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Offline Asid

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Rule the Waves 2
« on: February 15, 2019, 01:15:40 PM »
RULE THE WAVES II - 1900 - 1950



A Game of Naval Ship Design and Naval Combat at the Birth of the 20th Century.

D.O.W. thread on RTW I : Here
NWS Store: Here
Official forum: Here
Developers journal: Here

Single-player


Rule the Waves places you in the role of 'Grand Admiral' during the early years of the 20th Century. You manage the naval affairs of your chosen nation while navigating between the desires and demands of your own government, the efforts of potential adversaries, and the affairs of your potential allies.

The battle resolution mechanics are based upon our successful Steam and Iron (SAI) system for combat but technichal, economic and foreign policy decisions will also be necessary as the player guides their navy's design, construction, deployment and operations during a period of great technological innovation and political tensions.



Miscellaneous changes from RTW1

•   The world map has had some zones added to it, to emphasize the importance of the Suez canal and to make the map better suited to wars in the pacific.
•   Trade warfare, both in the form of raiders and submarines, is now summarized in one screen instead of a number of separate messages.
•   Refurbished the political system to cover the 30's. Less Kaisers, more Fuhrers after 1920.
•   Armour thickness up to 20 in allowed, but increase in armour over 12 inches will not give the same proportional protection due to difficulties in manufacturing thicker armor plates.
•   Additional ammo now costs more weight than before.
•   Retrofit of cross deck firing not allowed.
•   Centreline torpedo mounts cannot be used on AMC.
•   Private shipbuilding expansions will be rarer when using reduced research speed.
•   New research areas will be "discovered" and not be visible in the list until discovered.
•   Number of superstructure blocks in the ship graphics increased to 6 and number of points in each block increased to 24.
•   Ships can now have asymmetric superstructure and funnels (useful primarily for carriers).
•   Engine rebuilds now take longer time.
•   Risk of magazine hit now proportional to the number of main turrets.
•   Allied ships may show up on your side in battles. Similarly, if you are at war with two nations, the allies of your enemy may show up.
•   Allied bases and coastal batteries will also be present in battles.
•   One inch of deck armour can be added in refits.
•   Displacements up to 70 000 tons and speeds up to 36 knots allowed. (Possibly 80-90K tons and 40 kts if analysis/math holds up)
•   Major overhaul of design calculations to fine tune calculations and handle ship design after 1925.
•   Armour is now increased in effectiveness with technology progress instead of becoming lighter.
•   The AI will up-gun light cruisers if it finds itself outgunned by player CL:s
•   Reduced the tendency of ships with heavy flooding to go faster than safe speed.
•   Improved crew size calculations (crews were too small in RTW1).
•   Ship type MS is replaced with KE - Corvette.
•   Better placement of secondary turrets in ship graphic

Several new tech areas added:
* Anti aircraft artillery
* Radar and electronics
* Naval aviation, lighter than air
* Naval aviation, heavier than air
* Shipboard aircraft operation
* Missile technology


RADAR
Radar is divided into search radar and fire control radar. Search radar makes it possible to detect other ships in poor visibility. Radar detected ships will show as greenish outlines on the map. Early search radars are unreliable and prone to malfunctions. They are easily disabled by hits or even by own ships guns firing.
Fire control radar helps gunnery, and from level 3 will allow blind fire.
Once radar is invented, a nation will receive a number of radar sets per month. Radar sets will be automatically installed in ships with priority given to larger ships and ships in the active fleet. The player can manually install radar sets in ships, with the drawback that the ship will be unavailable the current turn.


Diving shells
Once invented, diving shells can be selected for use in the ammo doctrine screen. Diving shells have a chance for long range near misses to be converted to hull hits bypassing armour. On the flip side, diving shells have a larger chance of pass-trough hits and duds.


Oxygen fueled torpedoes
When oxygen fueled torpedoes have been invented, their use can be selected in the doctrine screen. Oxygen fuelled torpedoes give considerably better torpedo performance at the risk of more devastating torpedo explosions if torpedo tubes are hit.


Automatic loading
Autoloaded guns will have a 10% higher ROF. When the ship is straddling the target and going to rapid fire they will give a 30% boost to ROF. They also have better AA performance.


