OpenFront Mobile Controls: Tap, Attack, Build, and Command Fleets

Direct answer: make every mobile command a deliberate three-step action

After spawning, tap land or unselected water to open the radial menu, drag one finger to pan, pinch with two fingers to zoom, and hold for 800 ms before dragging to box-select Warships. During manual spawn, tap valid unowned land cleanly. Before attacking, use TAP: confirm the Target, set the Amount, then Pause for the preview.

OpenFront is playable in a modern phone browser without a separate download; the mobile app, download, and APK answer owns installation and source verification. On iOS, the official interface can offer Add to Home Screen so the game opens fullscreen without the address bar. That changes the available screen space, not the rules of the match. The game still resolves the same attacks, structures, diplomacy, naval movement, and win conditions as desktop. The important difference is input: a touch cannot expose the same hover information or keyboard shortcuts, so the mobile player must separate looking, choosing, and committing more carefully.

Treat a normal tap as a request for actions, not as a universal attack button. Outside the spawn phase, the tagged client sends a touch on land to the context action system, which opens the radial menu for that tile. A touch on water opens the same menu when no Warship is selected; with a selected Warship, water becomes a movement destination. During manual spawn, only a valid tap on unowned land can submit a start; Random Spawn does not use that manual choice. The meaning therefore depends on the phase, the tile, and any selected unit.

Use one finger to move the camera only after the finger travels far enough to count as a drag. The v0.33.14 handler uses a 10-pixel Manhattan-distance threshold in browser client coordinates: horizontal movement plus vertical movement below 10 client pixels is still treated as a tap. These are not measured physical screen pixels or a target to judge during a live match. The practical lesson is to drag clearly when scouting and tap cleanly when choosing.

Use two fingers to pinch. When the second touch arrives, the client cancels a pending long press so a zoom should not unexpectedly start fleet selection. Pinch out before selecting a tiny structure, narrow coast, crowded fleet, or one-tile border; pinch in only after the command is resolved. Zoom is part of targeting accuracy, not decoration. A target that cannot be distinguished from its neighbor is not ready to receive an irreversible command.

The reusable decision framework is TAP: Target, Amount, Pause. Target names the player, tile, structure, route, or unit group. Amount checks the attack-ratio slider, Gold cost, upgrade count, donation amount, or fleet scope. Pause confirms that the radial menu, armed build, target marker, or selected Warship matches the plan before the final touch. TAP does not slow the whole match; it inserts one deliberate beat only where a wrong touch spends Troops, Gold, diplomatic trust, or a nuclear launch.

This page owns touch execution and small-screen error recovery. Hotkeys remains the desktop keyboard workflow. First Match teaches general opening decisions on every device. Land Combat decides whether a border attack is sound, while Warship Veterancy decides whether a damaged ship should fight or return. Use this guide after the strategic decision is made and before the phone turns it into the wrong command.

Read the touch state before you lift your finger

Mobile control begins with a state check because the same screen coordinate can mean four different things. In a manual spawn phase, a clean tap on valid unowned land can propose your start; water and Random Spawn do not use that path. After spawn, a clean tap opens actions for the touched tile. With a Warship selected, a clean tap on water can move the ship. After an 800 ms hold, movement can draw a fleet-selection box.

The safest scouting gesture is a visible one-finger drag that starts on an unimportant open area. Do not begin a pan on the exact City, Port, Silo, narrow border, or Warship you are inspecting. If the motion stays below the 10-pixel threshold, the client can classify it as a tap and open the local radial menu. Opening a menu is recoverable, but it steals attention and can put an action under the next thumb movement. Start farther from the valuable object, drag far enough to be unambiguous, then release before beginning the next gesture.

A clean tap should do the opposite. Stop camera movement, put one fingertip on a visually separated tile, and lift without sliding. If the menu opens for the wrong owner or wrong terrain, close it by touching outside the menu and zoom in before trying again. Do not compensate by tapping the desired wedge faster. The original target remains wrong, and a faster second touch only turns an aiming error into an executed one.

