Description of the new naval game Lost Admiral Returns

 Lost Admiral Returns is a deep thinking strategy naval game with classic ships like Battleships, Destroyers, and Submarines.  These arch-type ships are constantly maneuvering to have Destroyers matched against submerged Submarines, Battleships against Destroyers, and Submarines against Battleships.

The final outcome of a battle is decided by how many cities you own.  Each city generates Victory Points every turn you own it.  These points are accumulated throughout the battle, and compared against the enemy's total VPs at the end of the battle.  Usually the side with the most VPs wins, though some battles have starting setups that favor one side or the other.  For these battles, the favored side will be have to score more VPs than the other just to "break even"... often at much as 20-30% more.

Being a turn based strategy naval game, LAR allows such razor edge choices of where to send your limited forces to claim cities OR to attack the enemy that shear destruction of the enemy will not ensure victory.  In fact, your fleet will often be faced with a fighting retreat while claiming and keeping cities (for VPs) as long as possible.

All strategy game players will enjoy the fine balance of game play in LAR.  Classic Battleship game players will enjoy the rich battlefield.  Chess players will enjoy the think ahead planning that goes into decisions throughout the game about what enemy units to attack with your ship's last moments afloat...

  Always keep in the back of your own mind that these challenges are part of the Admiral's mental "Naval Chess", so you can expect surprises and twists that might not be seen in our everyday real word life...

Lost Admiral Returns has a fairly straight forward flow of events for games:

• Choose a battle, choose the players, sides, and AI level
• Both players are given build points to buy a starting fleet with.  Select what ever mix of Battleships, Destroyers, Submarines, Transports, Carriers, and other units you feel will win the day for you.
• Red moves their units first.  All units start in the player's respective home cities, and then move outward slowly from there towards unclaimed cities or the enemy home cities.  Once out of the home cities, there is a limit of two ships per map hex.
• After Red moves, combat takes place in all hexes where both sides have ships.  Both sides get to fire their ships, and casualties are removed.
• Yellow then gets to move all their ships.  At all times in movement, one strives to claim cities with Transports, while protecting these vulnerable units from enemy warships with one's own warships.
• Combat again takes place after Yellow moves in all hexes occupied by both sides.
• Finally, the current turn ends, with both sides being awarded Victory Points for cities they still own, or just claimed.
• After a certain number of turns (12 for short battles, 30 for really long ones) the battle is over, cease fires signed until the next outbreak of hostilities, and Victory Points are compared for both sides to see who won!

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This manual is broken up into sections explaining how to play the game, how the program menus work, and other details of interest to players of Lost Admiral Returns.  Start at the top to find the different sections.

If you find an error or omission in this manual, please tell us through our contact form.