Carriers at war

[sking500]

Can't remember if this was an AH title or not, but anyone here still play "Carriers at war"? In addition to the board game, I remember there was a version on the Commodore 64 that was a fairly good port. It was fun, but could last for weeks, depending upon the scale.

Just wondering if there's still copies floating around out there.

Thanks!

[sking500]

I'm pretty sure it was called "Carriers at War", although that may have been the Commodore 64 version I owned. The game board was large, and hex-based. From what I recall it actually was comprised of two hard-backed boards (a la Third Reich) that, when butted together, contained from Northern Australia to the Southern Phillipines.

The game pieces either represented individual carriers, battleships, cruisers, and destroyers for naval vessels, and squadrons for aircraft. Individual squadrons were assumed to be of the same aircraft type, but numerous types were represented in the game. You could mix/match squadrons of differing types into wings which were represented by a single chit on-board, and organized off-board (same for fleets). I think you also had the option of how to arm bombers (i.e. bombs, torpedos, etc.). Each aircraft type had a rating of how effective it was in a few areas (air/ground, air/air, and air/sea).

There were even wind rules (each quadrant of the fold-out board had it's own wind direction) that required your carrier to move one hex into the wind to launch or recover aircraft!

Needless to say it was fairly detailed, which caused very slow play, but was usually pretty fun. It was one of the first games I recall having to deal with weather effects. There were spotting rules (again different aircraft such as the Catalinas being more effective than, say P-38's) for detecting enemy fleets, interception rules, radar, etc. I was only able to play a few times because my friends never had the patience.

Thanks for the input...I'll check it out.

Kingbaum

[sking500]

Found it...

Actually it's call "Flat Top" (two words); published by AH (Battleline) in 1977. I was hooked on that game for years. It was "ported" to Commodore 64, and Apple II (or Mac, I think) around '81/'82 but used the name "Carriers at War".

Thanks for the help.

[wtbarron]

Carriers at War is an SSG (Strategic Studies Group, Australians Roger Keating and Ian Trout) computer game. I kept my Apple IIe all these years solely to be able to keep playing it. It is one of the best computer games ever created, in my humble, but educated, opinion. (I never knew there was a version 2. Looks like you can get the whole thing for Windows (http://www.ssgus.com/ccaw.html) now as well. I guess I can finally toss out the Apple IIe.)

The fog of war that is essential for a strategic naval game is superbly done, all the way down to inaccurate scouting reports from your scout planes and exaggerated damage estimates. Weather plays an important part and is well-modeled. Best of all, the computer opponent is very, very good. The game is a real nail-biter and very realistic. It even has a scenario editor, but you can imagine how tedious it is to use on a computer that has no graphics, mouse, or hard drive.

SSG had a magazine they published which included new scenarios for Carriers at War. One of them was from the movie The Final Countdown (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080736/plotsummary). The scenario is pure fluff, but it's strangely satisfying after getting whipped by the IJN one too many times.