ARCTIC REALISM

Arctic Realism brings NWAC back 15 years to 2015 and improves realism in sensors, weapons, and units, as well as adding:

- 7 new nations
- Many new ships
- Many new subs
- Many new aircraft
- New surface to air batteries
- Coastal anti-ship missiles
- Electronic warfare on ships
- Nuclear weapons (launched from land, sea, and air)
- Reconnaissance helicopters
- Aircraft now have individual and realistic refuel/rearm times
- Ships and subs now have range (with nuclear staying unlimited)
- Ships are now faster, but high speeds will lower range
- Land based SAMs are more numerous and important
- Coast guard ships added
- Both campaigns fully converted
- All default scenarios (SP & MP) fully converted

While CMANO has taken most of the market for strategic milsims, it is expensive and lacks one key feature: realtime multiplayer. This is where NWAC shines and with this mod, it should become a viable alternative to CMANO.

This mod is in active development, but the scale of the research and data that needs to be processed, calculated and implemented means it will take a long time to release- however, there will be alpha and beta builds released before that time.

Disclaimer: The game does not allow for models/textures to be imported/changed, and as such new content uses the most visually similar content in the vanilla game as its model/textures. The simulation of the new content is fully accurate however, it is only the visuals that are not.

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RSS Articles
DEVBLOG 1
An Introduction

The State of the Genre


The niche of real time tactics wargames with a strategic scale was strong during the 90's, with sims like the Harpoon series and Jane's Fleet Command being surpisingly detailed, accurate and featureful for their time.

Harpoon 3, released in 2001, became the dominant milsim for the 00's, having a few minor upgrades until around 2006. It is a solid wargame, but shows its age hugely if played today.

The 'spiritual successor' to Harpoon came in 2013, with the release of Command: Modern Air Naval Operations, an excellent game published by the same publisher as Harpoon which I own and love, but still with no realtime multiplayer, and while the interface and graphics are improved in comparison to Harpoon, it is still clunky with a UI that is far from user friendly.

Another lesser known entry to the genre however came a year earlier- Naval War: Arctic Circle (NWAC), published by Paradox Interactive. NWAC had huge issues on launch with bugs and performance, but after 6 months of constant patches these issues were fixed.

The reason for the lack of huge popularity was the lack of mission editor on launch (it was added later), the bugs/performance (now fixed), the scale being limited to the arctic, and the fact that it is set in 2030.

Vanguard Class Slava Class

Goals of the Mod


Arctic Realism intends to make NWAC a viable air/naval wargame that people will want to play- a multiplayer-capable light and easy to use alternative to CMANO.

It will do this by bringing the sim back to 2015, adding all the nations shown on the map (7 new nations), adding tons of new ships/aircraft, new features, and improving realism in all areas.

The target feature list (as of April 2015) is as follows:

  • 7 new nations
  • Many new ships
  • Many new subs
  • Many new aircraft
  • New surface to air batteries
  • Coastal anti-ship missiles
  • Electronic warfare on ships
  • Nuclear weapons (launched from land, sea, and air)
  • Reconnaissance helicopters
  • Aircraft now have individual and realistic refuel/rearm times
  • Ships and subs now have range (with nuclear staying unlimited)
  • Ships are now faster, but high speeds will lower range
  • Land based SAMs are more numerous and important
  • Coast guard ships added
  • Both campaigns fully converted
  • All default scenarios (SP & MP) fully converted

Release Timeline


I have been working on Arctic Realism since October 2014, but developing something on this scale in spare time is actually a huge endeavor. It requires hundreds of hours of research and implementation, and as such the release target for the full version is currently Q3 2015.

Before this time however I intend to release ALPHA and BETA versions, for testing, feedback, and for people to develop scenarios in time for the full release.

The ALPHA releases will start in a few months.

The first alpha will have all the new ships, subs, fixed-wing aicraft, land installations, and features for the nations included in vanilla NWAC, but will not have the 7 new nations planned for full release. These nations will be added throughout the Alpha, as well as issues being fixed and changes being made based on community feedback.

