Demo: Task Force Admiral

I'm honestly surprised that Microprose is still in business. It just feels like a company that we would have lost at some point - props to them for sticking around, they have made some great games over the years.

Task Force Admiral on Steam

Task Force Admiral is a simulation game for World War II carrier battles, and it comes with a manual that they recommend you read. I suspect there's a correlation between simulation developers and outdated interfaces / manual reading. The people interested in developing a more realistic simulation are also the people who believe their audience is down for flipping through several pages of material in order to understand how to play a game, and they may be right, but I think that for developing something today it's not the right call,

In videogame days of yore, you absolutely needed to read the manual for some games. I did it then and I can do it now, but if you want to reach a wider audience, some form of tutorial is much appreciated, and the more complex the game, the more it needs one.

The Demo has one scenario so we're playing out the Battle of Coral Sea. We have command of the carriers Lexington and Yorktown escorted by a group of support ships and we're facing a group of Japanese carriers currently somewhere north of us. Our objective is to find and destroy their carriers while preserving ours. The game looks decent for a strategy game but the one scenario you can play in the demo starts at midnight so when I went to look at the 3-D world all I could see is a black screen.

Advancing time to dawn, the game looks pretty good as I launch a sortie to search for the Japanese.

 I also figured out how to put up CAP so that fighters will launch and protect my carriers, the interface for which is in an entirely different screen than the air search function. There's a lot of waiting in this game. With planes searching I can only change the timescale to about 20x normal - that's going to still take quite a bit of time while waiting to see what the results of a search are. I think games like this are just better suited to turn-based. 

CAP spots a bogey and I get a realistic-sounding radio report. They're moving to engage.

Looks like a Japanese floatplane! Get 'im!

The F4F approaches but the floatplane maneuvers rapidly - the F4F doesn't line up a shot while the scout's rear gunner pings a few bullets off the Wildcat's armor. The F4F turns around to try again when my search planes report a surface contact.

I don't even care what the contact actually is - I'm playing a demo and I want stuff to blow up. I launch every plane I have on my carriers at it. 

While I don't find these interfaces intuitive I do like the art style they're using for them. The Yorktown has CAP recovery / relaunch planned so unfortunately their strike has to launch after that, so the strike will actually end up being in two waves - the Lexington starts getting ready immediately, but the Yorktown's planes will only launch after the current CAP fights land and new ones take off, which will take a good chunk of time. One of the Wildcats finally lines up a shot and hits the enemy scout a couple times. It starts to dive - did they get it?

The enemy plane falls towards the ocean and disappears from view.

The Lexington readies its aircraft for the strike mission. I'm digging this.

The task force automatically turns into the wind when conducting air operations.

The first aircraft of Lexington's strike takes to the sky.

American planes at Coral Sea and Midway wouldn't wait to form a huge attack with all aircraft - and from what I can tell this game has done the research.

 This section of dive bombers doesn't wait for the rest of the planes to leave the deck and starts heading to their target.

The lead bomber is piloted by 'R. Dixon'. Plane detail looks good.

We get a radar contact of multiple aircraft approaching.

I hope Yorktown can get its planes in the air before they get here.

The two strike groups spot each other as they pass by.

My escorting fighters break off to attack!

After a head-on pass that appears to knock a Japanese dive bomber out of formation (another possible kill), their escorting Zeroes get into the mix and a dogfight ensues.

The Zero was no slouch, as this unfortunate F4F pilot is finding out.

That's a kill for the Japanese.

Looks like the pilot got out at least, but he's a long way from surface ships.

The air combat does not go well for me. All of the fighters that broke off to engage the Japanese have been shot down. On top of that, a second group of attack aircraft is approaching.

This does not look good...

Lexington has finished launching all her planes but Yorktown's got a full deck with the Japanese closing in. 'Planes fully fueled, armed, and on the deck' is not the state you want to be in when the enemy aircraft arrive, but here we are.

Flak bursts dot the sky.

U.S. Flak brings a couple down. Torpedoes are in the water.

The Yorktown tilts in a hard starboard turn to evade torpedoes.

This is a lot closer than I am comfortable with.

Zooming out gets me this cool view of the engagement. Visually this is a wonderful game to look at, especially for a simulation.

Here come the dive bombers!

Whelp, the Yorktown couldn't dodge everything.

The investigation's subhead is going to be 'The Admiral Fucked Up'.

The dive bombs miss but Yorktown takes two torpedoes while trying to evade those. Her steering is damaged and she's on fire, cruising in a circle. She can't launch her planes now.

I love a sophisticated damage model but I prefer that it be applied to enemy ships.

Lexington is (I think) hit by a bomb.

Both American CVs are burning.

Damage control gets the fires on both carriers out, but the second wave of aircraft is coming in.

Lexington is hardly moving when the attack comes in despite still having propulsion, and I'm not sure if there was something I should have done to make it take evasive maneuvers but I suspect it's because Yorktown is going in circles and the rest of the fleet is more or less holding position around her.

The second wave pounds Lexington, hard.

Finally, many miles away Lexington's strike aircraft have spotted their target!

The surface contact was indeed their carriers! Let's see if I can inflict some revenge.

The strike group appears to have formed up en route, there's a lot of US aircraft here.

Enemy Zeroes on CAP come up to engage us but there's not very many of them and most of the attack planes will get a shot at this.

A Dauntless dives toward its target!

American bombs straddle the carrier and one finds it mark!

The surviving American aircraft start the long journey home, leaving one Japanese CV burning badly, and I see another but I don't know if I hit it.

Meanwhile, the Lexington goes beneath the waves.

I end the scenario there, it's only a demo and right now the pain point in the game is the time compression - when the game is processing strike planes flying around sometimes the max time-rate it can process is x5 times real time. That ends up involving a lot of waiting and at this point I'd just retreat with the Yorktown when its steering gets repaired. I think we got beaten pretty badly but at least we managed to hit the Japanese back, when you end the scenario you get to learn the outcome.

I think this is a very fair assessment.

This outcome doesn't feel all that far off from how the battle of the Coral Sea actually went down.

If I were to play the demo again I'd hold off on launching CAP until I found the enemy fleet and had launched the strikes first, or at least hold off on launching CAP until I detected enemy planes approaching, you actually detect large aircraft groups via radar far enough out that I think you have time for CAP to get up in response to detection.

I enjoyed this a fair bit, more than I honestly expected to - it's a game that would require some investment in learning how to do things with an unintuitive interface, but I can't fault them on the simulation aspect which is fun to watch. Really, the main downside to it right now is not being able to fast-forward time very well when you're just waiting for the next thing to happen. If they can improve that and the interface it'll be be a solid game.