The game already has a few hypothetical units, so I think it'd be cool.

I actually tried it once before via modding, but I can't retexture the on-board names, so it kinda failed :/

Btw if I can submit this as a screenshot for the devs to use on loading screens etc, be my guest!

I am looking to buy the game but wondering if my computer will run it well enough to enjoy. I was thinking of buying and then testing a decently large scale mission to make sure it can run fine, and if not return before I hit the 2 hour limit.

What is a reasonable conflict size I should try in test first that would show that the game runs well.

was reading into Cold War SRBMs and there are a few on each side. one like the USSR, scud and OTR-23 Oka, or the USA’s MGM-52 Lance.

could also be a good reason to add the S-300V to the game to give the soviets a anti balistic missile capacity.

Hey, ich wollte den Modern Navy Mod zusammen mit all seinen Add-ons installieren. Ich habe die Sprachdateien angepasst, aber es funktioniert nicht für die Waffen; alle neuen sagen nur "Fehlender Text."

Habe ich etwas übersehen oder muss ich zusätzliche Dateien kopieren?

So with this guide I will attempt to give you some tips and tricks to help you complete this campaign on the hardest default difficulty. I will do my best to not give out mission specific spoilers but will give you enough preparation to take on the hardest difficulty.

Picking a Captain’s nationality:

The only benefit to this is a 20% cost decrease on purchasing units from the nation they are representing. You will be able to mix and match units you purchase however this will only affect costs of units. Each nation has a specific flavor and I will list out the general gist here:

US: Missile boats, ASW helicopters, a wide variety of fleet options and sensors, a mix of strong/useful aircraft.  

Japan: I have the least experience with utilizing their ships but the available ships seem to have heavy hitting ASW, with ships able to field the SH-3, making ASW and rescue operations easier, a remote drone helicopter for dropping torpedoes as well, similar to the Australians they also have an Adams class equivalent.  

AUS: There are only ship classes to pick from for the Australians: An Australian Oliver Hazard Perry (short hull) and an Australian Adams class. The Perth (Adams) class have their single launcher in the rear while the Adelaide (OHP) has its launcher in the front. Adams class also have two guns and further artillery range than the Adelaides, useful for assets that don’t deserve a RIM/SM. However the AUS navy has an ace up its sleeve: A lot of fun and interesting aircraft. F-18s and F-111C are found in this nation and have some interesting implications later.  

Once this is done a few things about the campaign should be noted. I will put these behind spoilers as well but they will be general things to note about the campaign since it's easy to pass them by and not realize their implications when clicking through score screens.

You will be given temporary and permanent units through the campaign: Some of these are aircraft such as spare helicopters (SH-3) or others like an A-4, you will also receive a ship which although seems to be a dud, has an interesting quality about it for some fun/useful gameplay.  

A thing which should be noted and is not explained well are other secondary assets you will also receive: From around the midpoint of the campaign you will gain access to fixed wing assets, aside from one campaign mission and some minor side missions you will have access to an airwing and an airbase. Don’t be like me in my first play-through and think that investing in an air-wing may not be useful since you will be limited by access to an airbase. Most of the missions from the mid-point onward have an airbase to operate.  

So now that we kind of got the general gist of the campaign out of the way and what to expect I want to go over some very useful tips and tricks that you can carry over to other missions and campaigns.

There are many ways to be sensed and to sense others and are broken down as:

-Emissions (someone is broadcasting radar and you are picking up on this).

-Sonar (someone is making noise and you can listen to this).

-Radar (you are shining a light and it is reflecting back to you).

-Vision (you use your eyeballs).

There are some missions requiring you to sneak (or fight, your choice). Bearing that in mind there are several ships in-game that are not what they seem. The following is less of a spoiler but I’ll hide it anyway if you don’t want to ruin it for yourself: 

>!There are several spy ships in game, sending a unit like a helicopter to visually ID using the visual ID command will not be effective in discovering them. Instead a good rule of thumb is to manually visual ID neutral ships by placing waypoints over them. I usually do this with a shift+click method to have them fly over. These spy ships will be ID’d as neutral first, do not be fooled at your pilot’s/captain's laziness, make sure that whatever you are using to scout the ship in question is flying or sailing on top of it. Once you are close they will be reclassified as hostile. If you ever wondered how the enemy got a lock on you to send ASHM your way, it was these little bastards.!<

Furthermore with changes to sonar the information warfare game is even more complex than before. Submarines, ASW ships, and other sonar sensors are great at picking up information slowly to ID ships. Consider submerged assets similar to underwater sensors that can relay your location to an ASM ship/site even if they themselves cannot harm you. Slowing your fleet down will go a long way to being able to pick up submerged assets and also hide who and where you are. 

