by Peter Robbins, 25 March 2026
New toys for Rule The Waves 3? And how much do they change the original game? Read on!
What’s In The Box?!
Make sure to check out the expanded battles user manual that is in your STEAM installation (or Matrix Games installation) disk area: \SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Rule the Waves 3\Manuals
click images to enlarge
Which covers the following topics, just as a top down view of what is overall provided in the expansion.
A combined pic is below of its Table Of Contents.
New options are on the right side of the in-game first menu. Ship Designer, Scenario Editor, Play Scenario and Quick Battle options. Boom, that’s the DLC in a nut-shell. Solid update.
These new options are in effect giving me everything I wanted as someone that more so enjoys individual historical scenarios than the long what-if campaign found in the core RTW3 game. That campaign takes a long time to get through (as a rabid, squirrel-like, ADHD consumer, which I’m sure I represent a good portion of the humans alive today in that regard).
I just don’t have a lot of patience, and this DLC is honestly opening this game up for players like myself to get much more out of the core game. This then incentivizes me to want to play the original Rule The Waves 3 campaign more; as this allows me to scratch that immediacy itch on the side, and also train at the tactical portions of the much longer Rule The Waves 3 campaign game.
This is a great move by NWS and Matrix Games expanding the single scenario capability set. It opens up the enjoyment factor many fold.
I myself am an NWS customer from before the RTW series. I own both their Steam & Iron Complete (covering World War I), and Steam And Iron – Russo Japanese War (covering, you guessed it the RJW). Both of those naval wargames offer a great experience, and are still out and about the net for sale.
If you liked the Steam & Iron wargames by NWS, this new DLC for Rule The Waves 3 finally brings RTW in line with what made those stand alone naval wargames successful. They both handled one conflict very well as a tactical simulator. Now, combining those features into the improved Rule The Waves 3 series tactical combat engine, is a brilliant combination. Now RTW3 is truly a naval wargame for all types of naval wargaming preferences.
Game Specs
|
Background Material |
The Ship Designer
The ship designer is very similar to the one in the core Rule The Waves 3 game, so it’s at least a familiar configuration to those that have played the long campaign form of the game for a while now. Nothing crazy new here, but it’s nice that you are not held back by lack of resources. The world is your ship designing oyster here. You are now directly just making something entirely new and able to use it immediately instead of waiting game-years+ for enough resources to actually float the boat from dry dock.
Great deal of detail and variety of customizations for the ship design, based upon all of the major ship classes of the time frame involved. 1880s through 1970s, a HUGE time span of ship capabilities. This new DLC has opened up this game considerably for us impatient folks amongst the crowd of naval wargamers. Bravo again Matrix and NWS. This was a smooth move overall to offer this new DLC.
The Scenario Editor
First and foremost, you can open an existing scenario or start from scratch. Looking over the existing may give you ideas for your own custom scenarios, so it’s worth picking through the existing scenarios ahead of making your own.
Above, you create a Force. Before doing this, you select a Location on the map by marking the location for the new group with the big red + symbol it allows you to click on the large globe-sized clickable map grid. The whole planet is available for your what-if scenario making pleasure.
The next part took some digging, but you add Ships by way of Creating Divisions within the Task Force then Add Ship to that division, as seen below.
Et voila, I’ve added a ship to a Division within a Task Force successfully, and then saved the scenario for safe keeping and further editing. Pretty straight forward once you find the Add Ship within the Divisions.
One very nice feature shown below is the Check Scenario button. You click this and you get an analysis of the logic of the scenario.
I’m trying all of this without reading the manual, to check for our faithful readers how intuitive the interface is on its own. So far, with just a little fiddle-faddling about, you can figure out most of what is added with this DLC. Of course, read the Expanded Battles new manual that was installed along with the DLC.
Play Scenario
Let’s take a quick stroll into the last offered individual scenario, Melee In The Med (1970), as this is a time period I rarely get to in the existing Rule The Waves 3 core game, as I’m impatient and horrible at the core game. That is a lovely trait combo that I suffer from in all wargames, not just this one; especially the impatience.
Below are all of the preferences when starting a Historical Scenario. Options galore, this is comparable to WDS wargames level of gameplay options.
Below is a sample air strike ordering menu.
The other randomly navigated escort SAG, well apart from the Carrier Strike Group is shown below.
And below is the US Air Base in Italy providing air cover and strike support.
Below is the Missile Salvo firing menu, only available in the Missile Age level of play normally in the core Rule The Waves 3, now it’s immediately available to you for custom built scenario creation sake. Again, a very nice move by NWS and Matrix to open up this functionality. Adding in the Expanded Battles DLC is like getting a completely new game along with the original long running what-if campaign core game.
Above, we see that no valid targets are within range; nor are any enemy targets properly computed yet by weapon directors.
My run through did not end well for the USA. As seen in my scenario summary below.
Back to the drawing board on this one! Likely with many failures to go before I find a good combination of approaches for both task groups and the air units involved.
Quick Battle
Below is the Quick Battles menu option result, without anything selected.
Below I’ve made my selections for a quick battle setup.
As you auto-generate the resulting available ship lists, you get the following. You do have to click on the Auto Pick Player Forces and Auto Pick Enemy Forces to force the battle generator to auto compile which ships are added to each division.
Now you very simply select a central starting area of each side with a simple Select Home for each side click.
I wish the dot was a tiny bit larger, but you can see where we generally set the “home” locations of the battle. I think this just sets the overall approaches of both fleets. Will read up more on this.
First Impressions & Final Thoughts
This was one of the easier articles for me to write of late, purely based upon the fact that what was provided was very clearly depicted in the source site materials, dev diaries, and Matrix games’ website. You knew exactly what you were bound to get, and they provided it in spades.
It was very easy to pick out the value add this DLC offers. That is usually the sign of a great DLC for a core game. The extra capability to create just about any naval scenario from 1880 to the 1970 early Missile Age, broadens the overall appeal of the core game measurably.
Honestly, I’d played RTW3 a good bit, but not nearly enough to get easily to any of the stages of development I had a hankering to play in, even when fast forwarding the start date for the campaign. Rule The Waves 3 core game scratches a very particular long game itch that I don’t always have the patience to enjoy for the long haul.
This DLC solves that entirely. I can now play as many side-line scenarios as I care to play WHILE STILL attending to a long running campaign. Expanded Battles DLC empowers me to re-enjoy the core game 10 fold. So, “thank you” Matrix Games and NWS for coming up with this very solid DLC for Rule The Waves 3. If you enjoy the core game or if you were a fan of the Steam & Iron naval wargame series of old (which is still available, and a good purchase), then this Expanded Battles DLC is right up your alley.
It’s absolutely worth the price of admission to greatly expand your enjoyment of the core naval tactical engine.
You can chat about this game in the Modern World section of our discussion forums
Thank you for visiting the Regiment of Strategy Gaming and riding with The Armchair Dragoons.
Rather than list a bunch of social media links, the easiest thing to do is to check out our LinkTree, which connects you to all of our various locales around the web.
You can also support The Armchair Dragoons through our Patreon, and find us at a variety of conventions and other events.
Feel free to talk back to us either in our discussion forum, or in the comments below.
