Sign in to follow this  
Rob Zacny

Three Moves Ahead 527: Ultimate Admiral: Age of Sail

Recommended Posts

Three Moves Ahead 527:

Three Moves Ahead 527


Ultimate Admiral: Age of Sail
Michael Hermes makes a port of call as Rob, Nick Capozzoli, and Matt Flanigan take to the high seas in Ultimate Admiral: Age of Sail. Rob hates the land combat, Matt hates the way the ships behave like sports cars, Capo greets both with measured approval, and Michael thinks we're all being a bunch of picky jerks looking a gift-horse in the mouth.

Ultimate Admiral: Age of Sail

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Michael Hermes is back! Huzzah!

 

What I got away from this episode is that someone finally managed to make Age of Sail combat interesting while at the same time falling for the common design flaws of career campaigns.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

On paper this is very close to my ideal game. It sounds like it would benefit more from a free-form campaign than set missions. Something very much like "The Mauritius Command" in fact. Manage your limited number of ships and (squabbling) captains, bring troops from over here, take this island, put some guns on this island so you can control shipping here... That sounds more compelling to me than "look, Trafalgar!", but then I've always been more interested in the idea of detailed command of a single (or a few) ships than trying to have an RTS of these big fleet engagements where in reality every captain was more or less doing their own thing and making their own decisions..

 

As you guys say though, there is definitely not a huge amount of choice in this arena though!

 

I was rather confused by referring to the O'Brian series as a towering achievement of American literature? O'Brian (or Russ as his original name was) was British, lived in Wales most of his life... got a CBE and everything? In fact, according to wikipedia he only visited the US three times in his entire life.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Just being pedantic, but the copper bottoms are an anti-fouling measure, and it's more precisely, copper sheathing, so it could absolutely be retrofitted to a ship. I imagine it would require drydocking for obvious reasons, of course.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
Sign in to follow this