Invasions
You can select a possession as target for invasion planning. If the conditions for a successful invasion are met (a substantial force with 4:1 superiority in the area) there is a chance that the invasion will take place. Invasion preparations will cost 1% + 300 000 every turn. Note: There will be no spontaneous invasions like in RTW1. You have to select a target to make an invasion happen.


Dual purpose guns
Dual purpose guns are about 25% heavier than usual guns, but are capable of both AA fire and engaging surface targets. 4 and 5 inch guns are the most capable DP guns.


AA fire
Note: All AA fire will contribute to decreasing the accuracy of attacking aircraft and causing aborts.
Heavy AA (PD guns) will fire at and possibly destroy attacking aircraft before they release their ordnance.
Medium AA guns will engage and possibly shoot down attacking aircraft before they release their ordnance. These guns are less likely than heavy guns to shoot down attacking aircraft before they release their ordnance.
Light AA guns will contribute to decreasing the accuracy of attacking aircraft and causing aborts, but are the least likely to shoot down attacking aircraft before they release their ordnance.


AA directors
AA directors will considerably increase the effectiveness of heavy and medium AA fire. More AA directors will improve AA fire, up to a maximum of 4.
An AA director will provide a limited anti surface capability if there is no regular director installed.


Fleet Exercise.
You can hold a fleet exercise once a year with any ships you select from your own fleet. Ships participating in the exercise will cost twice the active mantenance cost and gain some experience. Large fleet exercises can raise tensions.


Diesel engines
Diesel engines are heavier than steam plants but reduce the weight penalty of long and extreme range. Diesel powered ships have better acceleration.


Fuel Shortage
Nations without access to oil run a risk of suffering fuel shortages in wartime. The risk of fuel shortage occurring in a turn will increase the longer the duration of the war. If a nation is blockaded, the risk of fuel shortage will increase considerably.
In a turn with fuel shortage, there is a risk that ships will have ordered strategic moves cancelled or that they will be unable to take part in a battle. The larger the ship, the greater the risk of being affected.
Ships using coal fuel will never be affected by fuel shortages.


Inclined belt
Inclined belt costs 10% more than a conventional belt. It adds about 10% to the protective effect of the belt, but it also entails a risk that long range hits will be converted to deck or lower belt edge hits.


Box protection to magazines
If this option is selected, belt and deck thickness will be halved for hits to areas other than magazines. Belt and deck weight is reduced by 1/3.


All forward main armament
To get the benefit of all forward main armament (Nelson or Richelieu configuration) a nation needs to research all forward armament.


Trade protection (replaces the RTW1 role of ASW patrol)
Ships assigned to trade protection will not normally be available for fleet operations. However, in non home areas, any ship present might be used in battle.
DD and MS assigned to trade protection will be on ASW patrols or assigned as convoy escorts.
Cruisers assigned to trade protection will patrol against enemy raiders and provide heavy convoy escort.


Corvettes
The ship type MS - minsweeper in RTW1 has been replaced with the type KE - Corvette, to better reflect that the type covers various kinds of small surface combatants. Corvettes of 500 tons displacement or smaller are assumed to be civilian trawlers and similar craft impressed for wartime duties. Small corvettes are fast to build but cannot be built in peacetime. They will be automatically sold off after a war, like AMCs.


Anti submarine and mine warfare
Each ship has a rating for its capabilities in these fields. However, if the ship has a capability in more than one of these fields, the effectiveness of each will be reduced, to reflect the fact that the ship has to divide its time between the various duties.


ASW warfare
Ship types capable of ASW warfare are DD, MS, CV and CVL. Ships capable of ASW warfare have an ASW rating. The ASW rating of a ship depends on displacement and installed equipment. All DD and small ships will automatically have a basic amount of depth charges when these are invented. Additional ASW equipment, like increased storage of depth charges, K guns and ASW mortars, need to be added to the design and will cost weight.
The ASW value of CV and CL will initially be low, but will increase with development of aerial depth charges and airborne radar.
AMC will have a limited ASW value during the early period (as Q-ships).


Mine warfare
Ships equipped with minesweeping gear will contribute to a minesweeping value for each area. This value will be compared to enemy minelaying capabilities inthe area to determine the risk of ships striking mines during operational movement and also influence the number of minefields during battles.


Scout aircraft on ships
Ships equipped with scout aircraft will be more effective as raiders. They will also be more effective at hunting raiders.


