WARNING: LONG POST
I'm a noob. No really. I've been a passenger in a few boats for fishing and water skiing, but I've never been at the helm. I enjoy simulators, but I have NEVER played a boat sim before. I don't know the first thing about how you go about towing, pushing, or what the correct way to do any of this is. In short, I'm not qualified to pick my nautical nose, much less pilot any sort of vessel. And with that, I took the proverbial plunge and did my first mission. What came next would have been pure terror had this been real life...
I chose the first mission in the core campaign, "Round tour in the harbor", because it sounded like I was just going for a joy ride around the harbor, and I thought that would be easy. WRONG.
I got underway, and was told to go to drydock 17. I had no clue where drydock 17 was. With all this water around how could they even keep them dry in the first place? (Alright, I know what a drydock is, but I'm entertaining here. Back off.) =D I paused the game, and looked for a brief tutorial on Youtube. Couldn't find one. I found somebody going through a tutorial, and promised myself I would look for this tutorial after I inflicted my piloting skills on the good people of the harbor in my current mission. I did, however, notice that the guy in the Youtube video was heading toward these little green markers on his minimap, and THAT was enough to get me pointed in the right direction!
Or...so I thought. You see, I didn't know how to adjust the throttle, or turn the darn beast. I moved the levers a bit with my mouse, but knew immediately this was not going to work for me right now. I got everything back to the middle and stopped my intrepid tug. There was a coast guard ship headed my way, and I'm not sure if they pull you over or anything, but knew I would be in trouble if they tried, because honestly, I had a better chance of falling overboard than I did of actually being able to move the tug where they wanted it. I smiled and waved and did my best to seem like I was examining something very important. I then realized that I could so no humans aboard the coast guard ship. Aha! Obviously some sort of remote control thing, or robot or something. What will they think of next?! (I'm assuming at this point a lack of people is normal in this game.)
After the Coast Guard passes me by, I pause the game and go looking for a quick reference guide, which I found. It informed me that I could use the numpad to control engines 1 and 2 throttle, and the zxc and ,./ keys to control bow thrusters 1 and 2. Great. That should do it.
I decide to start with one of the engines and gently tap the "7" key on my keyboard. Nothing. I press it a few more times and listen for the smooth sound of engine 1 spinning up. Nothing. Maybe you gotta hold it down. So I stab at it with my finger and hold the sucker down. For like, 10 seconds. Ah...the sound of... more nothing. I am grateful at this point that there are no humans in the simulation because I'm certain my first mate would staring at me with an eyebrow raised, and I might have had to make a lame excuse about mistaking the console for a vending machine. (I told you it was lame.) So I poke the 8 and 9 buttons and still nothing. I try the 1 2 and 3 buttons, and get the same response. I'm starting to feel a little like that guy in the night club who everybody ignores and prays he wont come ask them to dance. Not that I've ever been that guy mind you. *cough* *cough* Just sayin'. Moving along...
I then try the arrow keys and get some audible engine gurgling. AWESOME. I stab my finger down on the up arrow and hold the sucker down like I was wake-boarding. The tug moves foward. I smile to myself, adjust my (imaginary) Captain hat, and whistle a toon as the tug plunges forward.
After a minute of this it occurs to me that the dock ahead of me is starting to get uncomfortably close, and I have yet to figure out how to stop or turn. For a brief moment I contemplate ramming the dock to show it who's boss, but I've heard the story about the destroyer and the lighthouse, and decide if the destroyer changed course, I should too. Luckily, I was only going about 12 nots, and letting off the arrow key brought this quickly down to 6. I learned that left and right arrows could turn me, but only when I was applying some throttle. Tricky. Not like I imagined. For some reason I thought if I held my finger down on the left arrow, that the ship would continue to turn to port as long as it had forward momentum. This appears to not be the case, and I'm sure I'm doing several things wrong, but hey, the ship turns. I turn away from the dock, but not before giving it a stern look and that "You want some of me? I didn't think so..." look.
I'll cut out a bit at this point. I got the tug where I was supposed to go, and waited for my next waypoint. Instead, I was ordered to throw a line to the large cargo ship next to me and pull it heaven knows where. I sure didn't. After a moment of getting myself righted, I figured out how to throw a line, and connected a line from mid aft of my tug to mid-fore of the cargo ship. I started to pull, and for the next 5 minutes proceeded to struggle toward the new marker on my map. The cargo ship was really pushing me around, and at one point I had to disconnect, right my tug, and reconnect. The coast guard made a slow drive by again, and I was sure that if they didn't get me, the crew was going to mutiny anyway. I was about to single-handedly be the cause of the descent of my crew into piracy. Piracy... hmmm... Nahhh.... Anyway, I then got the bright idea of attaching three lines and this made things go much smoother. I got the ship where it needed to go, and managed to push it in to place with some semblance of dignity. Honestly, with the way I had just bounced off the hull of that ship, the embarrassment of the night club would have been such sweet release from this embarrassment. Okay, I might be exaggerating a little bit, but you get the idea.
Next I was told to go to a new waypoint, but was interrupted part way there with a special message that there was an emergency in progress. I thought for certain they had scrutinized my piloting credentials and found that the supposed maritime college city I had graduated from was, in fact, land locked, and the closest thing in that town resembling any sort of vessel was the battleship of a car that my grandmother drove to church every Sunday. I was relieved and terrified to find out that the emergency was a small touring boat, and that I was the closest tug that could help the now engine-less boat. I was surprised how much easier this thing was to haul around, and quickly got the boat over to where it needed to be. For a brief moment I considered trying to being it in full speed and then pull a bootlegger reverse, but, remembering my tenuous position with my crew and the Coast Guard, decided this would be a bad idea. At least today.
With that ship handled, I was instructed to go back to the tug dock. I did so, and the mission ended. Mercifully.
Some things I will have to figure out:
1. I think I need to try the advanced controls. Having to hold down the throttle is not going to work for longer missions.
2. I'm going to have to read the manual.
3. What do all the other buttons do? (See #2)
Some thoughts after playing for the first time:
1. If there's a tutorial, it's not obvious where it is at. The game should hold my hand, at least as far as showing me where the tutorial is. If there isn't one, I think it would be a great idea to include one as it will make the barrier to entry much less daunting. I'm pretty patient so I can work my way through these things, but many people would have gotten frustrated and given up. Showing them the basics(or at least where to go to find them) without having to resort to a manual or online search would go a long way toward making the game more accessible to a wider audience.
2. The game seems pretty typical for a sim. If you like sims of this sort(more hard core train, boat, and/or underwater basket weaving sims) then this is probably just the thing for you. (If you can sit through a hard core train sim, than this game will seem the same in terms of excitement.)
3. The community seems pretty active and nice. That's always a plus.
4. The steam community doesn't seem to happy with the title. Might be good to have a few people from the official forum go hang out on that forum and help the people who are frustrated because I get the impression they're not all coming here, and they're not all getting what they need.
I guess that's all for now. My apologies for the long post.
Lance...
