Naval combat

[Kraxis]

Hmm... Ehm, what am I supposed to order? The Fighting Steel game or the Fighting Steel Project CD? Can't find the first, but the second costs 10$. I'm a little confused.

[Puzz3D]

You have to own the Fighting Steel game or purchase it for $10. Fighting Steel Project is a free download and patches the Fighting Steel game. The current version of Fighting Steel Project is apparently the last major revision which will be released. You can also buy their Thunder at Sea operational campaign simulator which costs $25, and includes the Fighting Steel Project patch. There are air and submarine elements included in Thunder at Sea, and it calls Fighting Steel to resolve the ship-to-ship battles. It's not necessary to keep any CD's in the drive.

[Kraxis]

Let me get this straight, you can't go in and play captain? Or firedirector? It is purely tactical and strategic considerations?

[Puzz3D]

At the operational level in Thunder at Sea, you control the speed and movement of task forces, refueling, patroling, detaching ships and can make air strikes from carriers. There is air recon but I think it's automatic if you have the aircraft, and I think the land based aircraft strikes are automatic. I believe submarine attacks are automatic as well. You can hit mines.

At the tactical level in Fighting Steel, you control individual ships or groups of ships in a division. You can detach ships from a division. You control speed, direction, smoke, evasive maneuvering, recognition lights, forward main batteries, aft main batteries, port secondary batteries, starboard secondary batteries, ammo type (armor piercing, high explosive, common and starshells), torpedoes and searchlights. Ships can sustain superstructure damage, fires, knocked out turrets and torpedoe mounts, flooding, magazine hits and damage or destruction of important systems such as damage control, electrical, bridge, radar, engines, rudder, optical sights and searchlights. Damage control is automatic. You can play entirely on a 3D map or switch to a 2D map. Probabilities of hitting the target are continuously available. Direct and plunging fire is modeled and armor thickness varies on different parts of the ship; all historically accurate for the type of ship and shells fired. Ships slow down when flooding until the flooding is controlled and the water pumped out. Firing rate declines as different systems sustain damaged, and recovers if the systems can be repaired.