New hardcore military games are very rare these days. Sub Command is the hardest of hardcore and even surpasses that previous bastion of realism - Janes F/A-18.

Sub Command is a quantum leap over Sonalysts previous title Janes 688(i) Hunter/Killer. The game features a full sonar suite with Target Motion Analysis, propeller revolution analysis, medium and high frequency sonar, under-ice operations, spec ops, land attack, and simulation of three different submarines - the Akula, Seawolf, and 688(i).

Enough advertising blurb - the game is hard - damned hard. Trying to get a firm TMA on a target is like trying to squeeze blood out of a stone. Trying to get a Mk48 ADCAP torpedo to actually hit something has a similar chance to winning a Vegas slot machine. In fact I have had more luck blowing myself up with my own Mk48's. Target aspect, sound propogation, surface noise, and bottom reflections are simulated in this game.

Sound is superb. Many times I was straining forward in my chair trying to listen for an elusive contact. It is important to note that you will only hear certain sound effects if you are sitting at the appropriate sonar station. There is a constant low level hum of the reactor plant.

Graphics are beautiful. The wave patterns are actually reflected on the subs metallic surface. Sea states are also simulated and will actually damage periscopes and radar masts if you do not surface high enough. Rays of sun even shine through the surface of the water at shallow depths. Stormy weather may also be present.

Missions are interesting and varied. I tried the mission editor to learn TMA and it is very easy to use. You can set "Show Truth" to show the actual locations of targets and you can also turn on AI's to handle TMA and weapons for you in the options.

On my Celeron 850 and TNT2U the game is smooth with no slowdowns. It is a very PC friendly game.

Some players are reporting bugs with the sonar suite but it is very hard to tell whether it is a bug or a realism feature. Sonalysts is currently working on a patch which should be out in the next couple of weeks.

Overall the sim has a high level of polish. The 200 page manual only exists as a PDF on the game CD so be prepared to fire up the old laser printer and a binder.

Now can someone tell me how to kill something reliably with a Mk48 ADCAP torpedo ?!

Here is a link to an interesting interview with the Sonalysts team :
http://www.navalwarfare.net/content/sc_interview.html

The killer for 688i was the canned mission structure. The second time you played a scenario, you knew what you were going to encounter, and pretty much where. Also, the campaign was arcade-like: "win" the mission, or keep replaying it until you do.

I've been told by the Sub Command folks things would be much better, but I haven't see the game yet. How's the campaign and missions?

Sonalysts have updated the mission design with random probability factors. For example you can assign a probability box in the target area. Plus
you can create Dynamic Groups in the mission editor that will create a different mix of units each time you play that mission. It is very flexible and very detailed.

Platforms that you destroy early in the campaign won't reappear later on. This really helps and it certainly doesn't have the canned mission feel of Janes 688(i).

Jeff,

As Sean mentioned, the dynamic groups add a lot of variability. It's not quite a dynamic campaign, but it's the next best thing.

With the scenario editor guaranteeing player-made scenarios, Sub Command should have legs. Fins. Whatever. I.e., you won't get bored anytime soon [insert nautical metaphor here].

-Tom

To hit anything with torps, you need a solid TMA. Sloppy TMA = wandering torps. That's why I let the computer take care of my TMA.

Thanks Roger. Wouldn't you think the torpedo should be able to acquire a target using its own search capability ? I tested this by using "Show Truth" and steering the torp directly at a target - but it still didn't acquire.

Yah, but torpedoes have 2 things about them that lessens those odds...

1. You need to know the range to target, so you can tell the torp when to go active... or it'll just sail past the target.

2. Torps use a pretty narrow sonar, so they have to be pointed in a good estimate of the right direction.

3. Correctly classify the contact as being surface or sub-surface. A torp looking for a sub will not notice a ship right above it.

4. Activate the torp early rather than late. Steer it while it's active. You'll feel it when it locks on to a target. The pings get more frequent.

5. This game is really hard. Don't feel bad.

"5. This game is really hard. Don't feel bad."

That's actually one of the things I mind least about Sub Command.

