Sea Power

[hellfish6]

SP actually got me to re-engage with CMO after some amount of hibernation (though I never uninstalled it).

SP is at its best in small scenarios with a handful of units that you can dedicate your full attention span to, with occasional breaks for eye candy. CMO is a decade+ more mature in all its iterations and its scope is vastly - vastly - beyond what SP can ever hope to achieve.

I love SP, immaturity and all, and as a naval game experience it's unparalleled and often breathtaking. It's my go to when I want to play a naval game. CMO is not a game. At all. It is the naval sim I always wanted, though, and I love it for that.

I don't have any interest in comparing these two titles beyond those statements. The field of naval warfare on your PC isn't so crowded that there isn't room for both of them. And if people are intrigued enough by Sea Power, I suspect they'll come to CMO eventually.

[Dimitris]

SP actually got me to re-engage with CMO after some amount of hibernation (though I never uninstalled it).

Welcome back

ICYMI:

CMANO-to-CMO changes & additions:
https://command.matrixgames.com/?p=4954
https://command.matrixgames.com/?p=4975
https://command.matrixgames.com/?p=4982
https://command.matrixgames.com/?p=4990

CMO v1.01 additions: https://command.matrixgames.com/?p=5026
CMO v1.02 additions: https://command.matrixgames.com/?p=5118
CMO v1.03 additions: https://command.matrixgames.com/?p=5188
CMO v1.04 additions: https://command.matrixgames.com/?p=5271

CMO v1.05 "War Planner"/"Tiny" additions:
https://command.matrixgames.com/?p=5423
https://command.matrixgames.com/?p=5449
https://command.matrixgames.com/?p=5486
https://command.matrixgames.com/?p=5492
https://command.matrixgames.com/?p=5496
https://command.matrixgames.com/?p=5500

CMO v1.06 additions: https://command.matrixgames.com/?p=5601
CMO v1.07 additions: https://command.matrixgames.com/?p=5740

[hellfish6]

SP actually got me to re-engage with CMO after some amount of hibernation (though I never uninstalled it).

Welcome back

ICYMI:

CMANO-to-CMO changes & additions:
https://command.matrixgames.com/?p=4954
https://command.matrixgames.com/?p=4975
https://command.matrixgames.com/?p=4982
https://command.matrixgames.com/?p=4990

CMO v1.01 additions: https://command.matrixgames.com/?p=5026
CMO v1.02 additions: https://command.matrixgames.com/?p=5118
CMO v1.03 additions: https://command.matrixgames.com/?p=5188
CMO v1.04 additions: https://command.matrixgames.com/?p=5271

CMO v1.05 "War Planner"/"Tiny" additions:
https://command.matrixgames.com/?p=5423
https://command.matrixgames.com/?p=5449
https://command.matrixgames.com/?p=5486
https://command.matrixgames.com/?p=5492
https://command.matrixgames.com/?p=5496
https://command.matrixgames.com/?p=5500

CMO v1.06 additions: https://command.matrixgames.com/?p=5601
CMO v1.07 additions: https://command.matrixgames.com/?p=5740

That's intensely helpful, thank you very much.

[thewood1]

That post comparing CMNAO and CMO should be pinned on the Steam store page, the Steam CMNAO forum, and the Steam CMO forum.

[thewood1]

Having played it some more...

While the devs are sporadically releasing patches, the patches seem to be full of fairly narrow tactical fixes. Changes to specific weapons, adding something to a 3D model, etc. There are two huge issues I am tracking that have stopped me from playing: No save game and a very bad memory leak.

Its still a micromanagement-fest with almost no AI, but the real killer is that you have to complete a scenario in one sitting. There is a dev menu that lets you do a kind of save, but I have yet to see it restore completely. The save has units missing, inflight weapons deleted, wrong locations, and a host of other stuff. To exacerbate the save issue, any medium-sized game that goes longer than a couple hours has very good chance of running out of memory or just crashing.

