Cold Waters Nuclear Submarine game/sim website by PMC.
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Cold Waters has two campaigns, old school Cold War era 1984 US/NATO versus Warsaw Pact Soviets and newer year 2000 South China Sea. Looks like campaign starts with random mission, at least its different mission every time you start.
Campaign has missions, when you first start a campaign you get your first mission. Once you finish a tactical engagement (in 3D shooting bad guys), after the de-briefing screen you will receive updated orders fora new mission.
There are various types of missions, so called generic missions are "hunt down XYZ type boat/ship/group and sink them" and special missions are inserting US Navy SEAL Team into beach or Tomahawk Land Attack Missile (TLAM) strike to usually heavily defended important enemy harbor or such location.
I like to play realistically, but the simple fact is that SEAL Team insertions and TLAM strike missions are a suicide missions, you ain't coming back from those, or if you are, then my sailors cap off to you as you are one mean submarine captain. In 1984 NATO vs Warsaw Pact campaign both SEALs and TLAM strikes happen in the kola peninsula, against murmansk soviet union, this location is SHALLOW WATER and heavily defended by soviet surface, air and sometimes subsurface units. Inserting SEALs is slightly better than TLAM strike because as you know, once you fire those tomahawks, every soviet commie scum know exactly where you are and will send every unit and every available weapon to hunt you down and kill you. Shallow water TLAM strike is suicide, just simply don't do it, don't play these kamikaze mickey mouse games, you don't have to do any mission you don't want and why on earth would you do a suicide one.
In Seawolf you can load 8 TLAMs for all the tubes so in theory you get to fire and run, but in practice you need to fire MOSS decoy torpedoes because enemy response is immediate and deadly. The 1984 campaigns TLAM strikes are horror because Los Angeles class sub only has 4 torpedo tubes to launch tomahwaks, you have to RELOAD tubes before firing more, usually at this time you start to die. Yes I have successfully completed in fact many of SEAL insertion and TLAM strike missions, but they are such a nightmare scenarios that in my later time Cold Waters gaming session I simply refuse to do those missions, I don't like them, they are so annoyingly difficult, odds are against you. But hey, maybe its just me, but if you've never done either of these mission types or played campaign at all, be very very careful with these special missions.
You can win a campaign without never doing SEAL Team insertions or TLAM strike missions.
Sinking tonnage does count towards the war effort.
Tonnage points = Displacement / 5000 for mission critical vessels. Mission points range from 20-30 up to 100 for Land Strikes.
As listed in the Help under Campaign:
So in addition to mission points for successful missions, you also receive points for ALL enemy tonnage sunk at the rate of tonnage/10000 * difficulty setting modifier (1.2,1,0.75,0.5) based on difficulty setting.
It can be a valid strategy to not do a particular mission/s and just hunt nearby enemy shipping instead.
In short:
- help win the war by sinking enemy ships
- help win the war by successfully completing missions
- lose progress by failing to sink high priority targets
- lose progress for failing missions
Good hunting captain.