Welcome to this post In this guide, we will tell you everything about Rule the Waves 3 – Naval Procurement and Game Setup Follow this guide step by step.

Naval Procurement is the process of discovering new technologies, creating new products based on that research, and then building them. It’s a difficult undertaking, especially when you’re working with a limited budget, conducting research, and managing an entire navy.

CH 0: Game Setup

Before you start a game, there are some necessary settings to consider.

Once you select a date and country as starting points, this screen will appear with key settings that affect naval procurement throughout the game highlighted in red.

Fleet Size: Fleet size is key in determining budgets across every country in game, including your own. Selecting a Very Large fleet size would increase every country’s budget to support more ships – however this will scale proportionally! Therefore poorer countries such as Italy or Japan would still have smaller budgets when compared with richer countries such as Britain despite being able to afford more ships whether playing Small, Medium, or Large fleet sizes – regardless of any changes in resources allocated between Small, Medium, or Large fleet sizes.

2. Select “Historical Resources”. If you leave this feature off, poorer countries will have much larger economies than their real-life counterparts – this helps even out the playing field significantly, bringing China or Spain closer to powerhouse nations like Britain than before. However, unlike fleet size, economic power is NOT proportional – USA would not receive more economic power while Austria-Hungary may.
Research rate determines how quickly or slowly research is completed by all countries in-game as a percentage; an 80% research rate would be 10% slower than its default of 100% (default). It cannot be raised beyond this number (default).

Research variation determines when technologies can be studied. When set to “none”, technologies will only begin being researched in their exact year of discovery in real life; with slight changing by 1-2 years; or using considerable which could mean they are discovered 6 years early or late and affect how effective an invention actually is.
Finally, you may wish to enable “slow aircraft development”. This will delay aircraft research worldwide for years – ideal if you want to delay when planes became the reigning power on seas!

CH 1: Setting Doctrinal Priority

Let’s start with the fundamentals: What do you envision for your fleet? Do you wish to concentrate on the final “fleet battle,” with gigantic battleships versus. battleships? Perhaps you like to chip away at the enemy one by one, with destroyers and cruisers serving as the backbone of your fleet? Perhaps pursue enemy trade using submarines and trade attack missions? Whatever you decide, you must plan ahead of time because it will impact your overall purchase approach. Keep in mind that your resources are limited. You can excel in one area at the expense of another, so choose carefully.

This screen displays doctrine. Here you can give extra training to sailors in certain tactics in the top left, increasing maintenance cost and only taking effect 12 months after starting training. When gunnery training completes, sailors will benefit with increased accuracy after receiving extra instruction; once paid-up training stops, however, its benefits dissapear as soon as payment ceases. Furthermore, other items below allow you to adjust various aspects and change torpedo usage; oxygen fuelled torpedos do significantly more damage; however, if one of your ships using them gets hit near its mount/storage system, damage could increase substantially compared with usual.

 

On the right you have your ammo doctrine. AP shells provide more penetration at close range; at long range they may become difficult. Your choice as to the ratio between AP and HE shells should determine your ammo usage doctrine; once SAP ammo unlocks, use that instead – it acts like a middle ground!

CH 2: Research

Now that you’ve got your priorities straightened out, you’ve got to research new technologies to improve your capabilities.

You will have to set your budget to the desired amount (max 12%) and then consider what you want your researchers to look into. Do you want larger, more powerful guns? Then put naval gun research on high priority. Not interested in machinery developments? Please put it on low. Remember that every research topic here takes a portion of the budget: if you set every topic to “high” priority, nothing is being prioritized. Everything is being researched at the same, equal rate.

In this case, it was 1915. I was playing Austria-Hungary with a US ally and fighting a war against the UK. Not a scenario I wanted to be in, but one I was prepared for. Up to this point I focused efforts into smaller ships, since most countries I would go against had larger economies for capital ships than I had. I would build battleships with a lot of armor and OK speed, to soak up fire for my DD’s to get in there and torpedo the enemy ships. Also, I wouldn’t say I like using submarines, so from the very beginning I put it on low research priority.

CH 3: Staggered Production

Now, it’s time to design a ship. But wait- before you do so, there’s something important to explain.

Staggered production is essential to any procurement program. What this means is that, instead of designing a new ship of every type, every year, and rebuilding the entire fleet every year, you space it out over a longer period. Design and build a run of DD’s this year. Design and build a run of BB’s the next. Make a new CL a year after that. But why?

