Rule the Waves, or: Neil Simulator

[Syt]

A game for Neil, I suppose (where is he, anyways?):

Official page: http://yhst-12000246778232.stores.yahoo.net/ruwaddo.html

Game Details:

- Become the 'Grand Admiral' of any one of ten different nations: Great Britain, Germany, USA, France, Russia, Japan, Italy, Austria-Hungary, Spain, or even a hypothetical 20th century 'Confederate States of America'!

- Manage and build your fleet: You have a naval budget and limited resources based upon historic aspects of the nation you choose. The design and development of the fleet is then in your hands. Do you want to build a powerful battlefleet or a cruiser force for a 'Guerre de course'? Or maybe your nation is better off with a coast defence force with coastal battleships and plentiful torpedo boats?

- Design your ships in a detailed ship designer where you select armour, guns, torpedoes, speed and other characteristics of your ships, limited by realistic design constraints and your current technology.

- Research and develop more advanced naval technology in all of its technically accurate detail. As you gain new technology, you can build larger and more advanced ships. You will start with a fleet of predreadnoughts and armoured cruisers, and end up building superdreadnoughts and battlecruisers. You can refit and upgrade your ships, or scrap them as they become obsolete.

- Respond to crises and demands from your potential adversaries, the interfering Navy Minister or the overenthusiastic Head of Government.

- A dynamic world-wide map shows you potential threat areas, your foreign stations, and more. Manage the naval defense of your nation's colonies and dependencies.

- War! If you go to war then you will play out the naval battles using the detailed and well proven SAI system.

- Will you end up as the most successful Admiral ever, or will the ruinous expenses of a luxury fleet drive your nation to defeat and revolution? Your nation's naval destiny is in your hands!

Costs $34.99




Review: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/07/17/the-flare-path-rule-the-waves/

It looks like arse, but combining naval combat with designing your own dreadnoughts, and politicking around with other great powers .... ?

Excerpt from review:

[...]

Without long-winded preambles and far-reaching consequences Steam and Iron's skirmishes were 'merely' plausible and diverting. Embedded within RTW's colourful 1900-1925 campaigns, battles shine bright as star shells. Realising that the years of political manoeuvres and fleet purchasing and policy decisions that preceded engagements like Jutland, and Tsushima, were every bit as interesting as the engagements themselves, clever Wallin has built RTW around a Paradox-style shape-your-own-destiny core. At the start of every campaign player-Sea Lords are asked to choose one of seven nations (Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Austria-Hungary, Russia, US and Japan) each of which comes with its own historically-based legacy fleet, navy budget, governmental style, research speciality and national trait. The 300 turns that come next follow no script. It's up to you to expand and modernise your navy as you see fit, and – largely through multiple-choice events decisions – to help your governmental employers choose friends and enemies and trigger wars and avert them.

'Prestige', the primary player goal, is deliciously double-edged. The reward for military victories and hawkish political actions, it's the resource that keeps you in your post so can't be ignored for long. Spend too long schmoozing at peace summits and turning a blind eye to spying and provocative acts, and your critics will multiply. There comes a time when foreign faces must be slapped and friendly fleets dispatched. The trick, of course, is fighting the wars you want to fight at the times you want to fight them. RTW's gloriously tangled events system and ever-present nautical arms race means that state of perfect preparedness is invariably a few months/years away when the balloon goes up. Blue blistering barnacles! In another six months, Furious, Livid, and Apoplectic, my new high-speed armoured cruisers, would have been ready. The submarines I lost in that unwise spat with the ASW-adept Americans would have been replaced...

Looking back on my first week with RTW, I realise I've enjoyed the intervals between conflicts just as much as the conflicts themselves. It's rare a turn passes without something thought-provoking occurring. Often another nation will appear at your door hawking a blueprint. Frequently, news or intel arriving from foreign parts will leave you questioning a current build direction. And then there are those wonderfully varied political choices that surface multiple times a year. The one below has just changed the course of my latest Italian campaign. Faced with three options, all of which threatened to increase international tension levels to some extent (tooltips describe the precise effects) I ultimately decided that the risks of alienating friends via choice (b) were too great, and that my fragile reputation couldn't take the small prestige hit of choice (a). In the end an ultimatum was sent to Vienna, and, a few months ahead of schedule, I was bustled into a conflict with one of my angriest but least intimidating rivals, the Austro-Hungarians.

