
“Rule the Waves”: a game of naval strategy (2016) - smacktoward
https://jasonlefkowitz.net/2016/02/rule-the-waves-review/
======
senko
Post is from 2016 and the link to the game (from the post) doesn't seem to
work. However seems to be available from
[https://nwswargamingstore.net/shop?olsPage=products](https://nwswargamingstore.net/shop?olsPage=products)
(haven't tried buying).

There's apparently a sequel out, here's one review:
[https://www.wargamer.com/reviews/rule-the-
waves-2/](https://www.wargamer.com/reviews/rule-the-waves-2/)

~~~
rob74
I can only agree with this quote: "RTW2 might look [...] perhaps a little too
much like the work players hoped to avoid by firing up a video game at the end
of a long day" \- you'd have a hard time convincing me that an application
with so many tabs, list views, select boxes, radiogroups etc. etc. could
actually be _fun_ to use.

Plus, I wonder if it was a concious design decision to keep the "good old"
(shudder) Windows 95/NT 4.0 look or if they simply forgot to include the
required manifest for getting the updated look & feel?

~~~
moron4hire
That's the entire Hard Simulation genre. It's not your cup of tea, but there
are lots of people who only play those sorts of games. Football Manager sims
are basically nothing but this. Hell, even Eve Online is not much more than
this, especially when you get into some of the massive battles that get
reported on in the tech media.

~~~
tomatotomato37
Auroa 4x is another good example. Very deep and detailed but also requires a
lot of menu fiddling and micromanaging with a GIMP-tier UI.

[http://aurorawiki.pentarch.org/index.php?title=Main_Page](http://aurorawiki.pentarch.org/index.php?title=Main_Page)

~~~
jplayer01
I've messed around with Aurora 4x before and I don't think the UI concept is
that bad. In a game as complex as this, the UI is going to have to reflect
that complexity in some way. I think the worst thing about the game's UI is
how it eschews basic usability and makes everything ridiculously tedious to
use. If I made a game like this, I'd probably come up with a similar UI, but
I'd pay way more attention to how players interact or want to interact with
the game on a moment to moment basis.

------
AnIdiotOnTheNet
> The first limitation is the quality of the graphics and the user interface,
> which, as you can see from the screenshots above, are pretty bare-bones. The
> UI is straight out of the Windows 3.1 era, all vanilla Windows radio buttons
> and lists and drop-downs.

That is sincerely one of my favorite things about games from that era.

~~~
vonmoltke
The screenshots immediately reminded me of the original computer version of
_Harpoon_ when it was updated for Windows 95. I still find that game's
interface to be one of the easiest ways to manage a complex amount of
information.

Incidentally, these screenshots aren't too far off what actual console UIs
look like for complex military systems. I think CDE is more common than Win32,
though.

~~~
MR4D
I had the same exact thought!

Bunch of screenshots here in case anyone is interested:
[http://armchairgeneral.com/harpoon-ultimate-edition-pc-
game-...](http://armchairgeneral.com/harpoon-ultimate-edition-pc-game-
review.htm)

------
LordHeini
There is a game called ultimate admiral:dreadnoughts which seems to be very
similar gameplay wise but has better graphics and seems to be more accessible.

[https://www.dreadnoughts.ultimateadmiral.com/](https://www.dreadnoughts.ultimateadmiral.com/)

Have not tried it yet due to the game being in development.

It is in early access which i tend to avoid but it looks quite ok so far.

~~~
sharpneli
I'm incidentally playing it right now. It's clearly alpha and it remains to be
seen how well they manage to deliver the final product, but it's promising.

I've spent maybe few hundred hours on RTW and RTW2 combined. So can't really
wait until they deliver the campaign for UA.

------
smacktoward
If you want to read more about _Rule the Waves_ , I wrote a follow-up post
after this one that goes into more detail on the strategic challenges that
face each playable nation: [https://jasonlefkowitz.net/2016/05/a-brief-
consideration-of-...](https://jasonlefkowitz.net/2016/05/a-brief-
consideration-of-various-strategic-problems-in-rule-the-waves/)

------
bwanab
From the article, which otherwise was good, this line "Both nations had spent
so much money on their battle-fleets that they could never bring themselves to
put them fully at risk" really doesn't capture the mindset of the antagonists.
It was largely true that the Germans were determined to hold on to their
fleet, which meant staying in Heligoland, and while the British were satisfied
keeping the German fleet in port, they wanted the decisive battle. Despite the
British fleet losing more ships in the first day at Jutland, the main reason
the Germans fleet escaped was miscommunication in the British admiralty.

