Fighting Steel by Eric "Snacko" Marlow
	Sound Quality The quality of the game sound was generally pretty respectable. The game includes a variety of voices with American, British, German, and Japanese accents. Australian accents seem to be included in the game's SFX directory, though I haven't played a scenario where they were used. There are only twelve distinct audible notifications given by crew members. Although this is adequate as to not become an annoyance, I would have liked to see additional crew voices for helm acknowledgment, when specific items are damaged, and when they are repaired. The option to turn off crew voices varying by importance could have been incorporated to cut down on extraneous chatter for those who do not prefer it. Realism The included database is incredible: four navies are built-in as part of Fighting Steel - the United States Navy, the Royal Navy (Britain), the Kriegsmarine (Germany), and the Imperial Japanese Navy are represented. Only ships that existed between the years 1939-1942 are included. You won't find ships that appear later in the war such as the Iowa-class battleships. Even so, the database number 90 different ship classes and is populated with 1000 actual fighting vessels. The main classes modeled in Fighting Steel are of the Battleship (BB), Battlecrusier (BC), Heavy Cruiser (CA), Light Cruiser (CL), Destroyer (DD), and Transport (TR) classes. If you are looking for carriers and submarines you will have look to other simulations. It would be too rich a task to list all of the modeling items that Fighting Steel has included, but just to give you a flavor: national characteristics, weather, fatigue, crew quality, night fighting ability, primary/secondary/tertiary gun capability, acceleration/deceleration of ships, armor protection, torpedo effectiveness, and so on - most of which is listed in tables in the back of the manual. In a nice move, SSI included how these modeled items factor into the battle as part of the documentation. While I was stretched to come up with any battles of the period that used landforms as a distinguishing part of the battle, I would have appreciated some kind of ability to simulate landforms in the engagements. Having the ability to set up islands and coastlines, such as were present around Guadalcanal, Savo Island, and "The Slot", would have made for some interesting engagements. Click to continue		Fighting Steel also includes an in-game reference for all of the fighting ships resident in the database. The database viewer gives a 2D and 3D view of each ship class with the ability to change angle and lighting to simulate visual identification at a distance. While the database is suitable, I would have appreciated the ability to quickly call up a contact's database entry from inside a game. As it is now, you must pause the battle and scroll through the database to find the ship you are trying to investigate. Bugs Aboard Ship The proverbial pests have not all fled from the ships in Fighting Steel. On more than several occasions I encountered very frustrating bugs. These bugs would frequently take the form of hard lock-ups of the system; they always seemed to occur when I was playing a campaign mission. Consequently, I was only able to finish a full campaign twice. Another annoyance deals with the release of torpedoes. There were many occasions that I had lined up my destroyer battle line to make a torpedo run. After closing the distance and having adequate torpedoes loaded on the proper side of the ship, my torpedoes would not launch from their tubes. Either pressing the FIRE button would not work or the FIRE button was never given to me. After reading up on the subject and to my knowledge, there was nothing that would have prevented me from a successful launch, yet my torpedo tubes showed "unable". Also frustrating was the inability to select torpedo targets. Sometimes when trying to select a torpedo target where it seemed many targets were available and within range, I was unable to click on the torpedo target box. The attempt at choosing a target produced no selection. Other times selecting a torpedo target that was directly off one of my ship's beams would produce a projected firing solution that was nowhere near the projected target area. Go to Page Five: Conclusion and Ratings
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