JTS Naval series online play

[Gary McClellan]

Oh, to put a bit more flesh on how we did it (back in the old Naval Campaigns Club)

If you're in a MP game, each player is assigned different units. This is done through the game engine, that part works pretty smoothly. We could use the ingame chat to communicate, and each player can only see what he can "see." In other words, if he has LOS, but not another player on the same side, the only one who can see the units is the one with LOS.

So, we would try to give fairly good reports. "Enemy BB, 24000 NNE my position, headed S at 14kts" or the like.

For a game like Jutland (we mostly used Jutland, with some Tsushima and Guadalcanal), we would often have one player in charge of the Battleline, another in charge of the Battlecruisers, with other players handing AC, CL and (especially) the DD/TB groups.

Lots of players always hated being "stuck" with DD/TB play, but I liked it. It was a challenge to keep out of the way when you needed to, but still be able to react to fight off your counterparts, *or* screen your big boys with smoke *or* set up a torpedo run when the time was right. It was generally pretty busy.