RTW3 : First Thoughts... what do we think so far?

[cormallen]

Evolving live review thread...


OK, Just installed our shiny new game and poked it with a stick a bit...

First thoughts:

1/ 1890 start forces still rather disappointing in certain respects.

Cruisers generally way too fast and many are much too modern looking:Very much a late 1890s vibe.
Battleships look good but need more variety given the weird and wonderful stuff around early on?
Shame there's no Torpedo Boats/Gunboats etc... Corvettes all look too modern.


2/ 1900 start is a lot better, again too good for legacy forces (so mostly 5+ years old IRL) but not so jarringly "Back to the Future" as the 1890s stuff.

3/ 1920 start looks rather like a prettier version of what's come before, usual multitude of Battlecruisers of course...

4/ 1935 start looks very good, almost no Battlecruisers? 



Ship designs are mostly very pretty and sensible looking, a touch cluttered to a RTW 1/2 eye but that'll be  just a matter of personal adjustment. 

Not got into the crew, division or much playing with graphics yet...


Please add any first/second thoughts as they occur:

[devoncop]

My first experience of the RTW games though have been devouring a LOT of You Tube content on RTW 3 in the run up to general release.

Initial impression of the 1890 Austro Hungarian start (I like a challenge) is that there are some truly horrific legacy ships I will have to cope with.

Kaiser class cramped short range battleships with Level 14 narrow belt armour but with 1 inch on the conning tower and turrets. They are at present being overtaken by two geriatric tortoises ... :-)

In all seriousness this one will be a huge timesink I can see and I actually like the UI.

[cormallen]

May 18, 2023 12:12:46 GMT -6 devoncop said:

My first experience of the RTW games though have been devouring a LOT of You Tube content on RTW 3 in the run up to general release.

Initial impression of the 1890 Austro Hungarian start (I like a challenge) is that there are some truly horrific legacy ships I will have to cope with.

Kaiser class cramped short range battleships with Level 14 narrow belt armour but with 1 inch on the conning tower and turrets. They are at present being overtaken by two geriatric tortoises ... :-)

In all seriousness this one will be a huge timesink I can see and I actually like the UI.

I really love them! Not only is the ship design stuff pretty good (as in, surprisingly accurate given it's relative simplicity) the tactical combat (at least the surface stuff, I'm less fond of the aircraft side) is excellent, especially with it's reflection of the challenges in the early 20th Century fleet command! And now it's gained a new level of personnel management... Can't wait!

My only gripe is that the 1890s fleets aren't rubbish enough! The pre-pre-Dreadnought period is very interesting but should see as much dynamic change as the next decade as armour and gun/ammo technology duel for dominance as usual. The 1890s research includes several evolving types of protection (Compound/Harvey/Krupp etc) with various degrees of improvement whilst guns improve from -3 to 0 (IG ratings) over the period. This should mean that a late 1890s Battleship will have a big advantage over the sort of Ironclad that your legacy fleet should largely be fielding.

[zulu354]

I do miss the option to build my own legacy fleet. =/

[cormallen]

May 18, 2023 16:00:05 GMT -6 zulu354 said:

I do miss the option to build my own legacy fleet. =/

I'm probably going to try and build one somehow and then put that into a Jan 1890 save game? Trouble is I'll have to do it for all the nations to stop the opposition having a huge advantage, mostly in speed! If I edit the techs I may try and add in Torpedo Craft like small (game really struggles under 300 tons though) Torpedo boats for the Jeune Ecole boys and Torpedo Gunboats etc for almost everyone else! I could edit torpedoes onto corvettes but I doubt the AI would use them?

[davea]

My first experience with RTW although I've enjoyed SAI and SAI campaign for many years.

Read the manual, picked France, medium as a trial to get the hang of it. Everything was great for 3 or 4 years, and then I got sacked (deteriorating relations with A-H and Germany, which I took a hard line on, and overspent and missed some paychecks.). Live and learn! While I was still employed took a shot at designing a couple new ships.

So far - love it.

Dave

[metesky]

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again!

My first 1890 French fleet was full of slow, 16 knot battleships and weak armored cruisers and way too many big light cruisers.
My second 1890 French fleet has six 18 knot battleships with two more under construction, 1 good armored cruiser with a 2nd under construction, 3 small foreign service armored cruisers and enough big light cruisers. A big improvement. I like it better than the real 1890 french fleet. This on 'medium fleet size'.

And those lozenge layout french bs are very pretty now. Prettiest ships imho are the ~7500 ton USS New York clones with 6x8 inch guns.

[owe166]

Enjoying it alot of far. Though I'm a fool and took a Stab at playing the royal navy. While I have mad it 10 years in. I'm still not the fan of managing this much in foreign tonnage.

