![]() ![]() And so forth.īut what makes all this a game and not just navy porn is that you have to figure out to put all this hardware to use while operating within some very powerful constraints. New aiming mechanisms let your gunners land their shells with increased precision. Machinery becomes lighter and more powerful, letting you add more armor or artillery without paying a penalty in speed. ![]() Early battleships may come with 10″ guns, but research can let you build up to 18″. Rule the Waves’ ship designer, showing a design for an early dreadnought battleshipĪs your boffins unlock new technologies, or as you buy them from other powers looking for some quick cash, frontiers in shipbuilding that were previously closed to you begin to open up. It then becomes your responsibility to steer the development of your nation’s navy until the year 1925, or until you’re driven from office in ignominy, whichever comes first. What Rule the Waves does is put you into the shoes of Tirpitz, or any of his contemporaries in other great powers - Jacky Fisher in Britain, Louis-Émile Bertin in France, William Sims in the United States, and so on - right at the moment that great naval race is about to begin. It was a classic example of military spending becoming uncoupled from strategic reality. Both nations had spent so much money on their battle-fleets that they could never bring themselves to put them fully at risk. ![]() In the end, all that battleship-building had no real effect on the outcome of the war the two fleets clashed a few times, but the “decisive battle” - the titanic struggle of battleships that the hugely influential contemporary naval theorist Alfred Thayer Mahan had predicted would decide any future war - never really came. So they stepped up their own shipbuilding to meet the German challenge, kicking off a ruinously expensive arms race that didn’t end until the two countries finally went to war in 1914. A Germany that dominated continental Europe was a Germany the British could live with a Germany that could choke off Britain’s trade routes was not. The mostly-landlocked German states had never been naval powers, but led by the navy-mad Kaiser Wilhelm II and his top naval advisor Alfred von Tirpitz, the new Germany embarked on a massive program to build a navy that could challenge the traditional ruler of the seas, Great Britain.Īs an island nation that required overseas trade for nearly all its raw materials, including such necessities as food and oil, Britain was naturally alarmed by this development. Having defeated its main continental adversaries, France and Austria, on land, in the 1890s the Germans began to flex their muscle in a new arena: the sea. Germany had finally been unified from a collection of minor states into one huge nation, and the emergence of this new giant in the heart of Europe threw long-standing power arrangements into disarray. Though people didn’t really think of it this way at the time, at the end of the 1800s, the European system started breaking down. Let’s start with a little historical background If you really want to get the flavor of what Rule the Waves does, think of it instead as Armageddon Simulator. Naval Warfare Simulations, the creators of Rule the Waves, describe it as “a game of naval ship design and combat at the birth of the 20th century.” But that really doesn’t do it justice. Its name is Rule the Waves,and you should be playing it. “Rule the Waves”: a unique, compelling game of naval strategyĭear strategy gamers, I want to tell you about a little diamond in the rough I came across the other day.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |