Second Commission

A season lasts one sitting. This page covers everything you need before the first one.

Beginning a game

Enter a name for the list, choose a sea and a difficulty, and the Admiralty gives you a purse. Buy a fleet against it. The flagship is free and compulsory; everything else is your choice. Then place your hulls in the water off your own coast and the season opens.

Controls

Click one of your hulls to select her. Green water is ground she can make this turn; a red counter is an enemy she can fire on. Drag anywhere to pan the chart; the plus, minus and Fit buttons zoom. On a phone the chart sits above the panel and both scroll. Every control is reachable from the keyboard.

Turn order

A turn runs in three parts. You give every hull an order; then every declared action is fought out, both sides firing from the hulls they had when the round opened; then every harbour pays its holder. The machine takes its turn the same way, and you can watch it move.

Movement

A hull steams up to her rating in hexes and stops the moment an enemy comes alongside. Land blocks; shoals do not. A submarine stays submerged - invisible to everything except a destroyer or corvette alongside her - until she fires.

Combat and scoring

Damage is printed. Read the attacker down the side and the target across the top; the number where they cross is the damage dealt, before the flag's and the carrier's support. Nothing is rolled.

BBCADDCOSSCVTRFL
BB56662675
CA34552563
DD23445552
CO12334341
SS75332666
CV11110121
TR00000000
FL55662675

The classes:

CodeClassCostHullSteamSight
BBBattleship261232
CACruiser17943
DDDestroyer10663
COCorvette6452
SSSubmarine14642
CVCarrier20745
TRTransport8542
FLFlagship01443

Score comes from harbours, not from sinkings: every harbour pays its value every turn you hold it, and a sinking pays only the ship's cost. Take the coast early.

Winning

The higher score at the end of the season takes it. Notches are awarded on the margin and carry into your career rank.

Losing

You lose the season on score. You lose it immediately if your flagship is sunk - the flag is struck and the season ends there - so the flagship is worth screening.

Saving and restarting

The game saves itself into your browser at the end of every turn and offers to resume when you come back. Your career ledger is kept separately and survives a new season. Striking your own flag ends the season and writes the result to the ledger. Under the file:// scheme the browser refuses local storage, so serve the package over HTTP if you want any of this kept.