OpenFront Transport Landings: Choose a Coast, Screen the Route, Hold the Beach

Direct answer: run COAST before you launch a Transport Ship

Choose a reachable Coast, identify Opposition, set the troop Allocation, arrange a Warship Screen, and name the Termination condition. Launch only when the landing opens a useful second attack and you can still defend home. A Transport Ship costs no Gold, but it removes troops immediately, exposes them at sea, and normally loses 25% when recalled.

That five-part COAST check is the difference between a naval shortcut and a floating reserve that never returns intact. Coast asks whether the clicked territory resolves to a reachable enemy or neutral shore in the same connected body of water. Opposition asks which Warships, coastal armies, and third parties can punish the route or the beach. Allocation sets the attack-ratio slider and a maximum number of waves before the first boat leaves. Screen gives friendly Warships a specific patrol lane instead of a vague order to “protect the boats.” Termination defines the event that cancels the second or third wave: an enemy Warship entering the approach, the target gaining a defender, the bridgehead failing to expand, or home dropping below its reserve.

In the v0.33.14 release boundary, a player can have at most three active Transport Ships. The client sends the displayed attack-ratio share of the troops available at the instant of each launch; 20% is the normal fallback value, not a promise that every player still has that setting. Because the first boat removes its troops immediately, three consecutive 20% launches are 20% of a shrinking reserve, not three equal fifths of the original army. Transport Ships cost zero Gold and do not require a Port, but they do require your shore and the target shore to connect through water. The simulation chooses the closest usable source shore by water and a reachable landing shore belonging to the clicked target.

COAST check	Evidence to see before launch	Go signal	Stop signal
Coast	Same connected water and a useful landing edge	Beach creates a second route or captures an exposed asset	Click produces no boat, route ends at an irrelevant shore, or inland water is disconnected
Opposition	Enemy Warships, coastal troops, nearby third parties	Escort can enter first and land force can survive contact	Unscreened Warship patrol or defender can concentrate before arrival
Allocation	Current troops, slider, home reserve, active boat count	Named wave budget leaves the home front stable	Third boat is merely replacing judgment with more exposure
Screen	Friendly Warship patrol lane and timing	Escort controls the final approach before transport arrives	Escort is repairing, outside the water component, or chasing trade traffic
Termination	A visible cancel or reinforce rule	Beachhead takes a second tile and receives land support	First wave stalls, route changes, or home reserve breaks

Transport landings are not the same question as naval defense. Island Defense explains how to stop an incoming boat and preserve an island. Team Naval Control assigns fleet roles among teammates. Warship Veterancy decides when a damaged escort should repair. This guide owns the attacker’s decision from launch to beach: where to land, how much to risk, how to cross, and when to stop feeding the route.

The completion test is concrete. Before clicking, say: “Land on the western shore, send at most two waves, keep half my current troops at home, escort the last 130 tiles, and cancel wave two if the first wave cannot open a land border.” If the sentence has no coast, cap, reserve, screen, and abort rule, the operation is not planned yet.

Choose a reachable coast, not merely a visible target

A Transport command begins with the territory you click, but it does not promise to land on that exact interior tile. The released path logic first looks for a reachable shore owned by the clicked target, then looks for your closest source shore that can reach that destination through water. This distinction explains many reports that a distant click “does nothing” or produces a route that feels surprising. The command needs a legal target relationship, a reachable coastal tile, a source shore, and an available Transport slot. A colorful territory on the other side of the map is not enough.

Start the Coast check at water-component scale. Trace the sea, lake, or river-like channel between your territory and the target. A narrow land bridge can divide two bodies of water even when they appear visually close. A coast facing an inland lake cannot be reached from an ocean fleet merely because another side of the same player touches the ocean. The code deliberately filters for a shore reachable through water, which prevents a command from choosing an unreachable inland-lake edge. If the target owns several coasts, your click influences which target-owned shore is considered closest, so click near the coast you actually want rather than the center of a sprawling empire.

Then ask what the first landing tile buys. A useful beach is not just undefended. It should create a land border that can expand, threaten a structure, connect to an ally, or force the defender to split. A tiny peninsula surrounded by a stronger enemy may accept the boat but trap the landing. A neutral island can be easy to claim yet strategically empty. An exposed Port may be valuable because structures can transfer with territory, but landing directly into the defender’s prepared army can donate the entire transport before it creates depth.

