Recent reviews by ScubaSam

Like nothing else out there - a true successor to Jane's Fleet Command and a worthy follow on to Cold Waters.

As a long time player of the above games and also CMANO and CMO (Command: Modern Operations) this is basically my dream come true, adding graphics, sound, atmosphere and drama to go along with the tense tactics and strategy.

It's definitely in early access and a few features are still a bit bare bones, but very much in a playable and fun state with hopefully a lot of exciting improvements to come (new units, a dynamic campaign, lots of features / bug fixes etc.) Seems like a real labour of love from the devs. Some of the more negative comments you see about difficulty / confusing UI are probably wrapped up in just this type of game - if you're new to the genre or some of the ideas behind realistic naval warfare then this game doesn't (yet) have a lot that will hold your hand. But I'd very much recommend it if you're a fan of the genre!

I work as an engineer for a Formula 1 team, and what impresses me about this game is how it has captured the things which make a race weekend exciting while stripping away the stuff that would make every race weekend a chore (aka too much like a real job!).

For example, the short practice sessions - lots of complaints about those but I have to say there is probably no racing team that would ever say they've had enough practice - you always want more, and it's a case of prioritising what you want to learn about. The game forces you to make this interesting choice - do you work on setup or prioritise running laps on a set of tyres to squeeze out that last few % of performance?

In real life teams use a combination of experience and simulation to do the biggest chunk of setup work before the race - the practice sessions are just for fine tuning. The game gives you hints (and the track map should give you an idea) of whether this is a high speed / low speed circuit. I've found it's possible to get fairly close on your first go by taking an educated guess, but you won't get a perfect setup without long practice sessions, good driver feedback and a good starting guess - and nor should you! Getting a perfect setup is elusive just like in real life. And just like in real life you could keep a note of your setups and give yourself a better starting point for next year!

There are some things that could be improved - copying setups from one teammate to another would be handy, and at the moment there is a lack of strategy tools - you can't pre-plan setups for a particular lap (so you have to remember any strategies in your head) and it's hard to figure out whether a 2 or 3 stop is faster. Changing strategy on the fly during the race is made difficult because you can't get a list or a graph of your driver's laptimes since the start (at least I haven't found one) - this would allow you to compare and see if you have more pace / less pace than the guy in front and at what point your laptimes start to fall off the cliff (so time for a tyre change).

But overall I can promise you this is a really great (and fun!) impression of the real deal.