by Strike_Witch_Tomoko (or Tomoko in Steel Ocean)
After the ban on WoWS, friends dragged me to Steel Ocean. (I could make a new account….but no Yubari, Atlanta, Atago, or Tirpitz….)
Being biased to WoWS still (even with the ban i miss it), I was surprised how…actually fun Steel Ocean is.
Between the two:
Graphics: Steel Ocean wins. Once you put it on high or ultra, for some reason it defaults to low. The waves look great, and the ships are surprisingly detailed.
Balance: WoWS wins HANDS DOWN. Steel ocean has the problem of Battleships and subs being only viable classes, cruisers are crippled (unable to hurt BBs) and destroyers are sucidial. Carriers are balanced,
so unless WoWS has had a compelte remake, it will be more balanced,
mostly cause WoWS has HE and overpen to help smaller ships. In Steel Ocean everyone has similar hp, with armor being the difference. (I miss WoWS…..)
Maps: Draw. They are about the same, with the wierd arcade movement of Steel Ocean, it can get away with the more island filled maps, which are surprisingly fun for making games feel unique and not repeating themselves.
Realism: ironically….both. WoWS wins for realistic movement, but Steel Ocean has realistic armament. Of course its this armament that creates Steel Ocean’s balance problems. plus…you are fighting between 3-6 km usually.
Historical accuracy: WoWS.
Game Modes: WoWS (Steel Ocean’s game modes are good, but it only has like 2.)
Ease of Access (like understanding the UI): WoWS (Steel Ocean’s is kinda cluttered)
Ease of play: WoWS (just use HE, and you’ll do ok. not great. but ok. Steel Ocean you need to understand how to fight submarines, BBs are immune to basically all guns but BB guns, so you need to use torps. the tutorials teach you. but if you skip them (you can) then you are in a lot of trouble. Plus, while in WoWS you can’t aim your gun to decrease dispersion, in Steel Ocean you can….but tutorial tells you to stop the ship…they mean to stop the GUNS…so the problem is there, and you can’t snap shot like in WOWS, but you can fire guns that aren’t pointing in the direction you are facing….(opps). WoWS also has torpedo predictor paths…while in Steel Ocean…nope. and torps are always spotted…and usually short ranged. Cut the max range of guns in WoWS by 50%, thats what its like in Steel Ocean. but with faster acceleration and turning.)
Tutorial: Steel Ocean (explains a lot more in depth. Skippable though)
PvE: WoWS (Steel Ocean does not have it)
Dev Team: WoWS (as i don’t know much about the Steel Ocean dev team…though they have a staff tab in game…..hmm….is that a good idea? Really? I guess right now…but wait till you have 10k people on…)
I know WG is in this for the long run. They don’t plan to let WoWS become WoWP, they plan on a second WoT success.
But i don’t know the Steel Ocean Dev Team at all, is this a temporary cash in? Or is it something they plan to go big on…
So which is more fun?
Honestly, Steel Ocean.
Part of it is being more durable (no citadels, instead you have more modules and you can expect to die in 50 hits in a cruiser, or 30-40 in a destroyer, 90-100 in a BB)
And the close range fights.
The other part is the movement.(unrealistic, but fun to dodge point blank torps)
And if they fix the balance issue, it could be an incredible game.
My own idea for fixing the balance is to give crusiers +50% more range (so they have more range than DDs) and +50% more pen (less than BB main guns and more than BB secondaries, so they can pen BBs, as HE is a joke in this game)
Destroyers, let them take 20% less damage from high caliber (BB) guns, as BBs pen them for WAY to much damage, and decrease BB turn by 20%.
And with that, the game would be great for all classes: that simple xD
Oh wait…submarines…make their torpedo arm range 50%-100% longer than what it is now, so they can’t point blank shoot.
So all in all, WoWS is easier to play, and understand, but Steel Ocean has more potential and potential fun, if rather unbalanced atm.