What bothers me is that the manual doesn't really teach me what I'm supposed to do! And by manual, I don't mean that tiny fucking pamphlet they printed out for me. I mean the huge fucking 208 page goddamn Acrobat file on the CD that I printed out myself on my own fucking printer.

Your and Aszurom's tips are helpful, but the friggin' manual shouldn't assume I know what I'm supposed to do when I'm put in charge of a nuclear submarine.

-Tom

"Your and Aszurom's tips are helpful, but the friggin' manual shouldn't assume I know what I'm supposed to do when I'm put in charge of a nuclear submarine."

Heh. This was the problem with the F/A-18 manual, too. Lots of procedural information, but conceptually none of it tied together very well.

"Wouldn't you think the torpedo should be able to acquire a target using its own search capability ?"

Not really. The ADCAP is a great weapon but once the enemy detects it in the water they'll immediately evade and with enough pre-alertment a 30 knot target will outdistance a 60 knot torpedo. Thats why you don't want to enable your weapon too early- the enemy will pick up the active sonar and start evasion. Plus the ADCAP has a limited search cone so if you're outside of the cone it won't detect you. Good TMA is essential unless its an extremely short range encounter.

"Your and Aszurom's tips are helpful, but the friggin' manual shouldn't assume I know what I'm supposed to do when I'm put in charge of a nuclear submarine."

The accuracy of these games amazes me. I tried to play 688i when it first came out but it was too hard for me, even with the manual. After joining the navy and spending three months at sub school, I finally understood TMA well enough to do well in the game. I just couldn't believe some of the obscure stuff that they modeled. Just the fact that 688i had towed array bearing ambiguity fucking astounded me.

Tom (or anybody else...)

Wanna go for a swim? I wouldn't mind jumping on battlecom or roger-wilco and working through a mission or two... we could learn some stuff.

There's a patch out for Sub Command:
http://www.ea.com/downloads/subcommand/subcommand101e.exe

Tom Chick has reviewed Sub Command for Gamespot. He has given it a score of 8.4.

I am not sure how long this review has been out (maybe I missed it).

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Quote:

On the whole, Sub Command is one of those rare and delicious projects that's 90 percent simulation and 10 percent game. Although it may be the last of a dying breed--it's hard to imagine Sub Command being commercially successful--it is heaven-sent. It's a latter-day throwback to the sort of sims released by MicroProse in its heyday. Electronic Arts should be applauded for releasing a product with such limited appeal without dumbing it down. If there's a next time, here's to hoping there's a better manual to go with it.

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From Tom's review:

"The Akula and Seawolf are light-years apart in terms of technology. The Seawolf should be so quiet that it can cruise at relatively high speeds with little risk of detection, and the Akula should be a noisy clunker in comparison. But there's no indication of these differences in the game or manual."

The Akula II is an incredibly quiet submarine. In fact its supposedly quieter than a 688 and was a big imepetus for the development of the Seawolf. While the Seawolf still has the advantage, its not nearly as large as Tom indicates.

Kevin,

Sub Command models the Akula I and II. The biggest difference in playable subs is b/w the Seawolf and Akula I.

But the point I was making still stands. Other than different loadouts and control panels, there's no indication in the game of how the subs differ from each other. IMO, that should be a part of the game. Sub Command's biggest problem is that it leaves a lot of stuff like this unexplained.

-Tom

Oh, I didn't realize that the game modeled the Akula I also. I'm still playing through the 688i campaign and havent tried the Seawolf or Akula yet.

There's no doubt that a lot of stuff is lacking in the documentation. Which goes a long way toward showing how complex the game can be when a 200+ page manual isn't close to sufficient.

Had an interesting multiplayer game the other night. By the way, the patch is NICE... fixed quite a few of my gripes, and the main one was the Ownship hum in the sonar screen - gone.

I was in an Akula I, and my buddy (who was on a sub during his navy time) was giving me a tough time hunting him in his Seawolf. So, I found a convenient merchant ship and matched speed and course with it about 2000 yards away, so I could still clearly hear out my right side. I rode him in, and after quite a while (this game ran like 3 hours) finally caught the faint buzzing of the Seawolf. He never heard me, because of the interference of the big boat above me.

