Carrier Deck Review (Captain Potato)
Definite recommend if you like carriers, micromanagement games, working under pressure, and organising stuff. Some levels are really easy, and some will require you to play them multiple times to get them right. Plus the OST is nice, and I like the background radio chatter.
However, there is one fly in the ointment: the 'damage' mechanic. I'm not sure how it happens, but sometimes, aircraft get back to the carrier in a damaged state. If you fly them out again, they'll crash and you'll need to send a SAR Seahawk to recover the crew. The only way to fix them is to move them below-decks to the hangar for a period of 30 seconds (approximately).
This entire mechanic sounds neat, but in the heat of combat, with every single airframe mattering, it can be a real ball-ache to find out that you need an additional Super Hornet to deal with the approaching enemy ship, no worries, one of the Super Hornets are returning to the carrier, time to re-arm it and send it off, ONLY YOU DON'T, because RNG has struck at the worst possible time and your only available Super Hornet is damaged. So you have to pick between permanently losing an airframe for the rest of the mission AND sending out a SAR mission, OR not get that Super Hornet fixed and in the air in time and getting your carrier damaged.
Yeah, no. Screw that noise. I HATE this mechanic. Once I finished the game I immediately downloaded a mod that removes this mechanic and the gameplay was SO much smoother. You can get it for free on Nexusmods.
Lastly, for some reason, you can only have three active missions at a time. So if you have two refueling missions, good luck getting all the ACTUAL combat sorties in.
Other than THAT nonsense, this game is great. 7/10.