Ironclads

[Fallschirmjager]

Steam has these 5 titles on sale for $5 each. I looked at them and they look like something to satisfy my naval wargaming urge for single player. The first one, the civil war one, looks pretty primitive graphics wise. But the other four look acceptable in the looks department.

How are the games overall? Pretty abstracted or pretty hardcore? It would be nice if each and every cannon and rifle was rated for accuracy and ballistics and penetration. And slopes of armor and thickess coming into affect. Is the damage model pretty complex, in terms of engines or guns can be knocked out?


If anyone has played these I would like some general impressions.
I also see building aspects are included. That intrigues me. Do you order ships or can you actually construct a ship using menus and build a totally new class of ship?

[Terminus]

They're AWFUL. The interface is horrible (and created by people who don't speak English even as a third language), the ship movement controls are terrible and ships can't hit each other at point-blank range while sitting still on a calm sea. They're not worth the price even on sale.

[New York Jets]

ORIGINAL: Fallschirmjager

Steam has these 5 titles on sale for $5 each. I looked at them and they look like something to satisfy my naval wargaming urge for single player. The first one, the civil war one, looks pretty primitive graphics wise. But the other four look acceptable in the looks department.

How are the games overall? Pretty abstracted or pretty hardcore? It would be nice if each and every cannon and rifle was rated for accuracy and ballistics and penetration. And slopes of armor and thickess coming into affect. Is the damage model pretty complex, in terms of engines or guns can be knocked out?


If anyone has played these I would like some general impressions.
I also see building aspects are included. That intrigues me. Do you order ships or can you actually construct a ship using menus and build a totally new class of ship?

I just went to the Steam store and could not find these games you speak about.

[Fallschirmjager]

ORIGINAL: Chris Trog

ORIGINAL: Fallschirmjager

Steam has these 5 titles on sale for $5 each. I looked at them and they look like something to satisfy my naval wargaming urge for single player. The first one, the civil war one, looks pretty primitive graphics wise. But the other four look acceptable in the looks department.

How are the games overall? Pretty abstracted or pretty hardcore? It would be nice if each and every cannon and rifle was rated for accuracy and ballistics and penetration. And slopes of armor and thickess coming into affect. Is the damage model pretty complex, in terms of engines or guns can be knocked out?


If anyone has played these I would like some general impressions.
I also see building aspects are included. That intrigues me. Do you order ships or can you actually construct a ship using menus and build a totally new class of ship?

I just went to the Steam store and could not find these games you speak about.

Type ironclads into store search and should see 5 titles.

[Jeffrey H.]

The old Yaquinto board games of the same name were pretty good.

[Fallschirmjager]

I have found some positive reviews online. But Terminus seems to be the only one who has played them? Does no one else have anything to weigh in with? I could really use some opinions.

[Hertston]

I've bought a couple (ACW and Anglo-Russian) in different sales but, not overly helpfully, just haven't got around to playing them yet. The reviews don't seem to have been too bad considering the penalty wargames with this sort of obscure subject matter always seem to suffer from, regardless of how good they might be, and suggest the series has continued to evolve with each game. Somebody must be buying them.

[Anonymous]

[Deleted by Admins]

[caaraa]

The old Yaquinto board looks good.

[Hentzau]

Bismarck over at Wargamerdotcom has played several of them and liked them I believe. Think you can find some of his reviews of them over there.

[Perturabo]

I remember trying a demo of them. Sadly, I couldn't get it to work under Wine.

[Canoerebel]

Why would anybody want to play an ironclads game anyhow?  Even in the Civil War, ironclads seldom did much.  Most of the time, the Confederate ironclads leaked or foundered or broke down or couldn't get close enough to hit anything.  As for the Union ironclads, they mostly just responded to inflated rumors of CSA ironclad breakouts and served blockade duty.

[Perturabo]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

Why would anybody want to play an ironclads game anyhow?  Even in the Civil War, ironclads seldom did much.  Most of the time, the Confederate ironclads leaked or foundered or broke down or couldn't get close enough to hit anything.  As for the Union ironclads, they mostly just responded to inflated rumors of CSA ironclad breakouts and served blockade duty.

It's probably the appeal of the transitional period.

[Terminus]

The sheer lack of realism...[8|]

[Jeffrey H.]

Both.

[Fallschirmjager]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

Why would anybody want to play an ironclads game anyhow?  Even in the Civil War, ironclads seldom did much.  Most of the time, the Confederate ironclads leaked or foundered or broke down or couldn't get close enough to hit anything.  As for the Union ironclads, they mostly just responded to inflated rumors of CSA ironclad breakouts and served blockade duty.

The game simulates all naval combat during the 1860's. Not just ironclads. It simulates early steam conversions and paddle ships, regular steam driven sail ships with iron belts, gunboats, armored frigates and true ironclads.

I may buy one of the titles for $5 just to see if they are worth anything at all. If they are good then I will wait for another sale and pick up more titles. If they suck...well...$5 is not much to lose.

[NefariousKoel]

I grabbed the whole collection on a $10 sale during Christmas from Gamersgate. While they're amusing for the time period portrayed (you don't see that often!), the gameplay in all the later games is pretty dull. The original one's turn-based gameplay seems to be better but is still kinda bleh for me.

The latter games look far better, but the only orders you give is heading and speed. So you're basically just steering the slow-moving little squadrons around while they shoot at the enemy on their own. It would've been more interesting if the campaign wasn't so shallow. You basically buy the maximum number of the biggest ships for your next battle, then buy the maximum of the next lowest, etc. until you have your money spent on the fleet and repairs from previous ones. Rinse, repeat over a few battles and that's it. I think it would've been better if they'd have worked with the original's turn-based gameplay and added a few things but they completely went the opposite way and moved it over to real-time and tacked on a sliver of a "campaign". [:(]

Some people enjoy it, but I lost interest after playing one 5-battle campaign. I spent money on ships (same every play) and then proceeded to jockey the rudder slider for 3 lines of ships over a long period of time.

[Fallschirmjager]

I purchased the Anglo-Russo war 1866 game for $5. About to boot it up. I will give a review. I think this shows how desperate I am for naval games at the moment!
It may be ok for me. I liked warship combat from NWS which was essentially turn based ships slugging it out without any kind of campaign narrative. And I do have one internet friend opinion whom I trust who told me that the very first game in the series with the turn based combat was quite a bit worse than the later four games with real time combat. He said the turn based game had a few pros but more cons and pros. He said the game has few enough units that it does not become a giant mess like the Storm Eagle games. He said that the turn based Civil War game had the problem where due to the turn based nature of the game that the combat made little logical sense in terms of the firing sequences. He also said that the AI was very bad about not holding it's fire and thus missing chances to come in close and rake your ships with high quality fire. He said that the real time games, the AI was much better at being selective with it's firing.
We shall see.

I will come back and give my report.

[NefariousKoel]

Yes, the gunfire is handled much better in the realtime games.  The big problem there is that you don't do anything but steer and adjust the engine telegraph the whole time. [:(] I think it could've been a fair deal better if it just had more variety in units than the 4 or 5 per side that each one is limited to.

It's interesting for a bit, and there's obviously a little strategy involved regarding your movements, but it's not a lot.  For $5, it's probably a decent distraction especially if you really need a new naval fix.  I'm often looking for the same.

[uncc]

Ironclad Anthology (all five games) for $10 at StrategyFirst (ends 9/23): http://secure.campaigner.com/Campaigner/Public/t.show?NVzE--9pzg-bfC489