[...]

The third of RTW's three beautifully enmeshed components – ship design – shifts an already compelling campaign experience into true 'classic' territory. Watching your finest floating fortress take a fatal tinfish in the flank is infinitely more painful when you've carefully fashioned that fortress yourself and, in a last-minute bid to free-up weight for extra deck armour, decided to skimp on torpedo protection. Naval technology advanced at terrific pace during the first two decades of the Twentieth Century and the game captures the urgency of that headlong rush from reciprocating-engine pre-dreadnoughts clustered with vari-calibre armaments to less fussily armed steam turbine and oil-powered 'modern' battleships, quite brilliantly.



In the time it takes to manufacture a new model of destroyer, cruiser, or battleship, your boffins and spies are likely to have discovered or purloined technologies that render the new vessel passé. With news of foreign advances rolling in almost every turn, it's hard to resist regular trips to the design office. Maybe I can squeeze a few more knots out of the old Kraken-class BBs I designed in 1915... Now I've got access to oil supplies and acquired those Asian colonies, perhaps I should create a new long-range cruiser for colonial work... Gosh, half of my DDs were afloat when Queen Victoria was on the throne. Time for a new blueprint I think.

[...]

[The Brain]

Mew.

[Berkut]

OK, that looks awesome.

Probably cannot do MP though, with that branching political game thing going...

[Archy]

Sounds indeed interesting.  Don't know if I can play with sincerely I'm such a dreadnought noon,  should I dread nought.

[Lettow77]

At the start of every campaign player-Sea Lords are asked to choose one of seven nations (Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Austria-Hungary, Russia, US and Japan) 

- Become the 'Grand Admiral' of any one of ten different nations: Great Britain, Germany, USA, France, Russia, Japan, Italy, Austria-Hungary, Spain, or even a hypothetical 20th century 'Confederate States of America'!

So which is it? Is there in fact a campaign accomodating those who wish to play as the Grand Admiral of the Czarist Navy or the Spanish? Or maybe the Confederate States of America

[celedhring]

Pity the campaign doesn't start two years earlier. I fancy losing our colonies again.

[Lettow77]

PLEASE ALLOW FOR UP TO 1 BUSINESS DAY FOR YOUR SERIAL CODE TO BE EMAILED AND WATCH FOR THE DOWNLOAD BUTTON WHEN THE ORDER IS CONFIRMED. THANKS.

So who sells their game from the internet equivalent of a van down by the river, anyways?

[Syt]

I've ordered (physical copies of) games from NWS before; it was not a problem. They tend to specialize in obscure or old stuff.

[grumbler]

At the start of every campaign player-Sea Lords are asked to choose one of seven nations (Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Austria-Hungary, Russia, US and Japan) 

- Become the 'Grand Admiral' of any one of ten different nations: Great Britain, Germany, USA, France, Russia, Japan, Italy, Austria-Hungary, Spain, or even a hypothetical 20th century 'Confederate States of America'!

So which is it? Is there in fact a campaign accomodating those who wish to play as the Grand Admiral of the Czarist Navy or the Spanish? Or maybe the Confederate States of America

Are you seriously asking whether you should believe the publisher's current description, or the description written in a review?

[grumbler]

Bought the game, AAR to follow when I have figured this out.  Some of the ship design constraints seem pretty arbitrary, but otherwise this game seems to be one of those great retro spreadsheet management games like Crown of Iron or Stars!

[Syt]

Looking forward to your AAR.

[celedhring]

Bought the game, AAR to follow when I have figured this out.  Some of the ship design constraints seem pretty arbitrary, but otherwise this game seems to be one of those great retro spreadsheet management games like Crown of Iron or Stars!

Definitely a game I would enjoy vicariously through an AAR rather than playing it. Looking forward to your AAR.

[Alcibiades]

[Neil]

Sold.

[Alcibiades]

Initial thoughts Grumbler/Neil?