Guide: Sharing Ship Designs and Scenarios
Posted: Thu Mar 19, 2026 12:28 pm
The following guide will cover how to export and share ship designs, as well as scenarios with the community. Further in-depth info on creating scenarios and ship designs can be found in the Expanded Battles manual.
Ship Designs
When using the standalone ship designer, all ship designs will save in the following folder: \Rule the Waves 3\Custom Files. To share ship designs, simply find the appropriate ship design file with the .sdf extension and share it with the community by posting as an attachment in this sub-forum above in a separate thread. If there's more than 1 related ship design, you're welcome to attach a zipped folder that contains more than 1 ship design.
To add community ship designs to your game, simply download an appropriate ship design(s) and make sure to copy it/them into the \Rule the Waves 3\Custom Files folder. Your game should then detect them there and should be usable in scenarios and loadable in the ship designer.
Scenarios
All scenarios created in the scenario editor are saved as separate folders found in the \Rule the Waves 3\Custom Files folder. These folders will contain 4 files related to the scenario.
To make sure whoever you decide to share the scenario with receives a fully functional scenario that includes ship designs intended for the scenario, we recommend adding or saving any scenario-specific ship designs in the same folder as the scenario they are added to.
To share a scenario with the community, zip up the intended scenario folder and share it with the community by posting in this sub-forum in a separate thread. To import a scenario and make sure it's playable, please download it, unzip the folder, and make sure to copy the scenario folder into the \Rule the Waves 3\Custom Files directory. The scenario should then appear in the 'Play scenario' screen under the 'Custom Scenario' tab.
Ship Designs
When using the standalone ship designer, all ship designs will save in the following folder: \Rule the Waves 3\Custom Files. To share ship designs, simply find the appropriate ship design file with the .sdf extension and share it with the community by posting as an attachment in this sub-forum above in a separate thread. If there's more than 1 related ship design, you're welcome to attach a zipped folder that contains more than 1 ship design.
To add community ship designs to your game, simply download an appropriate ship design(s) and make sure to copy it/them into the \Rule the Waves 3\Custom Files folder. Your game should then detect them there and should be usable in scenarios and loadable in the ship designer.
Scenarios
All scenarios created in the scenario editor are saved as separate folders found in the \Rule the Waves 3\Custom Files folder. These folders will contain 4 files related to the scenario.
To make sure whoever you decide to share the scenario with receives a fully functional scenario that includes ship designs intended for the scenario, we recommend adding or saving any scenario-specific ship designs in the same folder as the scenario they are added to.
To share a scenario with the community, zip up the intended scenario folder and share it with the community by posting in this sub-forum in a separate thread. To import a scenario and make sure it's playable, please download it, unzip the folder, and make sure to copy the scenario folder into the \Rule the Waves 3\Custom Files directory. The scenario should then appear in the 'Play scenario' screen under the 'Custom Scenario' tab.