See also review by Nigel Slater
Computer Graphics Memory Disk Space Minimum 386SX VGA 2Mb Ext/Exp 10Mb Control: Mouse Sound: AdLib, Sound Blaster, PAS, MT-32, Sound Canvas Reviewed version on: 486DX2, SVGA, 8 Mb RAM, No sound card.
World War II naval battles are a common theme in computer games these days. CARRIERS AT WAR represents an update of Strategic Studies Group's earlier release of CARRIER AT WAR (CAW). CAW II is a stand-alone game in that it may be played without owning either the original game, or the CONSTRUCTION KIT released between editions. However, without these, CAW II will not be as enjoyable. More on this later.
CAW II puts the player on the flag bridge of one or more naval task forces in World War II Southeast Asia. Control of Japanese or Allied (or both) sides is possible. Carriers aren't the only ships in the game, but they are the most important.
There is no campaign game in CAW II. The game is played in isolated scenarios, and even those have a strict time limit. CAW II takes aim at being a tactical simulation of carrier combat in the short decade that saw the flattop blossom as the new definition of naval power. It leaves grand strategy to others, putting the player in charge of the few, crucial days that made or broke strategies.
For each scenario, victory points are awarded for achieving mission objectives, as well as for sinking or damaging enemy ships. Each scenario has its own Victory point scale, so it is possible to draw or even win with a negative total. Since most of the scenarios are historically accurate, and therefore lopsided, this helps play balance. Ownership of the CAW Construction Kit allows players to create their own scenarios. Virtually every warship afloat in the WW2 Pacific is available for these roll-you-own scenarios, so the possibilities are enormous. The Construction Kit is a separate product though.
Once on the bridge, players make decision about task force course and speed, search directions, surface combat dispositions, and air operations. The fog of war is present in CAW II, and players must make decisions based on inaccurate or incomplete information, just as the real admirals did half a century ago.
Air operations are the defining aspect of carrier warfare. Because of the tremendous offensive capability of a single air, and the time-consuming cycle of air operations, decision about when to launch a strike are crucial. With only partial information about the enemy, it is as difficult decision. Carrier warfare is very much an issue decided by timing. It is also a long-distance affair. Rarely are the opposing forces in visual contact, and finding the enemy before he finds you is the first order of business. Aircraft are good at searching large tracks of ocean, but the more planes your carrier force sends on patrol, the fewer you have left to strike at whatever the patrols find. CAW II does a good job of modeling all this, but falls short of engaging the player in it.
There are eight scenarios in the package. Most of them are relatively minor engagements from WW II. The really important carrier battles were covered in the initial release of CAW, and SSG chose not to rehash them in the new product. This means that CAW II completely ignores the battles of Pearl Harbor, Coral Sea, and even Midway. These are probably the defining moments of Carrier warfare, yet they are absent from the game. For owners of the original, this isn't a big deal, as the scenarios from the first edition are upwardly compatible. Anyone else should consider buying the original game. SSG will sell it by mail or phone. They want full retail price though, so be prepared to spend another $49 if you want to experience carrier battles that were important enough to make it to Hollywood and the Big Screen.
The scenarios that CAW II does offer can be divided into two groups, defined by which side has overwhelming superiority. Early war scenarios pit vastly superior Japanese forces against a motley collection of American, British, Dutch, and Australian (ABDA, in the war) ships and planes. Frequently, the Allied side doesn't even have carriers, just land-based planes and some Heavy Cruisers. Scenarios from later in the war have massive flotillas of American flattops going through the motions, mopping up Japanese possessions. As with the first group, the underdog in these often has no carriers, though Kamikazes do make a fiery appearance.
One scenario from CAW II doesn't fit into either of the two groups mentioned earlier, Plan Orange. War Plan Orange was the US Navy's contingency plan for a war with Japan during most of the 1930's. This scenario assumes the US and Japan went to war in 1936. This is a very different scenario from the others in two important ways. First, it is probably the most evenly matched of the eight included with the game. Second, it represents a period when naval aviation was not yet fully developed. The planes are radically less effective than the ones that would fly only five years later. Most were still biplanes in fact. Ranges and payloads were much smaller, and carrier warfare was still mostly a sideshow to the big surface battles. The outcome of Plan Orange will be decided by the battleships, but it gives the player an interesting taste of early carrier operations.
CAW II uses extensive graphics, and to good effect. Side selection is made by clicking on the appropriate national flag. Air operations take place against a screen backdrop of either a carrier - of the appropriate nationality - or a jungle island airstrip. Every ship in the game has a profile view, and the profiles are animated to show damage. If the ship is sunk, the profile becomes a patch of ocean with bits of wreckage floating about.
