How to play Operation Ocean Shield

What the game is

Operation Ocean Shield is a real-time naval strategy game set off the Horn of Africa from 2009 to 2011. You command Combined Task Force 151: a handful of warships, their helicopters and a few patrol aircraft, protecting merchant shipping in the Gulf of Aden, the Somali Basin and the Arabian Sea.

The navies, warships, aircraft and operations are named for history. The merchant ships, their crews, the pirates and every incident are fictional. It's a strategy game, not a simulator.

Play it in your browser at https://operationoceanshield.earthablaze.com/play, on a desktop or tablet. It's free, there's nothing to install, and you don't need an account to play.

The score

Your score is the number of ships hijacked, measured against what really happened: 47 in 2009, 49 in 2010 and 28 in 2011. The top bar shows your attacks and ships taken next to the real figures.

When a deployment ends, the debrief gives you a grade and sets your ships taken against the real count for the same period.

Choosing a deployment

• 2009: one year. The first year of the transit corridor and the group transits. About two and a half hours at 1×, less at speed.
• 2009 to 2011: the whole campaign. The motherships reach the Indian Ocean, then armed guards turn the tide.
• Daily Patrol. Thirty days, the same for everyone that day, with a leaderboard. See the Daily Patrol.

The start screen also lets you try a helicopter intercept or a boarding on their own. See Taking command.

Your first deployment

A new deployment shows six tips, and each moves on when you do the thing it asks: select a ship, give it an order, put its helicopter on Alert 15, give a patrol aircraft an area, set the speed, and look at the Desk. Press Skip tips to hide them.

What you're up against

• Pirates are hard to find. A skiff is a speck on the radar and a mothership looks like any other dhow. Patrol aircraft and helicopters find them; warships catch them.
• The monsoons. From June to September the south-west monsoon closes the open ocean to skiffs. The Sea state button on the map shows the weather by area.
• Merchants decide too. A fast container ship outruns skiffs. A slow bulk carrier with low sides doesn't. Best Management Practices, citadels and, later, armed guards change the odds.
• Ransoms buy boats, fuel and men. The Pirates tab shows what intelligence knows about the group at each of the five towns.

For every order and key, see Orders and controls.