Naval War has potential, but...

[unmerged(477521)]

Hi everyone. I created this account just to repost this from the steam games forum, because I think it needs to be said. The original post is here, I just extracted the paragraphs which I think are the most important:

This comment from strategyinformer basically sums up everything I think is holding this game back (minus the need for some kind of scenario creator!). I must say the demo was quite fun. After a few hours of playing though, the below mentioned issues really started to catch up to me and affect my experience. It really gets annoying when you have to manually pull the trigger anytime any unit needs to fire a weapon, especially at incoming missiles. If these could be addressed, and even a simple editor added, I think this game is one I would happily spend $19.99 for.

What it boils down to is that I am so busy finding my units and giving them orders after the fact (setting speed, altitude, radar and RoE for aircraft) that I rarely have any time to admire the 3D engine. The lack of duty officer assignments and pilot intelligence is also a problem.

You cannot trust that your ship will defend itself against incoming Surface to Surface missiles, that your fighters will dodge incoming SAM's or that once a foe is sighted and manually identified the aircraft/ship will actually engage the target. Unless directly ordered to do so by right-clicking you might be on the losing end of an Exocet attack as you have a sleeping "Do Not Disturb" crew. Even when alerted only one missile is fired at the target, and you must right-click again to ensure a follow-up salvo of one follows the first.

Also if a submarine has fired a torpedo it will often refuse an order to fire again if the tube is re-loading, which you must guess it is doing. Instead the user is notified that it has no weapon available to attack the target (which it actually does). After a few minutes (presumably the time it takes to re-load) the sub will accept new attack orders once more.

Helicopters likewise will drop sonar buoys when ordered but fail to engage a positively identified hostile target unless manually ordered to do so. It will also return to it's ship after making an attack (as with fighters/bombers) even with ordnance aboard. Very frustrating and requiring that the player babysit each attacking unit.

 

[Ekyman]

To make units automatically engage enemies, go to the mission settings (the gear above the minimap) and in the dropdown menu at the top of that window, select "Fire on all cleared targets"

 

[unmerged(476215)]

The game has just been released and they have already released some patches and are working on more. They have already announced that they will release an mission editor and more content. I think you should buy the game, it's really fun already as it is and multiplayer is fun. =)

 

[Stuckenschmidt]

I say you wait until the last patch is released and look at what has been done until then. Time and money are too precious for average games.

 

[General Baker]

Good thing it's a cheap game then

 

[unmerged(477521)]

To make units automatically engage enemies, go to the mission settings (the gear above the minimap) and in the dropdown menu at the top of that window, select "Fire on all cleared targets"

I have done that. You can also do it under battle settings for each unit individually. Also, If you read the post, you will see that the OP's (who I quoted) point, was not just that this setting doesn't seem to work, but that the unit AI is unreasonable in other ways as well.