The launch source matters too. A Port is not a prerequisite for a Transport Ship; the unit costs zero Gold and can spawn from a qualifying player shore. That makes emergency and early crossings possible, but it does not make every shoreline equally good. The chosen source is the closest shore by water to the destination, not necessarily the coast where your reserve is safest. Inspect the likely source before committing. If that edge is already pressured, the troop removal can break the home front even though the destination itself looks weak.

Use a three-tile landing test. Tile one is the beach the boat will conquer or attack. Tile two is the next territory needed to make the beach more than a dot. Tile three is the route back to friendly support or toward the operation’s objective. You do not need literal straight-line tiles, but you do need three successive decisions. If the first landing has no legal second action, it is a raid without an exit. If the second action opens borders with two additional enemies, it may be worse than staying home. If the third action cannot connect to reinforcement, the bridgehead is living on the troops already at sea.

The game can reject a launch before a boat exists when the target is yourself, the relationship does not allow an attack, no reachable target shore exists, no source shore exists, Transport Ships are disabled, or all three slots are occupied. Treat that rejection as information. Recheck ownership and water connectivity instead of tapping faster. On mobile, use the deliberate target confirmation from Mobile Controls; on every device, zoom until you can distinguish the intended coast from a neighboring owner.

An HTML route sketch is more honest than a fabricated screenshot because it makes the assumptions explicit:

Read opposition before you put troops on the water

Opposition has three layers: interception at sea, resistance on the beach, and exploitation by a third party. The sea layer deserves priority because a Transport Ship is not a fighting ship. A released Warship searches for hostile units and gives Transport Ships its highest target priority, ahead of enemy Warships and Trade Ships. When firing at a Transport, it does not wait for the ordinary shell reload path. The practical conclusion is severe: a route that passes through an enemy Warship’s working area is not protected merely because your boat carries a large army.

Use the current Warship geometry as a planning aid, not an invisible guarantee. A Warship patrol is centered on its assigned point, with a 100-tile patrol range and a 130-tile targeting range in the v0.33.14 boundary. Coast shape and connected water still decide whether the ship can occupy the right lane. Draw an imaginary 130-tile danger band around the final approach. If your Transport must enter that band before your escort can contest it, assume the defender gets the first useful response. Warships also alert defenders indirectly because the target receives an incoming naval-invasion notification when a hostile transport launches.

The beach layer begins before arrival. Compare the transported force with the defender’s current troops, likely growth during travel, Defense Post coverage, and the number of land borders that can join the fight. On arrival, the boat conquers the destination tile and, against a hostile owner, creates a normal land attack with its surviving troops. It does not magically spread across the coast or ignore ordinary combat. The landing therefore needs enough force to survive the first land resolution and enough shape to take the next tile. Use Land Combat for that border calculation rather than treating a naval route as a damage bonus.

The third-party layer is what turns many successful landings into losing games. In FFA, removing 20% or more from the home army is visible in your total strength. A neighbor who cannot reach the boat can still attack the coast you emptied. Another player may take the far side of the target while your transport absorbs its defense, becoming the real beneficiary. Run the whole-board scan from Threat Assessment before launching and again when the first boat reaches the midpoint.

Do not confuse an escort with a bodyguard attached to one boat. Your Warship follows its patrol and targeting logic; it does not form an invulnerable convoy. Give it a lane whose 130-tile target reach overlaps the route section where an enemy interceptor could approach. Move it first, wait until the patrol is established, and only then launch. If the escort is below its repair threshold or already returning to Port, the screen does not exist merely because the unit icon remains on the map.

Defenders can counter the operation cheaply. They can move a Warship into the route, stack troops on the expected landing owner, capture the intended beach before arrival, use a nuke to turn the destination into water, or attack the launch coast after the troops leave. They can also allow the first small wave to land and destroy it on land, baiting you into sending two larger waves. Your Opposition check must name the response you expect and the observation that disproves it.

Use a two-scan rhythm. Scan once immediately before launch for Warships, ownership, and home threats. Scan again when the boat is halfway or when the event panel shows a material change. If opposition has improved faster than your screen, use the Termination rule. A sunk first wave is not evidence that the second deserves more troops; it is evidence that the original route price was wrong.

