Lost Admiral Returns

TUTORIAL 2: Advanced Fleet Manuvers

Here is a view of the build menu, where you ships at the start of a battle. Lost Admiral Returns is a turn based strategy game where you outmaneuver your opponents for control of coastal cities using battleships, destroyers, submarines, and other ships.

The latest information on Lost Admiral Returns can be found at the official website at www.lostadmiralreturns.com.

As in CHESS, Lost Admiral Returns abstracts the ships you use in combat somewhat from real life. Their abilities and specializations have been blurred and then sharpened into certain roles that each ship has in LAR. These abstract roles such as ship killers like Battleships and Submarines play, Scouting, raiding, and sub hunting that Destroyers and PT boats play, etc all help create the fine tuned game play balance in Lost Admiral Returns. All ships in LAR have a role to play, and none are left as useless in the backwaters of the harbors...

The second tutorial covers advanced maneuvers in Lost Admiral Returns such as scouting for enemy forces, using Aircraft Carriers to boost your firepower, repairs, and stealthy submarine manuevers.

Run the tutorial to walk through these aspects of the LAR game. You can also use the Help and Advice Screens built into every menu in the game to learn more about various parts of the game.

Specific lessons in Tutorial 2 are:

1) Scouting with Carriers for enemy surface ships by moving Carriers first in your fleet. Carriers reveal all enemy surface ships within two hexes, and can be moved towards suspected enemy locations to find them while you still have time and room to conduct counter maneuvers.

2) Carriers can not spot nearby submerged Submarines. Instead, use "sub hunters" such as Destroyers, PT Boats, and Cruisers. Sub hunting ships will reveal the presence of any enemy submerged Submarine in each hex they enter. The sub hunter must stop in the hex of any submarines it finds, and will fight them in the following combat phase.

3) Stacking limits in LAR are enforced at the end of each movement phase. You can unlimited ships in friendly city harbors as long as you have a Transport type of ship there. Normal open ocean hexes are limited to 2 ships. River and River Mouth hexes are limited to 1 unit per hex at the end of the movement phase.

4) LAR will warn you if you try to end your movement phase with ships "over stacked" in a hex. You can either move some ships out of the hex in question, or allow the bottom ships in the hex to be destroyed to make room for the rest of the ships.

5) LAR will also help you know when you have moved all of your ships for this turn. During your movement phase, you will be prompted to move each of your ships one after another. You can also manually select what ship you want to move next by right clicking on it. For each ship you will want to eventually indicate you are done with it for this turn. You can use up all of the ships movement points, anchor the ship, or use the "Stop" button on the ship to indicate that you are done with the ship for this turn even though the ship is still able to move. Once all ships have been visited, and "used" in one of these ways to indicate you are done with the ship, LAR will detect that you could safely end the movement phase now, and will start to blink the "Fin" button at the bottom of the screen. Simply click on the "Fin" button to finish your movement phase. If per chance you click on the "Fin" button without "using" all your ships, LAR will warn you that you are about to exit without moving all you ships, and ask if you want to proceed anyway.

6) Carriers also help out all nearby friendly ships during combat. Every time you attack an enemy surface ship in the same hex as your Carrier, or in an adjacent hex, bonus damage will be done due to the "Air Support" from the Carrier. This bonus is +1 damage per shot per nearby Carrier. I.E. If your Destroyer was firing at an enemy Destroyer and has two friendly Carriers nearby, your Destroyer will do 5 damage with it's shot, rather than the normal 3 damage done against Destroyers. This bonus Air Support damage does not apply to shots against enemy submerged Submarines.

7) During the combat phase, combat occurs in all hexes where both you and the enemy have ships located. For each combat site, your top two ships will participate. Transport type ships (Transport and Armed Transport) will not participate in combat if there is a friendly warship in the hex with them. Larger combats will have two ships from each side participating, making for bloodier combats as each side will get two shots... leading to more casualties and sunken ships. Try to out maneuver your enemy by double teaming vulnerable enemy ships with two of your own ships where possible. Even better, arrange to sink the enemy ship in one round of combat with the combined fire power of your two ships, and any Air Support that you can arrange during your current movement phase.

