Who is happy with Command?

[Kipper]

ORIGINAL: wodin

This sort of question is always best asked two or three months after release..I've seen many many games get praised to death in the first few weeks and then slowly things become apparent and it turns out not to be as great as everyone first thought..very few games are. All the comments at first praised the AI no end..but now people are picking it apart for instance.

If you love Harpoon I expect it to be a must buy..but as someone who doesn't normally do Naval warfare I'm not going to take the risk. Databases are cool..but we have the Internet for free..or I'd prefer some good books if I was into that sort of thing rather than a game.

I do think though this is the go to game for all modern naval warfare grogs.

It's a new era in naval sims but we are talking potential here not actuality but that hopefully will come. I have put it aside as I am really struggling with the map performance issues, too much to get "under the bonnet". Waiting for the performance patch. I would wave off potential buyers until that patch arrives and then we can progress more into digging into the gameplay issues, of which I suspect there are a few but hidden behind the time I need to spend moving/zooming the map. In the meantime, the database makes interesting reading but I don't think the average gamer will be kept entertained by that


EDIT beta patch solved the performance issues for me smooth as butter now.

[invernomuto]

Right now I am focusing on ASW - ASuW operations and I am very happy about the details of the game.
It need some fine tuning but it's a great work IMVHO.

[Alchenar]

ORIGINAL: wodin

This sort of question is always best asked two or three months after release..I've seen many many games get praised to death in the first few weeks and then slowly things become apparent and it turns out not to be as great as everyone first thought..very few games are. All the comments at first praised the AI no end..but now people are picking it apart for instance.

If you love Harpoon I expect it to be a must buy..but as someone who doesn't normally do Naval warfare I'm not going to take the risk. Databases are cool..but we have the Internet for free..or I'd prefer some good books if I was into that sort of thing rather than a game.

I do think though this is the go to game for all modern naval warfare grogs.

Yeah, my plan is to wait until the Christmas sale (if it isn't in the Christmas sale then I guess there's always next year) and see if by then a consensus on the gamestate has emerged.

Right now Baloogan's videos are the best info I have.

[Der Zeitgeist]

Well, I can't say I'm exactly happy about the current state of CMANO. There's a lot of issues where I just can't see how they were not caught during beta testing. When you get tutorial missions that just don't work, when you do exactly as described in the tutorial (A-7s not dropping CBUs), you start to wonder if a few more months of bug fixing wouldn't have been a good idea.

On the other hand, I'm not one to complain about the price I paid or complain in general about the current state. That's because I knew pretty much what I was getting in to, that the developers can not be compared to an AAA software firm, in a positive as well as in a negative way. So I couldn't expect the kind of polish I would get with big titles by big game developers, but on the other hand, I can also expect that the developers will still be supporting and developing CMANO six months from now and probably even six years from now.

So for me, buying CMANO was an investment in a game that will take the place of Harpoon 2/3. I played Harpoon 2 and its descendants for almost 20 years, and that is the kind of timeframe I'm looking at for CMANO, too. With that point of view, the price of the game isn't really worth considering, I think.

Any bugs or unfinished issues are worth considering, absolutely, but unlike with other developers I expect those to be worked on, because the developers seem to genuinely like the game they are working on. And that is something you don't see all the time, nowadays.

[IPWinsor]

Warts and all, I LOVE THIS GAME!!!

I played Harpoon 1.0 on DOS and later beta tested Harpoon 97 for Windows 95. This is no different bug wise, but I have great confidence that these issues will be corrected.

But the work that went into making this a playable game is phenomenal. A/C automatically tanking - brilliant! Satellites - fabulous! The weapons DB is outstanding. The maps are amazing.

All in all, this game is a home run and will be around for a long, long time.

For the comments about time and compression, I started playing Harpoon on a 286; that was SLOW. I am not seeing any issues with Command time and compression on my 8 core AMD.

[SilentHunter]

Played enough know to say I'm happy with my purchase but my learning curve is very steep, never played harpoon or games like this prior. Lots to learn.

[Jorge_Stanbury]

This is what I wrote in War in the Pacific Admiral's edition forum.

Bottom line, yes, I am happy with the game, I think there are lots of things that need fixing, but I am confident they will

I played it for a couple of days; level of complexity is relatively low, obviously when compared to WitPAE.

By the afternoon of the second day, I was able to easily win the 3 tutorials + some minor scenarios. Scenario editor is simple to use, and I was able to built short, raw, scenarios (Cenepa conflict between Peru and Ecuador). results were as expected (Ecuador's Kfirs easily defeating Peruvian Su-22s Mirage2000s; Peruvian navy defeating the Ecuatorian, but with heavy losses due to lack of area defense missiles... and trigger happy AI).

The game's AI is OK, but not "genius". It is wasteful on ammo, so sending a picket ship to absorbe multple missile attacks will probably be a good strategy in most scenarios. It is also not great at defining attack ranges (for example attacking very high against heavily defended targets, and therefore getting torn down to pieces.)

Game is very tactical, and although it might be possible to see some multiple-day long scenarios, I don't see the AI capable of holding a decent game for too long... maybe with wave after wave of enemies triggered by events. That said, supply/ replenish missions exist.

Interface is good, although I can still see too many clicks needed to do some basic stuff; not to mention some commands only done through keyboard.

No multiplayer, It reminds me of "Jane's Fleet Command" game ; without the ship/ plane graphs (just the NATO codes)

I never player Harpoon, but is probably an evolutionary step of that game.

[Primarchx]

Good assessment, Jorge_Stanbury. I think the ball is really just starting to get rolling. A good scenario writer using the Event Editor as-is can put together some nice opposition activities that cater to the AI's strengths. That said, I expect improvements in both the AI and Events system as time goes by.