Rule the Waves III

[Asid]

Rule the Waves 3: Expanded Battles | Dev Diary 4
Fri, 27 February 2026



The Ship Designer



Given that Matrix Games held several ship design competitions in the past, we can safely say that one of the many draws to RTW3 was the ability to create ships to your liking. RTW3 is intended to be a naval warfare sandbox, letting players live through their own history as the head of the admiralty or ministry of the navy for one of the many nations available. This is of course limited to the sole campaign mode in the base game. We thought it only fitting that we should extend the sandbox potential of RTW3 by adding a new ship designer that's decoupled by the normal restrictions of the campaign mode.

The ship designer in RTW is in many ways the heart of the game. But in the campaign, the player is limited in the ships that can be built by technology, dock size etc. The standalone ship designer in Expanded Battles is basically the same ship designer as used in the RTW campaign, but free from the infrastructure and tech-based constraints on ship design applied in the RTW campaign. You can design a ship of any displacement, and you can freely add most types of equipment. This makes it possible for players to design any ship of any size from any time covered by the game. This tool is a companion for the scenario editor and will let the player populate scenarios with exactly the ships that are needed.

When a ship is designed, the year of the ship design can be set, which means that the ship will have the technologies and attributes appropriate for that time and nation. For example, the armor quality and engine development level of the ship will be saved along with the design and used for various functions when the ship is in battle.



There are extensive functions for fine tuning the appearance of the ships. Apart from the guns and torpedoes, you can spruce up your ships with various visual extras that make them look so much better. This is not necessary for them to function in battles, but it definitely increases their visual appeal.

We found that this new ship designer is powerful enough to create ship designs that are both graphically impressive for the perspective we have taken and historical authentic. In fact, our very own contenT designer utilized this improved ship designer to create a range of ship designs that we used for the historical scenarios. We think that these authentic designs will only serve to help with player immersion when engaging with the historical content of Expanded Battles. Here are but a few examples of some of the historical World War II ship designs we have included with the game, including ships of the Kido Butai of the Imperial Japanese Navy and the Kriegsmarine.



These ships are not just for looks and can be used in scenarios and the quick battle generator (more on that in the next dev diary). Moreso, ship designs will be saved in a convenient location and can then be manually shared with the community.



By Fredrik Wallin

Lead Designer

Naval Warfare Simulations

[Asid]

Tactics Update is out now
Wed, 4 March 2026



Hello wargamers, naval historians, and ship enthusiasts!

We have a new update available before the release of the new DLC.


Update highlights:

- This update lays the groundwork for the release of Expanded Battles, with a focus on battle resolution, ship performance, and AI behavior;

- This includes tweaking and recalibrating gun performance at various ranges, improvements to the tactical AI, increasing the effectiveness of smokescreens, and adding more flexibility to force organization;

- In addition, this update includes various minor fixes and changes to ship design, such as refreshing weight calculations and adjusting the cost of cruisers in comparison to larger capital ships, on top of general bug fixing.

Download the update here

Here is the consolidated changelog for this update:

v01.01.22 – 4th March 2026

Research
• Reduced the chance for developing oxygen-fueled torpedoes (Japan has them as bonus tech, so
will always get them). This means only Japan will have them in 1935 start.
• Increased the chance of developing +1 guns in the 1920s.
• Reduced the risk of dispersion problems..

Fleet Management
• Added the ability to change force for divisions and freer detachment of ships after researching Improved Command and control.
• Added the possibility to create AV-divisions in fleet organization.
• Fixed a bug with Fleet organization and subordinate divisions disappearing from view when their lead division was dissolved.
• More permissive rearranging of force organization in the pre battle screen.

Battle Resolution
• Fixed a bug with penetration values being randomized where they shouldn't be (like in the gun data screen).
• Divisions in screen role will now use line ahead formation at night, to better accord with historical practice.
• Uncertain identity modified so that friendly ships in the same direction as the enemy will increase the risk of ships holding fire.
• Improved performance for oxygen-fuelled torpedoes.
• Increased maximum ranges for some gun calibres.
• Adjusted penetration for some gun calibres.
• Sunk ships can now be seen on the battle map after a battle has ended.
• All ships can now lay smoke once effective smoke generators are developed.
• Made smokescreens more effective.
• Improved messages on turret jams so that it is clear when they are caused by unreliable triple or quad turrets.
• Reduced bombardment damage to land airbases.
• Some improvements to the tactical AI.
• Some improvements to the damage model for splinter damage.
• Adjusted deck penetration.
• Fixed a bug that made heavy ships fire HE instead of AP as default choice in some situations.
• Revised penetration calculations for 18+ in shells.
• Prevented diving shell magazine hits for calibres less than 6 inch.
• Fixed a bug with enemy torpedo reloading being visible in the log.
• Fixed a bug with enemy ship name shown accurately when targeting a sighted ship for an airstrike.

