In Warships, players battle in real time, and climb up ranks to win rewards. The gameplay of Warships is conducted over the course of seasons.
There are many key features of Warships. Players will need strategic upgrade planning, good attacking skills and good base building skills to succeed.
Tech Tree
The Tech Tree help you expand your Warship and upgrade both your offense and defense over the course of a Warships season. Each Warships season will feature different Tech Trees.
There are two primary resources you use to progress on the Tech Tree: Unlock Tokens and Upgrade Tokens. Unlock Tokens are used to unlock items on the Tech Tree, while Upgrade Tokens are used to upgrade existing items on the Tech Tree.
Unlocking tech on a space will allow tech on adjacent spaces to be unlocked.
Performing unlocks and upgrades on the Tech Tree increases the Tech level of your Warship. You will need a certain Tech level to unlock new Engine Rooms.
There are a variety of unlocks and upgrades that are available on the Tech Tree:
Troops: they are not available to use on Warships until they are unlocked on the Tech Tree, even if unlocked on the home island. Upgrading troops increases their level and the reserve size of that troop, allowing you to hold more troops in reserve to replace troops lost attacking Warships.
Landing Crafts: Landing Crafts are unlocked at the start of a season. Upgrading them increases their level and may allow players to deploy more Landing Crafts at once.
Gunboat: The Gunboat is unlocked at the start of a season. Upgrading the Gunboat increases its level, allowing players to start a battle with more Gunboat Energy.
Heroes: they are not available to use on Warships until they are unlocked on the Tech Tree, even if unlocked on the home island. Upgrading heroes increases their level and the level of their abilities.
Gunboat Abilities: they are not available to use on Warships until they are unlocked on the Tech Tree, even if unlocked on the home island. Upgrading Gunboat Abilities increases their level.
Defenses: Unlocking defenses allows you to place them on the Warship. Upgrading defenses increases their level and sometimes allows you to place more of the same defenses at the new level.
Boosts: Unlocking boosts will power up offense or defense, depending on the boost unlocked. Upgrading the boosts increases their strength.
Engine Rooms: Unlocking extra Engine Rooms allows an extra Engine Room to be placed, and also increases their health, but also changes the layout of the Warship and expands the play area allowing more space for base building. It requires a certain Tech Level and Headquarters level to unlock.
On the Tech Tree, there are several spaces marked with exclamation marks known as nodes. Players can choose one of three options; each option grants them extra defensive buildings, with later nodes allowing players to place Prototype Defenses. The defenses unlocked from the nodes can be upgraded by upgrading the relevant defensive building in the Tech Tree, while Prototype Defenses cannot be upgraded. Later you can change your choice, but by paying 100 Diamonds.
Upgrades and boosts on the Tech Tree have no effect on the player's home island. On the other hand, the only upgrade on the home island that affects Warships gameplay is the Headquarters (as it is a requirement to unlock new Engine Rooms); boosts from Statues or Tribes have no effect on Warships gameplay.
Also note that the Troop/Gunboat ability/Hero/Building levels on the Tech Tree are not capped by those on the Home Island. For example, a player with level 18 Heavies on the Home Island can still upgrade Heavies to level 22 on the Tech Tree.
Base Building
Each Warship has a few Engine Rooms which the players must protect to succeed in combat.
To do so, players will need to place defenses strategically. Defenses can be unlocked and upgraded from the Tech Tree, and new Engine Rooms can be unlocked with sufficient Tech Level and Headquarters level.
Defenses that are unlocked can be placed into a storage and can be re-placed, making editing the layout of defenses easier.
Battling
Battle in Warships is real-time; two players will attack each other's Warships.
Players will need to assemble troops to attack. Before a battle starts, players can freely choose troops from their reserves to fill their Landing Crafts for the battle.
Each troop type has a reserve whose size depends on their upgrades in the Tech Tree. When troops are lost in Warships battles, extra troops in reserves can be used to fill their places. Troops are trained (for free) to fill reserves whenever vacancies arise, at the same rate as they train on the home island. Diamonds can be used to instantly fill troop reserves; the Instant Training subscription also applies and instantly fills reserves as they deplete.
If you do not have enough troops in reserves to fill a Landing Craft, you can still start a battle with a partially filled Landing Craft, using all the available troops in the reserves.
Once a player decides to start a battle, they are matched with another player. Matchmaking prioritises finding opponents with similar Rank.
Before attacking the Warship, the players have 1 minute to scout each other's Warships and choose appropriate troops and heroes for the attack. Like with normal attacking, the timer is replaced with the battle timer once troops, Heroes or Gunboat weapons are deployed.
If there are not enough troops from the reserves to attack, they cannot be filled with Diamonds during the scouting phase.
The winner is decided by three criteria:
The player with more Engine Rooms remaining after both attacks are complete is declared the winner.
In the case that the number of Engine Rooms remaining are the same on both sides, the total destruction is compared, with the higher total destruction winning. Note that this is counted based on the total health of all buildings on the Warship, so partially damaged buildings will still count towards the total.
If the total destruction is the same on both sides, the remaining time (down to the second) left on the attack when it is ended determines the winner, with the winner being the one that had more time remaining when their attack ended. Note that scouting time is not counted, so players do not need to rush headfirst into an attack just because their opponent started attacking immediately.
If the time remaining on both sides is the same, the battle is declared a draw. In this case the winning streak does not reset.
Rewards
Winning a Warship battle awards the player with a Star. Players will need Stars to advance in Ranks throughout the Warships season.
Extra stars are awarded if the win was the player's first win of the day, or continued a win streak of 3 or greater.
At Iron or above, one Star is deducted for losing each Warship battle, but at lower ranks there is no penalty for losing other than potentially ending a win streak.
Stars also allow players to unlock Warship Chests. Players can hold up to 4 Warship Chests at a time, with each Chest unlocking with 3 Stars. Once a Warship Chest has been unlocked, new ones will be available after 8 hours provided that players do not already have 4 chests available. Losing Stars does not count against the progression of unlocking Warship Chests gained this way.
Even though players can drop to 39 Stars after reaching Iron, since each Warship Chest is gained by gaining Stars, there is no worry of their Warship Chests being downgraded to a Stone Tier one.
Warship Chests are also unlocked upon reaching a new Rank for the first time in a season.