WoWS wins, but you should keep an eye on Steel Ocean as if they fix the balance issues, it will be a game unparalleled.
after playing more. only part i would change is my recommendation for changes to submarines.
submarines are pretty balanced with their torpedo arming range(its LONG).
but depth charges are extremely hard to hit them with. so i\’d leave submarines alone right now. and increase the range of depth charge explosions(maybe doing half dmg instead of full dmg in this increased range. and full dmg in the range it has right now)
\”plus…you are fighting between 3-6 km usually.\”
Yeah, and that\’s not realistic at all. WW2 ships were already fighting at much larger distances. Yamato had special radars made for it, because it could shoot over the FUCKING HORIZON (where you obviously can\’t see).
\”but tutorial tells you to stop the ship…\”
Also what? Imagine WW2 ships stopped to increase accuracy… nope, nope, nope.
considering the acceleration and wierd movement of all ships in this game. it can actually be done.
and BBs do it often since they have the range.
as for the 3-6km fighting. unrealistic? maybe. but it defenitly makes the fights ALOT more fun.
as everyone moves up to engage eachother immediatly.
unlike WOWS where you spend 10 minutes w8ing for both teams to get a pair of balls and stop sniping.
in Steel Ocean, its fact paced, and fun.
my biggest gripe in WOWS(other than Yubari\’s citadel) is that it encourages people to snipe for 75% of the match. and when ONE DD gets on the capture point. people don\’t go to counter because they are so focused on sniping.
in Steel Ocean, if someone gets on capture point. its either cause everyone on the enemy team is dead except a submarine running away. or because thats where the main engagement is going on.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_cWyUmsOy4
and everyone has smoke(lasts 30 secounds). so you aren\’t screwed if you go somewhere and theres 4 enemies. you can instead drop smoke, run away. making scout DDs very popular.
and sorta essential…as long range torps aren\’t a thing (always visable).
(just to make it more clear – Yamato effective range of main cannons was 25km and the maximum range was 42 km, both of which hide many WW2 ships easily)
This is a really pointless thing to whine about. USN 5\”/38 has roughly half the effective range of Yamato guns in real life. In Steel Ocean 5\”/38 has roughly half the range of Yamato guns (varies since tier 2-9 US destroyers all have 5\”/38). In warships 5\”/38 range is significantly less than half.
It really doesn\’t matter what the displayed distances are. A kilometer in Steel Ocean is not the same as a kilometer in warships.
Unlike warships, in Steel Ocean your guns actually fire at high angle at maximum range – plunging fire exists, and is significant.
Unlike warships, Steel Ocean represents the US advantage in radars (it\’s not as big a factor as it would be in real life, but balance is a thing).
Tutorial saying to stop the ship is a mistranslation; stopping does not improve accuracy.
Both games are laughably unrealistic. The number of (in game) kilometers over which the Yamato\’s guns can fire is a minute and irrelevant detail, especially compared to the massive departures from reality elsewhere. It\’s like playing Mario Kart and complaining that the physics engine doesn\’t correctly model the way water drains off the roadway.
oh…and the spotting mechanics of Steel Ocean mean DDs and Cruisers are very good for \”spotting dmg\” which is actually VERY generous in credit income.
submarines are bad at it as they can\’t see underwater xD they rely on team mates to spot (they can detect within 2km on their own.)
and sonar. is interesting.
4km range for sonar(you can dodge torps with ease 1km range)
but only for 3 secound intervals. 6 times a minute (moddable)
I think I missed something, May I ask why were you banned from WoWs?
because WG thinks i did something that i didn\’t. their evidence made them think its me. but they didn\’t realize anyone can change their time zone on their computer with ease.
since i was only one with a mountain time zone on at the time (of the 16 people on) they decided it was me.(as its immpossible for any of the other 15 to change time zone on their computer. hell i do it daily to play some japanese and korean MMOs)
=/
i had to accept their decision cause if i make trouble about it on forums then they\’ll ban my WoT account as well (they literally said that in the email….seemed less like a ban and more like they put me up as a scapegoat to convince their boss they know what they doing. and they threatening me to avoid their boss noticing something isn\’t right with their very weak evidence)
Kinda lot of accusiations. Care to publish their mail here instead?
i would publish. but again my WoT account is at risk =/
Yep, got really angry because I know this truth.
so sorry you got banned for someone elses misdeed. can you share what this person did? ive been playing three years and never heard of a permaban so now im kinda very paranoid and curious. Dont need any names or anything w drama, just a rough desc of what it took to get banned so harshly please?
they leaked a ST post. what post it is idk as WG removed the picture before banning(or even informing) me.
so that logic is kinda flimsy
ty for reply
Wait how would that get you in trouble, you changed your computer time Big Deal
Misson and XP replacements happen at a specific time at every single time zone
problem is. someone else changed their computer time. took a screenshot of ST stuff covered by EULA.
and when WG checked to see who was on at the time listed on that time zone. the only one listed who lived in the time zone was me.
they don\’t realize anyone can change their time zone (i\’ll need to look up the email where they explain their logic. but apparently there were liek 16 people on at the time. only i live in mountain time. so it must be me. =/ )
Well WG are just being jerks.