It is essential to stagger production so that you can minimize financial and dock capacity costs, while maximizing the benefits of your research, and countering obsolescence. If you make a new CL every 2 years, then there will be only minor technology benefits, yet you are still paying 100% for the price of a new ship. Instead, make a CL, then a BB, then a DD, then a CA, then at last looping back to a new CL design. You can have whatever order suits you best, whatever you choose, it is important to spread out ships of the same role so that you can get more years of research in every hull.

In terms of obsolescence, imagine I produced 5 BBs a year from now. That’s a lot of money. In 11 years, I’ll have to replace 5 old, aged, and difficult-to-use BBs. This is a problem that keeps recurring in cycles. So, in addition to staggering the function of ship you build, you must also stagger the NUMBER of ships in each role. Instead, I should construct two BBs in a year and three BBs in six years. That way, in 11 years, I’ll only have to replace 40% of my BBs rather than all of them. Instead of creating eight CLs this year, I design and build four this year, then design and build four more in five years. I’ll still have 8 CLs in total, but I won’t have to replace every single ship all at once, which will save me a lot of money. Your production will resemble a ladder, as shown below.

To build submarines, they are built separately from the ship design process, using the “Build Sub” button below “Build Ship”. You cannot design a special submarine, they are abstracted into various classes (coastal submarine, medium range, etc). You can turn on auto-build submarines if you want.

CH 4: Ship Designer, Hull

Now, we’ve finally made it! Let’s design a ship.

Here is our glorious ship editor. The visual editor is a bit complicated to use, I would recommend against it unless you want to go through the manual and figure out how to work it. Instead, select the role of ship you want in the top left, select whether you will build it at a local or foreign dockyard, and then hit the computer button and confirm that you want it to make a design.

If you build things at a foreign dockyard, you gain access to that nation’s shipbuilding technology and their dock size. But it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. If you go to war with them and the ship is still building… well… guess who paid for part of a ship that the enemy now possesses? It doesn’t contribute to your country’s local shipbuilding economy either, which means you need to expand your dockyard frequently with the “build” button more often. Also, if they’re technologically weaker than you, they can steal some of your tech that you’re putting on the ship.

Voila. Here you are. A ship that may not even be a legal design, but now that we’ve got the foundation we can build it up into a real nice ship. First things first- make sure you’re at or below the tonnage limit of the dockyard you selected. This is only really relevant if you’re building a capital ship like a B/BB/BC or CV, since you can’t build a 20,000 ton Super Destroyer with a hundred torpedo mounts and 300 knots speed. Oh well. Use the checkmark button next to the computer button while you’re making a ship. It will determine if the ship design has any problems, and explain what they are.

Just note that larger doesn’t necessarily mean better- increase the tonnage of the ship if you want to add something, whether a more powerful engine or more ammo capacity. There’s no point paying for an extra 3,000 tons of hull and armor if your ship isn’t using those 3,000 tons for anything. The “Weight Remaining” number is very important- you want it to be positive, but you want to keep it pretty low. Also, DD’s have a weight restriction that can be increased with research. In 1900, some countries have the tech for 500 ton DD’s, but most only have 400 ton DD’s unlocked.

On the left side of the screen, you see a visual portrait of the ship from the top down, along with important design choices for the ship itself. You can hit the “suggest” button next to the class name if you want a historic name for that country from that time, but of course, you can choose your own name by typing into the name box itself. The “developed from” box will tell you what ship you’re developing from, if you rebuild or redevelop an existing ship by right clicking it in the ship list.

The engine is critical to the ship. The larger the ship, the more horsepower it will need per knot of max speed. You can optimize the engine of a class to either speed, reliability, or normal. Optimizing for speed means less weight per max knot, but the engine is prone to break down more frequently. Reliability means that the engine will break down less, but needs more weight per max knot. Normal makes no compromises and stands in the middle. As for engine range, Short range ships often have fuel problems and may not show up in a battle they’re supposed to. Long range ships gain effectiveness in attacking trade ships.

When you discover new types of engines, they can be more efficient than existing ones and can give you a leg up over other countries. Oil fired ships are always better than coal ships, both in the decreased weight/financial cost, and you don’t have to worry about coal shovelers getting tired on an oil ship, because there are no coal shovellers of any kind (Coal ships may slow down if kept at max speed for too long as the shovellers get tired, this will appear in the log). Oil ships also produce less smoke than coal,

Next, you have the freeboard, armor belt, and armoring options. If you set the freeboard to “low”, you can save some weight, but the ship will perform badly in poor weather, and is more prone to flooding. If you set the armor belt to “narrow”, less of the ship is protected by the armor belt, but you save some weight. As for the armor values themselves, they are displayed in inches of thickness. Destroyers are completely unarmored, Cruisers have a minor amount, while Battleships have a ton. Most shots that hit your ship will hit the side- the Belt. Some may hit the turrets themselves, or the conning tower (CT). However if plane is dropping gravity bombs directly on top of you, then it will hit the deck armor or turret tops. If firing from very far, naval guns will have a chance to hit the top/deck armor instead of the belt (you can see the values for this in Gun Data). The Armor Scheme is the layout of the armor on the ship, you can change this after you research the required technology if you want.

