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SireChaos -> RE: Supremacy at Sea: WW2 (12/21/2009 11:27:57 PM)
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I have the game - bought it on day 1, in fact - and played it quite a bit.
Disclaimer: I used to be a beta-tester for SAS-WW2, and am currently in a PBEM game with the developer himself, so I might not exactly be a neutral reviewer - keep this in mind as you read my post.
First off: yes, the game used to be buggy, no CTDs after the first few weeks but several bugs that could be considered game breakers. These bugs are however all gone by now. The developer has also added some more features in the meantime, such as improved control of aircraft production, and more ways for you to intervene during the turn. More features are going to come, such as transferring RPs between bases with a land connection.
Sabre1, you are right, the game is a bit hard to get into... but then, as wargamers, we ought to be used to that sort of thing. I never tried the tutorial (I´m the kind of guy who jumps straight into the grand campaign in War in the Pacific), but I found that if you let the computer do everthing for you in the first turn, then take a look at what he does, especially setting up task forces and giving them orders, you get a good idea of how things are done.
My advice for learning the game is to create a simple scenario. Use the Pacific map, disable all ports except the default Home Port and Advanced Port (Tokyo Bay and Truk for Axis, San Francisco and Pearl Harbour for Allies), set "no troops", set the AI (both the opponent and your second-in-command) to one of the intermediate aggressiveness settings. Give both home ports a moderate amount of RP - I´d say between 5000 and 10000. Set both strategic and operational turn lengths to one week.
With these setting and the default values for the ports, there will be no invasions, and although you can run convoys between your bases, you won´t need to. With the short turn length and large map, not too much is going to happen before the next turn starts and you can react to it.
Now, during the first turn, your second-in-command will offer to take care of infrastructure investments and ship and airplane production for you. Just say yes to everything and then look at what he did; for the beginning, he usually makes pretty good choices, although in my mind he is too fond of building escort carriers. You may have to manually deploy planes to carriers; the AI doesn´t always do that automatically in the first turn. Then go to the fleet deployment screen and let the second-in-command create fleets; he is fairly good at it, although he a bit too reckless for my liking and doesn´t believe in keeping some ships in reserve - but for learning the game, this shouldn´t matter too much.
Or you could create the fleets yourself and give them your own orders; the AI opponent will probably send major surface fleets to bombard both your bases, and small groups of 4-6 DD to mine the direct route between them, so you may want to try and counter that - or repay him the favor.
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