[2022] End the stagnant gameplay, Give ships a reason to get close

This is going to happen in Random Battles because there are 12 players per side. Even a brawling, armored battleship doesn't last long when pushing into the shellfire of 5+ enemies. There is going to be a period of time where long-range shells are exchanged until a few ships are sunk. When the numbers are no longer high enough to hold back a brawler, then they can go in secondaries blazing.

You see this already in the smaller 6v6 format of Ranked, or the 1-3 player format of Brawls. When there isn't a massive amount of damage to focus-fire down a brawling battleship, they will absolutely go in immediately and have a large effect while the enemy team tries to work them down without dying in the process.

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Random Battles can best be thought of as coming in 3 parts:

Early Game


Mid Game


Late Game

Early Game:

Players tend to split up to each flank. To be in the middle is to risk being shot from both sides, so fights break out for flanking positions. Since you can expect a roughly even distribution of 5-7 ships per flank, it's best to focus on TRADING. Trading is a process of trying to deal more damage to the enemy than you receive in turn. Dealing 10,000 damage to their team while your team only takes 5,000 is an example of a good trade. Repeated long enough, the enemy team will either lose ships or be forced to retreat.

Mid Game:

This starts after a few ships have been sunk. Usually both teams lose a few ships and start to look for what advantages have opened up. Successful trading will lead to kills and capture of strategic territory. If one team has lost both flanks, it can be extremely hard to come back. Sometimes the mid-game starts early when one side loses ships very quickly while the other team does not. The midgame could rapidly result in a route/blowout in those cases.

Late Game:

This starts after each side has lost half or more of their ships. Typically all ships have taken damage by this point in the game. Left with few resources, it's up to each player to make decisions that make their remaining HP matter the most. In the case of Brawling Ships that have saved the majority of their health, now they can push forward with the expectation of only a few enemies trying to wear them down. This allows them to forcibly take map position as the heavy armory and secondary pressure will drive back damage ships that cannot easily coordinate their fire.

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TLDR: Random Battles start with trading for a few minutes. As advantages/openings appear, then players get more aggressive and net kills. Try to save your health for brawling in the later half of the match when there are less enemies to focus you down.

As stated in my post, the Early Game is about Trading. If you feel that Trading your ship results in enough damage/pressure to the enemy team in the early game that it throws the mid-game into your team's favor, then that is your strategy.

Most players I know would instead feel that enough an extremely wounded ship is more valuable then a dead ship as it still offers map pressure through taking positions, spotting potential, and firing lines. In that sense, they can acknowledge a strong trade early but would almost always say losing a ship in the early game is far too risky for how the mid and late game work. If your team is not gauranteed to win the mid-game (and nothing is gauranteed in random battles) then the early agression can quickly backfire and start the steamroll against your own team.

In general, all-out early aggression is best used in 3 player or less Brawls or against bots.

Here, Here.

#TeamOceanMap

*Furiously scribbles notes...

"Moar... Ocean... map..."

KOTS in 9v9 on Ocean would be terribly boring.
You'd see a smoke-line of cruisers farming battleships that get constantly pushed further and further back. I played this format in Succession League back in 2021 and the novelty of Ocean wore off very quickly.

I will say - that the best thing Ocean did was make people have to rethink builds to accommodate a map with no terrain. In KOTS / Succession this didn't matter because you knew ahead-of-time what map was coming, but in a Clan Battle format where your composition must take into account Ocean map ~15% of the time the effect is much different.