Pinch zoom is a two-pointer state. The tagged handler tracks the distance and center between two touches, converts a meaningful distance change into zoom, and prevents the second finger from completing the pending long press. Use that behavior intentionally. Place two fingers around the area you want to preserve in view, pinch until the coast, border, or unit group separates, then lift both fingers. Avoid leaving one finger down and immediately tapping an action with the other; finish the camera gesture, let the map settle, and begin a new command.

Long press is reserved for Warship box selection. The official v0.33.14 input code starts the mode after 800 ms. A crosshair appears, and a subsequent drag draws the selection region. Moving at least 10 pixels before the timer fires cancels the pending hold and pans instead. Holding without drawing suppresses the next tap, preventing a stray radial menu from opening. These safeguards are useful, but they do not choose the right ships for you. Draw a box that excludes the fleet guarding the other coast.

The screen UI is also state. The attack-ratio slider defines how much of your available force an attack or troop donation commits. The client can restore a saved user ratio; 20% is only the fallback when no preference exists, not a forced value. An armed build or weapon changes what a target touch can do. A selected Warship changes water from inspection to movement. The event panel can focus an action and offers a red X retreat, but retreat costs 25% of the attacking Troops; nukes cannot be recalled after launch.

Before every finger lift, ask a compact question: am I looking, selecting, or committing? Looking uses drag or pinch. Selecting opens a menu, marks a unit group, or chooses an action. Committing spends the ratio, Gold, relationship, or launch. If you cannot name the state, lift away from the control area, close any open menu, and start again. That reset costs less than repairing an accidental war.

Use TAP to turn limited screen space into a reliable workflow

TAP converts every irreversible action into three checks that fit on a phone. It is not a memorized build order or attack percentage. It is a method for controlling context. Mobile errors usually occur because the player sees only part of the map, touches before confirming the slider, or lets one action state bleed into the next. Target, Amount, Pause closes those gaps in a fixed order.

Target comes first because a perfect amount sent to the wrong place is still wrong. Center the relevant front, zoom until owners and terrain are distinct, and identify the exact tile or unit. For a border attack, name the defender and the shape you expect after capture. For a transport, name the landing coast and follow-up tile. For a building, name the protected location and the route it serves. For diplomacy, name the player rather than trusting a nearby color. For a nuke, name the weapon, launch Silo, target, and follow-up action.

Amount is whatever the action consumes or scopes. A ground attack and troop donation use the attack-ratio setting. A structure uses Gold and may add an upgrade count. A Warship box uses spatial scope: the ships inside the rectangle are the amount. A donation slider uses an explicit value. A nuke uses a weapon and a launch that cannot be recalled. Read the visible control immediately before choosing the radial action; do not rely on the value you remember from the previous front.

Pause is the verification frame. After opening the radial menu, look at its center and available wedges. After arming a building, inspect the preview and cost before placement. After selecting ships, confirm which markers respond before touching water. After opening a player’s Info menu, confirm the name and relationship before sending resources, stopping trade, or proposing an alliance. A pause lasts only long enough to state the expected outcome. If the UI does not match, close it instead of improvising inside the wrong state.

Mobile action	Target check	Amount check	Pause signal	Abort
Ground attack	Correct defender and border tile	Attack-ratio slider	Sword/action belongs to that player	Close menu and zoom
Transport	Legal destination and useful landing	Troops implied by current ratio	Boat action and route are visible	Close menu; keep coast reserve
Build or upgrade	Protected tile and named job	Gold cost and x1/x5 state	Preview is valid at intended site	Cancel preview before panning
Donate	Correct ally	Ratio or Gold slider	Ally name and relationship match	Close player menu
Move Warships	Selected local fleet and patrol water	Box scope, not all ships	Selected ships visibly respond	Tap/cancel before choosing water
Launch nuke	Weapon, Silo, target, follow-up	Weapon cost already paid; one launch	Final target is unambiguous	Cancel before launch; never after

Apply TAP twice when an action has two stages. A transport has a launch decision and a landing decision. A nuclear sequence has weapon selection and target selection. A Warship operation has fleet selection and destination. A build has menu selection and placement. The first TAP confirms that the correct tool is active; the second confirms where it will resolve. This is faster than recovering from a single-stage assumption.