8) You can also repair damaged ships in LAR by moving them back to a friendly city harbor. As long as you own the city, and keep a Transport type ship there, any damaged ships you have located there will repair 2 damage points at the end of the whole turn. A whole turn consists of the Red player moving, then combat for both sides, then the Yellow player moving, followed by combat again.

9) Note that the lower left area of both the movement screen and combat screen can be used to track how many movement points your ships have, how damaged they are, and what kind of damage they can do to enemy ships with their shots during combat. For enemy ships, you will be able to see how much damage points they have left ONLY if you also have a ship in the same hex (to closely examine the enemy ship with).

10) During combat the lower left area will show a projection of what damage you can do to each enemy ship present if you combine your possible shots against that one target. I.E. LAR will list underneath each enemy ship what kind of damage you can do to it, with one shot, and/or shots from both of your ships in that combat site.

11) Submerged Submarines are the only unit in LAR that can move through an enemy occupied hex. Enemy sub hunter ships (Destroyer, PT Boat, Cruiser) will still stop the Submarine. For instance, a submerged Submarine could move into the same hex as an enemy Battleship, and then move past the Battleship to a vulnerable enemy Carrier in a hex past the Battleship. Normal surface ships would have to stop and fight the Battleship, rather than "sneaking" past it into the Carrier's hex.

12) Tutorial 2 demonstrates a series of combined arms moves that lets you destroy a rather large enemy fleet by double teaming your opponent where possible, using air support bonuses from your Carriers to kill the enemy more quickly. In LAR it is always a good idea to maneuver for quick kills where possible by using your Carriers to scout out enemy locations, and then support your ships in combat. Every ship in LAR has an "arch nemesis" type of ship that can be used against it. Use your Destroyers against enemy submerged Submarines, your Battleships against enemy Destroyers, and your Submarines against enemy Battleships and Carriers. Refer to the damage chart page for more information on what ship attack combinations work best.

Earn Victory Points to win the battle:

Each city you can claim for your side by using a Transport type of ship will earn you the city's Victory Points at the end of each turn. Regardless of how your warships are faring on the battlefield, what counts in the end is the Victory Points you earn from your cities during the game.

Some battles will require you to simply earn more total Victory Points by the end of the battle than your opponent to win. Other battles will give you a better starting position than the enemy, and therefore you will be expected to earn significantly MORE Victory Points than the enemy to win. I.E. Your starting position might be good enough that you must earn 30% more Victory Points than your opponent just to "break even" and barely win the battle. If you earn 25% more VPs than the enemy, you will LOSE the battle (by an adjusted 5% percent, so to speak).

Flow of turns in LAR:

In LAR, battles are fought between the Red Player and Yellow Player for a specific number of turns. Your goal is to earn enough Victory Points to defeat your opponent by the end of the battle. This goal is listed as a percent of your opponent's VP Total that you must make. I.E. score VPs of your own equal to 130% of your opponents to win on a map and start setup that favors you.

You will have only a certain number of turns to achieve this score ratio (or better) in. Each game will have a setup stage, and then turns broken down into phases as follows:

Red Movement Phase - red moves all their ships as desired.
Combat Phase - both sides get to fire their ships once.
Yellow Movement Phase - Yellow gets to move their ships now.
Combat Phase - again both sides get to fire their ships once.
City Ownership Phase - Ownership of cities is given to players who are the only one to have a Transport type ship in that city harbor. The owning players earn Victory Points for that city, along with resources, and will get to repair any of their own damaged ships in that harbor, removing up to 2 points of damage.
That ends the turn, and the next turn starts with Red Movement again.

Play Tutorial #3, and #4 to learn more!

The other tutorials will teach you all about the intricacies of movement, combat, ship building during the battle, and selecting your units at the start of a battle.

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.

Please use the contents menu to navigate the manual.

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Here is a view of the build menu, where you ships at the start of a battle.