[axe99]

Really enjoying it (not perhaps the most unexpected result!) Been hanging out for this for ages. Really like the officers, the divisions, the new ship visuals, the great number of nations in a game, the relations matrix, and of course the core gameplay loop remains as excellent as ever

A few minor things worth mentioning for possible "A & As" for the future:

* The 1890 start has the most senior officers without enough time in position to be promoted, but other officers who are nominally less senior with enough time - so I can only promote division commanders at this stage by taking a prestige hit. Not a big issue, but might be nice to tweak at some stage. If I just press "yes", the promotions are prestige-hit free (and seem to sometimes break the rules for manual promotions in terms of years served).

* Agree with your point cormallen about speedy cruisers - Mine are 20 and 21kts in 1890, when my notes have the New York class as the first ACs to hit 20kts in 1893, and Reina Regente (forced) in 1888 - most cruisers in 1890 would have been a few knots slower, some as slow as 15kts. Not a big issue, but a "nice to have" if the devs were happy tweaking it (setting up templates for starting ships for 10 or so navies for four starting periods is no mean feat - same story for officers!)

* A minor thing I had was "historic enmity" raising tension with Germany in 1890 - iirc, Germany and Britain were still relatively friendly in 1890, it wasn't until a bit later when tensions arose, and they may not have had "historic enmity" until after WW1.

* When sorting by rank, it might be nice if it sorted by seniority (both within and between ranks) than alphabetically by rank name.

But all up it's absolutely wonderful - many thanks to everyone involved in putting it together - you've done a sensational job

[blarglol]

So far anyway it seems more balanced than RTW2. There are less wild swings of tension, and things are explained better. For example, instead of an endless series of bi-annual wars beating up Austria-Hungary and bottling them back up in their blasted ports, I get messages like "Tension lowered with Austria-Hungary because they aren't as strong as us and don't want to start a fight." This "common sense" AI is a welcome addition to the game.

I haven't seen any AI wars yet, but I think the threat of them is what must be helping make the AI more reasonable. Before, all they had to do was worry about fighting us, so they could do things willy-nilly, while we always had to consider getting dogpiled.

Also, shore batteries mount fixed torpedoes now? Was that in RTW2 and I just never noticed, or is it new? I have actually seen useful batteries that dueled and fended off enemy Bs with a number of damaging hits. I hit a mine early (1891 I think) so they are definitely present and very dangerous even in the beginning of the game.

The officer corp is interesting, and I have had things like duels, speedy guys ruining ships in peacetime, etc. More to see there.

Regarding divisions, I have been using mostly two-ship ones, and I think that isn't perfect, as particularly with my cruisers it matches ships with 1-2 knot speed differences that I explicitly put in another division. Worse, their sisters are in the same battle! So it's not like one was somewhere else. Basically - there was no reason for the battle generator to break up the divisions (might be a bug).

Overall, I like this as an improvement to RTW2, but I still wish I could open up two different windows side-by-side and look at designs. I wish the UI was little a more comprehensive.

[dorn]

May 19, 2023 7:25:17 GMT -6 blarglol said:

Regarding divisions, I have been using mostly two-ship ones, and I think that isn't perfect, as particularly with my cruisers it matches ships with 1-2 knot speed differences that I explicitly put in another division. Worse, their sisters are in the same battle! So it's not like one was somewhere else. Basically - there was no reason for the battle generator to break up the divisions (might be a bug).

For division I would recommend to build them as was usual at that time. Battle generator will change them if they are too different compared to what was practice.

But overall I would recommend to fill them to full and make enough destroyer division to your other division so that all you other divisions have one screen DD division.

For carrier division probably best number is 2 ships per division.

[axe99]

A bit further in, still loving it Used to RtW 1/2 Britain at the start being spread thin if there's a risk of war with two powers after the first few years, but Britain in the 1890s is (to be fair, as it was) a monster! Feel a teensy bit mean, but I'm sure economic growth in Germany will have them catch up and cause trouble soon emough

Lots of little touches that make things better as well as the big things, the tweaks to the UI and so on are great.  Being able to move whole divisions at once is excellent

[colprice]

Minor quibble with the ship inset in the map screen.
In rtw2, I could use this to see if my course allowed A arcs open and which turrets are damaged etc.
The new graphics - while adding realism - make it difficult to see. The graphic really needs a magnification setting!

[devoncop]

I am now onto my second campaign as Austria Hungary having decided to jump into the RTW games for the first time on release day. Absolutely loving it.

First campaign ended in ignominy as the Austrian Kaiser was overthrown by a workers revolt but the circumstances were just brilliant. Losing a war against Italy I was offered the option of using the Austrian Navy to clandestinely land a charismatic Communist leader on Italian shores to ferment rebellion.

This he did with remarkable efficiency, causing the Austrian Navy to become inflamed with communist fervour and revolt, inspiring the oppressed masses in Vienna to overthrow the Kaiser ....

Amazing narratives in this game.

Incidentally there have been several AI on AI wars in both of my playthroughs to date.

[supswar]

I'm a bit over 8 hours into an Italian game. It's my first time with rule the waves and I'm really loving it. It's surprisingly intuitive. A great reason to research navies. I just finished my first world war in 1914. It's a bit easy as Italy so far, but I'm really just focused on ruling the Mediterranean (though I've picked up some colonies and Iceland).