Fleet Command

Gameplay

In terms of gameplay, as a real-time tactics game it is a realistic military simulator and only involves resource management of weapons and the fuel of airborne aircraft. The scenario defines the units that a player has at the beginning of the scenario, and the player can never have more than what they started with until the scenario ends. Like other real-time tactics games, losses cannot be replaced, which emphasises the value of units and the judicious use of them (though some scenarios make it impossible to save a particular unit). The military realism is emphasised further by such means as using some authentic NTDS symbology on the 2D tactical planning map. Much of the game and mission events are presented in the form of full-motion video sequences.

Gameplay can be chosen from one of three different options. First is a series of preset missions that contain certain objectives. These missions contain specific goals that must be accomplished in order to be graded successfully. They vary in difficulty from one star to four with four stars being the most difficult. A second game play theme is to play one of four provided scenarios. These are generally "wars" verses "battles" that require the player to win each successive challenge before continuing. The last type of game play is using a feature called "mission editing," where a player can input their own configurations and force strength and objectives. Preset mission objectives and goals can be inputed into the editor and displayed to the player at various intervals throughout game play. Inputed objectives can be configured in such a way that they must be completed in predetermined orders for the overall mission to be successful. The programming skills necessary are quite basic and are a credit to the ingenuity of the software designers.

The "mission editor" feature is simple to use and relatively uncommon in other game play software. The feature enables players to interface directly with the software and provide a relatively limitless amount of possible combat scenarios.

Setting

The game is set in the late 1990s. The game focused exclusively on contemporary units. Units that were in service when the game was released were featured, and units that were out of service or not yet in service were not featured. The game reflects that some of the world's military forces are more advanced than others.

Realism

The game is basically a naval combat strategic training simulator. It covers the full spectrum of modern naval operations, including submarine warfare, surface warfare, naval aviation, and electronic warfare. Air Force, Marine Corps and Army units are also modelled in the game, although the Army units are generally static. Although the initial release focused mainly on the U.S. Military, it did include a wide variety of forces from nations around the world including the U.K., India, Russia, China, and others. The actual forces under a player's command can include units from several nations (a multi-national force), or it may be limited to a selection of forces from just the one nation's military Arsenal.

The game includes both aircraft carriers and land-based air bases. It maintains a level of realism in that aircraft that are limited to land-based operations in real life are similarly limited to land-based operations in the game. This prevents the player from having heavy bombers (like the B-52) taking off or landing from aircraft carriers, something that never happens in the real world. Moreover, only aircraft that are actually assigned to a particular class of aircraft carrier in real life are available on in-game carriers. This concept of realism in units carries through to the weaponry, ordnance, speed, accuracy, radar coverage, level of detection, and survivability of all of the units and weapons in the game. One feature that was deliberately kept out of the game was nuclear weapons.

Game dynamics

In a single-player game, the player starts by selecting a stand-alone scenario or a campaign scenario. Campaign scenarios are linked in that if the player successfully completes a scenario in the campaign, this unlocks the next scenario in that campaign for play. However, the game is limited in that it can only ever have the one campaign available to the player at any one time. In fact, the original version of the game only included one campaign (since then, several replacement campaigns have been made by FC and NWP-FC enthusiasts). A stand-alone scenario is not linked to other scenarios like the campaign scenarios are, although they may be related in terms of setting, theater-of-war, combatants, alliances, fictitious or historical conflicts, etc.

Once the player is in the scenario, a 2-D representation of the forces available is presented. This display also shows a representation of the sensor (radar, visual, sonar, etc.) ranges that any of his units have. Individual units are shown in a 3D rendering. If the player has selected the EMCON option, none of his units start the game with active sensors on; only passive sensors will be engaged. This can be an effective strategy for keeping the player's ships undetected, but it also blinds their GCI and leaves them "groping in the dark", so to speak. If the player has AWACS aircraft and/or fighter jets available, these are often the first units deployed; it is important to find the enemy before they find you.

Development

Jane's Fleet Command was developed by Sonalysts Inc. and published by Electronic Arts. The game licensed parts of Jane's Information Group's military information database, which was used as an in-game "Jane's Library", reference material that the player could refer to while in-game. Fleet Command was written primarily for the use of the now defunct 3dfx's Voodoo brand video cards that used Glide, therefore the game supported 3D rendering by either Glide or Direct3D, but not OpenGL or software rendering. D3D rendering is slower than the native 3dfxGlide rendering of the same map, even when using the newest D3D-capable cards. The game was written for Windows 98, although it would run on Windows 95.

Release

The game was released the first time in 1999 by EA. EA licensed also from Jane's the "Jane's" name and the "Jane's Combat Simulations" logo, and the game was marketed under the "Jane's" name, much like the previous "Jane's Fighters Anthology", also published by EA.

After the release, the game's community worked on player-made fixes in cooperation with Sonalysts Inc., which were later incorporated into the official 1.3x patch line.

Under usage of later versions of Windows, namely Windows 2000 and later Windows XP, the game had serious stability and installation issues which were addressed by Sonalysts Inc. by an additional installation utility/patch in 2001. Around 2002 the patch version 1.34 was released, which addressed many issues and added content, without warranty as unsupported software.

In 2004 the final patch version 1.38 was released fixing a race condition bug in the sound thread, improving stability under Windows XP.

Re-release

On October 26, 2006 Strategy First re-released Fleet Command as SCS-Fleet Command, without the "Jane's" branding. It was released as part of a three-game retail package called Naval Combat Pack (NCP), which also included 688(I) Hunter/Killer and Sub Command and also includes a video CD A Century of Silent Service.

The 2006 version of Fleet Command was also released on GameTap as of Thursday, March 20, 2008.

Reception

The United States Naval Academy had the game installed in computer labs and used it to introduce prospective students to the concepts of fleet level decision making during its Summer Seminar program.