~~~
mcguire
The British may have wanted a decisive battle, but they didn't want to lose
any more of their fleet to submarines and mines. The Germans were the ones
pronking around raiding the English coast and what-not.

"Could never bring themselves to put them fully at risk" does kind of describe
the overall situation.

------
alerter
This is a really great game, if you can get past the ancient interface. Has a
surprisingly tight core loop and a nice, pared down approach to 'grand
strategy'.

Despite all the buttons, it's actually got very little simulationist cruft
going on. You're mostly making interesting decisions.

------
JoachimSchipper
There is a "group game" of sorts going on at navalgazing.net:
[https://www.google.com/search?q=rule+the+waves+site%3Anavalg...](https://www.google.com/search?q=rule+the+waves+site%3Anavalgazing.net).

And if you're interested in this sort of thing, you'll probably also
appreciate the rest of navalgazing.net - e.g.
[https://www.navalgazing.net/Top-Posts](https://www.navalgazing.net/Top-
Posts), [https://www.navalgazing.net/Jutland-
Part-1](https://www.navalgazing.net/Jutland-Part-1).

------
baud147258
I remember a succession game of Rule the Waves 2 on a forum, with each
successive player trashing the designs of their predecessor before designing
their own class of ships, especially for the destroyers, until all ships were
from dozens of different class with different performance and armements.

Rule the Waves 2 covers a wider time period, since you can go until ~1950,
with aircraft carriers, radars, ground-based planes and submarines.

The author also didn't touch the spying that can be done on other nations,
which will then increase tension and bring new tech and information, and the
military treaties, which will force allied nation to go to war together.

------
howard941
More towards the modern era is the Harpoon successor Command: Modern Air and
Naval Ops. It diverges from the game in question by implementing only extant
platforms and weapons, making it perhaps less interesting as a replayable game
but more interesting for modelling past and future encounters.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command%3A_Modern_Air_Naval_Op...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command%3A_Modern_Air_Naval_Operations)

~~~
mcguire
" _-Command /CMANO has had the following downloadable content released:_

" _...You Brexit, You Fix It (war in the Baltic States)..._ "

I may have to do something I very rarely do: buy a computer game.

------
aww_dang
Perfect candidate for a browser game.

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arethuza
I live overlooking the Firth of Forth across from Edinburgh and I'm always
amazed when I read of the surrender of the German fleet to the British Grand
Fleet in the Forth:

[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-
scotland-46273928](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-46273928)

43 British battleships and battlecruisers and 120 destroyers escorting 14
German battleships and battlecruisers and 49 destroyers.

The current Royal Navy has 6 destroyers and 13 frigates.

~~~
achamayou
A Type 45 destroyer is almost 10000 tons though, a WWII destroyer would have
been 2 to 3000. It’s probably difficult to come up with an accurate cost
comparison, but I suspect the difference is even greater than for tonnage.

~~~
arethuza
I wonder if there is a wargaming app where I could find out whether the Royal
Navy of 1918 would win against the Royal Navy of a century later? ;-)

Edit: Of course it would lose, I had forgotten about submarines!

~~~
learc83
In a straight up battle the 1918 Navy would definitely lose just because of
radar directed fire and anti-ship missiles. For the big battleships standard
sea skimming anti-ship missiles might not be super effective because of the
amount of armor, but I'm guessing the entire Royal Navy has at least some
modern missiles that are designed to pop up and plunge through the deck.

~~~
arethuza
How many Harpoons does a Type 45 have though? I could see details online of
how many launchers they have but not how many missiles are actually carried.

~~~
learc83
All 13 type 23 frigates also come equipped with Harpoons. And the modern navy
is so much faster than the 1918 Navy that firing their entire complement of
missiles, retreating, and reloading is an option.

------
aidenn0
Can anyone comment on how well this works in wine before I drop $25 on it?

~~~
jandrese
There's a decent chance it will work well in Wine given the basic WinForms
interface it uses.

The Wine Database[1] results are encouraging as well.

[1]
[https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=applicatio...](https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application&iId=17174)

