I have been following Fighting Steel by SSI/Divide by Zero for some
time. Last year at the 1998 E3 I got my first up-close-and-personal
look at what was poised to be an incredible naval simulation. More than
a year has past and the simulation has undergone many substantial
changes. How does the final release fair? Let's take a look.
On the Box Experience
I must say that SSI has maximized the experience of opening the
box. Not only was I rewarded with a very nice printed glue-bound manual
and the game CD with a jewel case, I also received copies of the
DOS-based Silent Hunter and Steel Panthers II Brigade Command. Nice
touch.
Fighting Steel's website begins with the bold statement, "The
most graphically stunning and realistic simulation of naval surface
combat ever created." Other statements such as "Combining the depth of
a detailed simulation and the tactical challenges of the finest war
game…" and "Detailed combat and maneuvering systems accurately simulate
naval surface combat..." clearly set the tone by which Fighting Steel
should be measured.
SSI is plainly targeting more of a hard-core crowd with Fighting Steel.
Although Fighting Steel could be targeted at the soft to middle core
gamer, you really aren't subjected to the "secret" code words the
marketing departments always seems to plug-in to address these needs:
"easy to use", "intuitive", and "scalable game play."
Ok, so how well does it stand up to these claims?
Manual
Given my disappointments with the quality of manuals of recently
reviewed sims, I was pleasantly surprised to find a well-written,
substantial game play guide included in the box.
The 125 page manual includes sections on the Quick Start Tutorial, a
Game Overview, Starting the Game, Playing the Game, Preference
Settings, Ship Viewer, Campaign Game, Winning the Game, Creating New
Scenarios, What's Behind the Game System, Staff Briefing (Tactics),
Designers Notes, and Reference.
In general I was quite pleased with this manual, as it is what I have
come to expect from any developer who offers a military simulation that
espouses realism and content.
Training
Fighting Steel includes two tutorial missions that give you an
introductory flavor of naval combat. The training missions are to be
learned by executing the mission while reading along with the textual
dialog in the manual.
I found the training missions to be adequate to the task, but just
barely. I would have appreciated some kind of voice-over narration, as
trying to execute a real-time mission on-screen while jumping back to
the manual was challenging at best.
Single Missions
Initially the player may opt to start their exposure to Fighting
Steel by jumping into a single historical engagement. Fighting Steel
includes twelve scenarios from the period 1939-1942 set in the Atlantic
and Pacific theatres of operations. Every scenario was carefully
researched to give you a sense of battle size, time of day, crew
quality and starting position. The manual includes a full description
of each engagement on the Background and Historical Scenarios page.
To keep things fresh, Fighting Steel also incorporates what is
called a Battle Generator. The generator can produce a random battle
based on criteria that is specified up-front. Criteria include items
such as nationality, start time, historical/fantasy, battle size,
battle type, formation setup, air/sea control, visibility, time,
location, and crew quality. While not maintaining historic realism, the
battles generated can achieve historic authenticity.
Campaign
Fighting Steel's campaign structure is a mix of new and old. The
campaign begins by an initial selection of campaign setup options. At
the outset, you make the choices as to whether a campaign will be based
on historical or fantasy criteria. The AI adds a random factor that
establishes how much chance is applied to the generated mission types.
You also have control over player nation, difficulty and game length.
The missions produced by the campaign engine are not scripted; rather they are random based on the characteristics you specify.
The part I most enjoyed with regard to the campaign was the fleet
management functions. At the start of each campaign you are given
control over a finite set of assets. The assets are comprised of a
variety of ship types and crew abilities. It is your job to manage the
availability and effectiveness of the ships in the fleet.
Effectiveness is managed by specifying which ships are on
patrol and which ships are in port. Moving a ship to "in port" status
allows the crews to refresh from a "fatigued" status. On the other
hand, allowing the ships to stay on patrol and participate in
engagements improves their crew quality and (if they participate in a
night battle) improves their night fighting skills.
I found the fleet management screen to be a little confusing at
first. The manual does not do an adequate job of explaining the fact
that the more lit green squares there are on a ship's status, the
stronger it is in that area. Thus I thought that when all of the green
squares under the heading of "Crew Fatigue" were lit for a particular
ship, that ship's crew was highly fatigued.
Not so - apparently it's the other way around. The lower the number of
lit green squares, the higher the fatigue level. Night fighting and
Crew Quality is as it should be: the more green squares the stronger it
is. I think the title "Crew Fatigue" needs to be changed to "Crew
Freshness" or some such heading to make it clearer.
As for how the campaign tends to incorporate "the old", the
engine is built on the turn concept where each turn signifies a
movement of time in increments of one week or one month depending on
the campaign length you selected initially. As each turn is
implemented, time moves forward and ship/crew status is updated
accordingly. The campaign engine makes the determination if a battle is
to be fought; if one is at hand you are moved to play mode.