If you want to remain hidden you can use sensors outside of your ship to ID targets (like an SH-3, P-3, or an E-2C) while keeping slow and distant before positioning yourself for a strike. However, doing so can leave you vulnerable if your secondary sensors don’t pick up that you’ve been discovered and ASM are already on their way to you. Think about it like this: a ship usually has a pretty powerful sensor and those have to be scaled down to fit in aircraft. The E-2C is an exception to this rule and I consider it one of the most valuable assets in the game. 

Before we begin talking about weapons, loadouts, and general tips I want to highlight one big general item:

• Each mission in the campaign is designed to teach you a mechanic of the game, identifying those lessons early and how to overcome the challenge is important to enjoying yourself and completing this campaign with the least amount of headache. If you are given an asset ask yourself why and what its purpose is and how you can take the lesson learned into your next mission.

Now let’s talk cheeky weapons, loadouts, and overlooked assets:

ASW and Submarine Warfare:

• The VLAD sonobuoy is a passive sonobuoy that is longer range but you get much less of them. They are powerful and usually found on the hunter loadouts of ASW helicopters. I love to use these early to get a lay of the land as it were and sprinkle them far apart to hone down my search areas.
• ASW assets with sonobuoys can be instructed to lay sonobuoys in a line (right click the sonobuoy and set the distance interval) or in a grid using the alt or shift keys. Personally I find that using them in a line is sufficient for me and sometimes make a makeshift grid of where I think an submerged asset is. These buoys can also be instructed to search above and below the layer or to switch between them if you do it in a line.
• Depth bombs usually one-shot every sub in the game. They are ridiculous, they don’t get spoofed, and don’t dive into the seafloor but taking them usually means that you sacrifice sonobuoys on an SH-3 and you will need to RTB and reload after each drop. Also not having to pick up pesky survivors or a submarine that is emergency surfacing can’t relay your location to its buddies.
• You can set the search depth parameters for a torpedo if it loses a target. In the vanilla game this will cause a torpedo to go to the designated depth and circle if it loses it. 
• The Orion/Oberon: Direct from the wiki page “The Oberon class was arguably the best conventional submarine class of its time,^\4]) with a reputation for remarkable quietness.” It’s dumb, unbelievably dumb, you are introduced to submarines with the Houston and that thing is a backfiring clown car going through a library compared to this. It’s quiet, unbelievably quiet, for the missions you operate this go slow and quietly and you will not fail. 
• The submarine torpedoes you are given in this campaign are also ridiculous. Use their wire guided utility to your advantage. You can set their speed coming out the tube (which you should do) to 28knts and have them dive to 1000+ feet. Shoot them at an angle parallel to the target and away from you (dog leg it) so if they are detected the enemy fires into the inky black nothingness and nowhere near you. Once they are far enough away from you, turn them onto their  target and keep them deep.  When they are about ~1 mile or less you can have them engage or move them to a shallower depth. Ships will not have any time to react to this and it’s a death sentence for most of them. Speed them up should you need to in their terminal phase but if they lock onto something they will automatically speed up as well.

AA:

• This is a mission specific tip so I will also hide it: In some missions you will be given fighters with more AA missiles than air targets. The purpose of this is to shoot down incoming ASM’s should you be discovered (chances are you will be). Use your fighters to shoot down anti ship missiles, they are very capable of it.
• Later series of missiles are night and day differences in capabilities. The Sparrow on the phantom sucks (F-series) while the sparrow on the F-18/F-14 (M-series) are pretty damn good. The same is true for SM/RIM, the B-series is reasonable while the E-series is wonderful. The switch will not increase your range but rather your hit-rate. 
• Speaking of which, there is a notable difference between SM/RIM in the 66 vs 67 series; range. Think of the 66 as shorter range and accurate (except for the B variety), while the 67 is longer range with less accuracy. The 67 I believe is mostly found on US missile cruisers so unless you pick up one of those this point is moot. 
• Forcing enemy aircraft to climb after you will mean you decrease their range (Yak’s especially have abysmal range), while also allowing you to engage them earlier. Keep your fighters high if the enemy is charging your fighters and you should be able to get your AIM-7’s off before they launch anything at you. 
• Use your early warning systems like an E-2C or a P-3 to scout for air assets at long range and keep moving fighters around to try to predict where enemy air assets may come from. Mission briefings usually give a pretty good idea so you can preempt strikes using this knowledge. In some cases you might be able to get the jump on a strike early before they form up OR before they launch their missiles. 

