Are there any good tutorials out there?

[antmf]

Just seen this games and am very interested. Watched a few youtube videos and man am I lost. Any recommendations on how to learn this game?

[Gerack]

The game does seem daunting at first, specially because of the excel spreadsheet UI. It is simpler than it looks, though. I recommend starting with the USA, arguably the easiest nation. You start small but your economy build up and end up becoming the strongest nation. Pick small fleet size, and once in game, click through every button to see what it does. In 20 minutes, you'll know about 80% of everything you need to know. Despite it's rough look, the UI does a good job at displaying everything you need to know.
Ship design might seem incredibly complicated, and at first, it is. Use the "autogenerate" button and click it multiple times until you get a design you like. Adjust it just a bit if you need to and, at least at the start, don't touch it too much. By the end of your first playthrough you'll be designing entire ships from scratch without need of help. Have the manual at hand, though: at the end there's an appendix with the characteristics for each class of ship. That comes in handy.

Now, THIS IS IMPORTANT: once in game, go to preferences and change difficulty to "admiral mode". This means in battles you'll only control your capital ships, which means less micromanagement on your part.

Ok, battles. You're greeted with another strange UI. Chances are your first ballet will be an unimportant engagement between cruisers or something like that, so it's the ideal moment to experiment and familiarize yourself with the game. Go through the buttons and see what each one of them does. Some let you save and exit, toggle circles around your ship (range of sight, of main guns, fuel range... etc), some let you change the speed. On the left you have a list with your battle order, you can also see a log of last turn events and your mission objectives. In the lower left corner, you can set the speed and course for the division you're controlling.
Now, to the map. There are ships. And there are ships with flags. The ships with flags are the division leaders. You give orders to divisions (which consist of one or more ships). Click on a flag to give orders. Now, flags can be square, if you have direct command of a division (you can more it around, make it do stuff) or triangular, if you don't have direct command (you can still give orders, but the AI will handle them).
When you select a division with a square flag, you can alter it's speed (again, bottom left corner) and set its course. You can do it by clicking the buttons next to the speed meter or by Shift + click on the map. You can also Crtl + click, which will make the turn counter advance until your ships reach the designated point (or something else happens that stops time).
When you select a division with a triangular flag (no direct command) a window pops up. There you can set the lead formation (the lead group that you want this division to follow), the role (how you want it to behave) and the formation (how the ships should arrange themselves). This is all explained in the SAI manual that comes in pdf format with the game. However,at the start of each battle you'll be able to take a look at how your divisions are arranged and what orders each one has. Looking at this is the easiest, quickest way to understand the nuance of every option.

I think that should be more than enough info to be able to comfortably face your first play-through. You learn by playing, and it's surprising how quickly you can learn this game. I'll leave you with a final tips: You can't exist battles without saving, but you can open the task manager to close the game! Torpedoes can be a real b*tch to new players.

[dizzy]

www.youtube.com/user/sexyneckbeard/videos

[snwh]

The way I learned was watching lets plays. TortugaPower has some rather decent ones. There are also a few for rtw1 that could be very informative about the early game

[tortugapower]

I'll make a tutorial series eventually, but my time is occupied by playing the game myself right now!