When these 7 nations are added, the mod will move to BETA. In this stage, issues and feedback will be constantly adapted until it feels in a release-ready state.

The eventual goal is to try and make NWAC popular again, but this of course will be difficult.

Ship Ranges Freedom Class in the Littorals

Current Progress


This wouldn't be an actual DEVBLOG without the current progress.

All pre-development research has been carried out, analysed, categories, and stored in an easy to process manor.

The development plan is to tackle things in the following order:

  1. Pre-Development Research
  2. Surface Ships: improve the realism of the ships including their sensors and all weapons systems onboard, add electronic warfare to ships, as well as adding all the new ships (all surface combat vessels of each nation including their coast guard), and giving ships range the same as aircraft have
  3. Submarines: improve the realism of the submarines including their sonars and torpedoes, as well as adding all the new submarines (including ballistic missile submarines)
  4. Land Installations: improve the realism massively in the land-based surface to air missiles, as well as adding land-based ballistic missiles and coastal missile defences
  5. Helicopters: improve realism of the helicopters including sensors and all weapons systems, as well as adding new helicopters
  6. Fixed Wing Aircraft: improve realism of all fixed wing aircraft including sensors and all weapons systems, as well as adding new aircraft
  7. Convert campaigns and vanilla scenarios to Arctic Realism
  8. (ALPHA Release)
  9. Add the new 7 nations and perform development actions 1 through 6 for them
  10. (BETA Release)

Throughout all of this bugs and inaccuracies will be fixed and features will be refined and adapted based on feedback.

I am currently on (2) as of early April 2015, and just need to polish up radars and sonars and add electronic warfare and countermeasures to move onto (3). It should be noted however that (3), (4) and (5) are much smaller in scope than (2) and (6) which are by far the most time consuming and difficult, so don't think that development is far behind target.

Team Openings


While I intend to work alone on research for the mod as well as development, I am looking to hopefully recruit a Marketing Manager with strong skills in graphic/web design to help improve the quality of this ModDB page, to provide high-quality professional looking graphics (titles and infographics) for the summary page and the articles, as well as hopefully to produce high-quality trailer videos.

This would be an unpaid position, but you would be officially marked as marketing manager. If anyone is interested, please private message me with examples of your previous work.

At the time of release, I would also be looking to recruit Community Support members who can help people with installation problems.

Surface Ships

Surface Ships

Feature 6 comments

An overview of the surface ships available in the mod.

Submarines

Submarines

Feature

An overview of the submarines available in the mod

Fixed Wing Aircraft

Fixed Wing Aircraft

Feature 1 comment

An overview of the fixed wing aircraft available in the mod.

Helicopters

Helicopters

Feature 3 comments

An overview of the helicopters available in the mod.

Post comment Comments  (0 - 10 of 11)
Dusty_Tier_1
Dusty_Tier_1 - - 14 comments

is this mod released here?

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AtheistDane
AtheistDane - - 52 comments

Is this mod dead?

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Guest
Guest - - 691,047 comments

This comment is currently awaiting admin approval, join now to view.

Guest
Guest - - 691,047 comments

Hey Heaney,

are you still working on this mod?

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FoxxyRidge
FoxxyRidge - - 3 comments

Looks awesome, keep up the good work!

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uguccione
uguccione - - 1 comments

Tracking!!

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Guest
Guest - - 691,047 comments

good luck man, will this be released through the steam workshop? Sel

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Heaney Creator
Heaney - - 961 comments

Unfortunately workshop for NWAC only allows for missions, not mods.

I will be releasing here, but I'll put missions on Steam workshop.

Reply Good karma+1 vote
blahdy
blahdy - - 997 comments

Awesome, tracking.

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zacury
zacury - - 308 comments

Tracking!!

Reply Good karma Bad karma+3 votes
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