Build a neutral reset habit. Touch outside the radial menu to close it. Cancel an armed preview before dragging across the map. End a pinch with both fingers. Deselect or deliberately retarget Warships before inspecting another water component. Use the event panel to focus a live attack rather than trying to rediscover a tiny border at low zoom. A reliable reset creates a known starting state for the next TAP cycle.

TAP also protects attention. On desktop, hover, hotkeys, and a large viewport let the player inspect one region while preparing another. Mobile compresses those tasks. Give one front a short command window, then return to a strategic overview. Do not keep the camera at placement zoom while a second opponent moves elsewhere. The framework ends when the command is verified; then zoom out and rescan threats with Threat Assessment.

The completion test is simple: another player should be able to hear your sentence and predict the next visible result. “Target the western Bot, send the displayed 20%, pause until the attack appears in events” is testable. “Tap quickly near the border” is not. Precision on mobile comes from naming the result before touching, not from developing a faster thumb.

Control land attacks, diplomacy, and the radial menu without rushing

On released mobile input, a land tap outside spawn opens the radial menu for that tile. The menu is contextual: it asks the game which actions your player has for the touched location, then shows the available build, attack, transport, information, diplomacy, donation, or communication paths. This is why memorizing a wedge position is unsafe. The same angle may be absent, disabled, or lead into a submenu when the tile owner, relationship, terrain, lobby modifiers, or your resources change.

For a ground attack, begin at a zoom where the border is wider than your fingertip. Run Target by checking both the defending player and the capture shape. A tile at a three-player junction can open a new war even if the immediate defender is weak. Run Amount by reading the attack-ratio slider. The official help defines it as the share of Troops used for an attack and notes that the casualty benefit of overwhelming the defender stops improving beyond a 2:1 attacker-to-defender ratio. That fact does not create a universal ratio, because terrain, structures, contact width, other attacks, and current reserves still matter.

Pause after the radial menu appears. The center icon changes for friendly targets, and available actions come from the selected tile. If the name, relation, or sword/donation context is wrong, close the menu. Do not slide toward an attack merely because the wedge resembles the previous one. For the combat decision itself, use Land Combat; mobile TAP only ensures the intended ratio reaches the intended border.

The event panel is the recovery path for an attack already sent. Official help says touching an event can focus the attack, nuke, or transport. A red X can retreat a conventional attack, but 25% of the attacking force dies in the retreat. A recalled transport returns toward its start and can attack there if ownership has changed. Nukes cannot be retreated. These costs make early verification valuable. If an accidental attack is small and harmless, it may be cheaper to let it resolve; if it opens a catastrophic war or drains the reserve, pay the retreat cost promptly instead of waiting for perfect information.

Diplomacy uses the same target discipline. Tap well inside the intended player’s land, open Info or the relationship action, and verify the name before proposing an alliance, stopping trade, marking a target, or sending resources. At a crowded border, zooming in is not wasted time. A Gold donation to the wrong ally is unrecoverable. A troop donation uses the attack-ratio percentage, so a ratio left high for a previous assault can turn a routine support touch into an empty home defense.

Use a two-window rhythm during tense diplomacy. First, zoom out and decide which relationship improves the map: quiet border, shared enemy, trade route, or emergency support. Second, zoom into a safe interior tile of that player and perform TAP. Do not open diplomacy from the disputed border tile where colors and ownership can change during the gesture. If the recipient is disconnected or the action disappears, close the menu and reassess rather than tapping an adjacent option.

Mobile makes repeated attacks tempting because the previous target remains under the thumb. Resist cadence without observation. After every attack, zoom out enough to see whether a third party gained, a second border opened, or your current Troops fell below the reserve. Re-read the ratio before the next tap. The high-skill mobile loop is not maximum taps per second; it is the shortest reliable interval between a changed map and a corrected decision.

