Naval 1945 Guide: Basic controls every player needs

Controls are mostly the same across all ship types, with a few extras depending on what you are sailing. The developers themselves say the in-game manual is essential reading — open it before you do anything else.

1. Move and steer W moves the throttle forward, S slows or reverses, and A/D turn left and right. You can only turn while moving forward or backward.
2. Fire your guns left-click once to fire a single turret, hold left-click to fire each turret in sequence, or double-click to fire everything at once. Press 1 for High Explosive shells and 2 for Armor Piercing.
3. Torpedoes press 3 to select them, then left-click to fire. A red reticle means they are still reloading, yellow means the angle is wrong, and green means ready. Press 3 again to adjust the spread.
4. Repair and damage control press T to repair, which drops your speed to one quarter of your top speed and forces submarines to surface. Press U for damage control, which instantly stops fires, flooding, and rudder damage.
5. Submarines only press R to surface and F to dive.
6. Destroyers and destroyer escorts press Y to deploy a smoke screen, X to drop depth charges, and 4 to use ASW weapons such as Hedgehog or Squid launchers.

Each nation has a tech tree running from Rank I to Rank X. To move forward you need to hit a credit and experience threshold on your current ship. Premium ships have a separate path that also requires Gold.

1. Check the requirement look at the next ship in the tree to see how much XP you still need on your current ship and how many credits you must have in total.
2. Save your credits unlocking a high-tier ship can cost millions of credits. The KM Bismarck, for example, requires 2,360,000 credits and 1,545,600 XP earned on the KM Gneisenau.
3. Premium ships need Gold some ships sit outside the free tech tree path. The KM U-218, for instance, costs 600 Gold on top of requiring you to already own the KM U-96.

Carrier play is the most different from anything else in the game. You have four squadron types: fighters (anti-aircraft only), multirole fighters (also capable of dive-bombing, available on US carriers from USS Ranger onward), dive bombers (best against large slow ships), and torpedo bombers. Land squadrons back on the carrier to repair and rearm them — a destroyed squadron takes longer to recover than one that lands intact.

1. Switch to top-down view press V to enter the map view. Hold right mouse button to pan the camera, and press Left Ctrl if your cursor is locked to the center.
2. Select a squadron press 4 through 0 depending on how many squadrons your carrier carries.
3. Launch press J. There is a ten-second cooldown between each launch.
4. Move press M then left-click the destination. Hold Space while setting waypoints to create a route around heavy anti-air ships.
5. Attack press K then left-click a target location, or hover over a ship until the cursor turns orange and then click to enable automatic tracking.
6. Land press L to send the squadron back to the carrier. Dive and torpedo bombers return automatically after dropping their payload.