Rule the Waves 3 News

Hello Admirals, the first Ship Design Contest is over and we have our winners. Gabino, Hououtenki, EwaldvonKleist, Dyna, Student Wang, and The Black Baron's designs were chosen as the judges favourites. We had a grand total of 66 different people submit designs for our two categories, which meant well over a hundred ships were in the running for the six winner slots.

All the vouchers have been sent so if you haven't gotten yours, be sure to ping the contest email you submitted your design to at [email protected]


If you missed the stream and the winning designs we have it archived below.

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Given the massive number of submissions the contest received, we are definitely doing another one. While it's still far too early to set any exact dates, keep an eye out for announcements in the new year for another ship design contest. If you missed the contest or still haven't picked up Rule the Waves 3, it is currently having a sale on Steam with 25% off.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2008100/Rule_the_Waves_3/

We also have news on a Rule the Waves 3 update in the works. The Admirals Update has an improved interface and sequence for battle generation.

The player will get a more detailed assessment of enemy forces and a possibility of rearranging his own force before deciding to accept or decline battle. There will also be a role for admirals as area commanders. Before battle, the commanding admiral will do a command check to determine the extent to which the force can be modified. On a very good roll, he may even be able to add a ship. Note that the enemy gets a vote too. There is a corresponding check to see if the enemy can add a ship to his force.

Also included in this update are numerous bugfixes and UI improvements.

The update is currently in public beta and can be opted into either via steam or the forums. The forum post also includes a detailed log of all features currently in the beta.

This update will be fully released late November.

Hello everyone, we are happy to announce that we got a ton of great submissions from the community. Thank you everyone that chose to participate in this event!

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 this first ship design contest.

Our livetsream where we announce the results of the contest will be Monday, October 23rd, at 7PM CEST/ 1PM EDT hosted on the Slitherine twitch channel.

After the results have been announced we will get to work sending off those Matrix Store vouchers to those who participated and to the contest winners.

Thanks for participating and I hope to see many of you in chat on Monday!

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

We are launching our very first ship design contest for Rule the Waves 3!

A full list of the rules and submission instructions are available at https://www.matrixgames.com/news/rule-the-waves-3-ship-design-contest-battleships-and-dreadnoughts




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.

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.

BrotherMunro: If you want to find a Youtuber enthusiastic about games with ships and naval combat, BrotherMunro is your man. If it's about sailing the seas or boosting from orbit, he has probably played it.

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 October 16th, so get those ships in!

We are proud to announce our new Home of Wargamers live event, which will take place on September 12th at 5 pm UK time.

Join us on our Twitch channel to know more about our biggest franchises. You can set a reminder here.

We will talk about a lot of important updates for some of our Matrix Games best sellers and coming soon games, such as:

• Modern Naval Warfare
  
• Nuclear War Simulator
  
• Command Modern Operations
  
• Flashpoint Campaigns
  
• Rule the Waves 3
  
• Strategic Command
  
• Combat Mission
  
• Valor & Victory
  

Hello everyone,

We are happy to announce another update for Rule the Waves 3. Along with multiple bug fixes and tweaks to the campaign and battle generator, a new feature added with this update increases the number of large fleet battles you will have in a campaign. You can toggle this option on or off with the in-game preferences menu.

What’s New in Version 1.00.19

Bug Fixes
- Fixed a minor bug that led to some hits being without hit location explanation.
- All nations will now get numbered DD names if names run out.
- Fixed a bug that could delay gun research if playing with bigger fleet sizes.
- Fixed a bug with triple turrets in A or Y positions on high speed ships connected with the wrong tech.
- Fixed a bug with the ammo for secondary and tertiary guns in combat not corresponding to the designed amount.
- Fixed a bug where good quality heavy guns could be developed before longer gun barrels tech was researched.
- Magazine explosion sound will now not play if no sound is selected.

New Game Options
- Added option for more frequent large battles and fleet battles in the in-game preferences.

Battle Generation
- Made some adjustments in battle generation to reduce the risk of divisions assigned to support carriers being used for other duties.
- Adjusted pre battle placement to increase variability and give opportunity for more pre-battle maneuvering, especially in the missile age. Note, this might increase the number of no-contact battles.
- Fixed a bug with the battle generator ignoring the designated fleet flag division if the flagship was a B.
- Tweaked the battle generator to adhere more closely to division organisation in some cases.

Battle Resolution
- Tactical AI: Made cruisers and BC on AI control more careful about staying in range of enemy battleships.
- Fixed a bug with formation line abreast not really working. Note, as a consequence of this, ships in line abreast formation can now collide with friendly ships in the same division, to discourage unrealistic wild turning maneuvers while in line abreast.
- Ships maneuvering to avoid air attack will now tend to turn away from nearby enemy ships.
- Reduced the chance of friendly bombing of ships close to the originating carrier.

Ship Design
- Raised maximum ROF for autoloaded light guns.
- Allowed DD with Unit machinery to be rebuilt to KE.
- Fixed a bug with battlecruiser building allowed too early (now requires four levels of ship design research).
- Corvette AI ship templates updated.
- DD ship type will be correctly classed when DD up to 3800 tons is researched early.
- Autodesigned ships will not have incresed elevation if not researched.
- Made sure the autodesigner does not include inclined belt if not developed.
- Made sure the autodesigner does not include mines on AMC if not developed.
- Ship design: Fixed some quirks when entering numbers with the keyboard when editing rest angles for guns.
- Ship design: Funnel positions are now rescaled when ship displacement is changed.
- Ship design: When setting rest angle for tertiary mounts, opposite mount, if any, will automatically get corresponding rest angle.
- Ship design: Removed lingering red circles after editing secondary and tertiary gun positions.
- Improved AI design templates for early pre-dreadnoughts.
- Tweaked the AI ship designer so it will not mangle lozenge design old battleships.

Officers
- Made sure officers can never be so stupid that they get invalid ability ratings.

Divisions
- Made sure the division editor display of subordinate divisions is updated after dissolving a division.

Balance Changes
- Increased the treaty build limit by 20%.
- Adjusted some aspects of research when playing at less than 100% research speed.
- Changed the starting dock size for USA in 1890 to 10000 tons.
- Adjusted gun research on less than 100% research speed (now easier to develop guns).