Build structures and launch weapons as separate armed states

Building on mobile is a two-stage command: choose the build action, then place or confirm it. Treat the armed preview as a live state that must be resolved or cancelled before scouting again. A common error is to open Build, choose a City or Defense Post, decide to inspect another front, and drag across the map while the preview is still active. The next clean touch can become placement rather than inspection. Finish TAP at the intended site or explicitly cancel before changing tasks.

Run Target at two scales. At strategic scale, name the job: troop-cap headroom, a protected trade route, train access, a predictable defense approach, nuclear coverage, or a specific weapon. At placement scale, zoom until the structure is clearly behind the line it is meant to support. A City on the newest edge can transfer its capacity to an attacker. A Port on a weak corridor can become the opponent’s naval base. A Defense Post too far from the real approach buys no decision window. Small-screen convenience is never a reason to place a permanent asset on the first visible empty tile.

Run Amount by reading current Gold, cost, and upgrade mode. Structure costs can escalate, and some build systems support x1 or x5 upgrades while a new structure remains a single placement. The mobile radial workflow does not waive any prerequisite or price. If a menu item is disabled or missing, diagnose the lobby modifier, terrain, range, existing infrastructure, or balance before repeating the touch. Tapping faster cannot make an invalid placement valid and increases the chance of selecting a neighboring wedge.

Pause on the preview. Check that the intended structure, site, and count are visible. If the preview overlaps the edge of the screen, pan only after cancelling it or use a fresh build cycle after repositioning. The safest mobile sequence is camera first, build second: center the protected location, pinch to placement zoom, lift both fingers, tap to open actions, choose Build, choose the structure, confirm the preview, place, then close the state. Do not interleave camera gestures with an armed purchase.

Nuclear weapons require an even stricter two-cycle TAP. First confirm the weapon and ready Silo. Then confirm the final target and the land action that follows impact. The official help distinguishes reversible conventional attacks from nukes that cannot be retreated once launched. A mobile target that is partly covered by a finger, panel, or map edge is not a valid launch target. Close the sequence, recenter, and start again rather than guessing through obstruction.

The tactical target also needs a strategic sentence. “Destroy this City cluster so the western attack takes the corridor” is complete. “Hit the large color” is not. A Water Nuke, ordinary weapon, Hydrogen Bomb, or MIRV can change terrain, infrastructure, unit threats, and future routes differently. Use Nuclear Deterrence and the MIRV guide to choose the weapon; use TAP to keep the phone from changing the intended Silo or tile.

Opponent pressure makes the reset more important. A notification may arrive while the build or weapon state is armed. Do not answer by dragging straight to the alert. Cancel the active state, use the event panel to focus the incoming threat, then decide whether the original purchase still has value. A Defense Post ordered before the attack may still be correct. A Port or City whose route is now falling may not be. The map changed, so the old Target and Pause are invalid even if the Gold Amount is unchanged.

End every purchase with a screen-space check. Zoom out until the structure’s route, at least one likely threat, and your reserve are visible together. The build is not complete when the icon appears; it is complete when you know what action it enables and what would force you to abandon or defend it. That closing scan prevents mobile placement zoom from becoming strategic tunnel vision.

Command Warships with tap, water context, and the 800 ms fleet box

Warships introduce the most important mobile state change. With no ship selected, tapping water opens the radial menu. With one or more Warships selected, tapping water can command movement. A tap near an owned Warship can select it, while a long press and drag can select a group. The water tile therefore cannot be interpreted without checking fleet selection first. Before touching a second sea, look for the selected-unit feedback and ask which coast will be left behind.

For one ship, zoom until its hull separates from nearby units and tap it cleanly. Then TAP the destination: Target is the patrol area or interception line; Amount is one selected hull; Pause is the visible selection and an unobstructed water destination. Do not tap through the ship toward the sea behind it. At low zoom, a touch intended for water can pick a nearby unit, while a touch intended for the unit can open water actions instead.

