No internet access required at all. It does require at least 256mb ram at the very least.

The man had quite a life. Eight children ?!

Indeed. Crazy life. Started as an orphan, grew up in Port Adelaide hanging around ships and sailors. I have a copy of his navy record. Ran away from the orphanage and joined the navy at age 11 (legal age was 15). Got his first 'good conduct' award in 1913. Shipped as'Boy, 2nd class' on the first Australian ship to fire a shot in anger, HMAS Encounter, 1914. By end of the war he was an Ordinary Seaman on HMAS Australia. Left the navy and went into reserves in 1926 with rating of 'Leading Torpedo Officer (electrician)' and joined the railways as an electrician. He was an old man of 37 when WWII broke out and he was called up from reserves again. He was married with four kids by then. His wife got sick and died during the war so when he came back as a Chief Petty Officer he was a widower with four kids and a payout of £212 'war gratuity'.

My grandmother lost her husband in a train accident during the war, and she had four kids. They met not long after the war ended, got married and it was suddenly a family of eight kids. They were married forty years.

Learned to drink whisky in Glasgow in 1940 and never lost the taste. Was promoted to Petty Officer in 1941 and a week later was docked a week's pay for misconduct. Smoked tobacco from a pouch til the day he died. Shaved with a cut-throat he used to sharpen on a leather strap which he always threated to use on us grandkids but never did. Went to church every Sunday, loved gambling and I never once heard him swear.

She died aged 92. A year later we had the conversation where he said he was tired now and just wanted to be with his wife Anne again. He stopped eating and not much later died in his sleep.

If you want a role model for living life, it's hard to find a better one...

H



Crew of destroyer HMAS Nizam, 1941. Jack is the old guy, 3rd row, fifth from right.

Would be great to have Windows version, in the meantime downloaded and installed on Windows 10 using Bluestacks.
Couldn't figure how to aim guns, but game seems to run fine:)

Not a huge fan of the gunnery. I've been in the New Jersey's Fire Control Center and there wasn't anywhere near the guess work that this game has on gunnery.

Nice write-up, Heinkill. As we say, they don't make 'em like they used too.

Nice write-up indeed.
I tried the game out after Heinkill mentioned it in a IL-2 BOS post.
I started with Pacific Fleet "lite" and bought the full version, then Atlantic Fleet.

Re: the gunnery; I can't have an opinion on the realism of the gunnery, but from a gameplay perspective the gunnery in AF is much preferable to the gunnery in PF. In PF, once you outfit with a radar you can pretty much nail anything from any distance. When you strike a hit in AF, taking into account the wind and your previous shots, you get a rewarding feeling of satisfaction when shells connect.

The single feature I've found myself enjoying the most, apart from the Battle of the Atlantic campaign, is the possibility of "wolf pack" tactics with the submarines. It is just as described by Heinkill and is great fun. I've played subsims before which are obviously much more detailed, but this is the first one (to my knowledge) where the player can have 3-5 subs and "herd" a convoy to it's death. I had a very satisfying round last night in which I was able to trap a BB by scaring it towards my other subs which were way out of position.

Continuing the contrast between PF and AF, I find the use of aircraft to be much too easy in PF and too difficult in AF. In PF it boils down to a simple question of timing. In AF, you have to take into account the wind (good) but it is very difficult (at least for me) to determine when the aircraft is properly in position in relation to the target to begin a dive or drop bombload. The only weapon I have used with any modicum of success has been the airdropped torpedo.

I think that the decision to switch to multiple steps (preparation, launch, strike and recovery) for the carriers, was a good one as the carriers were arguably to powerful in PF given that every turn gave a strike opportunity.

Interesting. Not sure when you were on NJ but i guess it was continually refitted from the 40s to the 80s. The ships in this game are pre and early WWII.

H

Last year the end of this month. The main battery FC system is the same as was originally installed.

Everyone should check out the turret tour. It used to be an interesting place to visit, but now that they cut open the lower turret to let people go through the guns, it is a must see. They'll even take you to The Broadway and allow you to see the engines.

The problem if you automate the gunnery too much is that, because we can't have 100% hit rate, it takes on the character of dice rolls where it comes down more to chance than skill whether or not you land a hit. We had a fully automated system in one of the early builds but it just wasn't fun. I personally feel the current gunnery system is a decent compromise between realism and fun given the turnbased nature of the game. And when you play it, your hit rate is still going to be magnitudes better than it was in WW2.

Speak for yourself big fella. I find I'm pretty historical in my (in)accuracy!

I found a record from a prewar US Force Battle Practice gunnery trial of USS Colorado vs Maryland vs West Virginia which showed a hit rate of 3.7% for West Virginia to 5.4% for Maryland (out of 7 salvos/56 shots) and an average error of 93 yards for West Virginia to 680 yards for Colorado.

Those numbers are right in my ballpark!

H

Thanks for the wrteup, HeinKill. In 10+ years of SimHQ participation, this is the first product of any kind that I have purchased purely from a review. Glad I did. Having a great time.

For ten bucks its hard to go wrong isn't it?

Absolutely. You were spot on about the air element of the game. I think it would be much more fun simply to select a target, assign it to 1-4 planes and let them attack (or get shot down) self-flown. The launch/attack/recover sequence is something of an immersion-killer. A small quip in an otherwise nice experience thus far.

+1

Having lots of fun with this game on my iPad. Definitely the best tablet game out there, closely followed by F-Sim Space Shuttle and Astronaut Spacewalk.

Nice review and awesome write up about your Pop Heinkill. Evil Flowers quote below seemed to fit in well when i was reading down the topic








Looking forward to a pc version, i just cannot get into gaming on small screens, my minimum deal now is my bargain bin 42 inch flat screen..i couldn't even go back to a 24