Allocate waves from a shrinking reserve

Allocation begins with one fact that is easy to miss: the attack-ratio percentage applies to the troops available when that individual command is sent. The client multiplies current troops by the displayed ratio. The server also has a 20% default boat amount when no explicit amount is supplied, and it caps the requested value at the troops still available. The boat then removes that force from the player immediately. As a result, repeated percentage launches naturally become smaller unless troop growth between clicks replaces the difference.

Suppose you have 900,000 troops, the slider shows 20%, no growth occurs during the clicks, and all three Transport slots are free. Boat one takes 180,000 and leaves 720,000. Boat two then takes 144,000 and leaves 576,000. Boat three takes 115,200 and leaves 460,800. The fleet carries 439,200 in total, not 540,000. This compounding behavior can be useful because later waves are smaller, but it is not a reserve policy. You still removed 48.8% of the starting army and exposed three separate groups to interception.

Set the reserve first, then derive the wave cap. If the home coast needs 500,000 to survive the strongest plausible neighbor attack, the third boat in that example is forbidden even though the game allows it. A two-wave cap leaves 576,000, barely above the named floor. If the defender has a Warship and your screen is uncertain, one 180,000 probe may be the entire operation. The maximum of three active boats is a concurrency limit, not a recommendation.

Choose between a probe, a pair, and a three-wave commitment. A probe tests route selection, interception, and beach resistance with the smallest force that can still produce useful evidence. A pair separates the job: wave one creates the border, wave two reinforces only after the first secures depth. A three-wave commitment is justified only when the coast is already screened, the home reserve remains safe after compounding, and the third wave has a distinct job such as reaching an objective rather than repeating a failed attack.

Do not launch all waves on the same observation. A defender receives an incoming warning and can move after wave one. The route can remain legal while its risk changes completely. Staggering creates decision points. Let the first boat cross the most dangerous section or establish the beach, then rerun Opposition and Allocation. The cost is time; the benefit is avoiding three boats entering the same trap.

Allocation also includes Gold even though the Transport itself is free. A credible screen may require a 250,000-Gold first Warship, with each additional Warship cost rising by another 250,000 until the 1,000,000 cap. The beach may need a City, Port, or Defense Post after capture. Do not call the operation free if it consumes the troops that protect an expensive core and the Gold needed to make the bridgehead durable. The right comparison is the full opportunity cost against a land attack, a defensive structure, or waiting for better timing.

Use an allocation ledger you can state without a calculator: starting troops, home floor, ratio, maximum waves, escort status, and bridgehead budget. Recalculate after each launch. If growth lifts you above the floor, that new surplus can fund the next wave; it does not retroactively make the first decision safe. If a land battle starts at home, the wave cap falls immediately. The sea does not reserve your right to finish the plan.

Screen the crossing and sequence the beachhead

Screening is a sequence, not a unit count. The escort must arrive in the contested lane before the Transport, hold a patrol point that covers the likely interceptor path, and remain healthy enough to stay there until the boat passes. Because hostile Warships prioritize Transport Ships, an escort that trails behind the boat may spend the fight exchanging shells while the high-priority target is destroyed. Lead with control, then move the vulnerable force.

Build the route in three timed zones. The departure zone is your source shore and the first stretch of water; it must remain free of an enemy Warship that can immediately acquire the boat. The transit zone is open water where you can still cancel and return, accepting the normal 25% retreat loss. The terminal zone is the final 130 tiles around likely enemy Warship positions and the landing shore. That is where a defender’s targeting priority and short reaction distance matter most. Put the escort’s patrol point where it controls the terminal zone rather than where the boat started.

Transport movement is one water tile per simulation tick. The official configuration treats a tick as 100 ms, so a 240-step path has a baseline travel time near 240 ticks, or roughly 24 seconds, if the route remains valid and the simulation advances normally. The path length is not the straight-line distance; coast shape and obstacles can add steps. Use this arithmetic to reason about reaction windows, not to promise an on-screen ETA to the second. A defender warned at launch can reposition troops and Warships during the crossing.