These issues have all been around since day zero. So the devs know and have said they are working on a fix. But we are coming up on three months since launch with not even an estimate on when these issues will be addressed. And on top of that are all the other issues with ship, aircraft, and weapon performance. The devs haven't even really talked in any substantive way about how/when they will fully develop the AI and mission capability.

The devs said their developer had a serious health issue and that shut down any updates for a while. But that was weeks ago. No real progress in a bit. Its still kind of fun to start up and watch aircraft launch and missile battles play out, but it eventually feels very hollow if you play for any length of time. I'm feeling more and more pessimistic about the game's progress. I have noted from the forums and Steamcharts that there is less player activity for the game. The devs need to do something very quickly or they will end up at a point of no return.

[Kushan04]

Who releases a game, even in EA, without the ability to save?

[schweggy]

Who releases a game, even in EA, without the ability to save?

I think you can modify the config.ini file in this folder: \Steam\steamapps\common\Sea Power\Sea Power_Data\StreamingAssets\original to enable saves. It's mickey-mouse because the Steam data integrity routine will set it back to the default, on occasion. I've tried it, it works, but it's not perfect.

Snippet of the file:
LoadQuickSaveInStandAlone=False
SaveLoadEnabled=True
SaveLoadSensorDataEnabled=False
SaveLoadFlightDeckEnabled=False

[thewood1]

Just to reinforce the issues with it; from my earlier post.

"There is a dev menu that lets you do a kind of save, but I have yet to see it restore completely. The save has units missing, inflight weapons deleted, wrong locations, and a host of other stuff. To exacerbate the save issue, any medium-sized game that goes longer than a couple hours has very good chance of running out of memory or just crashing."

[HalfLifeExpert]

It's been a while since I've fired up Sea Power, but I do have a thought about it's lack of features.

I suspect that they may have put too much time and resources into making more units/platforms for first EA release and not enough time on the fundamentals of the gameplay.

I also seem to remember earlier promos for Sea Power mentioning only a couple of specific theatres (North Atlantic/Barents, and Persian Gulf/Arabian Sea). Later they seemed to shift gears toward having basic functionality of all the oceans at EA launch.

This leads me to suspect that the long time in development, prior to EA release, was spent on going too big, too soon.

A better approach IMO would have been to concentrate on only one or two theatres of war, and a relative handful of assets for a Cold War One gone hot setup (say late 70s- early 80s, and only a reasonable OOB for Soviet and USN assets), and spend time refining the core functions of gameplay.

Only THEN have an early access release, during which more content (theatres, assets etc) as well as campaign functionality could be added.

I believe a lower content but higher quality gameplay EA release would have been much better received.

[thewood1]

The devs have now admitted a couple times on the Sea Power Steam forum that they "over-scoped" the game. I have said they felt some pressure from CMO's massive scope.

[boogabooga]

Who releases a game, even in EA, without the ability to save?

In fairness, there is not a whole lot going on in Sea Power that's worth saving. It's an eye candy game. Expect the devs to double down on eye candy.

Sea Power will be controversial because it occupies an unusual spot in the serious simulation<->action sliding scale. Things like limited EMCON like thermal layers make it SEEM 'simmy', but it's about seeing high-poly 3D models go boom.

I'm enjoying it, though. I kind of enjoy seeing it play out...the tubes opening, the launch rails turning, the booms, etc. But don't ever expect them to cite academic sources for their missile lofting model. When I want depth- CMO.

Its still a micromanagement-fest with almost no AI, but the real killer is that you have to complete a scenario in one sitting.

Right. Theses rendered 3D world games seem to work better when the player's scope is narrowed down to controlling just one vehicle...like flight sims and submarine sims. The key for enjoying SP is to play small scenarios with low unit counts. Otherwise, you'll spend the whole time looking at the 2D map anyway, and at that point you may as well play CMO.

[BobTank63]

NGL, I was disappointed by Sea Power initial release. I still think it's a good game, and the devs have been patching it in the right direction (most of the updates so far have gone towards the mem leak issues and finishing up the save feature), but it was certainly not the 0.9 version they advertised the game as.

Devs were quite up front as to why they released when they did. They ran out of money to develop the game and had to release in EA to get more funds. Sucks it played out this way.

I still think the game is gonna turn out fine, just gonna take longer than it should.

[thewood1]

They still haven't formally made the critical decision they need to make. They need to announce that the scope of the game is XX date to YY date using these ZZ countries for the next 1-2 years. No new units outside that box until the engine is functionally complete. In some ways they are doing that by default, but being clear would sure clean up the noise and let them focus.

[thewood1]

My opinion on the state of the game hasn't changed much, even with several patches having been delivered. But I thought this post from the devs was interesting. Plat earth vs round earth:

"Yes, our world is flat, and we'd love to switch to a spherical representation. We've been talking about it for a long time---really since the game became worldwide during development---but it's never made sense for us to make the leap. The problem is that our systems assume both for moving units around and for spatial computations generally that the world is flat, and changing all of that code would be

A) a lot of work that could be spent on other parts of the game and
B) likely very buggy for a long time.

We have limited development resources, and our view is that the community would prefer performance improvements, new gameplay features, and core functionality like save/load over a spherical world.

We could choose a different map projection to flatten the world with, but this would just be changing where the distortions are while begetting probably 90% of the bugs that a sphere would cause."

Beyond the flat vs round earth impact, its some good insight into the pressure the devs are feeling on priorities. I don't think they have reached the point where they can say the game is functionally stable and they can turn to adding critical features. My opinion is they aren't even close.

[schweggy]

I will say this about Sea Power; it's got a fair amount of fodder for possible CMO scenarios. Not saying some of the scenarios in Sea Power aren't already CMO scenarios, but there's some room for creativity on the player's part with them.

The game itself, the development, seems to have slowed or stalled. And the number of mods for it are hard to keep track of... and some mess with the base game, at least the beta version(s). I haven't played it in a number of weeks. More focused on the latest CMO patch and Fail Safe.

[Mgellis]

Yes, I agree. I've only watched some of the YouTube videos, and glanced at some of the resources on Steam, but some of the scenarios look pretty interesting. Doesn't look like it would be hard to convert some of them over to CMO (and perhaps expand on them a bit to take advantages of some of the features in CMO that don't appear to be in Sea Power, like specialized magazines, cargo operations, etc.)

I will say this about Sea Power; it's got a fair amount of fodder for possible CMO scenarios. Not saying some of the scenarios in Sea Power aren't already CMO scenarios, but there's some room for creativity on the player's part with them.

The game itself, the development, seems to have slowed or stalled. And the number of mods for it are hard to keep track of... and some mess with the base game, at least the beta version(s). I haven't played it in a number of weeks. More focused on the latest CMO patch and Fail Safe.

[nats]

Just wanted to add here about the possibilities of 3d that we could have a 3d version of CMO with icons and the like the same as they are now but one which you could rotate and view in 3d from differnet angles with 3d terrain as well. Whether it would be much better than the game is now or worth the processing hit I cant say. But being able to pan around a battlefield in 3d would be interesting. Maybe a cut down version of Tacview.

[thewood1]

News on ea Power from devs' new roadmap. Just the stuff I thought was important.

1) Tacview integration to use Tacview as the reply tool. Something is at the top of my wishlist for CMO.
2) Dynamic campaign is delayed until the game is more feature complete.

[thewood1]

Big patch released that seems to address some things. Adds Japanese navy plus some miscellaneous units. The big add is the Tacview replay feature. Played with it a little. It seems to follow the Sea Power theme of being pretty cool, but with a lot of issues. But a good first attempt. Again, would love to see this in CMO.

[Kushan04]

would love to see this in CMO.

Unfortunately, TacView replay isn't something that's going to happen in CMO. The TacView files are not encrypted, which means someone could use them to extract data out of for analysis.