How to play Orbit Strike
Orbit Strike is an original hidden-fleet strategy game. You place five ships on your own grid, then take turns firing on the enemy grid, trying to destroy their fleet before they destroy yours. One Scanner Pulse per game lets you sense how many enemy cells are occupied in a 3×3 area, at the cost of your turn. Play the deterministic Daily Mission or practise against Cadet, Commander, or Admiral.
How to play
- Place each of your five ships by choosing it, setting horizontal or vertical, and picking a starting cell — or tap Randomize to auto-place a whole fleet.
- Once both fleets are set, take turns firing by choosing a cell on the enemy grid.
- Each shot is a miss, a hit, or a hit that destroys a ship.
- Both grids are lettered across and numbered down, so every cell has a name like D4. The fleet rosters under the boards track which ships are still flying.
- Use your one Scanner Pulse to reveal how many enemy cells are occupied within a 3×3 area. It uses up your turn.
- Destroy every enemy ship to win.
- In the Daily Mission, Practice and Solo hunt, ships may not touch: they cannot be placed against each other, even corner to corner. Sinking a ship therefore proves every cell around it is empty, and the board marks that ring as clear so you never waste a shot on it.
- Solo hunt plays the same daily fleet with no opponent: you place nothing, nothing fires back, and your score is the number of shots it takes you to clear the board against a published par. The Scanner Pulse is not available there, because par is worked out for a hunter without one. Your daily streak is untouched, and you can retry as often as you like.
Tips & strategy
- Spread your own fleet out. Ships placed side by side die together once your opponent finds the first one.
- Avoid the edges for every ship — a predictable border is the first place an experienced opponent sweeps.
- Search in a spaced pattern rather than sweeping row by row. Leaving gaps still catches every ship longer than one cell.
- Once you score a hit, work along that line in both directions before searching elsewhere.
- Save the Scanner Pulse until you have a promising region. Spending a turn to sense empty space is the most common way to lose tempo.
- Par in Solo hunt is what a strong solver averages on that board, so beating it means you searched more efficiently than a machine that already knows the odds. Hunting along a line after a hit, and skipping cells too small to hide anything, is where the shots are saved.
Accessibility
Fully playable by touch, keyboard, and screen reader. The enemy fleet is never revealed until a ship is destroyed, and shared results never show ship positions.