I would be alright with Steel Ocean if wasn\’t a blatant rip off… I thought AW was a rip off but at least it changed the graphics, settings, and tanks…
Steel Ocean isn;t much of a rip off.
the models are more detailed, going so far as to include very detailed stuff like life boats and even those stairs on the sides of ships that people use to climb up onto (look at DDs for this)
so graphic wise, they didn\’t rip WoWS off so much as they improved it
gameplay wise. the games are complete opposites.
Steel Ocean\’s wierd movement system and map designs (not to mention spotting mechanics and range. plus AIMING) promotes aggressive fighting. heading to the center of the map to grab the objectives and stop the slow submarines from pushing on your BBs.
-giving everyone smoke gives people confidence that they can fall back if things go sour.
-games in Steel Ocean last on average 7-10 minutes before its clear one side has lost(aka all the enemy is dead.1 submarine vs 5 BBs can easily win. as the BBs have no depth charges, and will have to rely on dodging torps and w8ing for the submarine to come up for air. while 1 DD can murder 5 submarines)
-the lack of citadels. with the addition of modules and aim time(fire decreases accuracy) makes people more durable.
WoWS\’s slow movement, harsh spotting, lack of smoke, and focus on long range promotes sniping games. where people spend 10-15 minutes sniping.
-WoWS games last on average 8-13 minutes in PvE. or 15-20 in PvP. as sniping is promoted and citadels cause anyone who doesn\’t snipe to go pop very fast.
so its not a rip off. the games have enough different mechanics and different gameplay styles. plus different graphics
that its more like Warthunder Ground Forces vs WoT. same time zone, but vastly different.
except. unlike WT GF which screwed itself over, right now Steel Ocean is still in the green.
oh also. night battles ARE a very real thing. BBs might be OP, but in nightbattles. its the exact opposite. smaller and faster beat bigger in these battles
-Disclaimer: This comment is constructive criticism.-
Holy sh*t this article is shaky as f*ck (sorry it has to be said by some one *shrug*).
The grammar is so bad and it shows that there was no real time put into editing this post to fix even the most bare bones basic of spelling errors. Also it currently looks really unprofessional with undeserved abbreviations. Not giving at least two seconds to type out a full word mid-sentence is informal and moreover it is unprofessional and it looks shoddy and under achieving; it simply looks bad. The poor construction of this article makes myself feel like throwing out the whole argument and perspective (whether it be good or bad unfortunately) for I do not want to even consider the author\’s perspective for I see that in my eyes that not even two sh*ts were given to proofread nor a respectable effort was given on the author\’s part fix even the most basic of grammatical errors.
In my opinion this article has a good concept and and is a good idea but damn was it a chore to read because from my perspective it was so crude and broken from a technical standpoint. If you want The Armored Patrol to be respected and admired then consider your reader\’s critical opinion before posting an article with a plague of grammatical errors. To make my point very clear, ask this question to yourself: why should your readers critically consider this author\’s opinion if the author cannot even provide the bare basics of grammatical structure when writing for a \’professional blog\’?
Now if that sounds sharp and harsh that is because it is. If this blog wants to be a successor to \’For the Record\’ then start using a grammar filter and looking the professional part. If this blog is to look \’top notch\’ and become professionally panned than start posting articles that can at least spell their words right and construct sentences better than a child in elementary school. This blog will stay at the \’amateur\’ and \’mediocre\’ level of credibility if there is a habit formed and continued based upon bad grammar and poor to non-existent editing choices.