Overall, the user interface is well done. The main view is dominated by a map of the region the scenario takes place in. Friendly Task Groups appear as circles on the map. Enemy ship sightings are yellow crosses. Plane formations are represented by small aircraft symbols. A control and information panel occupies the far right side of the screen, and it changes to reflect the activity the player is currently engaged in. For instance, selecting the Sightings menu will display information about the current enemy sighting in the control panel, as well as a list of other sightings to choose from. A very nice feature here is a leader line that points to the location of the selected sighting on the map.
The map itself is well done and quite beautiful. Clouds and bad weather, important because of the effect they have on air operations, are shown on the map, giving it almost the appearance of a color satellite weather photo. The cloud details can be turned off if the weather gets so bad it's obscuring the ocean below. Unfortunately, there is no zoom capability, making it difficult to pick out certain details, especially near coastlines.
Moving task groups is very easy. Any individual group may be sent to a particular map location by a click of the mouse. Speed is set with a simple spin control. Task groups can also be given movement orders, to escort a friendly task group for instance, or to close with a spotted enemy force.
Conducting air searches is one of the most important things to do in carrier warfare. Unfortunately, CAW II models it in a very simplistic manner. The player decides how many of the eight cardinal compass points a task group or land base will search. That's it. There is no choice between single-phase or two-phase searches (a decision that was crucial at Midway), no choice of search radius, frequency, or timing. Just "have somebody go look that-away." Accordingly, the interface is very easy to use, but air searches as a game element are almost non-existent.
Aside from search operations, the player has basically two things to do with his carrier planes, put them on Combat Air Patrol (CAP), or send them on a strike mission against the enemy. Setting up CAP is very easy to handle. Just assign the number of fighters from each carrier, and the computer will keep the fleet covered during daylight hours. Strike are almost as easy to form. Aircraft are assigned to strike entire squadrons at a time. Fighters can be sent along as escorts, and the strike can be "cohesive" or not. A cohesive strike will attempt to have all planes hit the target at roughly the same time, making life difficult for the defenders. These strikes take longer to form up though, as planes must circle and wait while the rest of the strike launches off the carrier deck.
A real carrier can't launch, land, or refuel all of its planes at once, and neither can the ones in CAW II. The air operations cycle plays an important role in CAW II. The planes go through the various stages of the cycle, landing, refueling, launching, etc. Where planes are can be crucial when an enemy strike hits. One bomb dropped onto a deck of fully armed and fueled planes can be disastrous.
Resolution of air strikes is abstracted. A picture of the ship under attack is shown, along with a message such as "Vals dive-bomb CA Houston." There is no comprehensive after-action report detailing how many hits were achieved, or how many planes were lost. This makes that big strike hitting the enemy carriers a little anticlimactic.
There are no turns in CAW II. Game flow is regulated by "breaks." Players who happen to be programmers will be immediately comfortable with the concept. Time can be set to run for a period of time, from minutes to hours. Certain events, such as enemy sightings, can be designated as breaks and, when one occurs, the game will halt and allow the player to issue new orders. In general, game flow is very smooth, letting long hours when nothing interesting is happening pass quickly. Playing time is concentrated on the brief periods of real action.
Surface combat is highly abstracted. It is nowhere near GREAT NAVAL BATTLES, or TASK FORCE 1942. However, the emphasis of this game is on carrier combat, so surface combat is not supposed to be the a highlight.
For a game titled "Carriers at War," there is an awful lot of surface combat, and it has an good deal of impact on the outcome. This is mostly a function of the scenarios included. Many of these give one side nothing but surface units, and a few land-based search planes. While this may well be historically accurate, it makes the game less about carrier battles than about Light Cruisers chasing transports. This puts a great deal of emphasis on the surface combat engine, which wasn't meant to be the focus of the game. Possession of either the original CAW, or the Construction Kit, will help to alleviate this problem. The Construction Kit in particular, opens up may possibilities for more interesting scenarios, and increases replayability.
Aside from the scenario selection, the rest of CAW II is about carriers. It does a good job of modeling the realities of carrier warfare. However, too many of the important elements are removed from the stream of play, or simplified to such a degree that they blend into the background. The result is a game that is relatively easy to play, but not terrible engaging. There just isn't that much to do. As an avid buff of World War II carrier battles, I had hoped for more.
This review is Copyright (C) 1994 by John M. Hawkins for Game Bytes Magazine. All rights reserved.