Ship design
Once you have determined a ship design, that design needs to be developed until construction can start. Developing a design takes from 1 to 4 months, depending on ship type and displacement. Some ship types, AMC and small corvettes, do not have any requirement for development time, as they are converted from existig ships.
When the design has been developed, it is possible to start construction of any number of ships according to that design.
A ship design that closely resembles an existing ship will get a reduction to the price and cost of developing the design.





















« Last Edit: February 15, 2019, 08:09:19 PM by Asid »
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Offline Asid

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Re: Rule the Waves 2
« Reply #1 on: February 15, 2019, 01:20:44 PM »
This post describes some of the air operations that are conducted automatically by carriers in RTW2.
Dec8 2019
By jwsmith26 - NWS Team

The actions that I describe in this post occurred fairly early, following one of the first releases that included air code for the game. The overall flow of what I describe continues to occur but the details of how it is currently implemented have already changed in some cases or will change prior to the game being released.

Immediately below I discuss the process I observed in detail as a carrier automatically deployed and maintained a combat air patrol. In the second section I describe how operational air damage and repair was handled during one battle. I've included my impressions that I recorded at the time about things that went right and things that didn't seem right, as well as suggestions I made for what might be improved. These have been lightly edited. I've included current comments, made while writing this log, in brackets and in red text. Black text was written while or shortly after observing and recording the events.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[In RTW2 the combat air patrol is handled automatically, with each carrier making its own decisions about when to ready, spot and launch fighters, as well as when to land them, while attempting to maintain a consistent number of fighters over the task group. While this is going on the carrier is turning into and out of the wind to accommodate each launch and landing, as well as any searches and strikes that have been ordered. The player is largely hands off with CAP. He is able to set the size of the CAP, but after this the AI takes over and handles the rest. Attempting to handle the set of ongoing tasks that I describe below manually would be a nightmare. The automated process is quite impressive to watch (assuming you have time while a battle is raging).]

I found myself in a cruiser mission that started with just 20 minutes left until twilight. I had a small force of 1 BC, 1 DD and 1 CV, the Kaga. The Kaga carried 80 planes, 16 of those were fighters. It was much too late to contemplate launching a strike but as soon as the mission began the Kaga immediately began preparing its fighters for a combat air patrol, fueling, arming and spotting the planes for takeoff. About 40 minutes later the Kaga started launching CAP fighters. By now twilight had arrived, but the Kaga persisted, putting 12 fighters into the air in about 8 minutes. She continued to put fighters up about every 4 minutes until full night was imminent. The total CAP aloft rose to 12 at its max but that total was slowly reduced as night approached and a larger number of fighters began landing than the carrier launched.

Below is a table showing the timing of fighter launches and landings used to maintain a CAP over the Kaga



Surprisingly, fighters began landing on the Kaga one minute after the 12th fighter became airborne, having been aloft for less than 10 minutes. They weren't very good at it in the reduced light. During the twilight period there were 18 landings. Of these, 2 fighters crash-landed and another 6 were damaged upon landing, while 10 landed safely. A further 4 landed after full night had arrived. Of those, 2 were damaged, 1 crashed and just 1 landed safely. [There are more than 16 plane landings mentioned here because some fighters took off and landed more than once.]

In all, 8 fighters were damaged upon landing and 3 crashed, leaving just 5 undamaged fighters out of the 16 that were available when the mission started. All that damage and crashing occurred without an enemy air unit in sight. The number of damaged and crashed planes seems excessive for the twilight period. Carriers typically maintained a CAP through the twilight hours, so even green pilots quickly gained a lot of experience with the process. I have no quibbles with the damage rate for those planes that landed at night. BTW, the fighter pilots of this carrier were rated as experts.

For missions that start in daylight, I think that any carriers in the force should start the mission with fighters already aloft as (medium?) CAP or at least spotted on deck ready to take off. In this mission the fighters started unready and had to go through the entire readying and spotting process before they could get aloft. By the time the first fighter took off it was already twilight.

[For aircraft, experience ratings are applied at the squadron level, but in this build those ratings did not yet affect game play. Note that the overnight repair rate for damaged planes is currently around 80%-90% successful, so the starting fighter complement for day 2 would likely have been about 12 fighters on the Kaga. Looking at this now it strikes me that the fighter turnover is much too rapid in this example. Most Allied combat air patrols lasted between 1 and 2 hours. In this example some planes were landing after just a few minutes and none were aloft longer than 28 minutes. The AI has no problem handling that turnover rate but it does result in an excess amount of carrier maneuvering as the carrier turns in and out of the wind.]