When the boat arrives, the naval phase ends quickly. The destination tile is conquered and a hostile destination becomes the source of an ordinary land attack using the transported troops. The beachhead therefore needs an immediate second decision. Expand sideways to increase contact only if the combat math supports it. Push inward toward the named objective only if doing so does not expose several new enemies. Connect to an ally or another holding when that creates reinforcement. A one-tile beach that waits while the defender concentrates is not a completed landing.

Sequence friendly actions around arrival. In Team mode, assign one player to screen, one to land, and a third to pressure the defender elsewhere when possible. The screen player should not abandon the terminal lane to chase a Trade Ship; Transport priority helps only when the hostile interceptor is within the Warship’s reachable targeting geometry. The land player should announce the intended coast and wave count before the first launch. The pressure player should attack late enough to split attention, not so early that the defender finishes that battle and returns before the boat arrives.

In FFA, concealment is limited because the defender gets a warning and every neighbor can see strength changes. Use route ambiguity instead: choose between two reachable coasts, move the escort where it threatens both, and click near the final desired shore only when ready. Do not send a fake boat that cannot survive merely to create noise; the troop cost is real and the three-slot cap can block the actual landing.

The bridgehead passes when it has depth, reinforcement, or an immediate objective. Depth means more than one fragile coastal tile. Reinforcement means a second wave, land connection, or teammate can arrive before the defender’s counterattack. An immediate objective means the landing takes something that changes the fight, such as a route junction or exposed structure, rather than adding territory for its own sake. Once one of those conditions is true, switch from naval planning to Land Combat and protect the route back to the sea.

Cancel deliberately and distinguish failure states

Termination must be written before launch because sunk-cost thinking arrives with the first boat. A normal manual cancel marks the active Transport as retreating. It then seeks a friendly shore reachable from its current position. When it completes that return, 25% of the troops aboard die and 75% rejoin the owner. A boat carrying 180,000 therefore returns about 135,000 under the stated assumptions. That loss can be cheaper than losing all 180,000 to a Warship or hopeless beach, but it is not free reconnaissance.

Use four termination triggers. Cancel for interception when an enemy Warship enters the terminal lane before your screen controls it. Cancel for ownership change when the chosen beach is no longer the target that made the operation useful. Cancel for home breach when a neighbor attacks and the remaining reserve falls below its floor. Stop future waves for bridgehead failure when the first landing cannot take a second useful tile or connect before the defender concentrates. Only the first three may require recalling a boat already at sea; the fourth often means letting the existing wave resolve while withholding the next one.

The code has several failure states, and they should not be blurred into one promise. A launch rejected before a boat spawns removes no transport force because the command never reaches construction. An active boat that is manually recalled normally pays the 25% return penalty. A destination converted to water by a nuke automatically puts the boat into retreat logic. A path that becomes impossible can end through a separate path-failure branch that returns the troops and deletes the boat. Do not try to engineer that refund: it depends on the path state and is not a reliable player-controlled exit.

If the destination has become your own territory by the time the boat completes its route, the arrival is treated like a return and applies the retreat loss. This can happen when a teammate or another attack captures the beach first. Coordinate arrival order instead of assuming that “friendly now” means the whole boat will merge without cost. The original target can also change diplomatic or ownership context during transit, so the visible map at launch is not the final resolution state.

The worst response to a failed click is repeated clicking. No boat may mean all three slots are occupied, the target is not attackable, the clicked owner has no reachable shore in that water component, your own qualifying source shore is absent, or the unit is disabled by the lobby configuration. Check the outgoing-boat panel, relationship, and water body in that order. A UI rejection is not evidence that the game needs a larger troop percentage.

After a cancel, update the ledger. Subtract the 25% loss, re-evaluate the home floor, and decide whether the escort still has a useful naval job. Do not immediately relaunch the 75% survivors along the same route. The opposition that caused the cancel is still present, and the next boat begins with fewer troops. Convert the surviving force into defense, a different coast, or a land attack only after a new COAST check.

Termination also protects teammates. State who has authority to cancel a shared operation. The transport owner controls the boat; an escort player cannot recall it. A short call such as “red Warship inside final approach, cancel wave two” is useful because it names the observation and action. “This looks bad” wastes the limited window. In solo play, use the outgoing-boat row to focus the unit, inspect its ETA and target, and cancel while a friendly shore remains reachable.

