For a past few weeks, I suppose, I played this nice old game I once played when I still have my PS2 console that have it's CD slider borked and/or the slim one being converted to use HDD and gave it over to my neighbor. This is the game where you can (literally) go AFK in nature, if you are using a battleship with powerful weapons. It's a grind for win and rewards to build better ships and conquer the seas to reclaim peace of the open waters. It's also a place where you can design your own ship based on the parts you have or let the CPU process your ship building plan for you.
Naval Ops: Commander. A PS2 game I owned since I bought PS2. At the first of playing this game I don't understand the mechanics (that day I sucked hard at English before few years later and today) and kept stuck at B-4 or something with just a destroyer and light escorts, and guess what? Enemies have pwned me right in a blink of an eye. When I went back playing this again, I figured out "Tech" menu is there for a reason. It's used to develop (research) weapons, hulls, bridges (not the one you see on the roads), engines, etc.
I'll be honest, among all other warship-based games, especially Cold Waters (where you can only control a submarine) and some ads on YouTube about ships and such, nothing beats Naval Ops: Commander, where you can fight enemy ships with your own design, not only to win and grind for parts, but also for field-testing your design to fix flaws or adding missing parts from the ship you designed.
What I like from this game is the "cheater weapon" that you can plant on a battleship or a battlecarrier. "Wave Gun" is there as a "one-time cheat weapon" for you to use. However, "Superships" at levels F-9 and F-10 can fire more than one of this kind of weapon. Quite destructive; a literally "game killer" if you don't use powerful weapons on fighting them. Apparently I got this (without notice and just funds topped up to 1.5 million) when I fought "Druna Skass 2" at level F-10 alone, with escorts staying at the place where I start. Played on Hard difficulty (since Normal was more than enough and I wanted to step up a notch) in an emulator, though having trouble (have to redo several times), at least my escort configuration and a strategy where you have to start with full defenses worked well. The key is having a chain gun (356mm and 305mm is the best I can have ATM) installed on a high-level battleship with 61cm plating on hull and extra auxiliaries like Good luck charm (quite hard to get, but you will when you grind for enemy ship kills - it's only given once and can be removed and placed on any ship, but please, don't sell it; might save you from headaches later) and Gravitational Field. Also, having auxiliaries to reduce reload times make shooting (manually) faster.
Right now, I finished the game on Hard difficulty and I'll be doing the new one (area with asterisks or "stars") with addition of laser ships I found on area F. This is where I'll be needing appropriate ships with EM shielding, because... it's kinda funny and ends pretty fast if you use a battleship with powerful weapons at the early mission (especially area with asterisks).
This is the game I (second) like beside Ace Combat, anything Naruto/Boruto-based, and shooters (FPS, TPS). Having to play this also remembered the old Ghost Recon game that it's like ARMA or something; it's like "one shot, one kill" stuff, with no health indication and realistic insta-death if a bullet lands on your head. No enemy markings. You'll never know where the enemy comes from (much more like Battlefield 2 or so).
So, why I call this game "a game where you can go AFK"? It's simple. Automated weapons system that can fire without needing you to control it and time-consuming missions. This game has no fast-forwarding feature as in flight simulators or anything that induces real-life simulation. Patience is highly questionable in this game, because if you have a very short patience, you will quickly gave up on this game. Automated weapons system means you can set all your installed weapons on a ship to automatically fire when an enemy is in range. This includes machine guns (and CIWS - close-in weapon system - a better machine gun) that can attack automatically when a torpedo, missile, or an aircraft is in range, helping you to keep your ship afloat.
However, AFK doesn't mean you have to do it for too long. You must be on constant overwatch every 3, 5 minutes or so, or the ship can go outside the border or (if under heavy fire) you'll be in risk of getting your own ship sunk.
You'll notice on the 3rd screenshot that I have 3 types of machine guns in place. Why? Missile emplacements, some enemy ships, and several Superships, utilized missiles that even a Gravitational Field can't absorb its damage. Having machine guns installed on different ranges/calibers reduces chance of missile hits. Much more a guaranteed fix for multi-warhead VLS missiles, especially when you brought "Guided Anti-Wave Ship" that can disrupt enemy missile's guidance (just found out recently).
It's possible that you can have 4 or 5 types of machine guns in place, but you'll run out of weapons to be installed for offensive use on enemy ships. I used this set on aircraft carriers since they can launch planes off of it to be used as an offensive weapon. However, this doesn't mean guaranteed kills; you have to be on an offensive and having a number of enemy ships in place to make the planes you launched attack. Tested this on levels B-α, C-5 and E-9. Maybe it's a bug or something, but yeah, this is how the devs made it so when enemies attacked your ship, your planes will attack. Kinda annoying, as a matter of fact, but since PS2 games are made as is, this is what you get, a final result with bugs/issues in place that can't be fixed unless recompiled with bugfixes.
Overall, it doesn't look bad to my eyes, but at least it's worth my time to spend to find new interest after doing a run in Ace Combat 04 on Hard difficulty. Recently found a bug that maybe bricked the game at some point, especially mission 5 "Invincible Fleet".
Figured out on debug window, it's called "call stack overflow". I had this issue long before this, and I've confirmed it again. I got this from a pure ISO file I made from the PS2 DVDs I have when I still have PS2. The discs are still there, though, but those are getting "data-degraded" as the time goes by. I'll gonna get a new ISO from the Internet when I have time; though, EmuParadise has no longer providing downloads to ISOs anymore. Sad, but I'm sure it's about copyright issues.
This is what I'm feeding my curiosity of Zaptroxix's video about Mission 5. He did that without having any issues, killing enemies at the northern part of the map. Non-emulated as well. Probably this is about "data-degradation" that come from the discs I used in consoles. Ever since I have this bug, I avoided the northern part of the area in Mission 5.
When I got a new ISO, I'd like to try that again. Also, I'm curious about this Project Nemo I found on Ace Combat Fan's Ace Combat 3 playthrough videos, as well as Zaptroxix's one with commentary. Might gonna try that as well; I'm sure the JP version has more array of usable planes and story branching than US/EU version (roughly scrapped JP version that has only a few planes), so I'd like to see that for myself. Might as well remember some old games I used to play. Who knows?
Fun fact: I've tried Ace difficulty in Mission 5 and for some reason, it doesn't cause something like I showcased here. Also, about Zaptroxix's video about Mission 5, he played that on Ace difficulty, so I think there's something that bricked the system on lower difficulties. Even going directly on that mission at lower difficulty still has that weird "call stack overflow" issue (or bug, maybe?).
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