Naval Ops

The Naval Ops series is a trilogy of games released for the Playstation 2 that focus primarily on ship to ship Naval Warfare. Naval Ops: Warship Gunner, the first game, is a vehicle simulation game released in 2003 for the PlayStation 2. The Second game, Naval Ops: Commander, shifts the perspective slightly to fleet-based combat. The third game, Naval Ops: Warship Gunner 2, returns to the single-ship style combat of the original.

The games are one-player simulations of naval combat, in which the player commands an individual ship, and, in Commander, a small fleet. The heart of Naval Ops is ship customization. Your ship's abilities limited to the type of ship you initially purchase, but your options can quickly expand as you acquire more money and assets.

Tropes used in Naval Ops include:
  • Alternate History Wank: Wilkia was founded by Nordic settlers after crossing America and estabilish themselves in the Orient and manage to wage the war against the world, the Freedom Forces thanks to the discovery of superweapon engines.
  • Applied Phlebotinum: The Enigmatech equipment.
  • Back From the Brink
  • Battleship Raid: Many of the bosses are so huge that they have to be killed one part at a time. And, in some cases, they take up a significant portion of the level.
    • Can be inverted by the player who with a certain branch of wave motion guns can destroy entire levels, bosses and all with no more effort then it takes to push a button (literally).
  • Beam Spam: Energy and laser based weapons abound. There's even a subtype of warship called laserships.
  • Beehive Barrier: Gravity shields have this effect when hit by shells.
  • Benevolent Warfare: It's fortunate that, when you're playing as a naval officer, every faction in the series believes that overwhelming naval superiority is the key to winning conflicts.
  • BFG: A lot of weapons qualify for this.
  • Bigger Stick: Bigger guns/missiles/torpedoes and bigger ships. Combining the two is heavily recommended.
  • Black Box: The superweapons in-game, at least in Warship Gunner 2.
  • Boring but Practical: In a game with homing lasers, plasma cannons and railguns, a deck full of plain ol' mid-sized artillery manages to strike a happy medium between range, raw damage, ammo capacity and firing rate. Of course, when you consider that a properly-equipped battleship can explode most other ships in a single broadside, the "boring" part sort of falls by the wayside.
  • Boss Rush: One of the unlockables in Warship Gunner 2.
  • Bottomless Magazines: Averted somewhat, it's just that ships tend to have lots and lots of ammunition readily available. Acquiring the Ammo Assembler in Warship Gunner 2 makes the trope true.
  • The Bridge: Every ship needs one, but only Warship Gunner 2 ever shows the inside of one outside the opening cutscene.
  • Cap: 100 parts per ship, 7 different weapons, 64.6 knots cruising speed without Enigmatech systems, and 99999 rounds of ammunition per weapon system in Warship Gunner 2.
    • The game also can't handle anything going faster than 200 knots, which might explain how slow the lasers are.
  • Carrier Battleship: A hull type called the battlecarrier is essentially a hybrid between a battleship and an aircraft carrier. The Japanese actually built two of them in real life.
  • Chainsaw Good: There is a type of ship hull that can be unlocked called the Drillship Hull which, in addition to a colossal Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann style drill bit mounted on the prow, has giant, colossal saw blades sticking out of the sides.
  • Chekhov's Gun: The oil rig that spooks Nagi early on in Warship Gunner 2 turns out to be yet another superweapon.
  • Cool Airship: There are a few.
  • Cool Boat: Can be Turned Up to Eleven in the games.
  • Cool Plane: The recurring boss Archaeopteryx is a bomber the size of a warship. You can also carry a number of Real Life Cool Planes on your carriers.
  • Crate Expectations
  • Critical Encumbrance Failure
  • Damn You, Muscle Memory!: The controls for Warship Gunner and Warship Gunner 2 are very different. Shooting, switching weapons and zooming in on your target are the most frustrating changes.
  • Deflector Shields
  • Design-It-Yourself Equipment: The trilogy's trademark HLG61 Ship Editor.
  • Disc One Nuke: On a smallish scale, you can research and build advanced destroyers fairly early on in the first two games and then chop them up for parts that can't be obtained normally until much later. Like anti-sub missiles for you battleship that can't use depth charges.