I love The Armored Patrol but I expect a better effort on the editor\’s part and I do believe that a better effort can be made on the editor\’s part for the sake of this blog\’s current and future prosperity. I give a sh*t about this blog earning critical appraise and the respect of the silent majority. You should not allow your blog to be so unprofessional for you are competing against at least Rita\’s blog and potentially another up-and-coming blog: Off the Mark. You need to set higher standards than this article\’s grammar to win the hearts and the minds of the people who come here for a critical opinion that can be respected and not ridiculed.
This quality of article will not lead this blog to be the \’de facto\’ English news blog for the online vehicular battle community that it CAN become. Instead this quality article gives blogs like Rita\’s Status Report (and potentially Armored Talk and or even Off the Mark) leverage in the eyes of community at large to critically succeed both Off the Record AND The Armored Patrol.
yeah yeah i suck at grammar(freely admit that, as i don\’t care about grammar)
i literally wrote it while alt tabbing between the games i was playing and notepad
it was just a bunch of bullet points.
as for \”why should your readers critically consider this author’s opinion if the author cannot even provide the bare basics of grammatical structure when writing for a ‘professional blog’?\”
if they can\’t accept an opinion without perfect grammar, then the internet is probably the wrong place for you. you should probably stick to college level magazines, and old books.
after all, the internet is the birthplace of such things as instant messaging, \”leet speak\” and meme\’s.
i could have written this in L33T speak or flooded with pictures of meme\’s. and people would still understand it. because thats what living on the internet does.
http://img.memecdn.com/grammar_o_188044.jpg
in all my time in WoT, WoWS, and heck, all games i\’ve played(and theres a LONG list) and been active on forums and such. No one has ever had trouble agreeing or disagreeing with my opinion based on bad grammar.
usually they agree or disagree because they are of a same or opposite mind. not because they can\’t stand a missing capital letter.
actually, the internet is the place that named people who can\’t stand improper grammar.(grammar nazi)
and not even rita\’s blog has \”perfect grammar\” specially as blogs like these rely on translation from other languages. which leads to TON of grammar issues.
and input from multiple people, who all have their own style of writing.
the most a person can do is try to match the formats the best they can so it looks uniform when u scroll up and down a blog. which is what rita and seb do. grammar is 2ndary.
and yes. seb already lectured me about using commas and complete sentences…… xD
i\’ll try, but i have my style of writing (aka bullet points, format, and then go back through it adding additional comments in () several times until i think i\’ve added enough)
I am sorry if I was a bit harsh with you my friend. To honest I posted that critical comment right after a big fight over this blog \’in a far away land\’ against \’some very talented and tough opponents to argue with\’. The er \’battle\’ was about whether the Armored Patrol was better or worse than Rita\’s Status Report (guess who came to the defense of this blog >.>). There was one point that really trumped one of my my arguments for this blog\’s over all quality and that was Article Quality is better than Article Quantity. That argument really got me thinking and that \’after the dust settled\’ I do agree that yes, the Armored Patrol is not well edited and for \’some talented people\’ that is a HUGE dropping point and they go over to Rita\’s Status Report Blog and may or may not write articles for her. Again I am sorry that I was so harsh, in truth I am really worried about a potential brain-drain with this blog for I saw it happen in front of my eyes and I do not want to to happen again for The Armored Patrol has great potential.
Show me where the argument happened. Link, NOW.
As much as I would like to shred some people\’s face on the internet I would loose a fair amount of er \’stealth\’ for you see I use er.. I will send you a deviantART message with more detail.
Wow, if that was \”constructive criticism\” I cringe at the thought of hearing what you say if you really let it fly.
Your critique actually sounded like thinly disguised hatred toward the author… as if you knew them, and really wanted to slam something about what was written and could find no other fault.
Just speculation on my part.
But, if you really need to throw out the whole article based upon sentence structure and grammar, you really need to go back being an English professor, and not delve in to the gaming world, where such things are not as important as the subject matter. It\’s pretty shallow to judge the entire article on just it\’s grammatical structure.
As to the subject, I will probably not ever try Steel Ocean, since I am heavily involved in WOWS, but I did find the article intriguing, and had no problem understanding the authors meaning.