The single-ship lookup uses a separate 10-map-tile Manhattan radius: with no fleet selected, a water tap chooses the nearest active owned Warship inside that radius; if none qualifies, the context menu path remains. This has nothing to do with the 10-client-pixel gesture threshold. After a ship is selected, the next water tap sends its move and clears the selection.

For several ships, hold one finger still for 800 ms until the crosshair state begins, then drag a clear rectangle. The selection completes only when the total horizontal-plus-vertical movement reaches at least 10 pixels; a smaller box is cancelled. Those are tagged client thresholds, not recommended reaction goals. Give the gesture enough time and distance to be unambiguous. Starting the hold over open water near the fleet reduces the chance that the first touch obscures a hull you need to include.

Draw by mission rather than by visual cluster. A fleet may look like one group while two ships guard the Port, three escort a transport lane, and one repairs. Include only the ships whose current mission is being replaced. After the box completes, pause before tapping a destination. If ships on the other coast show selection feedback, cancel and redraw. Sending every hull across the map can win one naval contact and expose two Ports.

Pinch and long press deliberately conflict in timing. The second finger cancels a pending hold, which is correct for zoom. If the fleet is too dense to box accurately, pinch first, lift both fingers, wait for a stable view, then begin the 800 ms hold as a new gesture. Do not place the second finger halfway through the hold and expect selection to continue. The client correctly treats that as a different input state.

Water movement also needs an exit. Name the return line, repair Port, or replacement guard before moving. Warship Veterancy explains the released three-level progression, repair behavior, and retreat decisions. Mobile fleet control adds a narrower rule: preserve local ownership of missions. A levelled ship protecting a damaged Port should not join a distant box simply because its sprite overlaps the attacking group.

The opponent’s simplest counter is distraction. A small transport or trade capture on one edge draws the camera and fleet, then the real landing arrives on another. Mobile view compression makes that counter stronger because both seas may not fit on screen. Use the event panel to focus contacts, move the minimum fleet that solves the first route, and return to overview before issuing the next command. If the match has two disconnected water components, treat them as two fleets even when one box could theoretically select ships from both at a wide zoom.

In Team, tell teammates which water you are moving to, not only that the fleet is selected. On Four Islands or another separated map, one player’s box may contain the team’s only bridge protection. In FFA, keep the move less legible by changing one local patrol rather than sweeping every ship. In Singleplayer, practice hold, box, cancel, and move at reduced speed if the lobby allows it; public multiplayer does not offer pause or speed control, so the gesture must already be familiar.

Scenario one: a 20% border attack on a 390 px phone

Assume a public FFA under v0.33.14 on a phone with a 390-pixel CSS viewport. Your nation has 600,000 current Troops, the attack-ratio control displays 20%, and a western Bot borders you through a narrow plain. A second human touches your south-east edge. You intend to send 120,000 Troops west while preserving the rest as recovery and deterrence. The viewport, player counts, terrain, and force numbers are teaching assumptions, not a promise about a named map.

Start with Target. At overview zoom, identify the western Bot, the south-east human, and the border shape. Do not attack yet. Pan using a deliberate drag that begins inside your safe core and travels clearly farther than the client’s 10-pixel tap threshold. Pinch around the western contact until the Bot tile and any neighboring human tile are visually separate. Lift both fingers. A target hidden behind your thumb is not sufficiently separated.

Now check Amount. Twenty percent of 600,000 is 120,000, but the live engine will use the current available force when the attack resolves, not the teaching arithmetic frozen on this page. An incoming attack, growth tick, earlier order, or ratio change can move the value. Read the on-screen slider immediately before opening the radial menu. If it says 50%, the intended 120,000 plan is no longer armed; correct the ratio first.

