Operation Trident: Cold War Subsim '46-'91 Windows, Mac, Linux game

So whats this game exactly?

At the time of writing (Feb 10, 2015) the current game overview is this. You are the captain of a submarine that goes out on missions (a mix of scripted and random) during the cold war. However you are infact at war with Russia, thus you will be required to not only hunt her submarines and warships when they try to attack you, you will be required to attack their merchant shipping.

The game will follow history. When a certain class of submarine is historically available, you will have the opportunity to command it instead of your current class instead, at the expense of losing your crew and upgrades.

We start out in 1946 with a GUPPY class diesel-electric submarine not at war. Your taught the basics of of the game and how submarines work through a series of interactive tutorials (skippable) that take you into 1950 or so. At this point nuclear submarines are becoming a possibility (USS Nautilus, SSN-571 is the first nuclear submarine in the world, and thus will be your first real command). At this point you are asked to take her out on sea trials to explain how a nuclear submarine works. The campaign now begins.

1954 - You start as the captain of the newly commissioned USS Nautilus the world's first nuclear submarine. It differs in no way from the submarines of world war 2 except the fact that she only needs re-fuelling once every 18 months. Russia declares war.

With world war 3 looming Navy recruits are ready to serve on the most advanced ship in the world. You choose your crew from a large selection, 12 officers and 50-100 enlisted men. Each man is assigned to a certain part of the boat and each man has certain ability points (mechanical, weapons, leadership etc.). Each officer oversees a part of the boat (sonar officer, radar officer, watch officer, torpedo officer etc) You spend all your initial upgrade points on your crew and your first load of food, spare parts, ammo, and torpedoes. You have to choose what food to buy (better food costs more points but causes your crew to have better moral (happier)) and the kind of torpedos/missles for the mission. IE. if your mission dictates that the Korean war is on and you may be asked to fire cruise missles at land targets you should probly load up at least 1 or 2 cruise missles, if your mission is just to attack merchant shipping maybe choose cheap basic torpedos.

As new technology becomes available, you can choose to add it to your submarine, as long as its not totally un-realistic. This allows the player to build the boat that they want essentially. Taking out enemy ships (and eventually land targets when missiles become available) gains you upgrade points. You can spend them during patrol on your crews ability levels. Once your patrol is over (when you run out of provisions, ammo, mission success, or at your own choosing you head back to port. Going back to port takes 2 weeks of game time. In port you get more upgrade points based on how successful your patrol was (ships sunk, damage taken, equipment breakdowns etc.) which you can spend either on your crews abilities or on your boat (both historial and research ideas). You can also award medals to crew members you deem worthy (say they worked extra watches or kept cool under pressure etc.) and eventually they will upgrade in rank eventually all the way up the chain of command.

When a new class of submarines is available you have the choice to choose command of her but you will lose all your upgrades to your previous boat, your crew and all their upgrades and promotions and have to start fresh, albeit with a upgrade points refund depending how long you commanded the previous boat for and how well you did over your patrols.

Crew members have passive abilities (IE. the sonar operator can be upgraded to increase the range he can hear sound underwater) which are enabled at all times and active abiltiies which you have to manually enable and are time based (IE. the torpedo officer can have his crew reload torpedos 25% faster for 2 hours). Officers also have passive and active abilities (ie. torpedo officer passive ability: torpedo loading experiance level 1: 10% faster lvl 2: 15% faster lvl 3: 20% etc. active ability: tweak the torpedo 'your torpedomen load some plastic explosives into the nosecone of the torpedo increasing its damage by 20% but increasing the chance of a dud by 5% since thats where the detonator lies')

Crew members have moral and the longer the patrol, and the less experienced you, and they are, the less effective/slower they are and the greater change they will break equipment etc.

You have to carry spare parts on board and harder difficulty levels will require you to decide what parts to take on patrol and what most likely isnt needed, but if a part breaks down with no backup system or parts, your patrol will end and you'll haver to wait for a rescue tug, and the enemy may find you in this time.

While you are the captain of the ship and you basically just send out commands, you can if you wish command important stations yourself. For example you can take control of the sonar station to get a more accurate fix on contacts (especially if you have a novice sonar officer and sonar operator), you can take control of the radar station to check for contacts a novice radar operator might have missed like a fishing boat. You can take control of the galley and choose what meals get served on what day to increase your crews morale by using better ingredients or saving food and losing crew morale.

The player will have the ability at anytime to add details into the ships diary which is basicacally just an ingame text editor. The player can add a new entry and it will list the date, time and location and you can write your own details ie: attacked enemy aircraft carrier with 2 torpedos at 8m depth, did not do enough damage to sink her before we had to dive and evade. Next time try at 10m depth so that it will sink faster. The player can edit entrys.

An automatic captains log wil be kept which can be organized by the following entries which are automatically entered in: Radio contact reports, sonar contact reports, radar contact reports, torpedo/missle firing, torpedo/missle hits, mission objectives, ships sunk, aircraft downed, equipment breakdowns, general messages from headquarters.

While underwater you will not receive reports from HQ however if you are on the surface or you have your towable antenna extended you will receive contact reports from HQ ie: "Enemy convoy of 1 small warship and 13 merchants seen at 13:00 on Mar 8, 1961. Course 241 degrees, speed 12 knots." however having anything above the water (periscope, towed antenna, radar mast, snorkle, radio mast etc.) will increase the odds that ships might see you if your operating in close quaarters.

Still in the planning stages. More ideas welcomed/coming.

How hardcore of a simulation will this be?

At first we hope to keep it fairly arcade like to appeal to the most customers possible. However if time permits, and definitly eventually, we hope to have various difficulty levels ie.

• Landlubber: Torpedos hit where you aim for in the periscope, ballast and trim water tanks are handled automatically, all you have to do is drive, upgrade, and attack. Your crew stays happy forever. Good for people who just want to point and shoot
• and various levels all the way up to
• Subnut: You are nuts about submarines! You have to make mental calculations and use a stopwatch, you have to control nearly every aspect of your boat or else you may face the depths of the ocean (reactor core temperature, equipment breakdowns, realistic reloading speeds, crew moral if your patrol lasts too long) only for die-hards

Eventually I plan to calculate everything from thermal layers (differnt water temperature layers that sound reflect off in the ocean), air velocity when blowing ballast/trim/negative tanks, to how often your crew showers and goes to the bathroom and uses up fresh water.

I have an un-answered question.

Feel free to email me (nsomnia, the project lead) at info@blendertek.com. I check my email constantly throughout the day. Forums/youtube/etc will get a slower reseponse.