Work through two numeric landing scenarios

Scenario one assumes a normal v0.33.14 Team match, 900,000 starting troops, a displayed 20% attack ratio, no troop growth during the three launch decisions, no units disabled, all three Transport slots open, and a 240-step water path. The destination is a lightly held island coast, while one friendly Warship can establish the terminal screen before the first arrival. The home-front reserve floor is 500,000 troops.

Boat one takes 180,000, leaving 720,000. Boat two would take 144,000, leaving 576,000. Boat three would take 115,200, leaving 460,800. The third launch violates the 500,000 reserve floor, so the written cap is two even though the engine permits three active transports. At one tile per tick and 100 ms per tick, the baseline path time is about 24 seconds. The escort moves first. Boat one launches only after its patrol covers the terminal route; boat two waits until boat one has crossed the danger zone.

If boat one lands and takes a second tile, boat two reinforces. If an enemy Warship enters the last 130 tiles first, boat two never launches and boat one recalls. A normal retreat of 180,000 returns roughly 135,000, making the total force after the recall approximately 855,000 before growth or other combat: 720,000 at home plus 135,000 returned. The 45,000 loss is the price of the bad read. Sending all three would have exposed 439,200 and broken the declared home floor before the defender made any decision.

Scenario two assumes an FFA on a compact strait map, 600,000 starting troops, a 30% slider, one active Transport already elsewhere, a short 90-step route, no friendly escort, and an enemy Warship patrolling near the only useful beach. A third player borders the launch coast. The desired landing would open two new land borders, and the defender has enough troops to survive a small wave.

A new boat would take 180,000 and leave 420,000 at home. The path baseline is only about nine seconds, but short distance is not safety. The enemy Warship prioritizes the Transport and can attack without waiting for the normal reload path used against other ship targets. The defender receives an incoming warning, while the third party sees the home total fall. The landing also creates two borders instead of a narrow bridgehead. COAST fails Opposition, Screen, and the three-tile beach test.

The correct decision is no launch. Move or build a Warship screen first, choose a different coast, pressure the defender by land, or wait until the enemy ship repairs. If the player had already launched and the interceptor entered the route, recalling the 180,000 would normally return about 135,000. That is painful, but still better than treating the short ETA as a reason to send a second 30% wave. The second wave would be 30% of the reduced 420,000, or 126,000, leaving only 294,000 at home for the third party.

These scenarios show why percentages, slots, and distance answer different questions. Percentage controls force per command. The three-boat cap controls concurrency. Path steps control response time. Warship geometry controls interception. None of them alone decides whether to launch. The decision comes from the combined reserve, route, opposition, screen, and beach shape.

Change the assumptions and recompute rather than memorizing the outcomes. Growth between launches makes later boats larger. A damaged escort may abandon the screen for repair. A longer coast can offer another landing shore. A teammate’s land pressure can lower beach resistance. A Water Nuke can erase the destination and trigger retreat. The reusable output is the COAST sentence and ledger, not “two boats at 20% always works.”

Adjust COAST for map shape, mode, and counterplay

On archipelago maps, Coast and Screen dominate. Water is the main route, so a bridgehead can change the whole game, but every player is also watching the same channels. Establish Warship control before loading the reserve. Favor a landing that connects islands or threatens a Port over a decorative edge. If only one channel reaches the target, assume it is observed and build the Termination trigger around the first hostile Warship entering that channel.

On strait and inland-sea maps, the path can be short while the approach is extremely predictable. A 90-step crossing may offer less decision time than a 240-step ocean route, but both players know the likely beach. Use land pressure to force the defender’s army away from the coast and place the escort so its 130-tile targeting reach covers the choke. Check that the water component truly connects; a narrow strip of land or impassable map feature can separate visually adjacent water.

On continental maps, a Transport landing is usually an optional second front. That raises its standard. If land can reach the same objective without exposing a fifth of the reserve, the boat must buy something else: surprise geometry, a shorter route, an exposed structure, or relief for a stalled border. Do not open a remote coast simply because the button appears. The defender can ignore an irrelevant beach while your nearest land opponent exploits the missing troops.

Compact maps shorten reaction windows for both the invasion and the counterattack. Lower the wave cap, because a neighbor can reach the launch coast sooner. Large maps increase travel time and third-party uncertainty; stagger more aggressively and rescan midway. Four Islands and other separated layouts reward assigned routes, but the general map assignment belongs in Four Islands Team Coordination rather than this launch workflow.