Well, I managed to drop in behind him and tried for another 30 minutes to get a good TMA on him, but wasn't having much luck. Suddenly my sonar sees a knuckle in the water, he'd pulled a 180 to check his tail, and managed somehow to pick me up this time. I think he might have heard me flooding tubes, since I did that a few minutes before this went down. Anyway, things got hot pretty fast and we both ended up toast.

This certainly isn't a game for non-patient people, but for the "military chess" players among us, it rocks.

That game sounds funny. Hehe. I'm trying to imagine sitting 3 hours at my computer listening for a faint sound to emanate from my speakers. I'm not knocking you, I've sat for ages in WW2OL watching about 4 dark pixels to see if they would move and thus let me know if it was an enemy or a bush. I'm not sure I would enjoy the sub game though, because I'm not into such a passive experience. It must have moments of excitement though when you realize you've detected someone.

Well done sub sims are a bit of the antithesis of what's popular in the computer games world these days. It's all about the hunt. Knowing that the enemy is out there, somewhere. Hunting quietly, seeing a blip, not knowing if it's a merchant ship, an oiler, a destroyer, or a CV task force. Sliding through the water, hoping to strike without the enemy ever knowing you were even there. Trying to remain the hunter, knowing a mistake can make you the hunted.

Sub sims are all about being surrounded by the unknown, hunting in the dark, the excitement of finding something, and the sweat drops that form as you try to determine what's out there. That's why a sub sim that has canned missions in which you know what you will be facing aren't sub sims, they're submarine based arcade games. In a sub sim, you never know if that juicy target might be escorted by a destroyer or an enemy sub, aquiring your signature even as you are acquiring your taget's. The actual weapons deployment is almost anti-climatic to the hunt.

Great stuff, if done well.

I agree Jeff. Sub Command allows randomly generated enemies. Makes the unknown all that more intense.

My wife is starting to wonder what all the strange noises coming from my room are. She can't understand why I spent four hours on one mission the other night listening to "static" through the speakers. hehe

"She can't understand why I spent four hours on one mission the other night listening to "static" through the speakers."

I love how Sub Command has a built in disincentive to being pinged by active sonar. The noise is so freakin' loud compared to the other noises in the game.

Except for the thundering *KLAAACK* of the 688(I)'s control panels and the earsplitting shrieks of the Seawolf's touch displays. What's up with that? Some of the world's stealthiest subs and the crewmembers are rendered deaf by the interface? :)

-Tom

But we all still love those switch noises don't we Tom !

I like the Akula's clunk. J

"Sub sims are all about being surrounded by the unknown, hunting in the dark, the excitement of finding something, and the sweat drops that form as you try to determine what's out there."

This is exactly what no submarine movie I've seen (even Das Boot) has properly conveyed- the unknown factor. Most movies will actually show the external shots of the sub so that the viewer can see the relation between the sub and its enemies. Movies never show a sub fire and realize they shot down an ambiguous bearing or enabled their weapon too soon. The key to submarine warfare is to find the perfect balance that lets you develop a solution good enough to fire on but not to take so long that the other guy fires first.

"This is exactly what no submarine movie I've seen (even Das Boot) has properly conveyed- the unknown factor."

I fully agree, but I don't think anyone's going to sink the kind of money it takes to make a movie into doing a realistic sub movie. The drama isn't very accessible to a casual spectator. Just think of how many people would actually want to watch you play Sub Command. :)

"Hey, why don't you play that Max Payne game instead?"

-Tom

How did a movie like "Enemy Below" do?

A movie "like" it? Do you have a particular movie in mind?

"Just think of how many people would actually want to watch you play Sub Command. :) "

Actually, a lot of my friends like to watch me play it. Of course, we all serve on submarines so we have a vested interest :)

LAUGH!

Check out Tom's Sub Command review and have a look at the caption for the first screen capture.