User Interface
• Objectives will be visible on the map at the start of a scenario.
• Tertiary gun data can now be viewed in the ship status screen just like secondary guns.
• Added SAP to the gun penetration display.
• Info on hits received is now more "fuzzy" to prevent the player from identifying the type of enemy ships by looking at the hits received. Full info is given after the battle is over.

Ship Design
• Changed crew calculations to make crews of BB and CV somewhat larger (they tended to have too small complements compared to historical ships).
• Adjusted costs to make cruisers somewhat cheaper compared to battleships (cruisers were too expensive).
• Increased weight and topside load of fire Control.
• Added an extra confirmation when removing all visuals from a ship.
• Inclined belt is now somewhat heavier to account for the inclined belt being "higher" due to geometry.
• Some general adjustments of weight calculations.

Aircraft
• Increased ready times for catapult launches from non carrier or AV ships.
• Increased fire risk if non carrier ships are readying aircraft and take damage.
• Fixed a bug where aircraft types under development could win the air race.
• Improved the routine the AI uses for selecting aircraft type to launch on recon missions.

Bug Fixing
• Fixed a display bug with the HAA value not updating properly when changing from twin to single
secondaries and the nation has single HAA tech.
• Fixed a bug with selecting a visual throwing an error.
• Fixed bug with show compass preference not saving.
• Fixed some 1890 templates with incorrect weights.
• Fixed a bug with provide CAP to division not being saved properly in save games.

[Asid]

Rule the Waves 3: Expanded Battles | Dev Diary 5
Mon, 9 March 2026



Quick Battles



We accept that Rule the Waves 3 is not the easiest game to learn, especially given the length of the campaign mode and the ever-changing political and technological landscape. As we mentioned in our previous dev diary, the ship designer is very much the heart of the game. While ship design is vital to success in RTW's campaign mode, it poses certain limitations and focuses more on the development of your fleet as a whole over time rather than any single ship. We found from feedback and our own gameplay that the tactical battles are where inidividual ships can truly shine as players are encouraged to manage their forces wisely. Tactical battles are also generally easier to get your head around than the full campaign, as you can focus on a few ships in a limited engagement doing your best to keep them alive and complete tactical objectives. As a result, making tactical battles a separate mode seemed like a logical step forward for the series.

This of course meant including a scenario designer for players who want to get into the nitty-gritty details of designing their ideal historical or fictional engagement. The flipside of this, is also adding a Quick Battles mode, one of the main features revealed for the expansion way back in 2024 during Home of Wargamers. We think this mode will be best for new players to the new franchise, as it focuses on quickly putting a fleet together and getting straight into the action. All players have to do is let the built-in auto-designer and fleet generator compose a sensible fleet based on several simple parameters, such as choosing nations, basic weather conditions, and location of the engagement. A great way to learn the interaction of different ship classes, weapons, and at different technology levels to boot!



Quick Battles also offers plenty of depth to veteran players who want to test their mettle and ship design ideas in different circumstances, without necessarily going through the full in-depth scenario design process. The QB system also lets players design their own ships and build a fleet out that fits their vision. This can be easily combined and mixed with auto-designed ships, as well as auto-generated fleets.



What we think will be of particular interest to all sorts of players, is the ability to modify technology years of the chosen belligerent nations to match for technologically balanced setups or make them widely different. For example, you can set parameters for the auto-generator to create a Jutland-era German fleet with plenty of dreadnought-style battleships that faces off against an embattled carrier group of the Royal Navy from 1945 or later. Or perhaps you want to replay a version of The Final Countdown and have a missile age US carrier group face off against the World War Two-era Kido Butai of the Japanese Empire. Possibilities are really quite limitless within the scope of RTW's 1890-1970s naval combat modeling.



Ultimately, we think the Quick Battles system fits perfectly with the naval history sandbox design that's at the center of RTW's design philosophy. We want to make sure that different types of players have the tools at their disposal to build, create, and experiment with ship designs and scenarios that lets them engage with naval history.

This is our final dev diary for Expanded Battles and we hope you enjoyed our series of deeper dives into the features of this expansion. We hope you enjoy this expansion to RTW3 to be released on March 19.

By Fredrik Wallin

Lead Designer

Naval Warfare Simulations