Although I like the fleet management aspects of the campaign, I
would have liked to see more emphasis on achieving some kind of
strategic goal during the operation. As it is now, you move from battle
to battle with no sense of what you are trying to achieve other than
the total destruction of the enemy (for which you have no intel.) As we
saw in the Pacific War during WW II with the island-hopping/by-pass
tactics of Nimitz and MacArthur, there are different ways of skinning
the cat.
Battle sizes are determined by the campaign criteria and not by my
ability to manage my fleet assets. I would have liked the ability to
better control what ships I engage the enemy with and be rewarded for
my asset management prowess. As it is now, the ships identified for
battle are determined automatically and you have little say what assets
you bring to the party.
Mission Building
Fighting Steel contains a very robust mission builder so
existing missions can be edited and new scenarios can be created. Just
about every conceivable control is available via the scenario editor:
environmental settings, game length, location, air/sea control,
visibility, and mission type are but a few of the factors you have
command over.
In addition, you have the option of creating hypothetical engagements
between navies that never met in real life. Interested to see how the
Arizona, Oklahoma, and Utah would have faired against the IJN? Build a
scenario where the unfortunate battleships of Pearl Harbor take revenge
on the unsuspecting Japanese. Mad at England for subjecting us to the
music of Oasis? Create a scenario that pits the US Navy against the
Brits.
While the scenario editor is quite flexible, the editor does
place a limit on the maximum number of ships you can position in a
user-built scenario at 20. While this may be sufficient for most
battles, I found this frustrating when I tried to write my first
historical mission, the first battle of Guadalcanal, which had 27
ships. Consequently, I created a mission that simulates the battle of
Vella Lavella, which can be found HERE. While this battle took place in 1943, the scenario editor's database allows me to create a very accurate engagement.
Game Play
The first thing you are confronted with when playing Fighting Steel is
the game's interface. What initially starts as confusion and
trepidation turns into a genuine appreciation in the designer's ability
to give the player a wealth of control over the combat action.
Daunting interface aside, after a couple of battles you quickly learn
how to maneuver between the 2D battle overview screen and the 3D combat
screen. The sim also gives you a wide variety of action cam settings,
which can automatically pan you to the action, or if you wish, stay on
one particular view.
I'm glad that the designers gave me the ability to configure the view
settings - several times during heated battles I would be automatically
switched to a view that I did not want. Luckily I could quickly turn
off this auto camera.
Battle victory once inside an engagement is determined by the
ability of the commander to maneuver his fleet into an optimal firing
position, usually with all guns pointed at the enemy. While there is
much to concentrate on to optimize your crew's ability to put steel on
target, I began to wish I had more control over my ability to
accurately delivery ordnance.
When I interviewed Joel Billings, the Producer of Fighting Steel last
year's E3 in Atlanta, I learned that the design specifications did not
include a first-person gunnery/torpedo station or radar position. While
I can't fully criticize a feature that wasn't included, I can say (pun
intended) that they missed the boat on not giving us more human control
over the guns and torpedoes.
I don't wish to diminish the fact that maneuvering the firing
line is simply a matter of "crossing the T", because it is a bit more
than that. But I quickly found myself making my moves and just sitting
back and watching the action. Allowing me to better control my accuracy
via gunnery stations, torpedo solutions, and radar identification would
have kept me more engaged.
I should also mention that game play is selectable in terms of allowing
the player to determine how much of the battle he wishes to control.
Each engagement is usually made up of 2 or more divisions (each
division may be made up of one or more ships).
As control of multiple divisions can be pretty brutal at times, you
have the option of controlling only one division at a time; the
Artificial Intelligence (AI) will take over control of the other
divisions. While I'm glad SSI incorporated this option, I usually found
myself playing standard mode because I found it difficult to coordinate
any attack with the AI divisions.
Although each execution of a single player historic or fantasy
scenario results in a numerical score, the game does not save these
numbers on a "high score" board. I would have liked the ability to
compare my success to my own previous performances by examining one
score versus another. Campaign high scores are saved for later
comparison.
Graphics Support and Quality
640x480 screen resolution is supported via the Direct 3D API,
and this is the only graphics mode supported. Generally I found the
graphics to be acceptable, even with the lower standard resolution. The
objects and environment are not really up to the standards that have
been set by recently released sims, but they are of a decent quality.
There are some spectacular explosion sequences, and shell
geysers that appear in the water close to the ship reward shell hits.
Shell misses are not displayed - only shells that "straddle" are
displayed. This is probably a frame rate issue, but could have
incorporated selectable settings for those of us with more powerful
machines.
