Old Gamers Never Die: My First Attempt to Play Through a Campaign in 'Cold Waters'

The Transit Map in Cold Waters' US vs. China 2000 Campaign. All graphics/game elements in this post are © 2017 Killerfish Games. 

 Last summer — you might remember — I bought a submarine simulation, Cold Waters, which was developed and published by Australia's Killerfish Games in 2017. Inspired by MicroProse Software's 1988 game Red Storm Rising, Cold Waters takes players into the chilling and thrilling world of late 20th Century submarine warfare in three "alternative history" Cold War-turns-hot scenarios:

• US vs. USSR 1984
• US vs. USSR 1968
• US vs. China 2000

Like the Sid Meier-designed Red Storm Rising (which was based on Tom Clancy's eponymous 1986 novel), Cold Waters is divided into three separate sections: Training, Single Battles, and Campaigns. The first one, of course, teaches players how to operate and fight their boats (submarines are never called ships by their operators or by those who know the traditions of the Silent Service); the second is a series of single battles drawn from each of the game's three time periods and gives players a taste of "real combat."  In single battle mode, Cold Waters lets you play missions that are pre-written by the designers or "sandbox" missions you can create by choosing the era and the theater of operation. 

Campaigns are the true test of your command abilities as a submariner. They are, in simple terms, a collection of assignments that take you from the beginning of the war to the end...unless, of course, your submarine is destroyed with all hands aboard. As in a real conflict, you start out in a naval base - if playing ss the US, you start in Guam - and are sent out on a war patrol to seek and destroy enemy naval and merchant vessels. 

Unlike the war patrols in, say, Silent Service II, the patrols in Cold Waters are not free-ranging. In Cold Waters, Pacific Fleet headquarters will issue specific orders that tell you that a Chinese convoy is being loaded and is bound for, say, Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam and that you need to intercept it. Your job in the game isn't to storm across the Pacific, blowing up everything in your path; instead, you go to an area where you are likely to encounter the specific enemy ships - or subs - and engage them. 

A typical OPORD (Operational Order) in the campaign game. 

  

Keep in mind that the game doesn't give players unlimited weapons loadouts that allow them to cruise across the vast area of the war theater to wreak havoc on the enemy. Each sub class has a powerful array of missiles, torpedoes, decoys, and noisemakers, but skippers don't get hundreds of weapons for one war patrol. A Los Angeles (Flt-One) can only carry 26 weapons total, so it's your job to figure out how many of each type to load aboard your boat. The usual mix would be 14  Mk-48 torpedoes, eight Harpoon missiles, and three to four MOSS anti-torpedo decoys.  You can rejigger the mix to your liking, but if you can only carry x number of weapons in a specific submarine class, that's it. You can't ask the game to let you carry 50 weapons on a boat that can only carry 26. 

So even though the game does not require you to micromanage your crew - Cold Water is not that complex or detailed - it does force you to think about using your resources carefully. And in the context of the game, that means that you have to make every shot count/in Campaign mode. 

I mention all this because the Campaign I'm playing now is not exactly going well for the U.S. Navy and my naval career as a commander of submarines in a hypothetical war with China in the year 2000.

A view from the periscope of USS Seawolf. Yes. That is from actual gameplay!

 The war has been raging for nearly two months, and so far I've lost not one but two subs — USS Seawolf and USS New York City. I was given command of a third boat, USS Jefferson City, but I have only successfully completed 9 of my assignments from Commander, Submarine Force, Pacific (COMSUBPAC).

 I have given the enemy a bloody nose —  24 surface warships, 12 submarines, and 11 merchant ships sunk — but not a knockout blow. I don't know how many missions I've failed, but the Philippine Islands are now occupied by the Chinese because I didn't intercept a convoy in time, and the war is in a state of flux because of that one development. 

I am determined to do better in my next war patrol; I have earned four medals for my efforts, and the Chinese have lost 47 vessels due to my command abilities. Maybe I can still help the Navy keep the Pacific free from Chinese domination, or, if we lose the war, at least make Beijing pay dearly for its victories 

 Boy, am I glad this is only a game!