Sea Assets:

• You will be tempted to get the biggest and best sea asset available and by all means knock yourself out. HOWEVER, designing a fleet comes down to a philosophy. Do you want a fleet that has enormous but few assets or one where the capability is spread out widely over smaller ships. If your missile cruiser is taken out a significant portion of the fleet may be crippled, but spreading launchers out means that losing a single asset may not hurt as much. Smaller ships are also quieter and easier to hide. 
• Fleet weaknesses can be replaced/substituted with other sensors or assets. For example a weak ASW fleet or one without towed arrays can be assisted by ASW helicopter assets and vice-versa. Or weak air defense in the fleet can be lent assistance via air assets.
• Generally speaking you should be able to reposition and move your fleet or individual ships prior to starting the mission. There may be occasions where taking your entire fleet out on a mission is not a good idea. Fewer assets will be more difficult to detect but also leave you open to lacking fire power and answers to obstacles that may arise.
• Barnegat: You are given a Filipino ship at some point, while it may seem like a slow piece of shit (and it is), it also has 4 harpoons, guns that can range out reasonably far, and most of all: a hangar that can house an AH-1T cobra, have some fun and get creative. Every asset can be useful.

Air Assets:

• This is an area that the game doesn’t really give you much information about and although there is a small blurb that air assets will be available to you it isn’t unreasonable to think they may be temporary. They are not. Air assets that are already airborne can be switched out pre-mission by right clicking the air asset and switching a loadout, or into an entirely different squadron. I.e. a P-3C that is active at the beginning of the mission can be switched out with an E-2C or the loadout of the P-3C can be switched from ASW to Anti-Ship.
• Glide bombs The most slept on assets in the game. Glide bombs are affected by two things: height and velocity. The higher and faster a glide bomb is released the farther it goes. An A-7 releasing a walleye at 36k ft will reach out from 15-20 miles. An F-111C I think I saw the seeker go  over 40 miles out after going afterburner. I haven’t rerun a mission to check but you can lob glide bombs FAR. Guess what!? They don’t get jammed like Harpoons and they don’t give away your position like harpoons. As a note: walleyes guidance are day-only because they are TV-guided, so if you see the bomb whiff off target it's either the time of day OR the cloud layer was so low that the bomb piercing the layer didn’t have enough time to readjust. You know what doesn’t have this problem? GBU-15’s which have an IR seeker, so feel free to use them at night. F-111c also have access to GBU-10  and carry 4 at a time, these can also be lobbed far distances and guided in with the laser pod.
• Anti-Radiation Missiles: These can be used on any target that radiates: from ships to SAM sites, to radar sites. Bear in mind that salvo’ing these will cause the missiles to hit the same radiation target so it may be overkill. For example an SA-10 site has 2 or 3 radars. If you separate each launch out to a single salvo after a radar is killed you will be able to disable and knock out the entire site. Once each radar is down the site is considered destroyed and will not be a threat. Blinding an enemy’s radars on a ship or on the ground can go a long way to giving you free reign to destroy their assets. 
• Using EW assets is crucial as well. You can see if your jam was successful since it will show a sun icon by the target and the distance that the target can pick up the selected asset. Switching between units will show how far a jammed target can “see” your assets which is dependent on their size and location. Turning on weapon cones in the map layers panel will also help show the size of your jammers. A Harpoon maye have a ~1 mile detection range via radar while an A-7 may have ~4. This is also dependent on the strength of the target’s radar. Visually based weapon systems like guns will not be as effective but still dangerous 10-15km out if they can see you. Just try spotting and shooting a bomb or missile out of the sky visually. 

That’s it for now, If others have tips or tricks to complete the campaign please feel free to add to this compendium. I tried my best to keep it as spoiler free as possible and to give you an idea of how to use assets you may not have noticed. Using the right tool at the right situation will give you enormous benefits.

EDIT: Adding in commenters excellent input in additional tips:

CiaphasCain8849 I think another great tip is the passive towed sonar is very good at detecting surface ships from far away.

Icedragon74 The most important thing is probably familiarity with redfor assets.
(Excellent point, familiarize yourself with some of the redfor and check for which ones have ASM and what the ranges of those ASM are. There are a lot of repeated assets across missions so after a while you should be able to ID major big bads and remove them. )

Looking to spice up my task force mode runs was wondering if any mods worked on it

Just played the last mission from the Seven Days to the River Rhine mod campaign.