While weather and visibility are modeled in terms of AI, they
are only modestly represented with graphical atmospheric effects. Skies
become gray and the sea state changes slightly, but there is no
graphical representation of rain, fog, snow, or heavy seas.
One disappointment was that there was no visible torpedo
splashes when a hit was scored. Again, this could have been a frame
rate issue, but since torpedoes don't hit that often, I would think
that they could have been worked into the game in some capacity.
Sound Quality
The quality of the game sound was generally pretty respectable. The
game includes a variety of voices with American, British, German, and
Japanese accents. Australian accents seem to be included in the game's
SFX directory, though I haven't played a scenario where they were used.
There are only twelve distinct audible notifications given by
crew members. Although this is adequate as to not become an annoyance,
I would have liked to see additional crew voices for helm
acknowledgment, when specific items are damaged, and when they are
repaired. The option to turn off crew voices varying by importance
could have been incorporated to cut down on extraneous chatter for
those who do not prefer it.
Realism
The included database is incredible: four navies are built-in as
part of Fighting Steel - the United States Navy, the Royal Navy
(Britain), the Kriegsmarine (Germany), and the Imperial Japanese Navy
are represented. Only ships that existed between the years 1939-1942
are included. You won't find ships that appear later in the war such as
the Iowa-class battleships. Even so, the database number 90 different
ship classes and is populated with 1000 actual fighting vessels.
The main classes modeled in Fighting Steel are of the
Battleship (BB), Battlecrusier (BC), Heavy Cruiser (CA), Light Cruiser
(CL), Destroyer (DD), and Transport (TR) classes. If you are looking
for carriers and submarines you will have look to other simulations.
It would be too rich a task to list all of the modeling items
that Fighting Steel has included, but just to give you a flavor:
national characteristics, weather, fatigue, crew quality, night
fighting ability, primary/secondary/tertiary gun capability,
acceleration/deceleration of ships, armor protection, torpedo
effectiveness, and so on - most of which is listed in tables in the
back of the manual. In a nice move, SSI included how these modeled
items factor into the battle as part of the documentation.
While I was stretched to come up with any battles of the period
that used landforms as a distinguishing part of the battle, I would
have appreciated some kind of ability to simulate landforms in the
engagements. Having the ability to set up islands and coastlines, such
as were present around Guadalcanal, Savo Island, and "The Slot", would
have made for some interesting engagements.
Fighting Steel also includes an in-game reference for all of the
fighting ships resident in the database. The database viewer gives a 2D
and 3D view of each ship class with the ability to change angle and
lighting to simulate visual identification at a distance. While the
database is suitable, I would have appreciated the ability to quickly
call up a contact's database entry from inside a game. As it is now,
you must pause the battle and scroll through the database to find the
ship you are trying to investigate.
Bugs Aboard Ship
The proverbial pests have not all fled from the ships in
Fighting Steel. On more than several occasions I encountered very
frustrating bugs. These bugs would frequently take the form of hard
lock-ups of the system; they always seemed to occur when I was playing
a campaign mission. Consequently, I was only able to finish a full
campaign twice.
Another annoyance deals with the release of torpedoes. There were
many occasions that I had lined up my destroyer battle line to make a
torpedo run. After closing the distance and having adequate torpedoes
loaded on the proper side of the ship, my torpedoes would not launch
from their tubes. Either pressing the FIRE button would not work or the
FIRE button was never given to me. After reading up on the subject and
to my knowledge, there was nothing that would have prevented me from a
successful launch, yet my torpedo tubes showed "unable".
Also frustrating was the inability to select torpedo targets. Sometimes
when trying to select a torpedo target where it seemed many targets
were available and within range, I was unable to click on the torpedo
target box. The attempt at choosing a target produced no selection.
Other times selecting a torpedo target that was directly off one of my
ship's beams would produce a projected firing solution that was nowhere
near the projected target area.
Summary
I'm a bit torn when sizing up Fighting Steel. While I applaud the
developer's attempt at accuracy and realism in constructing the ships
database, the AI, and the physical modeling aspects, I am disheartened
by some of the choices that where made early in the development cycle.
The need for first-person gunnery/torpedo targeting, the lack of a
radar station, and the necessity for more robust campaign engine might
damage this game by not allowing a fuller game play experience. It is
that fuller experience that will determine enjoyment over the long
term, and at the moment Fighting Steel is weak in this dimension.
On the other hand, I had a first-rate time constructing
missions and then playing them out as I saw fit. I rather liked playing
historical missions and determining if my maneuver skills would have
given me an advantage.
Although it's tough for me to overlook the problems with the
software, what's included in the box is an enjoyable simulation.
Although many of the features I had hoped to make it into this sim
probably will never be incorporated, I feel confident that SSI's
continued support of this product will allow it to stay on my hard
drive for some time to come.