[Seeing all those damaged planes spurred me to look more closely at the damage system for aircraft. I did that in the battle that is briefly described below, which took place in a later game while playing a different nation. In the battle covered by my report below the enemy had very few aircraft and AA fire was not yet operational, so all of the losses recorded are purely operational losses. I compiled the following report on how damage was handled on carriers.]


I had noticed for the first time in my previous battle that damaged aircraft were being repaired in an ongoing effort throughout the day and night. In some cases, planes listed as damaged were converted to destroyed during this process, but most of the damaged planes were being repaired and converted back to operational status. This was very cool so I decided to watch it more closely. The following report is the result.

Below is a table showing the losses and subsequent gains through repair for 2 fleet carriers that were engaged during the day and then spent most of the night repairing damage.



The battle was a large Italian bombardment raid against the Japanese that took place mostly during the day in late 1944. My Italians deployed 6 BBs, 1 BC and 2 CVs with 160 a/c on board. The Japanese had 1 BB, 4 BCs, and 1 CVL (unknown number of a/c). Both sides had an array of smaller ships. The result was an Italian victory after sinking all 4 Japanese BCs and their CVL for a loss of one Italian BB. There were also a few other smaller ships lost.

Each Italian carrier carried 80 aircraft into the battle as follows: 24 F, 28 DB and 28 TBs divided into six 12 or 14 plane squadrons. Both carriers were involved in the battle, with most TBs and DBs flying two strikes during the day. In each carrier, one squadron of fighters was used as escort, the other was left to fly CAP. There were no carrier planes used in reconnaissance, which was carried out by flying boats out of nearby NAS and by floatplanes embarked on my cruisers and battleships. The dive bombers flew 112 sorties and recorded one hit. The torpedo bombers also flew 112 sorties and reported 10 hits. [Hit probabilities for DB and TB are still in flux but heavily favored TBs in this build.]

I took some time to record air losses as well as repairs. Most planes landed on prior to dusk, though there was one straggling squadron that landed during twilight and one that mostly landed in twilight but overlapped slightly into night, increasing the losses in those two squadrons. At the conclusion of the day the two carriers had just 99 operational aircraft, with 43 damaged and 12 destroyed. The damages and losses were pretty evenly distributed among the three types of planes. That left 6 planes unaccounted for by the game display. Perhaps planes lost in the air are not included in the total displayed in the game? Or perhaps I miscounted somewhere.

For the attached table of losses and repairs I recorded the state of the aircraft just after nightfall and then again at turn 999 just prior to the end of the mission. On turn 999 it was still several hours until dawn, so it is likely more planes would have been repaired prior to the next day if the mission had continued. During the night the two CVs combined to repair 32 planes, leaving just 11 in a damaged state. The two carriers had 135 operational planes at the mission's end and would have probably repaired another 5 or 6 by morning. This would have left the carriers with 140 operational planes or 88% of their starting complement for use on the second day. Of course these were unopposed strikes.

In many carrier battles fought in WW2, USN losses to the enemy were about equal to operational losses incurred by such events as navigation errors, landing accidents, running out of fuel, etc. With inexperienced ship crews and aircrew the operational losses could be much higher. By the end of the war Allied operational losses often exceeded combat losses. But assuming losses to the enemy equal to operational losses, this battle would have resulted in an available air strength on the second day of battle of 75% or around 120 planes out of the original 160. That doesn't sound too far off historical averages. Early WW2 battles tended to be more costly in aircraft, resulting in second day operational strength of 50% or less, but later battles resulted in many fewer air casualties, so 75% feels very much in line with what historically occurred assuming relatively balanced forces and abilities. Of course we have not seen actual combat losses yet, so this is highly speculative.



Regardless of the system's eventual accuracy, I have to say that I find it extremely cool to see most of those damaged planes getting patched up overnight, and even cooler to see some planes initially judged to be damaged to end up being unsalvageable (and possibly pushed over the side - we need a graphic for that :-).
« Last Edit: February 15, 2019, 08:10:54 PM by Asid »
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Offline Asid

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Re: Rule the Waves 2
« Reply #2 on: March 17, 2019, 12:07:06 AM »
Latest update for RTW2 Release and Details:

Ok folks, we now have a solid release date for RTW2, one designed to give us plenty of time to make sure the game sets sail smoothly & with as much stability as possible:

APRIL 25, 2019

The price for the game will be $34.99 (US), which was the same price for the original RTW upon its release in 2015.

