The Historical Scenarios
Myself, I love campaign style games, where I can build up and nurture a force over a long stretch of
battles and encounters. Not everyone has the time and inclination to do that however, and some players
prefer historical battles instead of sanbox games. That is why we have developed the historical scenarios
feature of Expanded Battles.
The expansion will ship with a number of scenarios spread in time and scope to give variation and
show the whole breadth of what the RTW system is capable of. Scenarios will include Yellow Sea,
Dogger Bank, River Plate, Rheinübung (the Chase for the Bismarck), Second Guadalcanal, Eastern
Solomons and a fictional cold war scenario in the Mediterranean. This is an impressive collection of
scenarios spread over 70 years. No other game can even come close to simulating such a long
timespan of naval warfare.
Personally, I like Yellow Sea and Dogger Bank the best. They are manageable in size and time, have
a high suspense level, and they have concrete goals to attain. Eastern Solomons and Rheinübung are
larger and take longer time. They are also more varaible in outcome, with a risk that no substantial
battle will happen at all, which is in fact how most potential naval battles ended in real history. This
is something the designer has to balance all the time, realism, player agency, and maneuvering vs
a scenario where the forces will inevitably come into contact.
As players, we want action and combat, which at times goes against outcomes sought by admirals.
Just take the Rheinübung scenario for example. If the Bismarck and consort manages to sneak out
into the Atlantic and reach the objective without combat, this would certainly be a champagne
popping occasion at the admiral’s bridge on Bismarck, but as a player it will probably feel as an
anticlimax. ”At least let me blow up the Hood on the way...”.
To give the player the option both for battle action and for the more long term sneaking through the
British patrols, we have made two scenarios, one long breakout scenario and a smaller one that
concentrates on the battle of Denmark Strait. The problem of course with Denmark Strait is that the
historical outcome was probably very unlikely, but players will still somehow expect the Hood to
blow up. And Bismarck can blow her up in the game at the correct distance, but not every time, and
not usually after the first few salvoes. Playtesting so far has shown that the most common outcome is
damaged ships on both sides and Bismarck heading back home with some wounds and a substantial part
of her ammo used up, which seems reasonable enough.
We will also include a hypothetical nightmare scenario for the Royal Navy, with the carrier Graf
Zeppelin accompanying Bismarck and Prinz Eugen, and Scharnhorst and Gneisenau making a sortie
from Brest at the same time. We decided to have that as a separate scenario, as there are more
potential hypothetical ships that have various levels of probability. In this case we’re taking some
historical liberties for the benefit of player agency and what we think is an interesting scenario that adds
additional challenge to both the Royal Navy and Kriegsmarine sides.
All in all, it will be a nice collection of scenarios that will have something from every period of
naval warfare in the twentieth century for the naval enthusiast. And if that isn’t enough, there will
be a scenario editor, where players can create any scenario they might dream about. But more on
that in the next dev diary
By Fredrik Wallin
Lead Designer
Naval Warfare Simulations
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