Battle Builder

Battle Builder is the game: you set up two lines of ships and fight in one of them, alone in your browser. There is no account and nothing to install.

Setting up a battle

Battle Builder's page, /battle/, is where you set the battle up; Start opens it in the game. The sheet shows two lines, the Crown's and the Cabal's. Each side has up to eight ships, in any mix of the five classes: the First Rate, the Seventy-four, the Frigate, the Brig and the Cutter. Each ship is drawn in plan, to one scale, so you can see how they compare.

• Add ship puts another ship in a line, and × takes one out. A side is never empty.
• Player / NPC says who commands each ship. Mark one ship Player: that's yours. It can be on either side. Every other ship is commanded by an NPC captain.
• Under each line is its tally: how many ships, how many guns, and the weight of its broadside, the shot one side of every ship fires at once.

Start begins the battle. It stays greyed out, with the reason shown, until the battle can be fought.

The battle is in the address

Nothing is saved. The battle is written into the page's address, so reloading the page, or sending the link to someone, brings back exactly the same battle. Use Battle Builder in the pause menu to change it: it takes you back to the page with that battle on the sheet.

How a battle opens

The two lines start abreast, facing each other, with the wind blowing steadily across the line between them. The wind doesn't change during the battle.

Every battle has the same island, off the windward end of the lines and beside the water between them: low, sandy and wooded, about two kilometres long, with a bay in the side facing the fight and a long shoal running out from its northern point. Its woods hide a ship behind them and stop shot, so either side can use it for cover. Its shallows are a risk too: the map and the minimap show where they are.

A battle never ends by itself: there is no victory screen and no time limit. Ships fight until they strike. If yours strikes, the fight goes on around you. Fight again, in the pause menu, starts the same battle afresh.

Credits

The carved heads and sterns of the First Rate and the seventy-four are based on a 3D model by Mixmamo.studio (the original), licensed under CC BY 4.0. For Naval Gaming it was cut down to its head and stern, refitted to each hull, recoloured, and given a carved scroll in place of its figurehead.