American Objectives
- Destroy all Japanese warships
Japanese Objectives
- Destroy all American warships
A deathmatch if there ever was one, Steel Monsters is all strictly heavy fighting - that is, you won't see anything smaller than a heavy cruiser in this fray. Basically, each player gets a battleship and a heavy cruiser, and last team standing wins.
Regardless of which side you're playing, your first decision must be taken as a group - you have three options:
- Have everyone head north, over the island, to keep your firepower intact
- Have everyone head south, under the island, to keep your firepower intact
- Split up and head north and south, to catch the enemy in a pincer.
The most common strategy is to head either north or south. The pincer can work in theory, but it's tricky and divides your firepower considerably, so don't expect to see much of that.
As with all naval battles, always attempt to "cross the T" with enemy warships. This means to engage the enemy warship from the front, allowing you to bring all guns to bear on the enemy while the enemy can only fire his forward guns.
Battleships normally have a range advantage of other ships, but since this battle is pretty much all battleships anyway, you're going to find exploiting your range to be quite difficult. Additionally, unlike the computer, you cannot fire over the island. Keep these in mind while duking it out.
The map doesn't look recognizable at first, but it is in fact a clone of the Java Sea as it appears in Rendesvous at the Java Sea.
American Strategy
The Americans have generally stronger ships, and everyone's already in position to fight, so go ahead and duke it out with the Japanese warships, Pirates of the Carribbean style. There isn't much strategy to this fight, but be on the lookout for torpedoes. The Japanese heavy cruisers have a lot of them, so don't let them get in close with the battleships. Fight at long range and make sure all your repair teams are set to repair water damage.
Japanese Strategy
The two sides are evenly matched and the lines are drawn, so you have little choice but to go head-to-head with the Americans in this battle. You do have one advantage though - torpedoes. This gives you a bigger chance at closer ranges than the Americans do. Grab your heavy cruisers and send them right on top of the American battleships and torpedo the living daylights out of them to eliminate them quickly. Your battleships match up evenly with the American heavy cruisers, so don't worry too much about them.