Everyone who has purchased, or purchases, the original RTW game before April 25 will be offered a special price of $29.99 for RTW2.
This discounted price is our way of thanking everyone who has stood by us during the last ~ 2.5 years of RTW2 development...thank you very much!!!
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Offline Asid

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Re: Rule the Waves 2
« Reply #3 on: April 23, 2019, 01:30:01 PM »
THE ANTI-PIRACY SYSTEM FOR RTW2
Apr 20, 2019

Since we have a number of players wondering what sort of anti-piracy system we will have for RTW2, the following post should help explain what we are doing.

Basically the protection itself is a self-contained 'wrapper' (incorporated into the game executable itself, no drivers or other software is ever installed), where the game executable is protected and the game would need to be re-activated if it is moved to another PC. Out of the choices we had available and affordable to a rather small company like ours, IMO this is our best option without going too restrictive. You will not need to be online to play it, you will only need to send your machine code in and receive an activation code to play. You will also be able to play for a time without activating the game, so you can play even if you have to wait a bit for an activation code. You will still receive a separate serial code, but this serial code will not be required to install RTW2, it exists so we can make sure folks who need to have their game activated are legitimate owners of the game. Of course, if you transfer the game to another machine you will need to obtain an activation code for the new machine.

We plan to allow for activation of the game on 2 machines simultaneously, that way you can have the game on your home computer and on a laptop or other machine.

I do personally dislike that we have to have this sort of (relatively moderate) protection scheme to help curb certain types of piracy, but RTW was our first release wherein we tracked fairly significant piracy of the game and we believe that it likely harmed our sales to some degree, mostly later in the games' sales life-cycle. Larger companies perhaps can write off a certain amount of piracy as 'cost-of-business' and such, but smaller developers like ourselves just do not have that extra margin of monies/resources to do so in many cases. I certainly understand that some players may not like this decision, but I hope you can understand why we need to make some efforts to protect from at least casual piracy. We will do our best to make this as painless of a process as possible, and if you have any issues we will (as we always do) put forth our best effort to help clear them up for you.

Also, we will be releasing a playable limited demo of RTW2 so you can get a good feel/view for the game before you decide upon a purchase...the demo will not need any sort of activation to play it.

Thanks for your time, and for your understanding.

William Miller
Projects Director & Developer
Naval Warfare Simulations
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Re: Rule the Waves 2
« Reply #4 on: April 23, 2019, 01:30:57 PM »
4-22-2019 - UPDATE ON RTW2 STATUS


I have just finished a meeting with Fredrik & Christopher Dean, and I have also have consulted with our excellent Beta Team members that us help test the RTW2 game. Below is a summary of what we have decided upon for the near future as far as RTW2 is concerned:

1) RTW2 will be released on May 17 (of this year, of course). This is a solid launch date, not an 'estimated' launch date.   This gives us plenty of time to test the latest added features and related aspects of the game, and also to allow for the completion of item #2 below...

2) NWS Store operations will be moved to a more modern/updated hosting service prior to the RTW2 release.

3) A playable demo of RTW2 will be released to the general public 2-3 days prior to the official launch date.

I know some of you will be disappointed in this ~3 week addition to the release date, for that I am sorry. However, in the end it will allow us to better organize our operations at NWS, and also allow for the Beta testers and Fredrik to make the game more solid and enjoyable for you, the players. Thank you for your patience and time, we appreciate both of them.

William Miller
Projects Director & Developer
Naval Warfare Simulations
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Re: Rule the Waves 2
« Reply #5 on: May 15, 2019, 03:59:44 PM »
RULE THE WAVES 2 DEMO DOWNLOAD



The demo allows you to play as either Japan or Britain, with a game lasting up to 6 game-years before it ends (i.e. from the start of 1920 through 1925).


CLICK HERE  TO DOWNLOAD THE RTW2 DEMO (Installer Version 47MB)


CLICK HERE  TO DOWNLOAD THE LOOSE FILE VERSION (No Installer 53.3MB)

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