Torpedo defence systems (TDS) are below, with 0 representing none, 1 and above indicates increasing levels of protection built into the ship to counteract a torpedo hit. It works best on capital ships. Accomodation determines the quality of the crew quarters: Cramped quarters ships will suffer a penalty to morale and crew training when outside of your home region. Colonial Service ticked ships recieve a bonus to “tonnage on foreign stations”.

Finally, at the very bottom, you have the total costs in both weight and money, aswell as the time to build, and monthly cost. Again, keep your weight remaining positive, but as low as you can. Space on a ship should either be used or cut off.

CH 5: Ship Designer, Weapons

Now, we’re looking at the right side of the ship desiginer. Here you will find your firepower, and the graphical editor. We’ll only be looking at the guns and additional armaments.

The primary guns are the most important on your ship, and every ship (even aircraft carriers) are required to have at least one, maybe more depending on the ship’s role. For primary guns, you have to hit “add turret” and then select a position on the ship to add the turret. A turret that is “Port” or “Starboard” cannot fire on the opposite side of the ship, unless special requirements are met and you check “cross deck fire” (Hit the check mark frequently when you’re dealing with the guns- you may not have the technology for something you think you have, and certain combinations of turrets are not possible). Select the amount of rounds per gun that you want- smaller guns fire faster. You can click “GUN DATA” to see the statistics of a gun of the inches you select.

Choose the fire control option. More advanced fire control means more accurate fire. If a fire control position on your ship is hit, then your guns may lose significant accuracy, unless you have 2 or 3, in which case all of them will have to be hit to suffer the accuracy loss. Increased elevation turrets have an easier time shooting, dual purpose turrets have shells that can fire at both ships and aircraft (only DD’s may have primary DP guns, ships like BB’s can only have them as secondary/tertiary). Autoloaders increase loading speed.

The “Turret Era”, “Sponson Radius”, and “Assymetric turret” are all purely cosmetic options that affects the graphical portrayal of the ship. Change them if you want to.

Secondary turrets are, well, secondary to your main guns. They are of a smaller caliber, have less fire control, and are placed by the ship designer. Note that whenever you computer generate a ship and reduce the amount of secondary guns, it may remove 2 guns on 1 side, instead of 1 gun from each side- fix this by reducing the guns to 0, then reupping it to whatever amount you had in mind. Hit “Auto Place” for the designer to automatically find a place to put the guns visually. Casemates have no armor.

Tertiary turrets are only really used on the biggest of Battleships, and have even fewer options. They have no armor at all, and are smaller in caliber than your secondaries. You cannot have tertiaries without secondaries.

Now, click “additional armament” on top of the right. Here we have all the other weaponry that a ship may carry.

At first, only DD’s may carry torpedos in above-water swivel mounts, and are restricted to 1 tube a mount. As research progresses, you may unlock CL abovewater racks, more than 1 tube a rack, and even reloading your torpedos in combat.

Ships with mines will contribute to creation of minefields in/around your ports. Naval mining will slowly increase as a war goes on but do so faster the more naval mine ships you have. ASW weapons are employed on light forces and increase the capabilities of attacking enemy submarines. Radar, once unlocked, can be added to existing ships using the right click in list –> redesign up to level 2, but 3 or above must be built into the ship, not afterwards as a rebuild.

Flight installations and plane capacity are used for carriers, or large non-carrier ships to carry a deployable floatplane scout or ASW helicopter squadron. Unless you have a catapult, the boat will have to stop to launch any aerial vehicles, carrier or not. Any carriers must be built jet-capable to carry jet powered aircraft.

Missile launchers are for AShM’s (anti ship missiles) and SAM’s (surface to air missiles). AShM’s are generally pretty low weight and can be tacked on as a bonus to any ship, but SAMs require a significant amount of weight.

Finally, the topside load at the very bottom determines how much you can fit onto the top of your ship. If you’ve got too much stuff on top, whether it’s turrets, torpedo racks, anti aircraft guns, helipads, etc, you may suffer a ROF penalty, or even not be able to build the ship at all.

