SAS re-creates the drama of conflict between the Great Naval Powers of World War 2: the United States, Japan, Great Britain, Germany, Italy and France.
A campaign is played out between any two of these countries, although, in a feature added in version 1.1, you can also support the efforts of either or both sides by nominating any remaining countries as allies. (See making alliances).
The theatres include the Pacific, Atlantic and Mediterranean. By selecting from campaigns provided or creating your own – varying the countries, theatres and other parameters - you can play an endless variety of historical or hypothetical wars. See available maps and creating campaigns - an overview for more information.
As your country's Supreme Naval Commander, and the Supreme Theatre Commander in the selected theatre, you have full control over naval resources and considerable control over aircraft and troops as well.
You play for nothing less than ultimate victory or defeat. And you also play for posterity, to be remembered as the greatest Admiral of all. Your chosen opponent - another player or the computer - is playing for the same goal.
This is a game that can be played at all levels: strategic, operational, and tactical.
You make the biggest decisions: what ships to build, infrastructure and technologies to develop, aircraft to construct and troops to raise. Then you plan the operations that determine their deployment and rules of engagement. And as if this were not enough, in response to hourly reports on enemy forces, you can change fleet courses and speeds and rules of engagement, as well as air strike targets and payloads.
When surface battles occur, re-playable footage shows your ships in action as they follow your rules of engagement and fight shell by shell, torpedo by torpedo. All targeting, damage effects, flooding and ship movement are re-calculated by the minute.
Naval missions include convoys, amphibious assaults, shore bombardments, offensive and defensive patrols, blockades and interdictions, mine-laying and sweeping, and reconnaissance.
Naval forces include battleships and battle cruisers, heavy and light cruisers, destroyers, destroyer escorts, corvettes, submarines, and fleet and escort carriers. The ships are historical but include some planned but never completed – like the USS Montana. Best of all, with just a few mouse clicks you can modify them or create your own, setting size, gun calibre and number, armour, speed, range and so on. There are over two million design possibilities. Build battleships up to 130,000 tonnes that dwarf the Yamato and equal the biggest battleship ever conceived (by Germany, in its ‘Z’ plan)! More modestly, why not remedy some deficiencies? E.g., as the British player, you could up-gun the King George V class. The choices are endless, but you are always in charge.
Troop units range in size from company to army group, and have varying levels of equipment, mechanization, training and morale, thus covering the range of possible fighting capabilities.
Over 400 actual classes of carrier and land-based aircraft are available, including the main jet aircraft from late war and up to the late 1940s. By developing aircraft technology aggressively you can take earlier advantage of these superior aircraft. Aircraft characteristics that are modeled include firepower, bomb load, ASW detection and attack capability, maximum speed and cruising speed, endurance, ruggedness and maneuverability, plus special abilities such as carrier, night fighting and dive-bomb capable.
Behind everything lies the grim reality of your war economy, which must be sustained through production and trade. Everything has a cost. SAS models real-world constraints on your ability to wage war and in the process simulates the need to run convoys to maintain your industry, or supply your naval bases and troops in the field. (See the economic model in SAS for more information.)
Yet this rich game play never sacrifices playability. You are ably assisted by a 2-I-C of your choice, a legendary Admiral. For example, as the American player, you can choose a Spruance, King, Halsey or Mitscher, who range in approach from very cautious to very aggressive. With a click of the mouse he can make any decision for you – such as designing your whole navy, planning a whole turn’s operations or managing your budget. This frees you to concentrate on handling just the areas you are interested in or want to manage.
SAS is a turn-based simulation with a difference. The moves of both sides are calculated simultaneously, instead of one after the other as in most turn-based games. This allows for ‘real-time’ events and tactical responses on an hourly basis, giving SAS more realism and a genuine tactical dimension. In this way, SAS has elements of real-time strategy whilst remaining turn-based to properly allow for deep strategic play.
As Supreme Naval Commander, you take the big decisions. What sort of navy do you want? Big-ship heavy, balanced, or centred on the small ships - fast torpedo armed ships and submarines?
What sort of ship characteristics do you want - raiders for fast, long range hit-and-run operations; or slower, well armoured ones that can defend as well as attack?
How large a merchant fleet do you need – for trade and for transport of troops and supplies?
How many and what kind of troops do you need to raise for defensive and offensive operations? How many and what types of aircraft?
How much do you spend on other assets - port infrastructure and industry, naval intelligence, fleet training or technology, and what research priorities do you set for technology R&D?
The options are endless but your resources are not, so trade-offs are necessary.
To help make these big decisions, you - and your opponent - has a default strategy: either very agressive, aggressive, cautious or very cautious. The strategy is set during campaign creation but can be modified any time during game play. The strategy helps your 2IC make coherent decisions on your behalf in many many areas - from choosing the best aircraft, ship and troop types to construct or raise and the most effective infrastructure to build, to the most appropriate mix of fleet deployments and tasks to create. You can override any of your 2IC's decisions; but at least you know that his efforts will be a rational attempt to implement your overriding strategy. (See strategies for more information.)
