Rule the Waves 3 News

Hello RTW3 fans.

Beta testing on the next update is completed, and we are now live with v01.00.37. This update has several big changes that will improve gameplay and functionality. The first of these is a change of save file locations. Specifics are listed in the changelog below but the key points are that this new save system is considerably smaller and streamlined, fixing most of the issues previously found with syncing cloud saves. Upon loading an old campaign the old save file will be converted to this new format, which may take some time and lead to some errors with any old campaigns you are loading. Going forward all new save games will automatically use this new, streamlined save format.

Besides a better save file system, we have also made some significant gameplay changes at the strategic layer. Victory Point losses for declining battles distant from your home port have been greatly reduced. Home ports with at least 200 basing capacity will now also be able to rebuild ships. You can also now occasionally get the option to sell a ship to another nation when you select it for scrapping. In addition to all these changes there have also been...

Improvements to the User Interface
The creation of an import/export ship system so you can share your designs
Improvements to battle generation, with area commanders now influencing the chance of unexpected battles

With the ability to share ship files, this opens up a whole new level of collaborative ship designing. We look forward to seeing all the warships the community will be able to come up with.

The full changelog is posted below, happy hunting Admirals.

v01.00.37
Save Games
Games are now saved to the directory "C:\USER\USERNAME\Documents\My Games\Rule the Waves 3". Old saves are loaded from the old save directory and saved to the new save directory.
Refurbished the saving of design files. All designs for each nation is now saved in one file. A saved game will now consist of fewer files, and the total save game size is reduced considerably. This should mitigate problems with saving to Steam cloud. It will also mitigate problems with some ship names on some (mainly Asian) language operating systems.
Important Note: The first time an old save game is opened, loading will take considerably longer as old style design files are converted. Also note that there might be errors from inconsistencies in existing saved games. There are functions for the player to manually rectify these during the save conversion.

Strategic Level
Penalty points for declining battle is now reduced for battles far from friendly bases.
Adjusted some inconsistencies in the actions of allied nations in a multi nation war.
There is now a chance that scrapped ships can be sold to small nations (less than average economy), including to the player if the player is playing a small nation.
Adjusted submarine build times.
Ships being rebuilt will now be automatically moved to the closest home area with a rebuild yard.
There will be rebuild yards in home possessions with at least 200 base capacity. (That means US West Coast and Russian Far East will not have any initially on some starting dates, but by expanding base capacity, they will get the capability).
Increased the maximum number of ships that can be built at one time in the build ships screen to 25.
Nations at war with you will now not ask to buy a license for your aircraft.
Increased the cost of missile systems and missile maintenance.

Battle Generation
Removed some occasional quirks in force selection in battle generator, for example having a BB subordinated to a CL flagship.
Allied forces can now appear as support force.
Added ship speed and displacement to ship list in battle preview screen.
Background color now changed in battle preview screen.

Controls and Preferences
Added an option to convert some characters in German ship and officer names, for example ö becomes oe, ü becomes ue etc. This is for the benefit of users with Asian language OS which can have problems with these characters.
Added an option to see submarine sinkings in aggregate only. (Useful if you have many submarines and want to bring down the number of after turn messages)
The space key will now only pause the game. This is to prevent inadvertently restarting time when you want to pause.
The alt key will run the game one minute (or longer if auto play is switched on).

Ship Design
Added an export/import function for ship designs. The export function for ship designs is located on the graphics tab in the ship design screen. It will let you export any ship design as a file. The design can then be shared with other players or reused in a later game. Exported ship designs are located in the folder "My Games\Rule the Waves 3\Save\Ship Designs".
Moved the auto carrier conversion button to the box for flight installations.
Added a function to auto change carrier graphics to angled flight deck.
Curbed the tendency of the AI designer to overuse triple turrets on ships.
Fixed a problem with rebuilding ships transferred from other nations.
Fixed a problem with multiple classes being generated when fire control is upgraded for ships under construction.
Further adjustments to secondary gun placement on cruisers and destroyers.
Improved the autodesigner to avoid illegal triple turrets in A or Y position.
The upgrade guns button will now be available when opening an existing design that has worse gun quality than available.
Adjusted the automatic secondary gun placement on cruisers to avoid having them placed outside the hull. (It is better but not perfect)
Using auto design in the design screen will now force a different template.
Improved the British name list to produce more appropriate ship names from the 1920s.
Prevented fitting V turret on ships that couldn't have X turret.
Fixed a bug with the gun quality of the rebuilding nation not being taken into account for gun upgrades.
Fixed a bug with the autodesigner sometimes building ship with AON armor when it isn't researched.
Fixed a bug with ammunition weight calculation in the 80-85 rounds per gun interval.
Fixed a bug where a CA could have protected cruiser armour configuration.