    • Naval Ops: Commander allowed you to get the Enigmatech Sturla, Good Luck Charm, and Railgun Astal very early on, provided that you didn't mind killing 999 submarines and doing mission B-10 killing the Dreadnaught over and over again. The Enigmatech Sturla gave a good boost to health, speed, rudder ability, and control, the Good Luck Charm granted you full protection from fire and water damage, and the Railgun Astal was the most powerful armament that could be picked up early on asides from chain guns.
  • Easy Logistics: Ammo crates picked up from enemy ships will refill any weapon, even ones the enemy isn't using. More generally, you never have to worry about supplies no matter how desperate your nation/resistance force's situation.
  • Eldritch Abomination: Ragnarök could be defined as one of this.
  • The Empire: The, well, Empire. Also, Virishna from the second game and Wilkia from the third.
  • Enemy-Detecting Radar: Radar range increases as you upgrade your ship. You'll need a separate sonar system to spot submarines.
  • Escort Mission: Feel like protecting a fleet against a larger and better-armed fleet with just one ship?
  • Every Bullet Is a Tracer
  • Everything Sinks: Good thing, too, otherwise you wouldn't be able to move because of all the wrecks around you.
  • Evil Is Not a Toy: Karl Weisenberg tried to take over Ragnarök. It didn't work.
  • The Federation: The Freedom Forces from the first and third game, and Nivisha from the second.
  • Flying Saucer: The Halberd series of aircraft, as well as a few enemies. Commander features the Brillodein, a superweapon UFO with battleship guns and lasers.
  • Fog of War
  • Frickin' Laser Beams: In Homing Laser and Reflecting Laser varieties, among others.
  • Gameplay and Story Segregation: The Druna Skass cut the island of Shikoku in half with its Wave Gun and it just can sink your ship as any enemy ship in the game.
  • Gatling Good: Gatling miniguns are available.
  • Going Down with the Ship: Amagi, the last time you fight him. And Tsukuba, too, if you fight him.
  • Gotta Catch Them All: Well over a thousand parts and blueprints and other things to pick up per game.
  • Guide Dang It: Some 'Treasure' drops from Warship Gunner 2 have rather arcane conditions. Others, on the other hand, are liable to be found accidentally.
  • Harder Than Hard and Easier Than Easy
  • Heads-Up Display
  • Herr Doktor: Braun, of course. She's even named after a famous real life one.
  • Hey, It's That Voice!: In Japan, we get the late Degwin Zabi, Miles Edgeworth and KOS-MOS voicing some of the cast members.
    • You may also recognize Welkin Gunther's (Dave Wittenberg) voice in English releases - "MINOR DAMAGE!"
  • Hot Scientist: Braun
  • Hot Sub-On-Sub Action
  • Instant Win Condition: Even if you have one HP left on a flaming ship that's taking on water with no engines or rudder, you'll win as long as you destroyed your target and hit the "Withdraw" button. Averted in the first game where you have to actually make it to the map edge to end the mission.
  • Kill It with Fire: Giant, ship mounted flamethrowers are one of the many, many exotic weapons you can find.
  • Justified Tutorial: The first few stages of Warship Gunner 2 are a flashback to the player character's basic training. Which he has after running for his life from maneuvers that turned deadly. Braun later runs him through commanding a submarine.
  • Lethal Joke Item: The Shark Submarine hull makes your sub look like a giant shark... and has over twice the durability and weight capacity of conventional sub hulls at the cost of two special system slots.
    • And the Duck aircraft, which are highly durable and carry impressive weapon loads.
  • Luke, I Am Your Father: Werner is Karl Weisenberg's son.
  • Macross Missile Massacre: A savvy designer can cram dozens of missile and rocket launchers onto a ship.
  • Magnetic Weapons: Railguns.
  • Med Kit: For warships no less.
  • Medium Awareness: In the special missions of Naval Ops 2: Warship Gunner.
  • Missile Lock On: Pretty fast, and an AEGIS system allows you to lock on to multiple targets
  • Mission Briefing
  • The Mole: Werner when he's your XO.
  • Mooks: The seemingly endless flotillas of warships you will inevitably sink.
    • The Elite Mooks are of course the bigger, badder battleships you will also encounter as well.