Tap well inside the Bot-owned side of the border. The radial menu opens for the touched tile. Pause. Confirm that the owner and attack action match the western Bot and that you did not touch your own border or the southern human. Select the ground attack and watch the event panel for the outgoing action. Then zoom out to restore the two-front view. The mobile success condition is not “the tap worked.” It is “the west received the planned order and the south-east reserve remains available.”

Suppose the touch drifts 6 pixels during release. Because the tagged handler treats total movement under 10 pixels as a tap, the menu can still open. That is acceptable if the target is correct. Suppose instead you drag 14 pixels and pan the map. Do not instantly tap where the Bot used to be; the map moved. Recenter, identify the owner again, and restart Target. The threshold explains the behavior but never justifies acting on stale coordinates.

Suppose the resulting event reveals that the order went to the human. Use the red X only after comparing the consequences. The official help says retreat kills 25% of the attacking force. If 120,000 was committed, the simple teaching estimate is 30,000 lost on retreat, though concurrent combat and live state can change the displayed result. Paying that cost may still be better than opening the wrong war. If the order is only a harmless probe and retreat would be worse, stop further taps, communicate, and preserve the remaining 480,000 rather than compounding the mistake.

The opponent’s counter is to pressure the south-east while your camera remains at western placement zoom. Answer by completing one command cycle and returning to overview immediately. Do not repeat attacks just because the Bot is still under the thumb. Rerun TAP with the changed Troop total, changed ratio, and two-front state. On a Compact map, the human may reach the core faster, so reduce the committed amount or postpone the Bot. In Team, a teammate may cover the south-east, but verify that role rather than assuming the team color is a reserve.

This scenario changes a player decision: the 20% slider is not a rhythm to repeat; it is an Amount that belongs to one named Target and one map snapshot. Mobile reliability comes from restoring strategic view after the action, not from trying to reproduce desktop click speed on a smaller surface.

Scenario two: select three of five Warships without abandoning the Port

Assume you own five Warships in two visible groups. Three healthy ships patrol the central strait, while two ships at 62% and 71% of their adjusted maximum health guard and repair near the eastern Port. A transport warning appears 140 screen pixels west of the central group. You want the three healthy ships to intercept while the damaged pair remain on the Port route. Health, screen distance, route, and ship count are explicit scenario assumptions.

Begin with overview Target. Identify the warning, the central group, the eastern Port, and the water component connecting them. Use the event panel to focus the incoming transport if needed, but do not immediately touch the warning water while a ship may be selected. If the ships overlap, pinch in around the central group, lift both fingers, and let the view settle. The two-finger gesture cancels a pending long press, so selection must begin afterward as a clean state.

Place one finger on open water just outside the three-ship group and hold still. At 800 ms the tagged client begins the long-press selection mode and shows the crosshair state. Drag a rectangle across the three healthy ships with clearly more than 10 pixels of total movement, stopping before the eastern pair. Release. Pause before choosing the destination. Amount here is not a percentage; it is exactly the three selected hulls.

If only two ships show selection feedback, cancel and redraw. If one eastern repair ship is included, cancel and redraw. The transport remains a threat, but an incorrect four-ship response creates a second threat by weakening the Port. Do not turn a bounded interception into an all-fleet command because the first box was imprecise. A clean second attempt is faster than a long repair journey.

After selection is correct, tap the western water destination that gives the fleet an interception angle rather than stacking directly on the warning icon. Watch the ships begin to respond, then return the camera to a view that includes the Port and the transport lane. The three selected ships now own the interception mission. The two unselected ships still own repair and local defense. If the enemy transport changes course, update the destination with the same fleet rather than redrawing across all five.

The opponent can counter by sending a second transport toward the Port after your central group moves. Because the damaged pair stayed local, you retain a response and a visual reminder that the eastern route still exists. If the second wave contains Warships, avoid feeding the damaged pair into a losing fight; use the Port repair decision and call an ally or return one healthy ship. The box gave accurate control, not invulnerability.