Map Changes
Updated the Chinese coastline with shallow water.

Battle Resolution
Adjusted HE penetration and splinter damage on armored areas.
Some adjustments to the tactical AI.
Some adjustments to mission data.
Prevented avoiding battles by closing the battle preview screen.
Field batteries will now only have HE ammo.
Radar blind fire range reduced to 80% of radar sighting range.
Gyro Stabilizer will now reduce the gunnery penalty for sea state.
Improved go to base behaviour for divisions following the force flagship into friendly port.
Improved AI convoy defence decisions.
Ammunition expenditure is now spread more evenly across turrets. (Previously, A and Y turret tended to use somewhat more ammo than X and B).
Reduced SAM hit rates (they were a little too good).

Aircraft
One floatplane squadron of up to 12 aircraft may now be based at any airbase without counting against capacity. (This is to increase the utility of floatplanes at land bases in the early game).
Before 1930, a floatplane scout with bomb + bomb priority will have torpedo capability and can be used as strike aircraft from AV without catapults.
Reduced the rate of aircraft production and added a column for production in the aircraft types screen. (The intention is that heavy aircraft losses should hurt more).

Officers
Area commander ability now influences the chance of unexpected battles.
On auto assign of officers, rear admirals might now be auto-promoted to admirals to fill an empty slot, just like the case with empty division or ship commands.
It is now possible to manually promote the senior officer of a rank for free (no prestige cost), You can only do this once per turn.
The ROF enthusiast will now give -10% accuracy in addition to the +10% ROF (or 20% at shorter ranges).
Adjusted officer promotions and retirements to reduce the risk that a nation should have too few admirals available.
Fixed a bug with admirals not being removed from an area command when they were assigned to another.

AI
The AI will now be better at replacing floatplanes on ships with helicopters and helipad.

User Interface
Research breakthroughs are now also shown in the turn message summary.
Made sure the commander text is visible in the ship status screen.
Obsolete ships are now clearly marked as so in ship status screen.
Officer list now remembers sorting and filter options.
On the missile control panel, renamed the Fire Salvo button to Manual fire to better describe what it does.
Added a button to exit the battle from the results screen and a button to view the map.
Added a button to go back to the results screen from the map after battle.

Doctrines
Added doctrine choices for AP shell design.

Bug Fixes
Fixed a bug that prevented AI nations from taking territory from each other in AI wars.
Fixed a bug in Fleet Exercise setup where a ship removed from a division would lead to all the ships in the division being duplicated in the available ships list.
Fixed some typos in tooltips.
Fixed the height of the ship status window.
Fixed problems with some corrupted save files.
Fixed a bug with divisions with Land CAP were not saved.
Fixed some misspellings in Spanish officer ranks.
Fixed a bug with the AI rebuilding ships occasionally producing error messages.
Fixed a bug where having no fire control used more crew than intended.
Fixed a bug with occasional miscount of free shipyard capacity to build ships.
Fixed a bug with helicopters on recon sometimes going in the wrong direction.
Fixed a bug with showing ship details from the build screen.
Fixed a bug in scenario info that led to France having no convoy in one of the convoy defense missions.
Fixed a bug with background sound not changing on weather change.
Fixed a bug with magazine explosion sound playing even if sound options were set to No sound (I guess this one could have been somewhat jarring if you expected silence).
Fixed a bug where in some cases a CL with 4 in B armor was classed as a CA.
Fixed a bug where submarines could engage in gunnery duels with enemy ships in another area.
Fixed a bug with ships not having missile or torpedo reloads in battles.
Fixed a bug that could make the choice of scout force flag division ineffective in cruiser battles and other battles smaller than fleet.
Fixed a bug that could lead to an error message when a peace breaks out.
Fixed a bug with numbers of missiles not being included in the short ship description.
Fixed a bug with getting the correct name of the nation whose aircraft sinks a sub.
Fixed a bug with the number of reloads for missile launchers.

