers cannot launch aircraft in battle. You can only launch them from the strategic map. It would have been cool to be able to scramble fighters for an incoming air raid, but sadly in battle mode they're just there to be targets. It's ok once you accept this, but I think it would have been nice to see aircraft launches, especially in longer battles.
- You can kind of cheese the submarine gameplay. Launch some torps, then dive and hit retreat. Often times the retreat timer will be done before the escorts can reach you.
- Multi-selecting ships in battle and forming sub-groups is tricky at first.
- Air combat is just ok. Don't expect a DCS-like pilot AI here. It would have been nice to see more thought out tactics employed by AI, and taking manual control of the planes doesn't provide any kind of advantage.
The Bad
- More thought should have been put into the enemy AI and how they compose their task forces. It seems the biggest ships are always at the front of the formation, and they always choose the same formation (2 line). So you'll see 2 BBs, then 2 CAs, then 2 CLs, then 4 DDs. The only variety is when a carrier is present, which is usually in the middle. I've also seen CVs used as convoy escorts. It would be far more realistic if the enemy was more cautious with their carriers and battleships.
TLDR: If you're at all interested in WW2 and/or RTS games, give this a try. It takes some getting used to, but it truly is a great game!
