<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->You are properly right for the original game in SP-RPG-Mode, evil, but mayby mods will change this and MP is a totally different story.
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Have you actually tried to play AOP in MP mode? How can you say it's a different story, it's even more hopeless in terms of tactics applied than SP mode. They have a salvo rate there of roughly 1 broadside every 15 seconds, or so, and you have to manually aim and fire all the time. How much room that leaves for any maneuvering (commanding a squadron, forming battle orders etc?) No modding in the world can help this, you'll probably have to rewright the engine to make something resembling a naval battle out of it.
All you people coming from the AOS community, hoping for the same kind of online experience in AOP -- forget it! Here, let me enlighten you a little.
In AOP MP mode you have:
no raking, so crossing the "T" on opponent is useless and sometimes even harmful, since it gets harder to hit a target with a smaller profile ant that's the only thing you really get when you cross the T on someone in AOP.
no difference between wearing and tackling, in fact you barely notice you're tackling - it's that fast and easy. So what's the point of having the weather gauge if it gives you nothing? Try to outcircle the enemy, or cross the T on him -- he'll tackle in 10 sec and laugh at you.
no proper interface, all you get is a freaking radar-like device with four points on it. FOUR FREAKING POINTS! Compare that with 16 in AOS and 32 they used in real life. So how do you command your squadron again? Assuming you have time to do it (don't forget - you have to aim and fire constantly, or you'll reduce your squadron firepower)
no free camera, no preset cameras. All you see is a 3-rd and 1-st person views of your own ship. No overall view, no close-ups on the enemy from the 3-rd person camera, no visual representation of ships names, players, damage level and so on.
no proper chat window, all you get is a fading out chatstring, which has to be turned on every time you're going to type something. Then it fades out. Hey, who needs those battleplans anyway, right? You also don't get things like battle-log, statistics and replays, ofcourse.
So do you get the picture? Oh, and btw -- no editor, no user-made scenarios.
Afterall I think you are right - it's a totally different story. From AOS that is.