Team mode allows separate screen, landing, and pressure roles. Publish the coast, wave cap, reserve floor, and cancel call before launching. Avoid having two teammates capture the same destination just before a Transport arrives, because the arrival state can turn an intended reinforcement into a retreat-like resolution. FFA demands a larger home floor and a clearer immediate objective because no ally guarantees the launch coast. In either mode, the maximum of three boats belongs to each player, but available slots do not create strategic permission.

Water Nukes add a special failure state. If the destination tile becomes water, an active Transport automatically enters retreat behavior. Do not launch through a planned terrain conversion without sequencing the nuke first and rechecking the new shore. Doomsday adds a moving territorial deadline; avoid a long crossing whose beach will not survive the next zone change. Overtime rewards territory, but a remote one-tile landing that cannot hold may feed the defender instead of securing the threshold. Use Winning Overtime for the actual win calculation.

Counterplay should change the plan, not merely the prose. Against Warship interception, move the screen first or choose another water component. Against coastal troop stacking, land where the defender must split or create simultaneous land pressure. Against third-party attacks, raise the home floor and cap waves. Against a defender who lets probes land and then crushes them, require the first wave to secure depth before allocating a second. Against route-changing nukes, delay the launch until terrain stabilizes.

The final decision tree is short. If no reachable useful coast exists, do not launch. If a coast exists but opposition owns the terminal lane, gain a screen or change the route. If the route is controlled but the allocation breaks home defense, reduce the ratio or wave count. If the boat can cross but the beach has no second tile, choose another objective. If all four pass, launch one wave and preserve the termination rule for every later wave.

Verify the version boundary and continue with the right guide

This guide is verified for the official v0.33.14 release boundary on September 8, 2026. The formal release itself was an ad-layout fix; it did not introduce a new Transport rule. The landing facts here come from the corresponding tagged gameplay code and generated site data: zero-Gold Transport cost, a maximum of three active boats, the current-ratio launch amount with a 20% fallback, reachable-shore selection, one-tile-per-tick movement, normal 25% retreat loss, and Warship priority against Transport Ships. Later upstream main changes are not treated as released behavior.

Version boundaries matter because naval pathing has changed before. The current logic explicitly avoids selecting an unreachable inland-lake shore and can rebuild a path while a boat is active. If a later formal Release changes transport count, speed, path selection, cancel cost, notifications, or Warship targeting, recompute the COAST tables and scenarios rather than silently carrying these numbers forward. A merged commit or open issue is evidence for monitoring, not permission to promise a live rule.

Use the unit database for a compact fact check, but do not mistake raw values for a plan. The units reference records Transport and Warship roles and costs. The Warship Veterancy guide explains damage, repair, and the choice to keep an escort on station. Team Naval Control assigns who scouts, screens, escorts, and repairs. Those pages answer fleet composition; COAST answers whether this particular landing should leave now.

If you are defending the target coast, switch to Island Defense. Its job is to read incoming routes, position Warships, protect the coast, and decide when to abandon a water investment. If the Transport has already landed, switch to Land Combat for force, terrain, Defense Post, and stop conditions. If the operation is part of a losing position, Recovery Playbook decides whether a risky second front is a real recovery route or another drain.

Keep a five-line landing log during play: chosen coast, observed opposition, ratio and reserve floor, screen patrol point, termination trigger. Add the actual result after the boat resolves. That record exposes repeated errors. If boats keep landing on the wrong side, improve the Coast click. If they die at sea, fix the screen timing. If home collapses, raise the reserve floor. If beaches stall, demand a three-tile plan. If recalls are frequent, tighten the pre-launch Opposition scan.

The guide is complete when another player can predict both the launch and the stop. They should know which shore the click is meant to select, how many troops each wave may take, where the escort must be first, what the landing does after arrival, and which visible event cancels the next wave. A Transport Ship is powerful because it creates a border where none existed. The same fact makes it dangerous: it creates obligations on two coasts at once.

Return to the direct answer before every operation: Coast, Opposition, Allocation, Screen, Termination. If one word has no observed answer, keep the troops on land. If all five have concrete answers, send the first boat, watch the route, and make every later wave earn a fresh decision.