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Quote:

A Seawolf releases a burst of chaff to foil an incoming torpedo.

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Umm, I'll look into having someone fired for that.

Actually, I did write it. Since I didn't want to get too technical (it is Gamespot, y'know...), I didn't write 'active acoustic countermeasure'. I confess to thinking 'chaff' was a generic term for a decoy, but I just disabused myself of this notion with a handy dictionary.

At any rate, I still claim to be a hard-core simmer and I'm about to prove it by flying one of those things with wings that drops that stuff out from underneath it. I might drop some chaff while I'm at it.

-Tom, punching Elvis

Personally I would have just lied and blamed it on my editor. Stupid editor. (huh? ed.)

-Tim

Off topic, but are there any games that have that C-130 or whatever it is that's destroying the Taliban right now? That's not the same thing as that A-10 tank killer is it? Anyway, it sounds like it would be a fun plane to fly in a game and blow stuff up. I saw a picture of it that had about six guns all firing at once.

I saw that film clip too Mark. It actually made my skin crawl. Such an archaic and brutish looking beast amid such a modern fighting force. It'd be like seeing a bunch of infantry go by and one of them is carrying a really wicked looking spiked mace.

Shudder.

-Andrew

I think what's going on is that we've agreed to sit down with the Taliban leaders over a multiplay game of "Real War" and settle the dispute that way. If there was every anything that would give someone a distaste for waging war, this game is it.

I think USNF might have had that AC-130 gunship. I seem to recall it in some arcadey survey sim, but I could be wrong. At any rate, I can't imagine it would be much fun playing one of those. They only work where there's little or no air defense and they can't be challenged. The pilot flies in a big circle while someone else pours gunfire on a target.

It's not the same as an A-10, which is a beautiful slow tough plane with two fat General Electric turbofan engines stuck on its tail. It's one of the most visually striking contemporary airplanes. It's used as a tactical bomber in close ground support roles.

http://www.aerotechnews.com/phtoarc/webphot/a10/a10.html

And what's really cool is that it can drop chaff just like a 688(I) Los Angeles class submarine!

-Tom

"And what's really cool is that it can drop chaff just like a 688(I) Los Angeles class submarine!"

Hey Tom, how about a screen shot of the A-10 employing its sonar? ;)

Yeah you had the ability to pilot an AC-130H as far back as US Navy Fighters IIRC (or maybe it was ATF); kind of a blast, you circled around and laid waste to almost anything. Took out a whole French CVBG that way. Definitely not the same as flying an A-10 though.

--- Alan

I've heard third hand stories that during Vietnam, the only time you wanted to be in the light was when one of those things was giving you close support. Basically pinned down troops would get into a small circle, marked with lights of some kind, and the AC-130 would fire around the circle.

I have some good close up pics (which I can't find of course) of an AC-130 that I saw over at the Wright-Patterson AFB Museum in Dayton, OH. It was named Azrael (sp?) Angel of Death and had a whispy skeleton painted on the nose, with a firing gatling gun on its shoulder. I think the info plaque next to the plane said that Azrael was from Islam, sorta like a person's guide on the journey to the afterlife or something like that, but I could be misremembering it.

"I confess to thinking 'chaff' was a generic term for a decoy,"

Then you should have just said decoy then. Admit it, you enjoyed writing that pun. :)

Tom, it was Fighters Anthology that had the AC-130. Fighters Anthology is a collection of US Navy Fighters, Jane's ATF, , USNF '97,all of their expansions, plus a slew of other stuff. It has over 100 planes, and is the only sim I know of to include the AC-130. Pity, really, as I'd love to fly the thing in a more realistic, hard core sim.

I've got a book around here somewhere that is a history of the side-firing gunships. The first one was built using an old C-47 and eleven .30 Browning machine guns. The pilot would draw a cross on his side window with a grease pencil (and erase and adjust accordingly) as the aiming mechanism. The guy that thought of it was a pilot that noticed his wing pointed at the same spot on the ground if he made a pylon turn. Hmmm, what if I had a gun pointed sideways...