Matrix Games Forums

With so many different aspects to running a navy, we were wondering what you like most about playing Rule the Waves 3? Feel free to give feedback in the comments about what you like most about the game, and where you think more attention is needed.

I think there are two different questions.
What I like the most, I would say designing ships and managing the fleet.
But what needs to be developed more, once bugs are sorted out, I would say are the naval battles and wars. It would be much better if we could prepare shore bombardments ourselves, or if Gibraltar and Singapore, for example, had some strategic importance, or many other things we could think of.

I think RTW is like the total war series : The strategic aspect is ok, The tactical battles are ok; Both together make an awesome game.

RTW has an aspect that does make the gameplay differs a lot though, in captain mode you can micromanage (and outplay an AI) the ships in battle, while in admiral mode you basically leads only the lead ship and try to have the other follows.

I would like a mode more like Gratuitous Space Battle where you don't do a thing in battle, instead choosing (and training) in a certain doctrine (set of rules of engagement) and let you officers deal with it.
It would make the battles basically auto-battles, but add a lot of depth and preparation to the strategic aspect. In that idea the officers (and their traits) could be deepened to include foreign training, school of doctrine and even inter-officer amity or animosity that influences likelihood to follow orders or try to save another ship.

And I'd also like the total opposite, a custom battle mode with maybe a list of historical battles available. For those moment I just want a quick bloody nose or tryout a specific strategy.

Also the time frame should be expanded 2000years in both direction so we can start with rowing slaves and end up with robot crews, bronze lances to antimatter lances.

To resume what I want, just expand the functionalities and versatility of the game.
What would probably benefits the game most though is a 21st century user interface.

All of it. I couldn't imagine the game without all of it.

The poll is closed. If you follow Matrix on Twitter you will see we got somewhat similar results, although first and second place were switched, with ship design being more popular on twitter and fleet management a strong second place. I would like to thank those of you who voted or left comments here, this information really is useful for us going forwards. If I had saved my screenshots from RTW2 I would probably have posted some all forward gun dreadnought designs I built and reveal my bias for ship design .

Thanks everyone, look forward to more support and updates in the future.