  • More Dakka: The only limit to how much firepower you can cram onto a ship is the weight limit and your imagination. And a hard limit of 100 parts per ship.
  • My Country, Right or Wrong: In Warship Gunner 2, Amagi on all paths, Tsukuba when you have another XO. Japan has been annexed by the Empire, so they have to fight you.
  • Naval Weapons: Just about everything on that list.
  • New Game+
  • No-Gear Level: One mission on Werner's path in Warship Gunner 2 has your ship start with no ammunition; you must capture an enemy supply depot to rearm. Of course, this can be averted if your vessel has the ammo assembler as an auxiliary system.
  • No Swastikas: The "Fascist Flag" of Warship Gunner 2 uses a plain black cross instead of a swastika. Also, German hulls have a plain red or white spot on the bow/stern instead of swastikas.
  • No Ontological Inertia: After you defeat Ragnarök, all superweapons cease to work.
  • Nuclear Weapons Taboo: They're referred as "High-Explosive Missiles".
  • Nuke'Em: You can arm your ships with nuclear missiles.
    • And nuclear torpedoes.
    • And nuclear sea mines.
  • Ominous Latin Chanting
  • Point Defenseless: Averted. You can shoot down enemy missiles and torpedoes, but they can shoot down yours. That said, even the best AA suite can be overwhelmed by enough aircraft and missiles/torpedoes.
  • Randomly Drops
  • Rule of Cool: Some of the "superships" are so big and massive that this is probably the only thing that they can run on.
  • Sea Mine: They come in nuclear flavors too.
  • Serial Escalation: How much bigger or more badass will the next boss be? What crazy/insane/awesome weapon will we find next? How many more enemies can they cram into a single stage? When the hell will this game end? Will I ever find all of the unlockables?
  • Short-Range Long-Range Weapon: Even the biggest guns have ranges under 10 kilometres, which is far shorter than the 20 miles (or 32 kilometres) that a 16 inch (40.6cm) gun can have in real life. Missiles tend to be similarly short ranged. Wave guns go to maybe 20 kilometres, but regular lasers have terrible range.
    • Inverted by the chainguns...they're theoretically a short-range weapon, but due to their slow bullet drop, you can make steel rain halfway across the map by air-attacking with them.
  • Silliness Switch: The Special missions of Warship Gunner 2 and the Area G missions in Commander.
  • Space Compression: Distances on maps seem far smaller than they should be. A ship cruising at 60 knots should still take several hours to circumnavigate Sicily, for example.
  • Subsystem Damage: Deck, Engine, and Rudder Damage status each have negative effects, though Deck damage only matters if you use aircraft.
    • Commander takes this further by dividing the ship into Port, Starboard, Bow, and Stern sectors. If any one sector takes too much damage, the ship sinks.
  • Sucking-In Lines: Wave Guns
  • Tech Tree
  • This Is a Drill: Drillships, the only way for the player to deal damage by ramming the enemy.
  • Timed Mission
  • Types of Naval Ships: The games are pretty serious about this. DD for destroyers, CC for cruisers, BB for battleships, CV for aircraft carriers, etc.
  • Underwater Boss Battle: One of the recurring bosses in the series is a giant submarine, which you have to force to the surface with depth charges to fight.
  • Units Not to Scale: Everything. For comparison, a small destroyer is about the size of a town, and the player can navigate around Sicily in a few minutes depending on how fast their ship is.
  • Video Game Caring Potential: Rescuing enemy sailors after their ships are sunk increases the amount of points in the end of the mission.
  • Video Game Flamethrowers Suck: Short range, low damage. They are, however, extra effective against the iceberg carrier Habbakkuk in the first game.
    • Not true actually (at least in Warship Gunner 2). Because they fire a wall of damaging flame, they can form an effective anti-missile screen. Also, the damage isn't reduced by shielding. It's just that, in order to make good use of them, you need a large ship that's covered with them. More of a case of awesome but impractical.
    • Also given a buff, seeing as how fires can set off ammunition storage in Warship Gunner 2. That doesn't sound like much - BUT IT IS.
  • Water Level: Every level.
  • Wave Motion Gun: An unlockable that can be acquired by defeating any or all of the three "final" bosses. Yes, there are three of them.
  • With Great Power Comes Great Insanity : Karl Weisenberg
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