Games for the iPad - Battle Fleet - Readers' Comments and Minireview

Some fellow readers were very kind sending their comments about Battle Fleet, an iPad strategy game.

Let's see what they had to say about it!

Reader GM commented in the previous blog entry:


It's a turn-based artillery game - you select ships, move them, fire their weapons, end turn and repeat.

Turns are relatively widely spaced - your ship can move about 5-6 lengths in one, and from turn to turn you can issue complete changes in speed (full speed ahead in one, reverse in the next).

Your ship's various guns have firing arcs, which seems to be the main reason to rotate your vessels. Firing is top-down angle + power (for distance).

I haven't actually hit anything yet.


An anonymous reader added another comment:


Agree with the last poster. Just a moving artillery platform. Good for those of us starved for true wargames for the IPad but still very unrealistic.


Reader CO sent me this via e-mail:

Got Battle Fleet for the Ipad after seeing it on your site.

Essentially it’s a turn based, small number of ships wargame (I think up to 3 on your side) with a tutorial, a quick battle option and a US campaign.  I’ve only done the first campaign mission (escorting a troop ship with a destroyer against 2 japanese destroyers) so far.

The turns allow for movement (a limited turning circle based on previous speed I think, though no problem in any changes to speed), and firing any of your guns once (ie once each).  The guns have limited firing arcs making manoeuvre the key so you can bear as much firepower down on the enemy as possible.  The combat requires you to enter an angle of fire and a distance with range circles to help you, so it becomes a fairly quick iterative process to get the shots on target (I’ve found usually a couple shots gives a good idea, so if you can fire for example from 3 mounts then you have quite a good chance of hitting).  Interestingly the mounts are modelled separately so the correct bearing and range from one isn’t going to be the same for the next.

I think torpedoes are modelled (haven’t got that far yet).  Some damage is modelled (eg losing gun turrets or engine damage), and ships have hit points – I think about 4 or 5 hits sinks a Japanese frigate.

There’s also a card system with bonuses you can pick up from the map (eg repair, or get exact range and bearing for a shot).  I haven’t seen any Fog of War yet (the enemy ships appear on the map at the start and are followed through) and haven’t played enough to know if the AI is any good (it allows for Hotseat play anyway)

As far as I can tell it works OK, hasn’t crashed so far, has narrated mission brief, the graphics are quite neat and it’s quite fun… and provides a brief respite from WITP:AE !

I’ll let you know if I come across anything else… it clearly isn’t John Tiller (I’m hoping to get the Guadalcanal one sometime) but if you accept it isn’t going for hyper-realism it seems pretty good so far.

Cheers,