Naval War: Arctic Circle was released yesterday and I found some time to play around a bit and to search for things I don’t like about it.
Please note: Me griping in detail about it still means it still see the potential for it becoming a pretty decent game.
Gameplay Problems:
- There is no way to properly manage the fuel on the aircraft, the game is just telling you, how far from not making it back to base you are (percentage wise), but you get no direct indication of the distance remaining (other than doing some research or waiting for people to post some tables to the forums).
- Speaking of distances…there is no tool to determine distances on the map. (forum thread)
There seem to be some bugs in the fuel usage calculation…in the campaign I had a P-8 Poseidon run out of fuel on me after about half an hour, which I could not imagine to be possible unless it had a lot of leaks in the fuel tanks. (Update: I seem to have clicked “return to base” for the aircraft, which causes it to dump all extra fuel, see here)- The speed of the aircraft does not change depending on altitude. I reckon a P-8 would stall flying 200km/h at maximum altitude.
There are only active sonobuoys.(Update: I just realized, that it’s possible to disable the active mode of somobuoys, but they are launched in active mode, which makes it pretty unusable. Additionaly they do not seem to produce bearing lines but full-blown 3D-Contacts even if only one buoy has been launched.)- The F-35 carries way too many AMRAAMs. Maybe they are using external hardpoints, but then you should be able to select either this layout or a stealthy one. (forum post, and a thread))
- There are no MIL-STD-2525 or NTDS symbols (see here) unlike in Fleet Command by Sonalysts (In this case NTDS). (forum thread)
- Submarines are continuously in communications contact.
Technical Problems:
- There is no scenario editor.
- There is too much delay before scrolling the map when moving the mouse cursor to the edge of the screen. (forum thread)
Things I don’t mind, but others could consider as a problem:
- There is no possibility to save your progress within a mission.
- Some really bad puns in the campaign mission briefings.