And to Strike_Witch_Tomoko, keep the articles coming. Your absence from the WOWS forum is strongly felt.
tell littlewhitemouse i say hi =)
and fog cruiser yubari i\’ve still got my fingers crossed for yubari buff ^^
(someday i\’ll return to WOWS on an alt. provided they don\’t unban this account)
Do not worry, articles from her will come 🙂
First off I am harshly critical but I do wish that more articles be made by Tomoko. Although I am saying that there needs to be a higher quality of grammar if you want The Armoured Patrol to be more respected by the community at large. What people say here in the comments is not a 100% accurate source of feedback for most people will not comment. Moreover when I am cruising around the online community I have come to see a great deal of what some people come to think of this blog, I have seen some pretty nasty things said about this blog (true or not is irrelevant). I see a growth of disrespect to the quality of this blog growing in pockets around the tank / warship community at large and whether or not the vocal minority\’s claims are true or not is not important for you will always displease people but what matters is who comes to defend the Armored Patrol behind your back. I keep seeing a lack of people coming to defend this blog when issues of quality and professionalism are the question. I keep seeing people follow a \’critic\’s link\’ to a \’shoddy article\’ to then have potential new readers say \”yeah, I see what you mean by a shoddy blog *click*\”. That is so messed up my friend and I do not want that to happen anymore for this blog can be good; it has potential for it has vision and passion behind it. I am saying that there is work to be done here to improve this blog to become more successful in the eyes of the whole community. Also do not just think that my harsh critical opinion is just regulated to myself. Please think of who else views this blog, I will continue to support this blog although there are people who will not. There are a lot of very smart and talented people from all around that enjoy what The Armored Patrol covers. Moreover there are people on the \’edge of the fence\’ who could do a lot for this blog (e.g. high quality articles come from talented people). Although what really hurts is when (like I said earlier) I see talented people click a link to a shoddy article from this blog and their heart is lost and they end up going over to Rita\’s blog. Bam! I said it, you are loosing readers based on bad editing choices and Rita\’s Blog is getting some really smart people to help her and not you; and that is crap in my opinion. I have come to know what \’some very talented people\’ (no names) have come to view this blog and it is not good. Although 90% of \’their claims\’ are based not upon the choice of the content nor the direct of The Armored Patrol but rather the quality and the lack of due diligence that comes with / from rigorous editing and relentless polish. You can win the hearts and the minds of very talented people whom will in turn write high quality articles for The Armor Patrol. All that you have to do is just target these highly intelligent people with articles that they can come to respect and to not cringe over. The path that leads to winning over the brains of the community starts by editing and proofreading every article before it gets posted to ensure that \’extra something special\’ is found in this blog and people say \’Ah yeah the Armored Patrol, my favourite blog\’.
Speaking of Grammar, have you ever heard of a paragraph? And I keep finding poorly worded sentences in some of your replies. And people (on the internet) mostly don\’t care the least about mistakes in grammar when the points of the blog are plain to understand.
I am just really worried about this blog loosing the communities\’ brain power for I have been defending this blog behind everyone\’s back and I keep feeling that deep when I read a very well constructed rebuttal from an irrefutably talent person that (for example) quality of articles is > quantity of articles.. I just feel that down yeah, they do have a solid point that some articles suck and that the \’other blog\’ is where it is at. I am just really worried my friend about a potential \’brain-drain\’ if there is a continued lack of editing.
\”the models are more detailed, going so far as to include very detailed stuff like life boats and even those stairs on the sides of ships that people use to climb up onto (look at DDs for this)
so graphic wise, they didn’t rip WoWS off so much as they improved it\”
Sorry but is this guy for real??? 😀
I had a good laugh on this one…maybe you should get a better graphics card and/or a monitor, then set the WoWS details to ultra then let\’s talk about this again….Steel Ocean models are miles away from what WoWS offers….not miles, light years mate – and yes I was involved in making quite some of the models, being a warship nut for 20 years.
I can not comment on the rest like gameplay etc. as I did not play SO, but saying that SO models are more detailed and improved compared to WoWS ones makes all your other comparison questionable for me (at least taking them with a grain of salt)…
Regards,
Nice advertisement.Seriously you couldn\’t have made it more obvious. It\’s not just the \”article\” but all of the author\’s comments as well. Sorry,it\’s just to obvious to ignore. I guess i\’ll have to search for another blog,again.