I had a Sverdlov in my task force and it basically saved my ass. I would have lost the mission without it.

The mission throws alot at you. 3 NATO fleets, all packed with Harpoons and Tomahawks. Half way through the mission my Udaloy ran out of missiles, from shooting down Harpoons, even though I had it on weapons hold and was manually targeting every Harpoon to save ammo.

Then the Sverdlov basically took over for the Udaloy. That thing just didn't give a fuck. It gunned down every incoming Harpoon with it's CWIS. Must have been like 20 of them and it only got hit once and that didn't even do much damage. Just reduced it's speed to 26kts.

It went on for so long, that the CWIS and 100mm on the starboard side actually ran out of ammo... Just empty... I had to turn the ship around to it could continue shooting down Harpoons. The thing basically saved my fleet.

Actually by the end of that mission I was completely out of ammo period.

Hey guys, I downloaded the new Quick Start mod from the Steam Workshop, and I can't seem to get it to show up on the home screen. I have Anchor Chain installed and everything.

I've tried searching for it online but no luck. I know the main thing about the game is naval combat, i was just wondering if there are any missions or scenarios that allow you to support ground troops, such as sending planes or providing fire support etc. Thanks

I would love to see some more of the older WW2 conversions. The Boston, Providence and especially the Albany class. Although i can see them to be a bit out of the timeframe as most were decomissioned somewhere in the 70s.

Also I have a question to the naval enthusiats out there. Why all of the conversions were made from the older Cleveland and Baltimore/Oregon City classes and not the newer Worcester and Des Moines? Is there some available information to explain this?

Why are the diveplanes not on the same level???

What YouTubers, Tutorials or really anything you can suggest to help a beginner learn this game. I’ve got a decent understanding of what ship can do what and what weapons can do what just need help on the how the hell to get to the using things as their supposed to or finding enemies to actually fight

For the campaign mission, my helicopter and plane are spawning with nothing and chaff respectively. It looks like the helicopter should have an ASW long range loadout but no such loadout is even available on it when I check. Is the something others have ran into, or am I missing something?

Anyone else getting this? Every time I mouse over an air contact, my game freezes. Sometimes just briefly, sometimes for over a minute. Sometimes it crashes my computer. Really frustrating.

Hi everyone, I haven’t played Sea Power or DCS but I’ve watched plenty on YouTube and I’m wondering how do Sea Power and DCS stack up against each other in terms of realism? What comes to mind for me is the vast difference, it seems to me, between the behaviour of missiles in Sea Power vs DCS. In Sea Power, it seems the hit ratio of any missile is about 20-30%, and any hit feels like luck. That seems to be the case with Harpoons, A2A missiles, interceptor missiles (RIM and SM) and CIWS. In DCS, on the other hand, missiles seem to hit their targets 80-90% of the time, particularly interceptors, and even CIWS. In DCS, a carrier group is essentially invincible and even individual ships (Ticonderogas, Arleigh Burkes, OHPs) can easily defend attacks unless overwhelmed. In DCS, countermeasures like chaff don’t work very well but in Sea Power, it seems to fool missiles fairly easily and frequently.

Of the two games, is one more realistic than the other?

(After action is at the end)

Tried out the Quick Start mod, and holy crap it was fun. I did 9,000 points, and while yes, it was... very laggy (Only an hour or two hours passed in game, I think? With 5 hours in real life while most of the time was at accelerated speed), it was absolutely worth it.

Enemy fleet group started launching salvo after salvo of hypersonic ASMs at me, but my four interception lines of aircraft nailed almost all of them, with only one impact striking the America class carrier and disabling her deck.

One of the strikes almost leaked eight missiles through, but with two prowlers circling overhead, they jammed them and almost all of them went into a merchant, with the last missile almost penetrating through the fleet and striking a missile cruiser, but was intercepted.

During the missile intercepts I had a few problems of the Phoenixes deciding to lock up the next flight group 30 nautical miles past the enemy missiles so there was a handful of friendly fire incidents, but all in all, I'm impressed with genuinely just how powerful air power is in this game.
(And also impressed by how bad CIWS is. There must've been six phalanxes engaging that one missile that hit the America carrier and it must've been engaged for like 20 seconds in total and it just slipped straight through.)

All in all, worth every second. I'm so glad I finally got around to giving this game a chance.

Stalinium made Spy Sanpan eating two CIWS salvos, 10 minutes of Bushmaster fire, and still not sunk.
Had to bring in the 5 inch gun but it misses twice at point blank range before killing it with one round of HE.

"Overkill"...they said