Planned Release Date: Q1 2027

About This Game

In the Pacific of 1942, the fleet that finds the enemy first wins. Flight Deck: Pacific 1942 is a real-time naval strategy game: command the carriers, battleships, cruisers and destroyers of the US Navy or the Imperial Japanese Navy, each modelled on the real ship as she sailed in 1942, from the carrier duels of Coral Sea and Midway to the night actions off Guadalcanal.

COMMAND THE CARRIER WAR

• Find them first: send out scout planes, cruiser floatplanes and PBY flying boats, read the contact reports and track last known positions through the fog of war. Strike too early and your squadrons find empty ocean. Strike too late and their bombers are already overhead.
  
• Run the flight deck: bring squadrons up from the hangar, arm them with bombs or torpedoes, launch them and recover them before their fuel runs out. Spare aircraft in the hangar rebuild squadrons that come home shot up.
  
• Fly the attack yourself: plot waypoints around enemy flak, then choose the aim point and approach angle of each attack. Line dive bombers up along a ship's length, or drop a comb of torpedoes ahead of a turning carrier. Or leave it to your pilots and command the fleet.
  
• Remember Midway: get caught with a deck full of armed, fueled planes and a single bomb can turn your carrier into a pyre.

BROADSIDES AND LONG LANCES

• Ballistic gunnery: shells fly, straddle and walk onto their targets. Choose AP or HE or leave the call to your captains, and angle your hull to shrug off enemy fire.
  
• Armor that matters: every hit is worked out against belt or deck armor at its angle of impact. Expect citadel hits, overpenetrations, knocked-out turrets, jammed rudders and crippled engines.
  
• See without being seen: every ship has its own detection range. Speed, fires and gunfire give you away, destroyers hide behind smoke, and radar sees through it.
  
• Torpedoes: destroyers and cruisers fire spreads of torpedoes, and captains who spot the tracks in time turn to comb them.
  
• Fight to stay afloat: fires, flooding, damage control, repair parties and magazine detonations decide whether a damaged ship limps home or goes down.

FIGHT IN THE DARK

• Whoever fires first is seen first: at night a darkened ship is seen at half the range, but muzzle flashes give the shooter away and a burning ship becomes a torch on the sea.
  
• Light is a weapon: fire star shells beyond the enemy to silhouette them, sweep the sea with searchlights, and send floatplanes to drop flares over the enemy line. A searchlight finds the enemy, and makes you everyone's target.
  
• Eyes against radar: Japanese lookouts with big binoculars see further in the dark, while American radar sees as far by night as by day.
  
• No flying after dark: carriers cannot launch at night. Only floatplanes and flying boats take off, and the surface fleets decide the night.

SIX BATTLES OF 1942

• Coral Sea, Midway, Savo Island, the Eastern Solomons, Santa Cruz and the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal: play every battle from either side, with the historical fleets.
  
• Every battle has its own objectives: push the invasion convoy through the Jomard Passage, knock out the airfield on Midway, sink the transports off Savo before dawn, keep a carrier afloat at Santa Cruz, or stop Kirishima from shelling Henderson Field.
  
• Asymmetric, as it was: the forces are never evened out. Balance comes from objectives, time limits, starting positions and intelligence, so the weaker side has to fight better than its admiral did.
  
• Graded against history: every result is graded from marginal to decisive victory, scored objective by objective and set beside the historical verdict.
  
• Briefed like an operation: a narrated briefing on the theater chart sets the scene, then the battle opens with a cinematic pass along your flagship while the operation's particulars type out.

THE SHIPYARD

• Tonnage is the limit: every hull has a displacement limit. Spend it on guns, armor, engines, torpedo protection, radar and fire control, and live with the trade-offs: a heavy belt costs speed, and guns up high cost stability.
  
• Any gun that fits: every mount takes any turret under its weight limit. Mix calibers, put dual-purpose 5-inch turrets on a battleship, double a cruiser's torpedo tubes or leave a mount empty, within the technology of 1942 to 1945.
  
• See inside your ship: X-ray holograms show boilers, turbines and turning screws, magazines, armor plate and radar sweeps, shaped by your numbers. New turrets rise onto the deck as you fit them.
  
• Build the air group: carriers have squadron slots for any carrier aircraft of their navy, as many as the hangar holds, with the rest carried as spare aircraft.
  
• Take them to sea: commission your designs in custom battles and multiplayer, refit the ships of your fleet for the historical battles, or start from historical loadouts and one-click auto design.

BUILD AND SHARE

• Map editor: build your own battle on the real 3D sea. Place islands, fleets with orders and routes, airfields, objectives and withdrawal zones, then set the time of day, the time limit and the briefing. Test play it with one click and undo anything.
  
• A computer admiral for any map: it fills in sensible orders, steers around your coastlines and searches the sea for the enemy.
  
• Steam Workshop: publish your maps and ship designs, subscribe to other players' creations and find them in your map list and shipyard.
  
• Share codes: copy any design as a short text code and paste it into a chat.
  
• Play it everywhere: custom maps work in single player, as the waters for custom battles and in multiplayer rooms, where players who do not have the map receive it automatically.

TWO NAVIES, ONLINE

• Two navies, two doctrines: command the US Navy with radar, heavy anti-aircraft fire and fighter-heavy air groups, or the Imperial Japanese Navy with the Long Lance torpedo, sharp-eyed night lookouts, fast Zero fighters and deadly dive bombers.
  
• Online PvP: from 1v1 to 4v4 in historical battles, custom battles and custom maps, with every admiral commanding their own ships.
  
• Co-op: 1 to 4 players against the computer on easy, normal or hard.
  
• Steam lobbies: public, friends-only or private rooms, quick join and invites, map pings, quick radio messages and chat. Dropped players can rejoin, and co-op battles carry on if the host leaves.
  
• Replays: battles are recorded as replays. Watch them again at up to 16× speed, through one side's eyes or with full vision.

ALSO ON BOARD

• Training battle: a narrated ten-step exercise off Hawaii teaches the camera, gunnery, damage control, scouting, air strikes, fighter cover and recovery.
  
• Custom battles: pick the waters, a tonnage budget, the technology year and the hour from dawn to night, and fight a computer fleet designed to the same budget.
  
• Your pace: pause, up to 4× time compression and saves at any moment in single-player battles, with quick save and autosave.
  
• Steam Achievements and Steam Cloud: 38 achievements, and your settings, progress, ship designs and saves follow you between PCs.
  
• Your language, your keys: the full interface in English, Korean, Japanese and Simplified Chinese, English radio voices and narration, rebindable keys and graphics presets.