On Four Islands, the west and east groups may protect different team crossings. Announce the central move before it begins. On a tiny Compact map, 140 pixels may represent a short travel distance and leave less time for a second box; pre-group ships by mission before the warning. In Singleplayer, reduce speed and rehearse the gesture if allowed. In public multiplayer, the official help marks pause and speed as unavailable, so the safe response is smaller scope and earlier detection.

The completion test is observable: three healthy ships move west, two damaged ships remain on the Port route, and the screen returns to a view where both missions can be monitored. “All ships are moving” is not automatically success. Mobile fleet skill is the ability to preserve the ship that should not respond.

Recover from touch mistakes and adapt the workflow by mode and map

The first common failure is tap-drag ambiguity. A tiny movement can remain a tap; a slightly larger one pans. Counter it by making observation drags obvious and action taps clean. Never memorize the 10-pixel value as a finger exercise. Use it to understand why a borderline gesture behaved differently, then reset target and camera. An opponent benefits when you attack stale coordinates after an unexpected pan.

The second failure is armed-state carryover. A build, weapon, selected fleet, or open submenu survives longer than your attention. Counter it with a reset after every command: close the radial menu, cancel the preview, end both pinch contacts, inspect fleet selection, and zoom back out. Notifications and opponent attacks are designed by circumstance to interrupt you; do not let an interruption inherit an expensive state.

The third failure is ratio memory. The previous 20%, 50%, or 100% setting feels familiar, so the player skips Amount. Counter it by reading the slider before every attack and troop donation. Opponents can create rapid multi-front pressure that encourages repeated taps. Slow only the irreversible beat: Target, Amount, Pause, then execute. A higher cadence with the wrong ratio loses more time than the check consumes.

The fourth failure is thumb occlusion. The player commits to a tile that disappears under the finger or panel. Counter it by zooming first, targeting from a safe interior tile, and using the event panel for focus. On long narrow maps, move along the corridor at overview scale, then zoom only for the final border. On archipelagos, keep the launch coast and landing route visible before choosing a transport. On dense Europe-style maps, select an interior tile of the intended player for diplomacy rather than a multi-owner junction.

The fifth failure is whole-fleet reflex. A warning appears and every Warship leaves. Counter it with the 800 ms box and mission ownership. The opponent may deliberately send a cheap first contact to pull the fleet. Move only the ships whose route is being replaced, keep a return line, and restore the second coast to view. When the fleet cannot be separated accurately, choose one ship at a time or wait for a clearer geometry rather than drawing a broad box.

Mode changes the cost of each error. Public FFA rewards attention to third parties and does not provide pause or speed controls. Team modes let another player cover a front, but donations and joint fleets make recipient and scope checks more important. Singleplayer and private lobbies can expose pause, speed, disabled units, resource multipliers, or other settings; use them to rehearse gestures, but do not assume those controls exist in public play. During manual spawn, only valid unowned land accepts the start touch; Random Spawn skips that choice. Complete Team Spawn Formation or First Match planning before the countdown ends.

Device layout also changes the workflow without changing the game rules. On iOS, the official tagged strings instruct players to add OpenFront to the Home Screen for fullscreen when the browser itself lacks fullscreen support. More vertical space can reduce panel overlap, but it does not make a covered target valid. On a tablet, the viewport may show more map while touch semantics remain. On a phone, hide nonessential panels only when you know how to restore their information; a clean screen that conceals events is not better situational awareness.

The v0.33.14 boundary is precise. The formal v0.33.14 Release changes modal scrolling, not game rules. Touch behavior is verified in tagged InputHandler.ts, contextual land/water and ship handling in WarshipSelectionController.ts, the official mobile radial-menu and event-panel descriptions in English interface strings, and threshold behavior in input tests. Unreleased main changes are not presented as available controls.

Continue by intent. Use Hotkeys when moving to desktop, Land Combat before choosing a force, Defense Posts before placing a static line, Warship Veterancy before risking a damaged fleet, and Nuclear Deterrence before arming a weapon. The mobile guide is complete when a player can look, select, commit, verify, and reset without one gesture leaking into the next.