Hey, that is not my opinion and I was paid by noone. Think what you want. Tomoko wrote several articles in the past. And I do not shamelessly promote AW. I posted about SO just once. Or twice.
And this:
WoWS wins, but you should keep an eye on Steel Ocean as if they fix the balance issues, it will be a game unparalleled.
SO is a confusing mess to me (I\’ve no idea where to put each commander) as the Port interface is lacking somewhat and there aren\’t very clear explanations of many things in the game. Their wiki is incredibly \”blank\” as well. But I love this game. I\’ve 30 hours in my first 3 days (more like 2.5). The population is so small now (many F2P games on Steam seem to suffer this problem) and it\’s only going to get worse. I hate WG (see next paragraph) but I\’m tempted to play WOWS because I might have a better shot of finding people to play with in the near future.
WG somehow got a hold of my Xbox live account and kept sending me frequent emails about my playing WOT via Xbox Live. I NEVER linked my WG account with Xbox Live to begin with and I hadn\’t played WOT in a long time let alone via Xbox Live, so I ended up going back and forth with them via support tickets about completely removing my account and they refused–at first. I finally got REALLY nasty with them and cussed them out enough that they finally agreed to remove my account. I think getting banned would have been easier!
Actually in WW2 steel ocean gets it right with trops arming range just pointing that out
world war 2 naval battles did not have Balance, that is what hurts wows, also lack of ammo. except for Japanese who had 1 reload ships only carried what was in tubes. and destroyers really couldn\’t do much to BB except with torpedoes. both games are grossly unrealistic, obviously the Belorussian and Chinese devs have no time at sea. I have 7 years at sea and ships just don\’t move like that. Both have the problem of a lack of understanding of headway. to stabilize a ship and to be able to steer you have to be moving, when a ship is stationary(which never truly happens) it rolls, usually very badly, so you can\’t hit anything with guns. oh did I mention I\’m a retired Gunnersmate. sorry out of time, just a few thoughts.
I am a random person who came across this blog and unfortunately, regardless of how much an isolated community of kids would like to believe otherwise, when the medium of communication is long form written text, grammar -does- count. Why do you think it was even ever formalized? To make meaning clear and not only to make it clear, but to make it possible.
Especially nuance in meaning, it depends upon a common structure.
Also, tell me you don\’t feel sad inside when you suggest that proper grammar either takes effort or is only for the erudite and college educated. It\’s like you\’ve contracted acute microcephaly.
It doesn\’t take effort, and if you do learn to communicate with proper grammar and spelling, you will learn to communicate more clearly and the end result will be that you\’re far less alone in the world than you would be otherwise.
Words and grammatical structure lock behind them access to entire universes of thought. Weren\’t you forced to read 1984? Remember how they take away words and concepts so that the populace can\’t even access them?
Stop willingly submitting to being dumbed down and to being disconnected from the world. Because you live on the internet you see grammar as simply a cheap shot from someone who\’s refusing to admit they get your point. Unfortunately, that\’s not the case, as the words themselves and their structure form the contours and the meat of exactly the point you\’re trying to get across.
if you embrace these things you\’ll not only enrich your mind and your heart, but you\’ll have a leg up over the masses of people who subscribe to the argument you made in defense of your own lack of sophistication.
As a wise GI Joe once said, \”knowing is half the battle\”
Jesus christ, listen to your cranky friend. it doesn\’t mean you need to nitpick every typo, but you need to find the middle ground between not caring about it and being the grammar police.
(And Subs form the crux of the balance in Steel Ocean. Destroyers\’ purpose lies in being able to kill them easily and in scouting out targets. Also, battleships can fire over mountain ranges, especially with good spotting from a destroyer. And yes torpedoes are key for killing battleships when you\’re not in one, however many cruisers have the speed, torpedoes and enough penetration in their guns to really give a battleship a run for its money. With the slow speed of a battleship, torpedoes from close range are a death sentence. Once people close range on that artillery boat, life gets hard for him. Finally, a sub would have to get very lucky to take down several battleships as what goes down, must come up, and they have very weak hulls. Though it does become a very skill intensive game of cat and mouse at that point. However, still, subs are frequently vulnerable even in that advantageous situation.)
Yeah. Fixing up Tomoko\’s grammar is not easy!