CH 6: Aviation

Once created, zeppelins and planes are an integral part of every navy. They are crucial to winning victory, first utilized for observation and eventually overtaking battleship guns in power as they grow stronger.

Zeppelins are based on land. Go to “Build Fort,” then construct a zeppelin airbase in the desired location and port. At the commencement of combat, Zeppelins will automatically split out in a circular radius and scout on their own; they cannot be commanded.

Planes, however, are different. Once discovered, you can begin to request planes from manufacturers. When you request a plane, you must choose the role, and then the two priorities in building it. At first you may only have floatplane scouts, but as time progresses you will research more, and then even carrier capable or jet powered ones.

After a few months, the prototypes are finished. Your current plane in service is shown at the bottom, followed by a few rival prototypes above. Choose the one you believe is best suited for the job. Planes will then be created automatically over time, filling squadrons with the better planes. As with ships, stagger your requests for advancement across jobs. There’s no purpose in updating fighter planes every six months, so build a fighter, then a medium bomber, then a floatplane scout, then a torpedo bomber, and finally a fighter. Again, the order is irrelevant as long as each role’s development is staggered.

CH 7: Glossary

Ship roles and their tasks:

B: Pre-dreadnought battleship

Characterized by poor armor, speed, weaponry, or a combination of them all. Capital ship from 1890-1905. Large secondary or even tertiary batteries.

BB: Dreadnought battleship

1905-onwards. Significantly improved battleships- they feature a focus on large, primary guns, with reduced secondary and tertiary guns. The large guns cannot be effectively used at night because of the difficulty in spotting.

BC: Battlecruiser

1905-onwards. Battleships with a special focus on speed at the sacrifice of armor or other aspects. The large guns cannot be effectively used at night because of the difficulty in spotting.

AV: Seaplane carrier

Carries a small complement of floatplanes for scouting missions.

CVL: Light carrier

Carries a small number of carrier-capable planes, fighters, torpedo bombers, whatever it may be.

CV: Carrier

Carries a more significant number of carrier-capable planes, fighters, torpedo bombers, whatever it may be.

CL: Light Cruiser

Medium-sized ships that form effective screens, no cumbersome armor or mighty guns but can have high speed.

AC: Armored Cruiser (later Heavy Cruiser)

Between a cruiser and a battleship, they have a lot more weight in armor and guns but less speed.

DD: Destroyer

Small ship useful for scouting or screening (once unlocked). Powerful in great numbers, and especially effective at night as bigger ship cannons don’t have the range advantage.

SS: Submarine

Ship designed to submerge that carries torpedos as its main weapon. Can be used for fleet support or trade interdiction.

Plane roles and their tasks:

Carrier AND Land capable:

F: Fighter

Shoots down enemy planes. Significantly more effective than shipboard AA cannons if up to date.

TB: Torpedo bomber

Launches torpedos at enemy ships. Attacks will hit belt armor.

DB: Dive bomber

Goes on a steep dive bombing run, proving highly accurate but highly dangerous. Hits deck armor.

FS: Floatplane scout

Effective scout planes that carry little armament

Land airbase only:

MB: Medium bomber

Heavier bomb load than dive bombers, and attacks from higher up. Less danger but less accuracy. Can carry AShMs when unlocked.

PB: Naval patrol

Effective scout planes that carry little armament, but can use AShMs when unlocked.

Jet Powered:

LJF: Light jet fighter

Short-range but powerful fighter craft. Can be used on carriers without jet capability but count as 1.5 each for capacity

HJF: Heavy jet fighter

Long-range, all-weather powerful fighter craft. Requires jet-capable carrier. Can be used on carriers less than 40,000 tons but count 1.5 each for capacity

JA: Jet attack

Far superior AShM capability over other jets. Requires jet-capable carrier. Can be used on carriers less than 40,000 tons but count 1.5 each for capacity

H: Helicopter

Not bad at scouting, but excellent for ASW capability.

I hope you were able to learn something from this guide. If you have any suggestions, corrections or other comments feel free to leave one! Have fun on the high seas!

Share your opinions on our recent post, Rule the Waves 3 – Naval Procurement and Game Setup, and let us know if there is anything we can do to enhance it or if there is an error; we will make the required modifications as soon as possible. We are quite grateful to you, and we wish you an enjoyable remainder of the day. This piece was motivated by the author and creator Derp. Also, if you like the post, don’t forget to save us to your bookmarks; we update new posts every day with additional material, so be sure to check back with us frequently for more posts.