Sea Battle (Intellivision, 1980)
Entry posted by Mezrabad
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Sea Battle (Intellivision, 1980)
Sea Battle is a console title that does much more than one would expect a console title to be able to do in 1980.
Each player has a harbor and a limited number of naval units. The object of the game is to get your troop transport ship into your enemy's harbor by negotiating your fleets through the archipelago between the two harbors.
Like Space Battle (Intellivision, 1980) this game has a strategy phase and a combat phase. The strategy phase is played out on an overview map of the island region. Each player builds up to four fleets at a time, each comprised of up to three ships--from a total of 13, and sends them on their way towards the enemy harbor. The game takes full advantage of the Intellivision controller's keypad. Instead of creating your fleets using an on-screen, easy-to-see-by-your-enemy interface, you create fleets by hitting the keypad icons of the ships you want in that particular fleet before deploying it into your harbor.
When you or your enemy deploys a fleet, all that either of you can tell about if from the strategy phase view is how many ships are in it. When the fleet starts to move, your enemy may be given a slight clue as to the fleet's composition because a fleet may only move as fast as its slowest ship.
Safety tip: it's up to you to remember what you put in each fleet. You do NOT want to think you're going into a combat with a submarine and a destroyer and not finding out until you get there that you deployed a mine sweeper and a troop transport! To help you with this, each of your fleets is a different color. It does help. Some.
Controlling the ships in the strategy phase is interesting because you can only control one fleet at a time. Basically, you send a fleet sailing in a particular direction, and cycle around to each fleet providing course correction as needed. You don't have to worry about smashing into an island in this phase because your captains know to stop before hitting a landmass.
There's an Exxon Valdez joke here somewhere, but I'll leave it up to the reader.
Ship captains cannot avoid what they cannot see, and they cannot see mines. You can use a mine layer unit to put little floating magnets of death in spots which you know your enemy must pass through. However, sharp-eyed admirals may notice if a fleet seems to moving slower than normal through a narrow straight. This is the invitation for him to send sweepers in to clear things up before proceeding.
When two opposing ships get close, all movement stops and the players get to make an interesting choice. If neither player decides to fight the enemy fleet, movement resumes and the fleets go on their merry way. If either player decides to engage, then combat phase is entered.
Combat phase zooms the camera into the fight, kind of like Google Earth can zoom in on your old high school (hey, they made the parking lot bigger!). In this view, you and your enemy can see what each is up against, as each ship type has a unique icon. In combat mode, ship types have actual "stats" beyond just speed! The actual stats are in the manual, not on the screen, but you can look them up if you want (don't expect your enemy to wait while you do.) Weapon power, armor rating, momentum, firing ranges and damage all play a role in these combats. Most importantly in the combat phase a ship has a targeting reticule. Hold down the "aim" button and you can move the targeting "X" out from the ship you currently control. Try to move your ship into position (which moves the "X" too) so it can fire at another ship. So, you prepare to fire by aiming your "X" directly north, for example. Move your ship so the "X" moves over the enemy ship, or where you think the ship will be, and fire. You can't fire while holding down the aim button, so it's aim, move, fire when in range, rinse, lather, repeat. This is hard to do while your enemy is doing the same thing to you, but I imagine people using real ships in real navies feel the same way. Some ships sink after one hit, others can take a few, it depends on the weapons of the hitter and the resilience of that which is hit.
Oh, and don't let one of your ships ram a landmass. In combat phase, landmasses ram back!
Different ships have different ammo. The submarine or PT boat sends torpedos. Battleships and others fire salvos. Salvos require better aim, as salvos can pass over a ship and miss. Torpedoes aren't as finicky, they'll hit ship on the way to their "X" spot but as shot from the PT boats, their range is very short. Conversely, when shot from the submarine, torpedo range is very long--but you only get one sub. Like the strategy phase, you can only control one unit at a time, so while you're bravely maneuvering your speedy little PT boat into range, your enemy can be using the longer ranged guns on his battleship to take out your sitting duck of an aircraft carrier.
Can't take the heat? Retreat! If you hit the retreat button you have to out-dance your opponent's ammo for another 15 seconds before returning to the strategy phase view again. Of course, if your enemy has a relatively fast fleet of ships, they can always catch up and re-engage.
Overall, this game is brilliant. It is the type of game that would become more enjoyable the better you and your opponent get at it and the better you know each other's style of play. It's kind of like chess, except on an ocean, in real time and each piece is actually a fleet made up of smaller sub-pieces constructed of floating steel that can propel tons of metal several miles through the air to sink each other.
EDIT: Since writing this originally, my son and I have gotten to play again. I was able to win a game quickly by sending all of my ships at once (leaving behind a mine layer) and overwhelming my son's defenses on our first game. However, my son is a quick learner. He found he did better with a single ship strategy. He mined his harbor entrance points and sent out one ship at a time to attack my incoming fleets. He was usually able to do a lot of damage to each of the ships in my fleet while only losing one ship himself. This was especially effective if he found my mine sweepers. He would take the sweeper out first (as it was never the ship with which I was primarily defending) and damage the other ships before I could kill his lone attacker. My survivors would continue on, only to sink to a watery grave when we hit his mine fields. He enjoyed it a little more during our second session of play, probably because he understood it better and winning did nothing but improve his enthusiasm.
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