Other
Miscellaneous minor improvements

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

We have just had our second ship design contest, and we had some really top notch designs. While not everyone could be a winner we are really encouraged by how strong the community response is every time we run one of these. Check out the full article on the Matrix Site.

The winners submission are posted below for your perusing.

DasTactic's Picks

Light Cruiser
Heavy Cruiser
Honorable Mention
Liam's Picks
Light Cruiser
Heavy Cruiser
Honorable Mention
Tortuga's Picks
Light Cruiser
Heavy Cruiser
Honorable Mention

As mentioned at the start of the stream, we are also happy to announce that an update is in the works for RTW3. Many of you will already be aware of the public beta available on the forums and Steam. We are confident that this beta will be pushed as a full update by the end of February. With updates to the ship saving system and the strategic layer, it's going to be another great addition to RTW3.

With the launch of Dreadnought and Invincible the race for naval supremacy intensified. Ships ballooned in size, cost, speed, and armament. From 1906-1914 the navies of the world built a combined 63 Dreadnought Battleships in a naval arms race that helped bring about the First World War. Submarines made their debut as a practical weapon of war, and destroyers grew in size and displacement with multiple torpedo launchers. After the war the cost of these fleets was so ruinous a new innovation in international diplomacy was adopted to curb spending, the Washington Naval Treaty.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Special thanks to Drachinifel for lending his voice to this project.

You can expect Episode 3 out in March.

*The start time of the winners livestream has been delayed a half hour and is now 12:30 PM EST

Hello everyone, we are happy to announce that we got a ton of great submissions from the community, just like with the first contest it was a very strong showing.

Submissions are now closed and all of the designs have been forwarded to the judges. They are now getting to work going through your ships to pick out their favorites and choose our six winners for our second design contest.

Our livetsream where we announce the results of the contest will be Thursday, February 22nd, at 6PM CEST/12:00 PM EST hosted on the Slitherine twitch channel.

Thanks for participating and I hope to see many of you in chat next Thursday!

Hello Admirals, Commodores, Captains, and every other kind of Master and Commander.

We are launching the second ship design contest for Rule the Waves 3.

Every person entering the contest and making a valid submission will receive a Matrix store voucher worth 15 USD. The contests winners will also receive a voucher worth 30 dollars. For those of you who were in the previous contest, we have made some minor revisions to the rules.

Contest Rules: Submit a picture of your ship with both its guns page and additional armaments page.




In addition to the images, give us a very short story why the ship is designed the way it is or it's battle history. This can be humorous, knowledgeable, or simply an entertaining yarn about your ship. We are not imposing a character limit this time but please keep it brief for the sake of our judges. You may submit in both categories but you can only be picked as a winner in one of them. Variant technology submissions are also acceptable.

Please only submit a ship designed in an unmodded version of the game.
Category 1 - Light Cruisers, any period and any configuration. If it is a legal design and says CL it will be sent to the judges for consideration. This is a very broad category and we are excited to see ship designs run the gamut from the Town-Class to the Bremen. Protected Cruisers do count as CL, and are accepted designs.

Category 2 - Heavy Cruisers, any period and any configuration. Same rules as the Light Cruisers, if it says CA and is a legal design, we will accept it for judging.

Players should submit their designs to [email protected]
Now for our community judges, we are proud to announce they are:

DasTactic: If you ever needed a tutorial on how to play a Matrix game, DasTactic has probably done a video on it. From Distant Worlds to Shadow Empire Das's videos are a familiar sight in our wargaming community. This is Das's second round as a judge.

Drachinifel: Creator of the best naval guides out there. If you ever had even the slightest interest in a topic about warships, Drachinifel has you covered. From triple expansion boilers to the war galleys of antiquity, he has made a video on it. This is also Drach's second round as a judge.

Tortuga: Probably one of the best regular RTW3 Youtubers, Tortuga currently has a marathon 1890's Germany playthrough that is 55 episodes deep and growing. This is his first time as a judge.

Scores and winners are up to the judges, we aren't putting in any hard quantitative rules regarding what a ship is graded on, so expect some subjectivity. With that being said we have some very clever and knowledgable judges who will be looking for solid design work.

With a judge selecting a winner for each category, we will have six victorious designs. The winners will have their ships and stories broadcast when we announce the contest results with the judges on our livestream! The date and time of this stream will be announced when submissions close.

Submissions close February 12th, good luck and happy designing.