What was the name of this naval fleet combat game?

There was a game I saw a few years back that I can’t recall the name of. It was a WW2-era (or was it WW1?) game with both a strategy and tactical layer.

The strategy portion of the game was turn based, and fairly abstract, mostly for the purpose of setting up interesting fights between your fleet and the enemies countries. There was a global map with large ocean zones which you could move your fleets.

The tactical portion of the game was pauseable real-time with pretty basic overhead vector graphics. You could essentially zoom the map out to a global level. Day/night cycle was a thing, as was weather, both having a significant effect on visibility.

The game had a research system with a lot of incremental upgrades, and relatively expensive refits, which led to significant decisions about when to pull ships out for refitting. You could do a significant amount of designing your own ships, deciding about size, placement and size of turrets, amount of armor in different places, etc. You could also tweak the vector “icon” used for your ship in the tactical portion of the game.

The game was made by a single developer as a follow-on to an earlier game which was just the tactical portion.

Can anyone remember what I’m talking about?

Sounds like you’re talking about Rule the Waves.

That’s the one. Thanks!

I was reading through your post thinking, “Man, this sounds awesome! I wonder what it could be?” Then I saw the Rule the Waves icon on my desktop just past the edge of the browser window. “Oh. Right.”

lol… :P

Is it that or Steam and Iron? Or did S & I not have a strategic part. The main thing of rule the waves is designing your ships, right?

Steam and Iron is the tactical-only predecessor; Rule the Waves is the strategic layer and refined tactical layer follow-on.

I guess Steam and Iron had some campaigns, too, but no ship design.

Wut

Look in the game’s folder again

You can totally build ships and include them in a custom scenario. Although, with the exhaustive library already in the game, there’s really no point.

No ship design as part of the campaigns, then.

I should fire up Steam and Iron again sometime, now that I’m reading through Castles of Steel, and have a better sense for the context of all of those scenarios. Of course, it appears my old serial code doesn’t work. So much for that.

Chocolate and peanut butter, right there. Make sure you read Dreadnaught, too.

I suspect that one will pair better with Rule the Waves.

Apparently Rule the Waves 2 is coming out this year…

So the sequel was release, extending the time period to the 50’s and adding aircraft, carriers, etc.

I didn’t play the first game, but I’m finding this one pretty fun (though it’s been a while since I’ve seen such graphics and interface).

I started as Imperial Germany in 1900, designed my starting fleet and within a couple of years managed to inflame tensions enough to start a war with France. One of the first battles was coastal raid where my 4 battleships, three heavy cruisers and a dozen destroyers faced off against just 3 Light cruisers and a few destroyers (looks like the French didn’t keep enough ships in home waters).

Of course, I had a heck of a time trying to get and keep those lighter ships and range, but I thought I caught a break when they turned and charged straight towards my battle line. I forgot that CLs usually carry torpedoes… one of my battleships caught a torpedo… One CL was hit badly enough to slow down and get wrecked by one of my CAs. Two got away with some damage but not enough to slow them down. Thankfully the flooding from the torpedo hit was slowed to a comparative trickle before the battleship went under. Except the ship was something like 6 hours from port at best speed and the flooding was just a tad higher than the pumping - so she sank after 5 hours. Major French Victory. Ugh.

I got some measure of revenge the next month when one of my Battleships spotted a French CA and put a few rounds into him before he got out of range. He was slowed but not enough to catch him so a long chase ended at nightfall. Then I figure the CA would break for the French coast once I was out of sight and picked a random vector in that direction. Luck was on my side since I did almost run right into him in the dark and got enough hits to slow him down and keep him in range until it was a burning wreck.

https://nwswargamingstore.net/shop?olsPage=products%2Fnws-rule-the-waves-ii

NWS games are even uglier than CMANO, but they focus on the old-school grognardage. I’ve never progressed beyond Steam & Iron (I have no interest in the sociopolitics, just coal-fueled dinosaurs throwing metal at each other), but I definitely love what the two old guys at NWS do.

I was so glad the game was released! But it seems the game is still under heavy testing at the moment.
I also was kind of turned down by a big “Activation code” sticky on the forum, promoting a new copy protection remindful of Shrapnel’s practices. As someone who uses Wine to play windows game, having to request activation code each time I try to run a different framework setup while I try to get the game working was something I wasn’t willing to do…

But it turns out there is a demo! That’s such a great idea.
Sadly, the demo installer told me it wouldn’t proceed on the version of Windows I am running, so that’s the end for me.

I don’t think there is much sociopolitics (that I’ve seen so far). Rule the Waves 2 seems to be more about trying to figure out what’s the best navy you can build and evolve for your budget (designing the ships) and then fighting it out. The scenario generation seems like it can be a bit weird at times, but so far I love getting new techs and seeing what kind of ship I could put together with what’s available (and then seeing how those ships do in a scenario).

Judging from the screen shots I would suggest setting compatibility mode to Windows 3.1

I’m actually surprised myself how little this matters to me while playing the game. Graphics and UI is extremely primitive, but it just sort of fades into the background.

This game is definitely clunky but so far very absorbing. I wouldn’t have thought I could agonise so much over turret layout or whether to go for an extra inch of deck armour or an extra knot of speed.

The interaction between the simple overall economic constraints, the detailed ship designer and the detailed combat model is pretty interesting. God knows how much effort goes into that much modelling but it certainly has a charm.

Of course, the actual model is super-opaque. For instance, you have some estimates on how many inches of your current armour your current 12-inch gun will penetrate at different ranges. But there is a whole lot more going on that you have no knowledge of. How well will the shell penetrate older or newer armour? Newer shells? Different quality guns? How likely is it to hit different areas? How much damage does a 14-inch shell do compared to a 12-inch?

It is appropriate that most of this is unknown and guess-work, since people in the period didn’t really know (and a lot of stuff is still a mystery). A ship might get hit with substantial weapons dozens of times and be battered but mostly functional, or it could blow up on the first ranging shot (my ships seem to be torpedo magnets).

I guess what I am saying is that this all feels so much more satisfactory than hit points, even if I don’t really know what’s going on. Maybe because I don’t really know what’s going on!