You also plan the big operations. What do you want to concentrate on? Protecting the precious convoys vital to your economy, or that transport troops or the supplies they need; running offensive sorties deep into enemy territory; bombarding enemy ports; mounting amphibious assaults; conducting offensive or defensive patrols by surface ships and submarines, or mine-laying and sweeping in home or enemy waters?
These operations should be in mind when you design your ships, so that you have the capability you need. Then you assemble the ships into fleets and give them their orders.
If all this sounds daunting, remember that you can delegate key decisions to your 2-I-C and keep just the areas you want to handle. Playing the game can be as simple as you want. You can grow your areas of command as you get more experience. (See how to deploy ships for more information.)
SAS is predominantly a strategic and operational simulation. Nevertheless, very important tactical play is also supported.
You have complete freedom every hour and in response to the unfolding situation, to:
During surface battle, the movement and targeting of ships is controlled via the Rules of Engagement (RoE) which you gave them. The RoE are very flexible and allow you to set up fleets for pure reconnaissance, for light raids intended as nuisance value or for full scale fleet actions.
The RoE very effectively help your fleets to maximise or minimise damage - as desired - because each surface battle is calculated according to sophisticated rules that track the movement, orders, and battle condition of each ship. Every shell and torpedo hit is calculated. Minute-by-minute records are kept of damage to main turrets, superstructure, fire control, bridge, fuel spaces, machinery spaces, main magazines, and progressive flooding and leaking from underwater belt hits and torpedo hits. Ships make decisions to open, close or maintain the range based on their orders and their condition.
All the action is re-playable shell-by-shell in the special battle viewer. Even so, for those grognards who need to be ships’ captains as well as 6 star Admirals, a future release of SAS will support tactical control of surface battles.
You also have significant direct and indirect control of air strikes: setting policy preferences affecting affect how your 2IC prioritises targets and sets numbers of aircraft; and you can nominate airfields and carriers for closer control, changing targets and amending strike compositions and bombloads.
See tactical play options for more information.
You play by making key decisions for each game turn and then letting the computer calculate the result, taking into account the enemy decisions that are executing in parallel.
During calculation, all fleet movements and events of significance are shown on the map as they occur. You can respond to enemy fleet sightings by accepting or amending emergency fleet response orders. After the turn is calculated, you can replay the whole turn and watch it all again, including watching full action replays of all surface battles.
Your opponent can be the computer, or another player via “hot-seat” play or play by email. (See the Play By Email help file for more information).
A campaign theatre of action can be small scale – on a small Mediterranean-sized map, or it can be much larger – similar in size to the Atlantic or even Pacific theatres.
To allow varying size maps to be displayed without map hexes becoming too small, the size of the map hexes themselves can be of varying size - from 48 nautical miles across, for small maps like the Mediterranean, to double that size for the Pacific and Atlantic.
A campaign may commence with navies of any size: from very small, through to enormously big navies of nearly 3 million tones - with 30 or more battleships and carriers, 50 or more cruisers, and hundreds of escorts and submarines. Then, growth during the war may multiply these numbers several fold again, so you can end up commanding extremely large navies indeed. The only artificial limit to the size of the navies you can have is your computer’s memory.
Irrespective of the theatre scale and number of ships, making your decisions for a single turn can take as little as a few minutes - if you let your 2-I-C help you as much as possible. Or you can choose at any time to exercise greater hands-on control.
SAS can therefore be either a ‘beer and pretzels’ game, playable easily in a single sitting, or a seriously challenging game played over a longer period. The time taken will reflect how much of the decision-making you are doing, how big the game is and how easy are the starting odds.
The odds you face are set when a new campaign is created. Each country has historical strengths and weaknesses. But these characteristics can be varied to make a harder or easier game.
Though an easier game is recommended for beginners, a harder game is more rewarding and - just as importantly - if you do well, your place in history will shine even brighter.
The game calculates your performance annually based on your relative economic success and the starting odds. In a difficult game, your mistakes are more forgiven, your victories more praised.
A campaign can be played for as long as you want until a forced end occurs.
All campaigns must end when the year gets to 1950. (Beyond that, technology changes made WW2 style naval weapons and combat outmoded).
A forced end can also happen earlier, based on your performance. In January of every year (except the first) your performance vis-ŕ-vis the enemy is reviewed. Your Situation Report includes extra information about the enemy economy. This data is evaluated by your country’s leader. He assesses the growth you have achieved compared to the enemy, as well as the value of any supply targets that you have failed to meet. He then moderates the result for the odds you faced at the start of the war.
In addition to being able to create your own campaigns of varying size and complexity, and make decisions at all levels of game play - strategic, operational and tactical, you can also make many, many other customizations that affect your gaming experience.
You can:
Please follow these links to learn about what the game offers, and how to play it: